The Art of Being Present: How to Truly Enjoy the Moment

Imagine a time when life wasn't constantly interrupted by notifications, and meaningful conversations weren't overshadowed by the glow of a screen. On this episode of the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast, I share a heartfelt story from my pre-cell phone days, a time marked by a family health scare, that served as a powerful reminder of both the necessity of phones and the beauty of their absence. This story sets the stage to consider how our modern connectivity, while useful, often pulls us away from the genuine human connections that truly matter. We'll explore how rediscovering the essentials of love, safety, and belonging can help women over 40 who may feel lost or stuck, to create deeper connections and a more fulfilling life.

Let's challenge the norm of constant connectivity and rekindle the art of being truly present. I'll express the frustration of witnessing people more engaged with their screens than with each other, especially during cherished social gatherings. Together, we'll uncover practical tips to set boundaries with technology, creating intentional phone-free moments that foster genuine relationships. By tuning into this episode, you'll learn how to reduce stress, reclaim joy, and deepen your connections with loved ones. So, grab a cozy drink, and let's embark on this journey to find more joy, freedom, and purpose by being present in every beautiful moment of our lives.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Rediscovering the Art of Being Present
• 5:01 Fostering Connections Through Technology-Free Moments

Transcript

Melissa Holman: 0:06

I don't know about you, but watching people sitting at dinner on their phones while ignoring the people they're with just baffles me. Today on the show, I'll be talking about the art of being present, how to truly enjoy every moment. Welcome to the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast, your cozy corner of the world where we'll sip on life's lessons and squeeze the most out of every moment. I'm Melissa, your coach, cheerleader and maybe even a little bit like that mom who always has a warm hug and the best advice waiting for you. If you're a woman over 40, feeling like life's left you a little lost, aimless or downright stuck, you're in the right place. This is where your joy, your freedom and your purpose come back into focus. Together, we'll laugh, learn and rediscover what makes you come alive, because it's not too late. This is your time, so grab a cup of something warm, settle in and let's start creating the next most beautiful chapter of your life together. One of the things that's crazy, super important for me as a coach when I'm working with a client is presence like, being present in the moment, holding that space for my clients so that they can show up and share themselves fully. But how do you practice presence Like? How do you do that? This isn't something that we naturally know how to do. It's not something that we're generally taught in school. But today I wanted to just talk about a few things that can help you practice presence in every moment, so that you can be with the people that you're with and have that true, honest to goodness, deep, human to human connection that we all crave so deeply. Remember, we are designed for three things. We need three things for this life we need love, we need safety and we need belonging, and all three of those things come down to connection and being present with the people around us. So the first thing I wanted to talk about is just like these phones. Oh my gosh. So if you're a listener of the podcast, you're probably around the same age as I am, which means we remember a time when we didn't have these things in our pockets 24, seven, like you could leave the house and no one could get in touch with you. It was wonderful. I still leave my phone home sometimes because, well, I forget it, but also I don't need it and I don't need people to be able to get in touch with me 24-7 all the time.

Melissa Holman: 2:39

I remember the first cell phone I got for myself. It was a little flip phone. It was one of those ones, prepaid ones, that you get at Walmart. And the reason that I got it is because I had just gotten home from a trip to Florida to visit my parents and when I walked into the house I didn't have a cell phone. Right, I drove the 20 hours from my parents' house back to Texas without a phone. Can you imagine? Oh my gosh.

Melissa Holman: 3:06

Anyway, I walked into the house and there was a note on the table from my husband that said your dad had a heart attack. Why didn't you stay in Florida? And I was like what the heck just happened? And I tried to use the phone, but our phone was out at the house. We were having issues with our phone company that's a story for another day but the phone was out at the house. We were having issues with our phone company that's a story for another day but the phone was out at the house. So I hopped in the car and I went to try and find a payphone.

Melissa Holman: 3:32

Now, this was right after cell phones. Well, not right after, because I'm I'm late to the game all the time. I do not like trends. I like to wait until things are established before I grab onto them. But I went to try and find a payphone. I finally found a payphone and I called my sister, who was living in Florida at the time, and she didn't answer. I tried to call my mom. She didn't answer and I'm sure their caller ID didn't recognize the number, so they didn't think to answer because my dad had just had a heart attack and everybody was probably paying attention to that anyway. So that didn't work and I was like I need a phone, I've got to be able to get in touch with my family. So I went to Walmart and I bought one of those phones, a little flip phone, you know, 25 cents a minute kind of thing, and I, you know, was able to get in touch with my family and find out what was going on, et cetera, et cetera. All that washed, you know, washed over, and then it was.

