If you haven’t heard of the human superpower called presence, it’s time to learn what presence is.
Being Conscious, Confident, Clear, In Your Everyday Life
Presence is a natural and powerful state of consciousness accessible to every human being. From this frame of mind, you can objectively handle hard decisions; maintain your cool during difficult conversations; and compassionately listen to your feelings and inner senses, and the cross-talk in your head. These are just a few of the benefits of being present in the moment.
However, presence is not something you can easily turn on and off. Instead, you have to cultivate it. With practice, it gets easier.
Oddly enough, few people know what it is or how to induce it. You’re not alone if you don’t know much about it either.
If you want to know more about this human superpower hidden within you, read on to learn what presence is, why it’s your superpower, and how presence feels so you’ll know when you’re in it or not.
Can We Simply Define Persence?
It’s Not the Common Everyday Meaning You Think It Is
Though certainly valid, more common uses of the word presence are not what we’re talking about here. For example, it doesn’t mean being in attendance, notable (celebrities), or sensed yet not physically apparent (sugar in coffee, someone who’s missed, or ghosts). Nor do the phrases “being in the moment,” “in the here and now,” “in the present moment,” or “at present” sufficiently define it. Although, they’re a fundamental part of it.
The Human Superpower Presence
The kind of presence we’re talking about here is difficult to pin down into one concise and inclusive definition because people have somewhat different ways of experiencing it thus describing it. There’s a good reason for this.
Being present is a personal experience, hence subjective. Unfortunately, the English language doesn’t possess adequate words to capture internal nuanced senses concretely, consistently, and comparatively across speakers with potentially different points of view.
Also, those who use the term represent a diverse group of people engaged in various spiritual, introspective, and skilled activities (sports or performing arts) with different goals, hence different interpretations. Still, many individuals within all these different groups use this human superpower to enhance their experience and/or performance.
What Presence Is
Here we look at presence as a state of consciousness or awareness aspired to for personal growth, everyday living, and authentic engagement with others. It’s of interest in these contexts because by being present you can look within yourself and ascertain with a significant degree of clarity and trust in what you think, feel, and know about yourself, others, and your context right now. With presence, you’ll be conscious, confident, compassionate, and clear in your everyday life.
What you need to be present are two basic attributes – to be in the here and now and possess equanimity.
1. Being In the Here and Now
First, most people agree that presence means being focused on the current moment, and undistracted by the future and the past. It also implies that you can notice figurative “shiny objects” without fixating on them or feeling the need to grab hold of them.
This aligned and anchored state suggests you’re also grounded and centered. Certainly, cultivating both helps you stay focused on the here and now and on what is essential to you. In other words, stay present.
2. Being Equanimous
Second, equanimity is a critical condition for presence. It describes the state of awareness as well as how you process your external and internal environment when you are working from a state of presence. In this way, it goes beyond being grounded, centered, and focused on the present and immediate.
This additional characteristic implies a state of consciousness where, with calmness and clarity, you can be curious, nonjudgemental, compassionate, open, and patient with yourself and others. You can hold an open focus to perceive, comprehend, and consider more.
Conscious Living and Your Human Superpower
It’s easy to see how being present in the moment facilitates reflection, introspection, and inner work. This is because grounding, centering, and equanimity are all crucial to self-assessment, self-discovery, personal and spiritual growth, and living more in line with your purpose and what has meaning and importance to you.
Similarly, it’s apparent how being in the is frame mind can help you act and make choices based on this more accurate and complete understanding of you, others, and the greater whole of what is relevant in and to the current context.
With confidence and self-trust, it’s easier to respond to a situation than to react to it or be triggered by it.
The Benefits of Presence: What Makes It A Human Superpower
12 Benefits of Being Present
When staying present in the moment, you can:
- Maintain focus on the current moment rather than get stuck in the past or be anxious about the future
- Feel greater calm and clarity in difficult social interactions or in the face of adversity
- Respond with careful consideration instead of react automatically and without reflection
- Perceive the broader context as well as the important details, nuances and less immediately apparent opportunities and workable solutions
- Have empathy and compassion for the self and others thus creating deeper, lucid, and authentic connections with the self and others
- Establish a clear and true sense of how you are on the inside – notice and acknowledge the perspective of your embodied mind
- Notice tendencies toward judgment and choose a less judgemental stance
- Be with, feel compassion, and learn from difficult and even unliked parts (aspects) of themselves
- Disentangle feelings from emotions and deal with difficult ones
- Notice, disengage, and reframe limiting thoughts and beliefs
- Feel confident and trust your instincts, gut feelings, intuition, and conclusions
- Support a state of flow to perform with ease and mastery.
Examples of the benefits of being present are enumerable. Still, this list of a dozen gives you a good impression of the breadth of ways presence can shift how you see and interact with yourself, others, and the world at large.
Reflecting on these benefits and imagining how you would likely experience them, allows you to glean how you’ll feel differently when you’re present.
Even if it’s hard to be present and maintain the state, just practicing what encourages it such as grounding, centering, and releasing limiting beliefs will undoubtedly have positive effects on your life.
So, do what you can to be more present in your life and the life of others. The more you practice, the easier it will be to shift into it.
For More On Presence, See:
- Starchaser’s Mind Body Spirit Blog, and closely related blog posts:
- FREE guided meditation Relax, Ground, and Clear the Mind
