Presence is Your Power – 3 Practices
Your Presence is Your Power
Events are always changing. Everything is always made new in life, between the time you read this and now. Difficult and joyous times can follow each other instantaneously. When good times arrive, welcome them, when they pass, let them go. When pain arrives, it will pass as well. Sometimes you will feel strong and whole and sometimes you will feel weak and needy. Don’t let this distract your energy. Within you is a place of love and grace. A place without fear, no need to defend, prove, or doubt. From this place springs words of truth, actions of courage and life of love. Become aware of what the next clear steps may be.
Who you are is your power – three presence practices to help you become more awake:
Practice One: Breathe
Too often, we have shallow breaths, breaths that move only half way down our rib cage. Practice breathing into your belly centre, full breaths into your lungs. If you find yourself distracted, count five in breaths and five outbreaths and then count backwards from five. Breathing centers us.
Breathing is an ocean in our chest, it grounds us to the present moment, the only moment we have. There isn’t anywhere else to go.
Practice Two: Creation Mentality: Focus Your Energy on What You Want
I often picture an awake/asleep line. Everyone knows when they are behaving in an asleep fashion. I know for me, it often, ironically means not getting enough sleep, burning the candle at both ends and then erupting at someone when they frustrate me! I also know I can put my energy on what I don’t want versus what I do want. Throughout the day I have moments of being asleep to what is real and moments of being awake, as do we all.
It is far more effective to put your energy into what you do want to create and what you want to grow than to complain about what isn’t going right. So much energy and time is sometimes spent complaining about what we don’t like versus perhaps on what we want to create. Rather than focus on what you are against, use that energy to build what you are for.
If you are annoyed by something, face it honestly, see it as a tool of growth and maturity, instead of a stumbling block. Focus your energy and attention on what you want to create versus magnifying the negative. If you catch yourself in the act of complaining/whining/moaning/groaning, take a breath and ask yourself, what is the reality that I want to create? Am I acting, feeling and thinking from an awake place or asleep place?
Practice Three: Three Questions
Leaders capture people’s hearts, heads and hands. Next time you go to a meeting or workout, consider whether your heart is present. Are your thoughts in the game and are your actions in alignment with your heart and head? As well, if you have a big decision to make, is:
• your heart voting yes or no?
• your head voting yes or no? and
• your actions (body) voting yes or no?
Presence arrives by our actions. Actions are our bodies voting for us.