Presence Takes Practice: How to Be Where You Actually Are

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In 2015 I was in grad school, but I was not in grad school.

I was working on my Master’s degree and struggling significantly with being in the moment, with letting the “working on my degree” be enough.

I saw the three years ahead of me as something to speed through. The mindset I was living in went something like this: “In three years I’ll have a good paying career. Just 9 semesters of coursework. Now just six. Four more to go. Soon enough I’ll be licensed and working out there in the ‘real world’.”

I knew that I was stressed the heck out, but I really couldn’t put my finger on exactly why.

The explanation that I was stressed because I was in grad school full time and working two part time jobs didn’t seem to really cut it. There was something lingering under the typical, predictable “student stress.”

Coffee Date with a Side of Epiphany, Light Ice

Then one weekend afternoon, I met up with a friend of mine at the university who was enrolled in a different graduate program than me. I walked from my upstairs apartment to the Starbucks down the street with my backpack weighted down with all the learning materials I was about to absorb, very much looking forward to my tall Pike Place.

I walked in and greeted my friend as I set my stuff down at our table, then moseyed over to order my much awaited coffee.

When I returned to the table, set my coffee down gently, and cracked open my laptop, it smacked me right in the face - the true reason why I was feeling unsettled and stressed and out of place as hell.

There was my friend, deeply entrenched in typing on her laptop wearing her thick pink plastic rimmed glasses and an oversized hoodie, sipping her coffee contently, hair in the perfect “messy-but-this-took-some-real-time” bun. Singularly focused on where she was right very now.

This was a girl who was in grad school. Comfortably embodying in the experience she was in. The persona of “grad student” oozed out of her every pore.

My vibe for the past several semesters was to load up my Google calendar with all of the to-dos that would take me to the next week and the next semester and eventually to graduation and the “real world.” As if the world I was living in currently was not real at all, but a place holder for my actual life.

My “getting to the next thing and checking of box after box” habit was leaving me feeling very much scatter brained and very not at all in grad school.

I was trying very hard to be out of grad school. To race to the next thing as if it was somehow better than the very thing I was currently supposed to be doing (and was doing, just not with any kind of presence). This of course made it very hard for me to feel in grad school, and my true knowing felt this persistent disconnect.

Presence Takes Effort

If you are a fellow anxious human or self-described “box checker,” this experience that I went through likely speaks to your very core.

You want to be present, to be “in the moment,” but it can feel very hard to quiet the inner olympian who’s eye is on the prize and not necessarily the journey of each lap.

It takes work for me to focus on one lap at a time, one day at a time, or one semester or hour at a time. And maybe that’s true for you too.

What I can tell you is this: The end goal is worth pursuing, that’s for sure. But the laps are the most important part. The showing up and being in the moment, with your artisan coffee and your messy-but-not-messy bun, is where life actually is. Life is not in the sprint, it’s not in the rushing, and it’s not in checking off those boxes no matter how dang good it feels.

We need to look up from our to-do lists once in awhile (or more!), and check in with ourselves to see where our mind has been spending time. Is it here in the moment, or is it seven miles ahead waving back at us?

Take a minute to answer these questions:

Where is your mind?

What are you in?

What are you not in?

Sip your coffee, take a breath, look around and take in the space you are in right now today, and appreciate this leg of the journey.

Yours in practiced presence,

Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia

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Emily Rosepresence, how to be present, how to be present when you are busy, how to be present when you are stressed, mindfulness