Are You Conscious? How to Stay in the Moment

This article is based on the transcript of my CoolTimeLife podcast episode entitled Are You Conscious?. You can listen to it here or on your podcast platform of choice.

Are you conscious? I don't mean, “are you awake?” I mean, are you really conscious? Are you in the moment? Are you able to know what is going on around you and proact accordingly? This is an essential part of getting things done the way you want them to be done, but it is something that often gets so terribly overlooked. We have become overrun by external stimuli like emails and texts, as well as the simple momentum of life to the point that in many cases, we simply react. But being a slave to reaction is very expensive. In this article, I wish to share with you why such obeisance is so dangerous and counterproductive and what you can do to turn this around. But first, let's go to the airport.?

Catch me if you can? They can!

Imagine yourself for a moment in the departures area of an airport, where you are rushing to catch a connecting flight, half jogging through the terminal and pulling your wheeled carry-on bag behind you. You look up and you see a sign on the wall that catches your eye. It says, “Beware! There may be pickpockets in this area.” Now what is the thing you are most likely to do at this moment? If you are like 95% of the traveling public, you will instinctively reach for your wallet, your purse or wherever you remember placing your money.??

That’s a bad move because that's precisely what a good pickpocket wants you to do. This is the reaction the pickpocket is looking for. In fact, the first priority for any ambitious pickpocket is to locate the nearest warning sign or maybe even bring one with them and stand near it, since this is where their success is going to happen.??

Human beings are hardwired by nature to react, especially to dangerous or threatening stimuli. The threat of a pickpocket in the area immediately forces an unsuspecting passerby to touch the location where their money is being stored. It's an attempt to neutralize the threat by assuring oneself that the money is still there. But by doing so, the passenger is basically saying to the pickpocket, “hey, my money is here,” while pointing at it. This reaction is precisely what a pickpocket wants – a confirmation of the correct location of the goods.??

So, in this situation, the unsuspecting traveler reacts as all living creatures do. Once alerted to danger, instinct takes over. But the pickpocket on the other hand, proacts, anticipating the turn of events and setting a trap. The thief is writing the history of the next few minutes even before they happen. The thief correctly anticipates the reaction of most travelers – except the most sophisticated and experienced ones who know to ignore the sign. But for the others, it is a perfect trap.??

Meanwhile, back at the office…

In the working world, the challenges we experience with managing time come from the same reality as that pickpocket example, because we're always reacting. For example, look at emails and messages. When they come in, we feel compelled to read them. It's a reaction based on the instinctive need to deal with an unknown like it’s a potential threat. Similarly, when someone interrupts you and your work, you feel obliged to respond. It's a social pressure – a social convention based on a fear; in this case, the fear of offending somebody and/or of getting into trouble.?

Reaction makes us follow the commands of our calendars and it makes us disproportionately prioritize the requests and expectations of others. This is neither healthy nor productive. Think, for example, about phishing email, which truly is the modern day equivalent of pickpocketing. You're checking your email or your phone and you see a message that says, “your bank account has been frozen!” or “missed delivery from Federal Express.” And without thinking, you click on the link, which leads to malware being poured into your system. Why? Because rather than stopping and thinking about this message, you react, click, and allow the threat actors to enter. Numerous scams and thefts have started this way and they have robbed people of money, time, business, jobs, and in the case of hospitals, even lives, simply because people react rather than think.?

If you want to develop a skill to avoid getting phished, check out my YouTube Short, “How do I avoid getting caught with spam malware ?”

Pro-action can put you back in the driver's seat – back in control.

Pro-action is such a crucial part of life, of work, and of productivity. There is a positive physiological response that happens when your body and mind can confirm you are at a satisfactory level of control, and that danger has been put aside and you are on top of things. When this happens, nutrients, oxygen, and blood move where they need to go – not simply to the brain but to the digestive system, skin, and to other organs. When you feel good, your body feels good and when your body feels good, it works at its best.?

