Presence: the drug we actively avoid

Originally Posted on X ↗

You may not experience it often — but you definitely know the feeling of presence.

When every fiber of your being is effortlessly, thoughtlessly, and entirely engrossed in the activity at hand. You’re not actively thinking about being present, you just are.

That feeling after a glass of wine at dinner with friends and family. That feeling during face-to-face meetings, locked in a conference room, that you just don’t get over Teams. Maybe even that feeling during conversation with a stranger — while ordering food, the quick introduction, or cashing out.

The common theme is: you’re entirely focused on one activity in the world in front of you. Even if just for a few seconds (e.g. in the case of conversation with a stranger), your brain is single-tracked. Your brain is not partitioned. Those partitions are not allocated to some other topic(s). You’re operating on a single-tracked, whole brain. As a result, you experience the very real sensations of presence. More on this later.

Presence is a drug that we, for some reason, don’t want to take. I use “drug” because the sensations of true presence are similar to a drug-induced state. The physical, mental, and emotional state of being that comprises presence is subtle but profound. We should crave it. Yet we seem to actively avoid it.

Presence is somewhat abstract. So, it’s challenging to conceptualize what being present really means. I’ve started to think about presence from a different angle, which has helped me improve my presence immensely.

Presence as a state of being

Presence is an encompassing state of being — a mental, physical, and emotional state. The mental, physical, and emotional sensations, or lack thereof, that you experience during presence.

Going back to the first paragraph:

When every fiber of your being is effortlessly, thoughtlessly, and entirely engrossed in the activity at hand.

Effortless and thoughtless deserve emphasis. You are not actively thinking about being present. So, you are not forcing presence. You are simply just existing in the moment. You open yourself up to the world around you, let it take you, and lose yourself in it.

The sensations of this state of being are very real. Take a moment and think — what is an activity that you lose yourself in? Something you just get entirely lost in. What do you feel while engaged in that activity?

More than likely you feel some mix of the following.

• A single-tracked mind. No context switching or jumping topics.
• Relaxation and relief from the anxieties of everyday life. Those stressors are nowhere near the mind.
• A relaxed nervous system. An almost imperceptible slowing of the heart rate and relaxation of the muscles.
• The frazzled, overwhelmed brain? Gone.
• The persistent anxiety stuck in your stomach? Gone.

By allowing the present moment to take over your whole being, in many situations, you find ultimate relaxation for the mind and body. After all, how can you be stressed about this thing-over-there when it’s not on your conscious mind, and your brain has no active conscious allocations for it?

Your mental state sits upstream of presence. We’ll talk about this next.

Your physical state sits downstream of presence. Already covered above.

The mental state: upstream of presence

When entirely present, your brain is single-tracked. It is focused entirely on the activity at hand. There is not a sliver of brain allocated to some other thing. Nor multiple slivers of brain allocated for thinking about some multiple other things. Dividing your conscious brain into multiple slivers unfortunately tends to be the default required by modern life.

You can call it mental clutter, slivers of brain, a partitioned brain, open tabs, open threads, etc. Really any name works. It all refers to the same thing: holding unnecessary context in your head. Context on activities that are no longer the main activity at hand. Some of this clutter may be years in the past — a result of anxiety, trauma, or rumination. Other clutter may be more recent. While some clutter could be reserved for yet-to-happen future activities.

Either way, allocated is used intentionally here. I am in the camp that the brain can focus on one thing at a time, but can hold multiple other things in context. You’re allocating brain space to non-focus items that you, for some reason, want to keep in hot context. In the case of anxiety, maybe you don’t want to keep them in context, but your brain may persistently allocate in a manner that leaves you feeling out-of-control.

Having multiple simultaneous allocations naturally requires cognitive resources to maintain context on out-of-focus things. To successfully maintain context, your brain needs to check in on these things regularly, otherwise you forget. Now you’re context switching every few minutes, which requires further cognitive resources. Disclaimer: I’m not a neuroscientist, but this is what I experience in my own head.

The end result of allocating brain power to multiple things is obvious: less available brain and frequent context switching.

When we enter activities in this slivered state, a percentage of your brain, usually far less than 100%, is available for the activity at hand. Your allocations are still tying up precious brain power. So you give the activity at hand 40%, 60%, maybe 80% (if you’re lucky).

Not only that, your brain is still keeping tabs on these other things you’re holding in context. You’re subconsciously and consciously context switching. Taking your focus away from what’s in front of you.

This slivered state tends to be our default now. In a world where we are pulled in different directions, with far too much to do, and too much desire to do other things. It does not matter what those things are — be it work, your side business, what you have to do later, or day dreaming. You need to figure out how to let them go.

Letting go of your mental clutter is the prerequisite to presence.

For me, letting go of mental clutter is comprised of two concrete activities:

1.) Stop multi-tasking. No excuse. Just don’t do it. Here are a few good examples:

• No phone while talking to people, while driving, or in the bathroom.
• If someone starts talking to me, I have to choose — ask them (politely) if we can talk later, or stop what I’m doing right now.

2.) At the end of an activity, literally envision Letting Go, closing the mental tab, and filing it away. Wipe the slate (the brain) clean. This only takes a few seconds. If you have a few more seconds to spare, you should then envision your brain as a completely blank slate. Perhaps a bright white light emanating from the center of your brain outwards.

These two habits have worked wonders for my presence. If they don’t work for you, find a few quick practices you can incorporate in your life to reduce mental clutter. It takes practice, and might not go well the first few times. As you get your reps in, the process becomes easier and faster.

Only a clean mind is capable of being entirely engaged in the moment.

A method to enhance experiences

Presence seems to be one of the few ways to radically enhance almost every life experience. Presence costs you nothing, other than a little practice and patience. It’s something every single human can access and benefit from. Better yet, you can benefit from it right now. Your current life situation doesn’t matter.

Presence alone won’t get you everything you want in life. It can’t make $1,000,000 appear in your bank account. It can’t pay your mortgage. It can’t fix your health. It won’t make your business successful. It can’t fix your relationships (if you’re an asshole, you’re an asshole).

But I’d argue that presence is a highly beneficial, if not required, component to all of the above. Its role is often overlooked. Presence compounds in significant, crazy, and entirely unexpected ways over time. Once you access that state of being regularly, it may help you realize that what you thought you wanted out of life is not really what you wanted — that you really want something else. It will unlock and tint your perspectives, observations, reflections, and thought patterns. It will strengthen your relationships through unparalleled human-to-human connection and emotional attunement. It will even help you find relaxation.

At the very least, presence is required to truly experience what it is to be human. To experience The Human Experience, as I like to call it.