Disconnect to Reconnect: Mastering the Art of Being Present in the Moment

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Workplace transformation and having a better and healthier workplace starts with YOU.

If you are not taking good care of yourself, nothing else will matter. You will not be able to deliver consistently, and your health will be impacted and your relationship with your family and friends and even your colleagues at work will be impacted.

And one of the most important things that impact us negatively is worrying and thinking a lot about the future.

So, in this article, I will focus on your mental as well as your emotional well-being and try to answer a simple question ‘’How to live more in the moment?’’

If you are not capable of disconnecting, or in other words, if you are not capable of stopping yourself from thinking about work-related issues, your challenges, your problems, or your next bills while you are sitting with your family and friends, then I promise you that this article is for you.

Because in this article, I will share with you two concepts or ideas that, if you understand correctly, can change your perspective and help you live more ‘‘in the moment’’.

The first idea or concept is that ''problems will pass anyway''. I promise you; problems will pass anyway.

Do you remember your biggest problem that made you wake up at night last year? Can you tell me about it?

I am sure that this problem, when it appeared last year, you were maybe saying to yourself ''Oh God, this problem is killing me. I will not survive it. I do not see any solution''.

But look at you now. It didn’t kill you and life did not end.

You are sitting and reading this article right now and everything is fine, and you survived. Because problems are a natural part of life.

Problems are like clouds. They are supposed to be in the sky from time to time, but they will pass. They are not frozen, and they will not stay there all the time. They will move.

And you have to accept the reality that there will always be problems in life. They will appear, take their time, and then say goodbye to you even if they harmed you.

So, if you keep this in your mind, you will not get distracted while spending time with your family or friends because you will not be thinking about these problems and you will not allow them to eat up your life.

You will be saying to yourself ''I know that I have problems. I have bills or a loan to pay, or I have a problem with my team member or my boss, or with a certain important project at work. But I will not allow my brain to think about this problem all the time because I know that sooner or later it will be solved. Exactly like the problem of last year.''

Don't make the same mistakes. Don't keep repeating them over and over.

If you know that the past mistakes or the past problems were challenging you and they were keeping you focused on them, and you didn't enjoy your time with your family and friends in the past years, and you regretted that later because you discovered that the problem passed and everything went fine, then don't do this same mistake again and again. Learn from your mistakes.

Also, please, I urge you not to sit and keep anticipating bad scenarios and problems to happen. A lot of people conditioned their brains to anticipate one problem after the other and to consistently live in fear even if everything is fine.

So let me ask you, have you ever passed through a situation where you were expecting something bad to happen on a specific day after several weeks in the future, and then you discovered that this day came and nothing bad happened?

I am sure you regretted the days and weeks that you spent not living in the moment and locked in the cage of your fears and worries until this day came and you discovered that nothing happened. You just wasted these days.

Seneca (a stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome) once said ''We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.''

And I like to say it to you in another way. Imagine me sitting in front of you right now and looking deeply into your eyes while you are worried or concerned and telling you ''Do not die twice. Do not die waiting for something bad to happen, and do not die when something bad happens if it ever happens''

Learn to program your mind by repeating to yourself over and over ‘’I will deal with the problems when they happen. I will not allow my brain to trick me and to make me visualize and anticipate every possible bad scenario and steel the moment from me.’’ This is the promise that I want you to make to yourself.

And even when a problem happens, leave the problem for the right time and place where you can think about a solution and say to yourself ‘’I will be living right now in the moment because this moment will not come back again. Thinking about this problem now will not do anything.’’

The moment that you spend with your kid, the moment that you spend with your loved ones, with your wife, with your husband, with your best friends, these things will not be repeated.

And if you want me to give you an example of these things, I want you to think about the moments that you consider the best moments in your life.

If you go back with your memory, let us say 20 or 30 years ago when you were training at the gym with your best friend or when you were going on vacation with your colleagues from the university, or when you were starting your career journey, you will discover that one of the tricks that your brain does is that it always pushes you to believe that the past was always better than the present.

So my question to you is if you know that your brain will trick you into letting you feel that everything was amazing compared to what's happening right now to the extent that you long for these moments from the past, then why don't you invest more time in order not to make this mistake in the future by being there in the moment?

So that later on, when you are remembering these moments, you say to yourself ''I truly lived them. I truly lived them, and I remember these feelings all the time as if I was living them yesterday'', because, again, I'm repeating, these moments will not be there forever for you.

You can think ''OK, I have the full life in front of me to play with my kid or to go to the sports field and watch my kid training’’, or something similar.

But in reality, your kid will grow up, and later he or she will not be even open to you interfering in his or her life. And you will be longing for the moment that you spent with them while they were in front of you, and you were trying to push them back. That's what I'm trying to explain.

So, if you know that time will pass. If you know that things will not stay the same. If you know that you will be longing for these moments from the old days while saying that they were the best moments in your life, then don't make them pass away easily.

Try to stick to them. Exaggerate their importance and live them. And try to create a visual memory of these moments, instead of just being there trying to look ‘‘available’’ while you are not, and then you discover their true value seven ten, or twenty years later on in your life.

And always remember, if you are always stressed because you are thinking about problems, then the people around you at home will feel your stress and will get stressed also, and the people at work and your team will feel your stress and get stressed as well.