Melissa Holman: 4:30

It was several months later and I remember my, my oldest son. He called me at the house and he goes mom, I've been trying to call you. I said the phone hasn't rung once and he's like no, I was calling your cell phone. I said why were you calling my cell phone? He goes well, you have a cell phone. I was calling your cell phone, I said but I bought that cell phone for emergencies. He's like well, what if I had had emergency? I said, no, not your emergencies, my emergencies. That's why I had a cell phone. Anyway, I remember all of this.

Melissa Holman: 5:01

I remember being tethered to the wall as a teenager. I remember that freedom of not being able to be found. Every single time I walked around a corner, there's the phone, always available, always on, and this idea that people expect an immediate response all the time, things like that. That's since cell phones became the thing that we use to communicate. It didn't used to be that way, right? We used to be able to go out to dinner and just be out to dinner with the people that we were with. We used to be able to just sit down to dinner at home and ignore the phone if it rang on the wall, and ignore the phone if it rang on the wall.

Melissa Holman: 5:57

I get so frustrated, though, when I'm out to dinner and I see people sitting at the table on their phones instead of communicating and connecting with the people that they're with. I don't know about you, but that really frustrates me. I don't understand. I don't want to be so disconnected from the people that I love that I can't communicate with them. So the first thing I want to encourage you to do is put down your phone.

