Q&A 24 – Being Present With Ourselves

What happens when we try to be present with ourselves, including uncomfortable feelings or experiences we have? Is there a way to be with ourselves the same way a good listener is: without judging the experience or tying to change it?

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

* Conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit on YouTube

Transcript of episode

Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A; Episode number 24 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. 

Today I wanted to talk about the power of presence. 

I was listening, as I mentioned, I think on the previous episode Q&A; Episode number 23, I was listening to a conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit the other day. One of the things he mentioned that has really stuck with me and I’ve been contemplating ever since, is presence. Being present, both with ourselves and with other people. And it’s something that I try to practice quite often.

I’ve been challenged with a lot of feelings of urgency in my life and tend to feel quite sped up. And that really comes about, I noticed, with myself in conversations with other people. I tend to sort of step on their heels when somebody hasn’t quite finished saying what they need to say, I try to jump in and can be a little more focused on what I have to say, rather than what the other person is saying. 

And yet, when I’m recording a podcast interview and when I’m working with coaching clients, one of my favorite things to do, is to really drop in to that space of presence. I’m trying also to practice that in all other areas of my life as well. I’ve had some success, and sometimes not, but that’s okay. I’m learning. So when Dr. Pettit brought this subject up about presence the other day, somehow it occurred to me that it might be useful to be present with the depression that I have had been experiencing, or was experiencing at that time. Luckily, it’s resolved itself for the moment. 

I want to share what I experimented with, with you, with the aim of always of pointing you back towards your innate well-being and easing your suffering.

So this is an exercise I think we could do with anything that’s going on, we can practice it with other people, but with ourselves, what I’m practicing is being very present with whatever’s going on with me in the moment, and so I’ll explain that now. 

Here’s where we can begin: imagine that you have a friend who and maybe you do have a friend like this, who when you’re sharing something, that’s a challenge for you – maybe you’re upset about something or something upsetting is happened, that kind of thing – I want you to imagine the type of person who is able to just sit with you while you share what’s going on, and what that feels like for you. 

Now our culture tends to be so focused on fixing things and making our experiences go away that this kind of presence can be a bit rare. So if you don’t have anybody in your life like that, I want you to imagine someone imaginary who could do that with you, who could just sit with you, and be very present to whatever it is you need to share or need to say. And it could be a fictional character. I was thinking of someone like Mary Poppins or someone like that.