The Ultimate Gift: Presence
I Intend to be Palpable. The First 6 Months
The Biggest Learning
The value of presence.
When I started out coaching, I was (and still am) super keen to help others, bring value, and support them.
It all comes from a good place, the right place, and I have learned a few things.
The biggest lesson so far: my presence is the ultimate gift.
Silence.
Simply listening. Hearing the other person. Holding the space.
Sometimes this can go for more than 20 minutes, even longer.
A client sharing what is happening, what they are alive to, recounting recent experiences, providing reflections.
They are working through things by talking through it.
I am present.
Regulated.
Not waiting to say something.
Bearing witness.
Receiving.
When appropriate, and I am still learning when that is, I can offer a reflection, a story, a framework.
It is such an honour to be able to do this work.
So eternally grateful.
They Are Training You
The value of people’s attention is driving record stock prices for certain companies. With algorithms leveraging behavioural science to capture your dopamine system and get you to pick up your phone, scroll, and buy stuff…without thinking.
To train you. To optimize shareholder value.
With the expansion of AI into everything, this training will only get more focused, harder to resist, and negatively impactful.
Your attention is your most valuable resource.
…Where your attention goes, your life flows.
I choose to be optimistic about AI. It’s pretty darn amazing already. Alas, we are facing a future where being unconnected is less and less likely.
Connected all the time, always on, with endless inbound.
The Most Valuable Resource: Your Attention
The opportunity, and challenge, we are all faced with is maintaining and expanding our capacity to be present.
To show up in our lives regulated, well resourced, present and accounted for.
I wrote recently about the opportunity to add more analog back into life and some strategies to do that:
Returning to the Analog: more time with zero phone, writing by hand, reading paper, touching grass are great antidotes to this.
Your Attention, Your Presence…Is You.
Whether you choose to to do this in the morning, the evening or throughout your day, where your attention is focused will create your life.
“…Because how you spend your morning and how you spend your days is of course how you will spend your life.” - Ryan Holiday
Opportunity: Preserve your attention.
So you know yourself.
So you can be yourself.
So you can bring your gifts to the world.
Be Palpable
My belief is that people’s ability to be present will continue to decline. I hope I am wrong.
As a result, when we come across someone who is actually present, embodied, regulated, and listening - it will be palpable.
We will feel them.
We will know there is a difference.
I intend to be palpable*
*Definition
1. (Literal) Able to be touched or felt.
2. (Figurative) So intense as to seem almost tangible; easily perceptible by the mind or senses.
3. Plain to see or comprehend; obvious and clear.
AI will probably take some, maybe all?, of the work I have done historically. And to be honest, AI can have it.
I am way more interested in connecting with others.
To be present.
To witness.