The Problem with Problems
Staying present when faced with a challenge...
One of the misconceptions about being present is that you have to be free from all thoughts. It’s the same with meditation, where the assumption can be that you have to have no thoughts at all to experience the benefits. This isn’t the case in either situation.
It’s not about having no thoughts, it’s about not hanging on to them.
If we hold onto the thoughts for too long, especially negative ones, we can get very attached to them. These thoughts can keep reinforcing the same message, and distracting us from what’s happening around us right now.
The trick is to be able to detach yourself from your thoughts so you can let them go, and focus on what’s most important right now. If you’re in a meeting where someone’s talking to you about an important project that impacts you directly, it’s quite possible that your mind will go off on its own tangent. You may hear something that causes concern, or raises a problem that you’ll need to fix, or start thinking about how this new project will affect your team. While these thoughts may not necessarily be negative, and could even be questions you’ll need to address, if you get too attached to those thoughts, and get sucked into your own narrative, a couple of things can happen. Firstly you’ll miss what else is said in the meeting, which may even allay these concerns or contain new info that’s important to the project. Secondly, you’ll no longer be present with the person talking.
I like to solve problems, and when I’m told about an issue that I need to deal with, my mind wants to go straight off and come up with a solution. The challenge with this, is that I still need to be present with the person talking to me about the problem, and ensure they know I’m taking them seriously. I learnt the best way to deal with this was to make a note of the thoughts I was having as my mind went off trying to solve the issues. By doing this, I captured the ideas for me to process more deeply at a later point, and by writing down the thoughts during the meeting made it clear to people that I was paying attention and taking them seriously. Having the thoughts written down on paper also made it easier for me to then let go of them in my mind, and come back to be present about what they were saying.
I still use this technique, and write down thoughts that pop into my head, so I don’t have to deal with them right now, and can stay in the moment. Most of them aren’t even that important, and when I see them written down I sometimes wonder why I even thought it was a problem worth thinking about.
Try it for yourself, and see if it helps.
