Are you present or preoccupied?
I read an article over the weekend by a journalist who had taken her husband and teenagers on a digital detox break. She hoped that time without devices would help them get on better – and be less irritable!
Smartphones are the obvious saboteur of being present to our lives, and the people around us. We’ve all been with a person who seems more interested in their phone than us, or been that person ourselves.
However, you don’t need a phone to be preoccupied.
In body but not in spirit
A common scenario in my house : Husband and I having dinner at the kitchen table listening to news on the radio. Husband comments on news item. I have no idea what he’s referring to because I’ve been in my head thinking about something completely different.
Chris Bailey, author of Hyperfocus, says our mind wanders about 47% of the time, the majority of which is about the future.
There are times when mind-wandering can be a good thing – for example, for our creativity. However, often our preoccupations involve worrying, ruminating or making assumptions about what’s happening around us.
For example, one Director I worked with wanted to increase her impact in meetings with new clients. She spent most of the time worrying about whether to say something for fear of looking stupid – and often ended up saying nothing at all.
On a different note, a COO I worked with spent meetings with team members preoccupied by how she thought things should be getting done faster and frustrated at their apparent lack of progress.
In both cases, being preoccupied was impacting their capacity to connect and engage with others and, ironically, getting in the way of achieving their goals.
From preoccupied to present
When you find your attention is somewhere other than the present, here are three strategies to bring yourself back :
Come back to your body. Being consumed by worry or frustration is a symptom that your fight/flight response is activated. When you realise you’re in your head, bring your attention back down into your body by feeling your feet on the ground and breathing into your belly.
Attention out. Direct your attention outwards. Notice what you can see, feel and hear around you. For example, focus on everything red in the room, feel the texture of the table you’re sitting at, or pay close attention to what the person with you is wearing.
Be curious. What would you like to know more about? What questions can you ask? Focus on what you don’t know rather than what you think you do.
Happy endings
When the COO slowed down and listened to her team members, she discovered what was hampering progress and was able to work with them to come up with an effective solution. In the process, they opened up to her more as they felt a greater sense of connection and trust.
The Director practised staying present in new client meetings by feeling her feet on the ground and breathing into her belly. Through asking questions and listening attentively, it became clearer to her how she could add value which in turn built her confidence.
And finally…
A quote from the late Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn : “The present moment is the only moment available to us. It is the door to all moments.”
Alison Reid is an experienced executive coach who helps new Directors lead with confidence. She works with them 1-1, empowering them to focus on what matters, communicate with impact and stay calm under pressure so they can lead themselves and others to great results. She's the author of Unleash Your Leadership : How to Worry Less and Achieve More. Download an extract or buy the book.
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Uncertainty is like kryptonite for humans.
Talking to Val, an Operations Director, the other day, she was feeling a sense of being out of control after a challenging time in her organisation. She shared with me that she was feeling anxious, worried that she was going to thrown a curveball and that she and her team wouldn’t be able to cope.
When we explored further, she said she felt a knot in her stomach and there was a lot of negative mental noise.
Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has found that “uncertainty is more unpleasant and arousing than assured harm, because if the future is a mystery, you can’t prepare for it.” She goes on to say, “When people are seriously ill but have an excellent chance of recovery, they are less satisfied with life than people who know their disease is permanent.”
In other words, we humans hate uncertainty so much that we would rather be sure that something is going to end badly, even if it means death, than not know how it’s going to turn out, even if there is a good chance of a positive outcome.
There’s a good evolutionary reason for this. Greater predictability means our body-brain can work out what resources it needs to survive.
Uncertainty means our nervous system goes on high alert ready for whatever might come its way which takes up a lot of mental and physical energy. Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson puts this most simply, “We could make two kinds of mistakes - thinking there was a tiger in the bushes when there wasn’t or thinking there wasn’t when there was.”
I listened to an interesting BBC Sounds programme about the Amygdala sharing the latest neuroscience on how we experience emotions. Psychologist Kimberley Wilson
How to befriend the unknown
1) Appreciate your anxiety
When we come across something new or ambiguous - like a new role or news of a potential restructure - our brain releases chemicals which ready us to learn or to act. The resulting sensations are what we often experience as fear or anxiety.
Psychologist Kimberley Wilson recommends appreciating your body-brain for looking after you by saying to yourself, “This is normal. My body is preparing me for this new thing, and that’s ok.”
2) Matter over mind
When I asked Val* what she could feel in her body, she said there was a tight knot in her stomach. As I invited her to bring attention to her body and breathe into it, the knot became looser and her mental noise became lighter.
To paraphrase neuroscientist Dr Alan Watkins, the best way to change what we’re thinking is to change how we feel. Breathing smoothly and evenly into your belly is the most direct way to relieve stress and agitation and feel calmer.
3) Change your story
We are wired to make up stories about our experience. Not only are they often unhelpful, but they also fuel our fear and anxiety. For example, Val’s story was, “Something's going to go wrong and I’m not going to be able to cope.”
What’s a more helpful story? For example, “I am equipped to deal with anything that comes my way.”
4) Reframe your fear
Feldman Barrett is leading on the latest neuroscience around emotions, helping us understand that we decide what meaning we make of our sensations. Fear and excitement are actually physiologically very similar and our interpretation of whether we’re fearful or excited depends on our past experience.
One question to ask yourself rather than what am I afraid of is, “What am I excited about?” Or “What is exciting about the future?” Or “What is exciting about not knowing what’s going to happen next?”