200: How to Be Present and More Mindful | These 3 Engineer-Friendly Ways

[00:00:21] do you want a hundred more? what have you been enjoying? What are you loving? What do you want more of what can we do to make this podcast even more impactful for you? Shoot me an email Zach at oasisofcourage. com and let me know what you’re loving about the podcast And if you’re interested in another hundred or more Episodes, I’d love to hear your feedback Zach.

[00:00:43] It’s Z A C H At oasisofcourage. com I’ll throw the email in the show notes to let me know if you’ve been loving coming on this happy engineer journey with me. That would be awesome. Well, I was at a Christmas party, two or three nights ago, just the other day. And I had a conversation with a woman named Sherry.

[00:01:04] Who I don’t know very well. I’ve only met her a couple of times before this, and we were doing the typical pleasantries of hanging out at a Christmas party, you know, what do you do? How’s the year been for you? And she was extremely curious to understand what I do as an engineering leader turned coach and CEO and how the business works.

[00:01:26] How does our coaching program work? Work. She was asking me all of these questions about burnout and about what’s impacting engineering leaders today. And I really appreciated her curiosity. And it’s because she has some family members who are engineers and everything I was saying, she was nodding and saying, Oh my goodness.

[00:01:42] That sounds like my brother. Oh my goodness. That sounds like so and so. And we got to one point in the conversation that not only made her think of her engineering friends, but got. into her own life and connected with her directly. And it was the idea that people are so caught up. In figuring out the challenges of their career, the challenges of navigating the workplace and, all the goals that we have and the money we want to make and the impact we want to make and the purpose that we feel connected to.

[00:02:18] We have so much challenge in that space and we’re working so many hours and we’re putting so much focus and energy and so much stress and anxiety that gets built up around work that then we are not fully present When we’re at home, and we were reflecting on the Thanksgiving holiday that’s already happened, and She was saying yeah, I felt that way over Thanksgiving I took four days off to go on a trip and see family, but while I was there I was still thinking about work every day.

[00:02:50] It was really difficult for me to be present And we were talking about Christmas coming up in the same challenge. How do you get off of that? High octane rat race of your career and actually enjoy the things in your life that are not work. And it’s not just the holidays engineering leaders. I talked to all around the country, all the time, all around the world for that matter.

[00:03:20] deal with this on a day to day, week to week basis. Zach, I’m putting in 10 and 12 hour days. And even if I had time on the weekend, I’m so tired that I don’t want to do my hobbies. I have a camper that’s in storage and I haven’t even gotten it out and gone on a camping trip with my husband in years. I have all these old hobbies and things that I used to love and have passion for, but I don’t have any time for them.

[00:03:49] And even when I do have time, I have no energy for it. I hear that all the time. I’ve experienced that in my own journey as an engineer, where you’re working so hard, you’re so wound up in your mind about your career that when you do have a break. You’re still thinking about work. I’ve done it. I’ve been guilty of it as an entrepreneur as a coach.

[00:04:15] I Know these things I coach other people on these things and my coach continues to help me with it as well It’s a real challenge Partly for a good reason because we care we’re passionate about work, too I hope you’re in a zone of your passion but When it spills over and derails and takes away from the relationships that matter most with our family and friends, from the hobbies and the things that you love outside of your core vocation, then it’s stealing your happiness.

[00:04:48] And we were standing there, Sherry and I at this Christmas party, talking about this topic and really connecting deeply that this is not unique to engineers, but I was sharing with her. How the engineering mind can particularly struggle with this one problem of being unable to disconnect from work and reconnect with other things when we finally do have a break.

[00:05:13] And as we’re here the week of Christmas, I hope you’re enjoying a break. And as you look under the tree and you see all of those presents under the tree, my question to you is will there be presents around the tree? And I’m not talking about presence as in gifts. I’m talking about presence, your energy, your mind, your focus.

[00:05:36] Will you be fully present in that moment? Will you be in the room, not just physically, but mentally and spiritually fully present? It’s one thing to have presence under the tree, but if you want to love Christmas time and really make those memories and have an incredibly happy and joyful and peaceful time Then we also need presence Around the tree the presence of yourself in that room not physically Sitting on the couch, but mentally still at the office Thinking about a project that didn’t get completed before the holidays or thinking about that stressful You name it thing you need to get back to As soon as possible.

[00:06:26] No. Are you here? In the room? And it’s not just a Christmas time question. Maybe you’re listening to this much later. It’s an all the time question. Being present is a skill. It is something that requires intention. And the culture that we live in, And the companies that we work in will not nurture that skill for you.

[00:06:55] You must practice it on your own, if you want to become a master of presence. And if you don’t have this skill, then the inability to be present is going to steal your happiness. It will steal your joy. It will steal your peace. And I’m serious about that. That’s not just a, you know, a nice thing to say because it feels true.

[00:07:19] It is true. And here’s why. If you are not fully present in this moment, then that means you’re taking the energy of your mind. And you are burning that energy somewhere else. Maybe you’re burning it in the future. And what I mean is you’re thinking about something that you need to do later today, that you need to do next week when you go back to work, something that has not yet happened, or you’re thinking about something that you’re afraid of, you’re worrying, you’re anxious, you’re taking energy out of the present moment.

[00:07:53] And by worrying about that thing, by thinking about that future thing, you’re taking that energy to The future, but I’ve got news for you. The future is an abstract idea. The future never actually comes. Your life is a series of nows. It’s a series of moments. And while planning and visioning is something I love, and of course I subscribe to as a coach, if that’s all you’re ever doing is thinking and planning, or if you’re trapped in fear and worry, anxiety, doubt, it’s about your future, then you’re robbing the present of your presence.

[00:08:33] And you’re putting that energy into a place where you have no power. And happiness is an emotion. And emotions are happening now. Happiness only happens now. Happiness does not happen in the future. Happiness does not happen in the past. Happiness happens now because it’s an energetic thing happening in your body.

[00:08:56] It’s where the mind and the body collide in the nervous system and your happiness is a now thing. So if you’re burning your energy in the future, then you have less energy in the present, which means you cannot convert that energy into motion, emotion, the emotion of happiness. And I know you’ve had this experience.

[00:09:18] I just had it. two weeks ago, setting up decorations for Christmas in our, in our house. My wife had me go to one of my least favorite things. I cannot stand going into the storage unit to get all the, bins out and the Christmas tree out. That whole process of clearing out everything and getting those bins and taking them up.

[00:09:39] It’s, it’s not my favorite thing. So I do that. We get all the decorations out. And normally, decorating for Christmas is one of my favorite things. We put on the Christmas music, you pour ourselves some hot apple cider, or we might make a hot toddy or some sort of drink, whatever it is, just something in the spirit of the season.

[00:09:58] And we put that music on and we have the drinks and we dance around and set up decorations and decorate the tree. And it’s a really fun kickoff to the Christmas season. I love it. Well, I have a confession for you. This year, when we got the decorations out and we got started into that process, the music was on, the drinks were served, but my mind was wound up and thinking with all this stress and worry about something that had happened that day during a coaching session that had not gone well.

[00:10:35] And I was really disappointed about it, and I was frustrated at myself for how it went. And I was thinking about what I needed to do the next day to take action and course correct from that situation. And it was causing me some worry. I was feeling some anxiety. And honestly, I was just checked out.

[00:10:53] My mind wasn’t in the room and my wife could tell right away. She immediately knew that I was not okay. Fully present that my energy was not in the room. My body was in the room, but my mind and my energy was not. My focus was not on the joy and the happiness of this Christmas season. It was on this other issue and where your focus goes, your energy flows and without the energy, there’s no happiness in the now.

[00:11:24] There was no joy in the now. I just went through this. Now, luckily, I have the awareness and the tools that I was able to reset in that moment to get back into the room, to bring my presence back and to turn it into a joyful experience. But I almost wasted the entire thing. Think about the last time you had an opportunity right in front of you where you could have had one experience that would have been a great memory.

[00:11:56] A happy experience, a joyful experience, but you went through it, you got through it, you survived it, you, you know, you did the thing, but it didn’t have the quality of life that you want, that you could have had because of this issue. If you’re not able to be present, if you’re not able to hit that reset button, if you’re not able to bring your energy into the now, then you will not experience deep happiness, fulfilling and overflowing joy.

[00:12:27] It’s going to steal you of that. It’s going to rob you of that. Happiness is not just a now thing. By the way, this idea of presence is not just a now thing. It’s also a here thing. You’re not going to experience the life you want somewhere else. It’s only right here. It is a physical experience, when you don’t have presence in this room, in this moment, when you are somewhere else You’re in line at the DMV. Physically, wishing you could be somewhere else. Well, by doing that, you are robbing this moment of your presence.

[00:13:08] And you’re taking away any opportunity to create something great with what’s in front of you. What if a conversation with that person in front of you in line could actually be a spark to something great that you never knew? Make a new friend or even find someone who could help you with an issue that you’re dealing with or even better, a way that you could serve and help them.

[00:13:28] But you’ll miss that opportunity if you are mentally saying I wish I was somewhere else physically than where I actually am the quality of your life the presence that you can bring is Driven to a whole new level when you are able to focus it on the here and the now  in a time here the week of Christmas where we’re giving a lot of gifts.

[00:13:52] Give yourself and the people you love, the people around you, the gift of your presence over the holidays and every day going forward. So I’m going to give you three simple techniques Three ways for us to do this. The first one you may find incredibly obvious, but it must be said it is to get that phone out of your pocket. Off the kitchen table, out of your field of view entirely, get the phone away from you, put it in a drawer, lock it up, remove it from possibility to reach down on autopilot and grab it.

[00:14:34] These devices are hooked up to our brain in a way that will pull you out of the moment in a flash. Every time you pick up that phone, and you swipe up, and you look at what’s going on. Now, you are taking your mental, physical, spiritual energy away from this moment, away from this place and giving it to something abstract that is not real, that’s not here.

[00:14:58] So put the phone away, get creative with this, get serious about this. It’s okay to hear it and think I already know this, like that’s probably what you’re doing and I get that, but I’m challenging you now, like take this to the next level. I have one engineering senior manager that I work with. And he told me, Zach, I don’t, do this, even though I know I should.

[00:15:21] Do you have any suggestions? And I said, yeah, remind me how many kids you have. He said, I got three kids. I said, perfect. I want you to go home tonight and do an activity with your kids. Make a house out of a shoe box or some box lying around the house. Make a house for your phone. Okay. And make it an arts and craft project with your kids.

[00:15:43] Do it together. And then you tell your kids that every night when you get home from work and it’s time to be with them, that you’re going to give them your phone and they’re going to put it in its house. And they’re going to, pretend to lock that proverbial door to the phone’s house. And you enroll the people you love into the, um, process of executing on this simple, simple action.

[00:16:11] when he did that, guess what? Every night when he got home, his kids were waiting at the door, hands out saying, daddy, daddy, give me the phone so I can go put it away in its house. Awesome. Awesome. Do something serious. Do something major to make this happen. Get the phone out of your pocket. There’s some incredibly interesting research that’s been done that just the presence of a cell phone on the table during a conversation will lower your attention level and your focus on the conversation itself, the quality of the conversation and the way that people perceive each other is lessened.

[00:16:53] Just by the presence of the phone on the table. It sends a signal to you when my phone is sitting out, especially if it’s sitting up where I can see the screen and the notifications. It tells you subconsciously that you are not important enough to deserve my full attention. That my phone and these messages and these other people and these apps that want to reach me are more important than you every time I pick it up and look at it.

[00:17:21] We’re all guilty of this, so action number one is get that phone away from you, out of sight. It won’t be out of mind, by the way. You’re gonna think about it, you’re gonna reach down to your pocket, and you’re gonna wanna grab it, and you’ll be tempted to walk back and go pick it up. I’m challenging you to take a bold enough action that you won’t do that in a time that is meant for focused presence.

[00:17:47] Number two, after you get that phone put away, remember that the mind was made for having ideas, not for holding them. So the second thing to do, if you want to increase the level of presence in your life is to take an action that allows you to close the mental tabs that are open in your mind. I think of it like a web browser.

[00:18:11] You’ve got Chrome open and you’ve got a tab. Frickin hundred tabs. And I know engineers, you got a lot of tabs open. I know you do. And we have a lot of tabs open in our life, different things that we’ve been thinking about through the day, through the week, through the quarter, through the year, we’re thinking about a lot of things.

[00:18:29] And the subconscious mind is trying to keep these things all active and moving because there’s something incomplete or unfinished. A task that didn’t get done. Something you thought about and you don’t want to forget it. And so we open a tab and we leave it running and it consumes all of this memory.

[00:18:47] It’s like the RAM of our subconscious is just full. So we need to close the tabs. Well, the best way to close tabs in your mind is to get it out of your head and onto the piece of paper. It’s the age old brain dump. Go grab a blank piece of paper. Not your Fancy schmancy to do list systems that you have in notion or to do list or some other app or whatever you use at work.

[00:19:13] I’m not talking about getting out a fancy spreadsheet, the one place where you’re already tracking everything. That’s not what I’m saying. Grab a blank piece of paper and on that paper, start writing down every to do every action, every thought that’s popping into your mind. That is an open tab right now.

[00:19:34] Just do the brain dump until there’s nothing left that you can think about. And then take that piece of paper, go tuck it away in the office, a place where you won’t lose it, and give yourself that permission to stop thinking about those things because now you have it captured in a place where you don’t need to remember it.

[00:19:53] It cannot be forgotten because it’s written down. That action is Will allow you to refocus the energy from keeping something in memory to the present moment. I actually did this right before recording today’s conversation. I wanted to test that for myself before coming on a recording with you. It was amazing.

[00:20:19] I got the blank piece of paper out and I thought that I was pretty focused. I thought, yeah, this isn’t going to be super impactful, but I’m about to talk about it on the podcast. Let’s give it a whirl. I started writing and realized, oh my goodness, there’s this and this, and oh, I forgot about this. And at lunch today, I was thinking about that and I got a whole page of things written down.

[00:20:37] And then I got to a point where nothing else was coming to mind. And there was a feeling of ease, a feeling of. Wholeness, just standing here getting prepared to now come and Talk to you about presence. It was a real gift. It had a bigger impact than I was expecting, and it will have a bigger impact for you than you might think.

[00:21:01] Grab that blank piece of paper. Get all of those thoughts out of your mind. If you’re standing around, sitting around for the holidays and you’re feeling distracted, you’re feeling fear, you’re feeling worried, you’re feeling a lack of presence in the room, then step away for just a moment, grab a piece of paper and do this and then enter back in.

[00:21:22] Put your phone away and do the brain dump. The mind was meant for having ideas, not for holding them, so stop holding on to so much. Write it down and come back. Number three. Become an observer of the now. As an engineer, you will be great at this. Engineering managers, the leaders that I coach, are really skilled at this.

[00:21:52] And it’s often categorized as an artistic skill. But I really believe that engineering is art. It’s often considered the opposite of art. But I believe that there is an art to great engineering. And engineers have this artist’s skill of observation. looking at a test, reading the data, observing what’s happening.

[00:22:17] So let’s use that skill that we uniquely possess as engineers of being detailed observers and use that to bring energy into the now. Here’s what I mean. You have five senses, start focusing on using them and as detailed a way as possible on what’s going on around you right now. Begin with sight. It’s the easiest one.

[00:22:45] And for most of us, we are sight dominated in the way we interact with the world around us. Begin with sight, wherever you’re at, look around and capture the, the finest details of your environment that you can possibly notice. I’m looking at a camera right now and I’m noticing the little blue lights around the ring, the logo.

[00:23:11] Of the brand on the camera, just the, the depth, the fact that I can’t really see the lens, but there it is. You know, these are very kind of strange intangible points that I normally don’t notice while I’m looking at it. And if I were to look around the room and really begin to observe, I have my coffee cup here, which I love.

[00:23:32] This cup was designed by an incredible artist in the style of star Wars. Uh, if you’re listening only, you can’t see it on YouTube. It’s a killer mug. Orange and black, of course, for the Oasis of Courage. I love it. And, and the texture of this. So now we start engaging with touch. it’s got this incredible finish and there’s two different textures between the orange stripes.

[00:23:54] They’re kind of raised on this and it’s just incredible muck. How does it feel? It’s cold to the touch. You think about smell, especially at Christmastime. Wow, there’s Christmas cookies or great foods or pies. What are you smelling? What are you hearing? The sound of kids laughing, the sound of presents being ripped open.

[00:24:15] Maybe it’s a quiet day sitting out in the snow. If you live here in Michigan, where I’m at, we get a lot of snow this time of year. Maybe it’s the silence. It’s the absence of sound. The fact that you get some time alone, fireplace crackling, even just one candle can be enough to hear the sound of the flame.

[00:24:36] Engage your senses. Pay detailed observation to what’s happening around you right now and go for the finest, most intricate detail that most people would never notice and observe it with your full focus. As you begin to do this, You’ll start to notice that because of the demand of focus and energy that you’re putting on your five senses to observe something at a deeper level than you normally would, all those other thoughts, all those other things that are attempting to steal your energy, to steal your presence, will start to melt away.

[00:25:19] You’ll find yourself more calm, more relaxed, more at ease in the moment. And as the energy comes back into the here and the now, the opportunity opens up for a deeper level of happiness, fulfillment, joy, and connection to what is in front of you today. And at the end of the day, those are the things that create that incredible quality of life that we ultimately want when our head hits the pillow at night anyway.

[00:25:49] Become an incredibly detailed observer. Use all five of your senses at a level that you never have before. Really engage. And I promise you, you’re going to find yourself more present than you’ve been in a long time. Three simple techniques. Use all three. Put the phone away, do a brain dump, and observe your life through all five senses at a level you never have before.

[00:26:14] And I’ll throw in a fourth bonus. If you don’t practice meditation, Now might be a great time for you to begin picking up a meditation practice because there is no practice that will help you with presence over the long haul of your life more than meditation. Christmas is an amazing season. There’s presents under the tree, but give you, your family, the people you love, friends, And your colleagues, your boss, the people who you work with, the gift of presence.

[00:26:48] This is not just true around the Christmas tree. It’s true around the conference table. It’s true in the boardroom. It’s true when you’re presenting. It’s true on zoom on teams. It’s true on slack. It’s true every time you’re interacting with the people who you have commitments in this life to practicing presence will help you in every single one of those arenas to make a bigger impact.

[00:27:13] To get more done and be more productive and to experience a deeper life of purpose, meaning, and fulfillment along the way. This is a year long gift. It’s a lifetime gift. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Let me know how it goes and shoot me an email. If you want to get a hundred more episodes of the happy engineer podcast and what you’d love more of.

[00:27:36] I hope that these last 200 have been a gift for you. If you’re listening to this right here, as it releases, Merry Christmas. Happy new year. Get ready for an incredible 2025. There is going to be some amazing things coming here on the podcast and at the oasis of courage. Connect with me, email me, find us on LinkedIn and get ready for an incredible new year.

[00:27:58] Let’s do this.