in taking the actions we suggest next.
Presence Practice #1: Physical awareness
Physical practices are a convenient fast track to improving presence. While our minds may wander, our body is always right here.
Physical Practice: Move it!
Years ago we met someone who used to work directly with Walt Disney. He told us that whenever creative thinking was needed and missing, Walt would say, “Change the setting!” People would get up and move—maybe go for a walk, find another place to meet, or simply get up and change the configuration of the furniture in the room. Most of the time, new thinking emerged in the new setting.
Movement tends to awaken all our senses, increase presence, and energize thinking. A few suggestions:
• Have a walking meeting. Grab a notebook or note cards in case someone says something brilliant.
• In the same vein, the next time your own thinking gets stuck, go for a walk. Notice how heavily your feet hit the ground; see if you can step more lightly, then even more lightly. Then, add force to your step and notice the heaviness increase. Then, just enjoy the walk.
• If you are working at your desk, stand up every twenty minutes to stretch, take a few steps, look out a window, and notice something new.
• If you are having a bad day, hike up a moderate hill. It is hard to stay negative during a pleasant uphill walk. Start up the incline and position your body like you are dismayed, fatigued, or beaten (e.g., slumped shoulders). Then, shift to a posture of confidence (e.g., back straight, chest up and out, chin level to the ground). Do both again. Stay with the one you like.
• Do a performance review in an unexpected setting. Ask the other person where he or she would like to go. Go there and have the conversation.
• In general, move frequently while you notice breathing, posture, and details of your environment.
Movement restores the connection between mind, emotion, and body. In his book Get Up!, Dr. James Levine says, “Sitting is the new smoking.” Levine maintains that sitting all day is unnatural and to blame for all kinds of ailments. “This is about hard-core productivity. You will make money if your workforce gets up and gets moving. Your kids will get better grades if they get up and get moving,” he says. “The science is not refuted.”
Your Vitality Imperative
Earlier, we asked you to keep a real vitality imperative in mind as you move through the book. Think of that challenge now. What aspects of it cause you tension? Where is your body taut?
Now, take a deep breath, and as you exhale relax the points of tension in your body.
Any worries? Notice them, breathe, and relax.
Any stressful emotions? Notice them, breathe, and relax.
For you, what is most important about your imperative? Give your attention to that thought and read on.
Presence Practice #2: Emotional awareness
To have emotions is to be human. Some people diminish emotion and instead worship logic, which is a big mistake if you work with human beings. Emotions are an animating force that motivate us to decide and act. Brilliant researchers like Dan Lovallo, Nina Mažar, and Dan Ariely have shown that big decisions in companies and personal lives have rich emotional elements. As Ariely says, we are “predictably irrational.”
While some discount emotion, others seem ruled by emotion. Neither extreme leads to organizational Vitality, which, if you recall, is achieving more with less time, money, and stress. When a Vitality leader can wisely honor emotion and not be victimized by it, we call that emotional agility.
Most of us are not skilled at naming or expressing our feelings. Rather, we default to talking about our feelings instead of acting from them with confidence. In the process, we lose the clarity and choice regarding the emotions that animate our actions.
So, for instance, one might say, “I feel that you should have included me in the decision,” rather than, “I felt hurt and insignificant when I was not included in the decision.” The former is a thought; the latter is emotion.
Knowing how you feel is essential for powerful communication. If you learn to distinguish a rich palette of feelings and express them consciously, you will upgrade your own intelligence and the influence you have on others.
Emotional Practice: Name it
The following is a set of six common emotional “families.” Each family is defined by words that describe the emotion on a continuum from moderate to intense:
• Glad: from approval to elation
• Sad: from disappointment to despair
• Mad: from disapproval to fury
• Afraid: from avoidance to terror
• Ashamed: from embarrassed to guilty
• Content: from relaxed to serene
Our promise: if you do the 5-minute process below once a day for three weeks, you will dramatically improve your emotional awareness and agility, and people will notice.
1. Name a significant event or experience that happened that day. Anything that the word “significant” brings to mind will work.
2. Scan the emotional families and pick the one that best describes your most prominent emotions regarding the event or experience.
3. Using a 1-10 scale, how moderate or extreme is the emotion? What word or words describe that spot on the continuum?
4. What happened that triggered the emotion?
5. What is most important to you about the situation? What other emotions arise when you consider what is most important to you?
6. Of all the emotions that could be triggered by the event, which increase your vitality? Which decrease your vitality?
7. Breathe deeply and relax.
When we name and are present to our experience, we are in the position to compare and choose emotion, which is vital to emotional agility. The more you practice, the better you will get at aligning emotion with your most important purposes.
Presence Practice #3: Rational awareness
The great poet John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
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