Being Present Can Inhibit Your Winning Recipe And Reduce Danger

WHEN YOU WERE very young you created a winning recipe so you could succeed in an extroverted world.  Now the recipe allows you to hide behind a socially acceptable way to be – balanced, extreme, inspirational, prudent, or righteous. Or any of the thousands of other ways introverts act to be successful.  For example, my recipe is to be methodical by building step by step procedures to cope with life.

In Post #11 and Post #12 we covered two ways to avoid the dangers inherent in a winning recipe.  Here we will talk about a third hazard, that of keeping your mind focused everywhere but on the present moment.

Ruminating about the past, and especially on the future, are preoccupations that your winning recipe loves to engage in. It wants to help you win in life so it is constantly concerned with having you not be an introvert.  Winning is a future-oriented enterprise so the recipe feels at home giving you unsolicited guidance on how to be when tomorrow comes.

The dangers that such an approach hides can simply be appalling.

How I Discovered The Presence Solution

My first job as a newly-minted MBA was with a Hawaii-based conglomerate. The company sent me to Santiago, Chile with my wife at the time.  I was VP & Controller of the firm’s low-cost housing subsidiary there.  We built earthquake-resistant houses, something much needed in a country located along the Ring of Fire on the Pacific Ocean. 

Soon after we I arrived, a Marxist, Salvador Allende, was elected president and began dismantling the economy.  After a year riots and strikes were erupting all around us.  Our small company was already struggling and as the nation deteriorated we slid towards the edge of insolvency. 

In the crisis my recipe mushroomed.  It called me to focus every ounce of energy on a cash forecasting and management system. That did help us to survive from week to week.  As inflation grew to a rate of 1% per day we endured only by receiving small infusions of cash from Hawaii.  Meanwhile my wife and I had separately stumbled into demonstrations and narrowly escaped injury or worse. 

Through all of this the relentless demands of my recipe kept two looming dangers hidden from me.  The first was that the situation in Chile was so untenable that we could never survive. Eventually we had to flee the country with just the clothes on our backs and one suitcase each.  The second danger was that amid all the stress I focused on the recipe instead of my wife.  It pulled our relationship apart, sowing the seeds of a divorce that would follow a decade later.

The solution to the danger would have been to be here now – to focus on the present situation instead of always concentrating on a future state that never came.

Unpacking The Presence Solution

It is devastating for me to realize in retrospect that the two giant issues that I missed were right there in front of me.

We could not even go downtown to shop or do business without potentially having a run-in with a mob.  What was I thinking?  How could I possibly assume that my cash flow machinations could overcome the train wreck that the Chilean economy had become?  As it was, we were lucky to get out with more U.S. dollars hidden in our shoes than the government would have allowed us to take out.

And my wife’s stress was right on the surface.  She had trouble sleeping; we lived in a nice part of town and she feared a home invasion; when her youngest sister flew down from the U.S. and then returned I was sure my wife wished we could be on that plane with her.  Yet I plodded on, doing nothing to change the situation until we simply had to flee.

The Chilean story illustrates a truism about your winning recipe: If you are not careful, you will die in the effort to save it from a sinking ship.

How To Be Present

Being here now is not easy.  It is much simpler to be distracted by thoughts about how as an introvert you must be appearing to others. Or how well you are not fitting into the extroversion going on around you, or some regret from the past, or some concern about the future.  Such thoughts can make you oblivious to things as critical as the state the world you are in, or the fitness of your primary relationship.

Because being here now is so rare in our society you can only gain skill in doing it by making it a new habit.

Step 1. Identify the costs.  Having a distracted mind is costly in terms of relationships, creativity, and work/life balance.  How much are you hurting your relationships because you are not listening to others?  In what ways are you not being creative because you allow distractions to sap your imagination?  How much are you upsetting the balance between your work and personal lives because you cannot turn off your work mind at home?  Only when you are aware of these costs will you be motivated to do something about them.

Step 2. Improve your mood.  It is almost impossible be in the present moment if you are feeling impatient, irritated, worried, defensive, judgmental, self-righteous, stressed, angry or depressed (please see Post #12 for more on moods). To get out of those ruts think of something that makes you feel enormously grateful, or wise, or hopeful, appreciative or curious.  Any of those positive emotions will help to quiet the distractions down so that you can focus on being here now.

Step 3. Focus on the present moment… 

• When talking with others.  Make eye contact and truly listen to other people instead of thinking about what you want to say next, or judging and evaluating them, or wondering what they think of you.  Notice the things about others and your relationships with them that you might not have seen before.
• When scanning your environment.  Pretend that someone from Mars is looking at your situation.  What things would that person see that you have perhaps overlooked? 
• When being creative.  As an introvert you have the power of deep concentration.  Notice how much easier it is to focus when your mood is positive and distractions are quiet.  Look for ideas to emerge that you may not have had before.
• When going home.  Leave your work behind before you walk in the door.  Observe how much easier that makes it to be with your family.

Being in the present does not last.  You move into it for a while, but then the distractions start up again and you are back somewhere else.  That is normal – unless you’re a Tibetan monk or a Jedi Knight you can expect to have to work at it to be here now.  Fortunately, it gets easier with practice.  Once you have experienced what it is like you will want to recreate the experience again and again.

I Invite You To Become Present Today

• What did you discover the last time you were fully in the moment?  How did that benefit you?  If you would like us to consider sharing your story anonymously with The Satisfied Introvert community please email it to me at thesatisfiedintrovert@gmail.com.
• How can I help you spend more time in the present moment? Please go to the Contact page and enter your name, email, and questions. I cannot answer everyone, but will do my best – especially if the answer could benefit others.
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Welcome to the peace that comes from living

in the present moment, and from using

your new ability to avoid the dangers

inherent in being distracted

© 2022 The Satisfied Introvert LLC