Emotions are contagious. And when people are stressed and their brains are occupied with something, they either stress the people around them or they become flat (no emotions) and disconnected, and hence they become incapable of helping the people around them.

This was the first concept.

The second concept or idea is that you are not invincible.

Can you guarantee that you will live until tomorrow? Can you guarantee that you will even live until the end of today?

That's the main problem.

The main problem is that most people believe that they will live 60, 70, or 80 years AND the other part of the problem is that they do not see the big picture.

And I want to start with the problem of not seeing the big picture.

I usually say to my clients ''Live as long as you are destined to live. In the end, your life is still a limited journey and you are just a tourist. So make it easier for yourself and others because it is not worth it. Make it a 'light' journey and make it easier for the people to remember you with good memories''

If you know that you have a short journey or a trip somewhere, would you waste most of your time on this trip getting in conflicts with others or feeling negative emotions such as fear or anger? I am sure you won't. I am sure you will try to make it an easy and joyful journey.

If you think in this way, and the person beside you at work thinks in this way, then a lot of things will change. And our workplaces and even the world will change.

Life is a limited journey, so please let us make it an easy journey for each other. Think in this way at work, at home, or on the street and your life will change and the people will love to be around you.

Can you make the life of your colleague at work easier in something? then do it. Can you make the life of your spouse or your neighbor easier? do it.

Let us stop blocking each other or making life harder. Life is much easier than we think.

This is what I meant by ''they do not see the big picture.''

Now let us come to the second part of the problem which is that they believe that they will live 60, 70, or 80 years.

While this is most probably true, this is something that can be good and at the same time very destructive.

Very good because it can make you feel optimistic. It can help you think about your future, plan for the future, set goals for yourself, and all of these things.

But it's also destructive because it keeps you all the time thinking about the future and what will happen there, thinking about what will happen when you retire, thinking about the school and university fees of your kids, your next promotion, and all of these things.

While instead, you should be thinking about this moment between your hands. Because this moment is the only thing that you guarantee and the only thing that you have.

And the problem with the idea of invincibility, and I know that a lot of people who are reading this article will have a problem accepting this reality (that we are invincible) and getting themselves in this mental state, but let me ask you, ever heard about the story of someone that you know who went to a doctor because he was complaining about a specific feeling or illness or pain, and then after going to the doctor, the doctor suddenly struck this person and told him, you have one week or one month to live?

Or maybe this doctor told this person, you have an operation that you have to undergo after 24 hours or one week or something similar?

What you will notice is that this person's perspective will totally change in one moment.

After receiving the shocking news from the doctor, this person will start suddenly thinking, ''What are the things that truly matter to me right now? I want to take care of my kids. I want to take care of my loved ones. I want to spend more time with them. I want to make them feel that I'm there for them in this limited time available for me on this earth.’’

In one moment after getting this punchline from the doctor, this person's perspective on life changes.

He or she is not thinking anymore about the next promotion. He's not thinking anymore about the yacht or the villa or the house or the money that he will get after he retires. He's not thinking about all of this because this is all in the future and he does not have a future. What he has is this moment now. He has a specific limited time. And that's why he is thinking about how to make the best out of this limited time.

And the answer always comes in the form of things that are not materialistic.

He will not think about what he is going to take with him to the graveyard, but he will always think about how to make the best out of these moments left for him. And the best things are always there in non-materialistic things. The things that are emotionally impacting you and the people around you.

So, I'm sure that most probably you heard about these stories, either you read them in one of the autobiographies or somebody else passed through them. And hopefully, you will never have to go through these situations. But they are real.

You can feel and believe that you are the healthiest person in the world, and then you go to a specific doctor because you are complaining about something that you believe is trivial. And then when you go there, this doctor shocks you and tells you that there is something risky or that you have a very limited time to live.

And then you come back to reality, and you discover that all the things that you are trying to postpone for the future, you have to do them right now.

The football training that you wanted to attend with your kid, and you promised him to attend. The vacation that you promised your family to go to. Or any other thing that you promised that you would do and fulfill, and you didn't do because you believed that you were out of time or you were busy at work, or you needed more money or after the next promotion or any other reason that you were saying, which is stopping you from doing this action right now.

All the previous bottlenecks and excuses fall, and what remains is ''how can I be there for the people around me? How can I focus on the things that truly matter to me?''

Do this exercise right now, imagine that everything is falling apart. Imagine that you don't have tomorrow. What are the main one or two things that you will be doing today? Ask yourself this question.

I know it's hard to get yourself in this mood but try to get yourself in this mental state.

I hope that these two concepts can help you in changing your perspective. You are not invincible. And problems will always appear, but they will always pass.

Keep these two concepts in your mind and try really to be there for the people that you care for and are important to you.

I work with leaders and teams as a consultant and advisor...

1- To help leaders, gain clarity regarding their next steps, transform their organizations, and amplify their influence, without working extended hours.

2- Boost the performance, motivation, and engagement levels of teams (such as sales teams, marketing teams, engineering teams... etc.).

3- Improve cross-functional collaboration and redesign the workplace culture (especially in cases of restructures, and mergers and acquisitions).

If you need advice regarding any of these topics, send me a message or a direct email: [email protected]