This might seem like obvious stuff, but the opposite situation is also worth remembering. When an email or an interruption or any sort of unwanted distraction occurs, your instinct activates the fight-or-flight reflex. We have had this reflex for all of the thousands of years of our biological history. During this reflex, not only do you stop thinking clearly, but all of the nutrients and all the elements that are distributed properly around your body are quickly relocated to the urgent places. The blood, nutrients, and oxygen that were feeding the thinking are of your brain (the cerebral cortex) get shifted over to the anger center to handle this unexpected urgency. As a result, digestion tends to stop or slow to a crawl, you get tunnel vision, your ability to prioritize ideas freezes up and in periods of extreme danger, time itself seems to slow to a crawl.

All of these things happen automatically as soon as you feel “not in control,” whether that be in an accident, or even something less dangerous, like a simple email interruption. Unwanted events trigger a profound physiological response.

Sorry, Elton – “No” actually seems to be the hardest word

Think about the act of saying no to somebody. It’s one of the shortest words in the English language but can be one of the most difficult ones to pronounce. Nobody wants to say no to a request from a colleague, or a manager. The word can sound like an insult, a challenge to someone's dignity. It may even be a precursor to bad feeling or confrontation.?

That is, unless you see the word “no” as actually the key letters of the word negotiate. Many things in life can be negotiated, especially when alternatives are made clear. There are deadline extensions, there are alternative approaches to taking care of a task. It's a matter of managing people's expectations in a way that makes them feel they are still being looked after well, and their needs are being met. The problem is, if you cannot reach that mental place to negotiate because you are still in a fight-or-flight response, then there is no creative capacity for coming up with alternative solutions.?

Keeping a cool head is part of the whole CoolTimeLife concept. Being able to think clearly requires a capacity and a genuine sense of being in control. Once you have that, you become able to influence people's decisions, negotiate alternative outcomes, and generally steer things to a more comfortable and productive mutual outcome, which is far more preferable than what can simply be done by reacting to that immediate moment. Reaction is pickpocketing. Your time and your mental capacity are stolen the moment you get taken unawares.

The greatest word to use is…

One final (and related) point: one of the most significant and treasured words to use in spoken language is the name of the person you are speaking to. Being able to insert their name sporadically into a conversation demonstrates to them that you genuinely care about them. Human beings, yourself included, have two internal sides – an emotional side and a rational side, and the emotional side always dominates. When you can connect with a person's emotional side, you make a far more profound connection with them. This then generates an increased willingness inside them to cooperate with you, to participate with you, or to do their parts of a task more promptly. These are all positive reactions that come from this positive feeling of being acknowledged. One of the easiest ways to do this is to remember somebody's name and use it in a conversation.

Let’s look at this from the other side: Have you ever met somebody for the first time, and within 30 seconds of meeting them, you have already forgotten their name, even though you just heard it clearly? This happens all the time. The act of meeting somebody new is a candid act; a type of interruption. There are conventions that must be followed. In many parts of the world this may mean extending your hand for a handshake, or maybe now an elbow bump. You are expected to smile, and make some short eye contact. Much of this is rote, but it’s still a reactive action.?

Because this activity puts you into a reactive state, there is no opportunity for your brain to make the connection and save the person’s name into memory. There’s just too much else going on, and even though it is generally a positive or at least neutral emotional activity, the fight-or-flight response still takes over.?

The trick to remembering people's names is, as you shake hands, and as you hear the person's name, you perform a silent word association trick to connect that person's name with something about them. Maybe it’s something about their physical appearance - their hairstyle, or the fact that they wear glasses, or maybe they resemble somebody that you knew in high school or someone on TV or in the movies. Whatever the resemblance or feature is, connect this person's name, at least for the duration of this conversation, with some mental image or association.?

You can do it with up to 30 people in a networking situation, once you practice this skill. But the point is, you have to remember to do this. By doing so, you now move yourself ahead in this person's emotional checklist. As someone who cares, someone who is interesting, and someone who they will want to work with or support, and that can become the bedrock for friendships and influence – all done by sidestepping the opportunity-robbing element of reaction and learning how to consciously proact.

If you have a comment about this article or the podcast on which it is based, drop me a line through the contact form at steveprentice.com , where you can also find my social media links. A full listing of past episodes is available at steveprentice.com/podcast . I keep the episodes evergreen, so that the concepts do not get dated. So, check them out and download whatever feels good.?