Melissa Holman: 6:18

If you want to practice presence, if you want to be with the people that you're with, put down your phone, turn it off. Maybe even set aside time every day where the phone doesn't get touched. Actually turn it off. Power it down so that no one can get in touch with you and you can just have time. I feel like having 24-7 access to us all the time is really creating so much stress mental stress, emotional stress and, ultimately, physical stress. So if you really want to practice presence, then you've got to stop having this with you all the time. We've got to be able to have time where we can just be with the people that we want to be with. So decide, make a decision between this hour and this hour. Nobody gets in touch with me, and you know what. Let your family know, let your friends know. This is going to be my time. I'm not going to have my phone on. Don't call me. It's important. It's important to have that downtime and not being behind your phone all the time will allow you to be present where you are. My oldest son was a wedding photographer and he said probably the thing that frustrated him the most as a wedding photographer was being there taking all these beautiful pictures. And he would turn around and he would see people in the audience with their phones up taking pictures instead of actually being present in the moment. And when he told me that, I was like, oh, wow, wow, you know what I'm guilty of? That I'm guilty of taking pictures instead of being present, and it was then that I stopped doing that and I actually miss out on a lot of photo opportunities because I want to be present with the people that I'm with. So put down your phone, pick a time each day where you're just gonna say that's it, nobody calls me, I don't call anyone, this is my time. The next thing that's super, super important for practicing presence is attunement, and this might be a new word for you. Attunement. You might have heard it before. You might have heard me say it. If you have never heard it before. Attunement is just. It can be simply defined as the focus of attention on the inner world. That's Dr Dan Siegel, and he also said interpersonal attunement, attunement between people, is the focusing of kind attention on the internal experience of another. Attunement is one of the things that is critical for survival in this life. We have to have attunement with others. That's that connection, that's that community, that's that belonging that our survival brain desperately needs for us to be able to be okay in this life. Infants must have attunement to survive. I remember the movie by M Night Shyamalan called Old, where one of the girls has a baby and if you've never seen the movie I don't want to give too much away. But they're on this beach where time passes very quickly, and she put the baby down to I don't remember stand up or something, and by the time she turned around the baby had died. Because there was a lack of attunement, there was no connection. We have to have connection in this life to survive. We have to be connected to other people to be okay. Think about tribal living, clan life. Any type of primitive people group understood this. They understood they had to have a group of people that were like them to be able to survive in this life. And that's attunement. It's taking that connection to the next level, being able to look at someone and have compassion and kindness toward their internal experience, not their external, but what's going on inside them and understanding and being able to set aside our own experience of life to be compassionate and empathetic toward another. So practicing attunement will help you be present and it is something that needs to be practiced. Again, it's not something that just comes natural, except for that mother-baby relationship, because of the dopamine and the other happy hormones that are released between mother and baby. God did that. He made that on purpose, so that we would want to care for our children. But attunement is so important. I remember I visited I came back from overseas to visit my family and I stopped in to see my oldest son and his family and I told everyone that I would be hugging them. If they started hugging me, I would hug them until they stopped no-transcript, and I did it with all of them. I even did it with my son and my daughter-in-law because I was like I'm doing it, I'm just doing it, and there would be times where they would be like I think we're done now and I'd be like, okay, that's fine and stop hugging, but practice attunement, practice setting aside your own self and looking with kindness on the internal experience of another and have that compassion and empathy toward others. Another really great thing that helps you practice presence is eye contact. Making eye contact with someone and this can be really uncomfortable, especially now, because we're not used to it. We're used to looking at our phones, we're used to looking down, we're used to not really communicating with eye contact anymore. So make eye contact with the people that you are talking with. So make eye contact with the people that you are talking with. It's huge. People don't do it anymore. So when it happens, there's something magical that happens inside of the people that are making eye contact, because that eye contact helps to speak to the survival brain, helps to speak to the survival brain. It helps to help that survival brain realize and know that, oh, everything's okay, I'm with somebody who's like me, it's okay. So make eye contact. Practice presence by making eye contact when you're out to dinner. Oh my gosh, you can use this as your time when you turn off your phone. Turn off your phone, leave it in your pocket, leave it in the car and just practice presence. Make eye contact with the people that you're with and it'll be kind of funny at first because it's awkward, we're not used to it anymore. So if you start making eye contact with people. They might squirm a little bit, but just be patient, continue to make eye contact and just enjoy being present. And while you're making eye contact, I just want to encourage you. There is nothing wrong with silence. I actually enjoy the silence. There's a lot of power in silence. Sometimes you can just make eye contact and not say anything and it just speaks to the other person soul to soul. So make that eye contact. The other thing that I wanted to tell you about, the final thing today, is just active listening. This is not something that we do naturally. This is not something that is taught. Most of us want to talk about ourselves all the time. That's just natural. We know ourselves, we know our story. It's easy to talk about our story, but to actively listen to another person lets them know that you care, lets them know that you hear them, it speaks to their survival brain and lets them know that they are okay. And active listening is things like repeating back phrases that they're saying to you. Like if I were to come and say, hey, I had a really rough day today and I'm not feeling that great, could you sit with me for a while? You could say, oh, wow, you had a rough day today and you're not feeling great. Yeah, I'll sit with you. It's a small thing but it's a huge thing because it speaks to the brain. It speaks directly to the brain. It bypasses the verbal. It really does and speaks to the brain and lets the other person know that they are okay, that they are with someone who understands them and loves them and values them. And active listening is one of the best ways to practice presence and it does take practice. It's not something that happens overnight. I remember back when I was going through wood badge training and my friend, uh, david I just met that day. We were not friends at the time. We're good friends now. We were doing an active listening exercise and we were given slips of paper and, uh, one side of the table was told how to listen and then the other side of the table was told to just share a story about a family vacation. On my piece of paper it said offer advice before they ask for it. So I grew up in the theater, so I was totally all over that and he started talking about family vacations and I started making suggestions and offering advice and cutting him off and telling him all these wonderful things that he could try with his family. And it was absolutely hysterical because his face just kept getting redder and redder and he kept getting more and more frustrated because I wasn't listening. I was not listening. I was listening to respond, not listening to understand. And active listening is listening to understand. And it was actually super funny because by the time that we were told to stop the exercise, he slammed his hands on the table and stood up and told me that I was a very annoying person and I busted out laughing. I thought that was hysterical because I was just doing what I was told. I was not offended by his outburst. I thought it was very funny, but it was because I was not listening. I was not listening at all to anything he was saying. So active listening really listen to understand, do not listen to respond. It's a totally different way of participating in a conversation. So those are four things that you can start doing today to begin practicing presence, active listening, eye contact, attunement and put your phone down. Set aside time where that phone is not your priority. Just stop. We know what it was like to be without that phone. Let's go back to it, okay. Let's go back to a time where we could just be with the people that we were with love, the people that we were with, attune with the people that we were with, and listen to them. Listen to understand, not to respond. So that's some ways that you can start practicing presence today, and I you know, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it. You can respond directly within the app. Let me know what your thoughts are about this episode, let me know what topics you would like me to cover and let me know if you'd like me to get salty again and get up on my soapbox. All right guys, see you next time. Thanks so much for spending a little time with me today on the Lemon Balm Coaching Podcast. I hope you're walking away with something that sparks joy, hope or a fresh perspective for your journey. If you loved today's episode, let's keep the conversation going. You can find more inspiration, coaching tips and resources over at my website, lemonbalmcoachingcom. Don't forget to follow me on social media for encouragement and updates, and you'll find me on Instagram and Facebook at Lemon Balm Coaching and hey, if you're looking for a supportive, uplifting community of amazing women just like you, come join us in the reignite your flame Facebook group. It's a safe, welcoming space where we share, grow and cheer each other on, and you can find the link on my website or just search for Reignite your Flame on Facebook. Remember, honey, just be yourself. The world needs what only you have to offer. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode.