Episode 150 - The Present of Being Present

[Music] And we welcome you to this edition of Tuesday People, the podcast I'm your host Mitch Album. Alongside as always is Lisa Goetz, my friend and producer of this program Lisa I was someplace in Virginia. Yeah I was in Virginia and made a speech and a woman stood up at the end and we were taking questions and she said I just want to thank you for your Tuesday's People podcast and she turned everybody in the crowd and she said I know you all know what I'm talking about. I don't think they did. I know you all know what I'm talking about. We wait every week and today today's the Tuesday I haven't heard the one yet but but but I'm going to because I know it's it's out there now and it was it was one of those rare moments that you are validated for what you're doing because in you know in our podcast we don't take phone calls per se no we get we get messages on the you know on the on the internet or wherever on the social in our group or emails or things like that but we don't really run into audience members all that much and then here we were here I was in Virginia and I mean this she just kept going on and on it was maybe Lisa Goetz hired this woman to come here. I did not but I wish I was there to hear it but I'm sure she's listening now and if you are listening now thank you that's awesome I love when people really get into it you know we love our little club here it's a little club we do well today's podcast I'm going to call it the two titles the present of being present yes I like that or how to pay attention oh I'll tell you something funny in a second or should I just tell you now I'm taking a class right now as part of my writers program at UCLA and it's it's a distracted writing class like how not to be distracted from writing but it also teaches you how not to be distracted in real life and sometimes during my class I find myself tracking my yes checking my emails while I'm in class and I feel like oh there goes my seven hundred and ninety five dollars down the drain yeah yeah wait a pay for that well that is kind of what we're going to talk about but even more on an interpersonal level meaning between two people or groups of people or a family or something like that how to pay attention I've told this story before I think on this podcast maybe a couple of years ago worth repeating a cute little story that illustrates that a mother and a daughter in the kitchen and the daughter is drawing something and wants her mother to see it so she says mommy and her mother is cooking and is distracted is paying attention to something else she says yes sweetheart and she says mommy and yes sweetheart just mommy and she says yes sweetheart I'm listening and the little girl says but you're not listening with your eyes oh and it's a it's a very apropos little anecdote how we pay attention to one another when we communicate now I want to fess up right at the beginning that the reason that I know that this is important is because I have been and continue to be sadly too much an example of the opposite I am an easily distracted person I daydream a lot about books that I'm writing and plot twists and characters and things like that and I I tend to Perseverate on a lot of things you know I do have a lot of things that I deal with with the kids in Haiti and our orphanage and our charities and things like that and a lot of it is just on my mind a lot of the time but it's not an excuse even though I use it as one for how many times I am talking to people who I care about friends family my wife and I am not really looking at them I'm not really making eye contact yeah I'm not really listening 100% to what they're saying and guilty guilty is charged yeah so I want you to know right off the bat that I am not coming from some place on high where I'm lecturing all of you who are listening to us like yeah this is what your problem is you're not doing this this is what my problem is this is what my problem has been yeah you can relate I can relate I've also committed the sin yes me too I get it I'm with you I'm terrible I'm terrible by the way at looking people in the eye and I don't know why I think it's just a discomfort I have I find myself often when I'm talking to people looking off to the side not that I'm distracted by what's over there I just have a hard time looking in people's eyes interesting I don't know why and so I don't mean that to be rude I just I don't know it makes me uncomfortable well Mori and I were talking one time and he used to phrase being present and I wasn't really sure what he meant so I said to him what are you talking about and this is what he said right now you and I are talking I'm experiencing you look at your eyes look at your face I'm hearing what you say I'm responding to what you say I'm fully present to use boobies term with you and with myself I try to keep focused on what is going on between us right now I'm not thinking about what we talked about last week I'm not thinking about the great news you brought me this morning I'm not thinking about you trying to make it back here on Friday I'm just thinking exactly on the point that you asked me how would you be an example of what would be don't have any moment and a lot of people today they have conversations but they're thinking about you know or have to do it tomorrow or how can I make out yesterday I'm still angry from this other mind is for stuff yeah I created mind really focused on yourself the other person what's going on that may seem obvious what Mori just said to many of us but it isn't we don't behave that way we so rarely do what he just said I'm looking at you in the eyes in your face I'm hearing what you say I'm responding to what you say have you ever had a conversation oftentimes they take place when things get quiet or you find yourself accidentally or unintentionally alone with a family member or a friend or whatever and you just kind of ease into the couch and you're there and and you and it feels like you're submerging into a conversation and you talk and yeah yeah and and you find yourself asking questions and they're asking questions you go back and forth and later you look back on that and you say we had a really great talk oh yes oh yes we had this really great talk my mother and I had a really great talk my sister and I had a really great talk my my friend and I hadn't seen each other while we had a really great talk well what makes that a really great talk I bet if you really were to analyze it all that made it a really great talk was that it felt like you were listened to and it felt like you were listening yes and it didn't have to be about the most important subject in the world or whatever I bet the subject matter isn't what made it a great talk what made it a great talk as you felt that you were communicating and that you were heard you know and it's also important in those situations to make people feel heard to ask them questions about themselves and not always to be talking about yourself at them talk to them and with them not at them I always judge conversations and in case you ever meet me remember this I judge people a lot by how many questions they ask the other person not like if if I've been in many conversations with people where I'll ask a question I'll ask a second question and they'll wait for me to ask a third question and I want to say okay I've just asked three questions about you what's happened in your life would have and you just keep going on you know there's not a moment at which you say well listen you know I've kind of dominated the conversation let's turn around how about you and how do you know it doesn't happen it's a credible incredible how many times that doesn't happen oh yeah what other people talk to one another and I say that person never asked the other person a single question couples that sometimes I've got all these nieces and nephews you know who are dating and all that and sometimes we meet the the guys or girls that they're dating and and I watch and I say yeah but if they saw he was such a nice guy. Yeah, but you know what he didn't ask a single question of our niece. He everything was about him talking and it was yeah, he was, he was interesting and he was nice about talking about himself, but I don't see any interest on his part in her, you know, she was sort of holding him up like, isn't he great? Isn't he great? But, but where's the interest in the other direction? And when I do see it, I say, yes, see that those two, that's good right there. They have a communication, they have an open, you know, back and forth in their, in their interest in the relationship. But back and forth in their interest. So a lot of what makes that great talk is that both parties express an interest in one another and both parties listen. And one of the reasons that people love therapy so much is that they feel that they are being listened to. Oh, yeah. I always wonder about it by the way, because I always, I could never be a therapist. I could never sit and listen that long to that many people, even though much of my life has kind of spent that way. Just droning on about themselves all day long. But I couldn't do it for pay and I couldn't do it by the hour and I couldn't do it like looking at a clock and seeing, you know, I've got 20 more minutes of this and the guy saying, and I, I don't know prunes. Everybody talks about prunes, but I don't like prunes. I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I know, I often will do that with, well, my former therapist. I've ain't gone to anybody in a long time. But I would do that with her, but I would always feel so guilty talking so much about myself that I would say, so, you know, how are your daughters? Yeah. They started school yet. What are you guys doing? I try to keep the balance in the head. Have you taken any vacations lately? Like it? Because I feel guilty taking taking and not giving, you know, well, but I am guilty, by the way, of not asking enough questions and conversations. I do that and I am very well aware of it and I work hard to not do it. Well, one of the ways, okay, so let's be practical about this. How can we be present? All right, there are some deep answers to that and there are some shallow answers to that. Let's do the shallow first. Okay. Shut off the television set. Okay. That's why it's fascinating to me how many times in my life I have gone to interview people as my role as a journalist, gone to people's homes, and they sit down to talk and they have a television. In the room. In the room. And I have, at the beginning, I just dealt with it. And then finally, I would say, is it possible? Could we shut off the television set because, and I would use the excuse that my tape recorder, it's going to pick up the television. If I put it down, I'm not going to be able to hear you. But you want to say to them, where's your manners? Yeah, where's your sense of just human interaction? Why do you think, blasphemy? And people would look at it while you were talking to them. Right, right. Okay. You're already making me feel like I'm not very interesting here, but the fact that you're actually watching a television set. So put shut off the television. Do not keep your phone. Not only within viewing distance, like on the table where you can see if a text message comes pops up or something like that. But it didn't. It sounded different. Yeah. Shut it off. Shut it off so that you're not tempted to go look at it. This is for young people, especially today, the greatest distraction from real meaningful conversations is the device. The pda device. It just is. It just is. It just steals your focus. It may sound very simple and rudimentary, but it is. Before people had phones, they had to write letters or walk over to each other's places to communicate with one another. And then something a device called the telephone was invented and human interaction changed forever and so did the ability to write. And the ability to write letters when you read some of the letters that our forefathers wrote in the 1700s and 1800s to one another, even the no more than high school educated letters that we couldn't even begin to to try to mimic now with our limited communication forms and kids growing up not even knowing how to write anything that isn't the 140 characters or less. So the devices, the way that people have communicated Twitter and Instagram and you know, I'm just going to send up a photo with a thumbs up. Not even a word expressed just a photo with a thumbs up. That's my way of communicating with people. That is the enemy. And you need to separate yourself from that if you're going to have a real present conversation with somebody. So turn off the TV, get rid of the devices. A third very simple thing. Don't start a conversation that you want to have some meaning to it that has an end time because of something you've got to do or someplace you've got to be. If you have to leave at three o'clock, don't start a meaningful conversation at 10 of three. Yeah. It's not going to work. Your mind is going to be distracted. You're going to be looking at what time it is and how can I finish up this conversation. So it's not going, not going to go well. We'll be back with more Tuesday people right after this. So time, make sure you have it. Devices, make sure you don't have it. Television, make sure you don't have it. And make sure that the other person that you're talking with also understands these parameters and that when you say to them, as I often do this, some of our college kids from Haiti, you know, when they're not quite sure if I say I want to talk to you, they think, oh, just you're going to ask me a question. I say, no, no, let's go over here and sit down. So a lot of it is, where do you go? Where do you go in the room? Where do you sit down? Where are you sitting? And okay, we've established we're going to be here for a little bit. This isn't something that's just in a standing up conversation. This is when they go, uh-oh, yeah. Right. What I do. That's an uh-oh call. Like the one who just ordered Uber Eats on the debit card that that we gave them. Yeah. After they have a meal plan at college, okay, that's not happening, you know, there's going to be a sit-down conversation about that. But you send a message to a person, okay, I want to be with you now. I want to be present with you. Let's go someplace, sit down, find the right place and the time and the mood, the body posture to have a real conversation, a real conversation. So set up the parameters before you even start, all right. So those are the simple, the shallow things to do. Now, the deeper things to do, you need to get to a place where mentally you are not focusing on other things. You are sitting and listening. And I think that starts with asking the person whatever the starting question is of your conversation and focusing on just listening. Yeah. I know this sounds very rudimentary and simple. It is not. Try it. Try it and see how to say, I'm going to just listen to this person. And my thoughts are only going to be on what they are saying. Try it. I bet if that person talks for more than 30 seconds, you will have your own thought will pop into your head. They may say something about, so today I was going for groceries and you're going to hear that word, you're going to go, oh, I didn't go shopping yesterday. I got to get, I got to get, I got to get, I got to get the kiwis. Oh, I forgot, I forgot the celery. That's what's going on in your head. The little balloon above your head is having an internal conversation while someone else is having an external conversation. You need to only be in one place. Okay, write that down. If you want to be present, you need to be in one place, not two, not three, not six, not fantasizing. Don't look around the room and say, I would paint this purple, this room. Don't look out the window and say, oh, no, it looks like it's going to rain and I'm supposed to go away tomorrow. Who do I have to call the changes? Don't look for, you know, shoots and ladders that game where there's always a ladder that you can jump on climb on. Don't look for a shooter or a ladder to try to escape the conversation that you're in. Try to put full attention as Mori did in that moment, full attention on the other person. Be fully present. It is not easy to do. Not easy to do. That isn't easy to just fully listen to somebody. I'm going to do that. I have to go to an event tonight. I'm going to do that with people. I'm going to be a listener all night tonight. I'm going to see if I can do that. See how long you last. Look at your watch out of you and see how long you can listen to somebody else without having having a single personal thought about something else other than the conversation. - That's hard, but it really is a good lesson. It's probably never too late to learn it, but I wish I would have started doing that when I was 20. - Well, it's something that you can train yourself to do. Mori had to, in certain ways, kind of retrain himself once he got ALS, because he couldn't think about, I gotta take the trash out, because he could no longer, could walk to take the trash out. - Right. - He couldn't think about, I gotta drive over to work today, 'cause he could no longer work. He couldn't think about, I haven't done my lesson plan for tomorrow's class because he wasn't teaching anymore. Consequently, the world shrunk down for him into the essentials, which in some ways made being fully present that much easier, but he still had to work about it, and had to get used to the change. Here he talks about that. I'm not worried about who's going to work and who's not going to work, and I can get out and see the beautiful trees, which I can see only partially, but rather, how do I keep myself fully human and fully alert and awake to what's going on within and around me? That's my primary interest within and around me, 'cause the people who love me are now. - So, Mori was already, kind of forcing himself to just be with the people who were around him, within, around himself, as he says, within and around me, the people who love me. His world shrunk down and allowed him to do that, but you don't need to have an illness like Mori did to learn how to try to focus on the people that you care about, to learn as I said at the beginning, how to pay attention. It seems like such a simple thing, like how to breed, but it isn't. - But it's amazing too that Mori's final days, that he could do that and turn the tables to take interest from other people, rather than spend the time talking about himself, because it seems at that time, you might want to just be filled with a lot of woe is me talk, and can you believe I'm going through this and what's gonna happen to me? And this is what happened to me today, and I feel terrible and I can't walk, and all those things. Like you'd think that-- - He's not alone though, Lisa. I will say a lot of people that I have met who have terminal illnesses or have been sick for a while. - Yeah, they went through a stage where everything that they wanted to talk about or did talk about was about their illness, how they feel. But many of them I find reach a point where they see, this is not making me feel any better. It's not changing anything, and it's not making me feel better. And so what makes me feel better is what sort of distracts me from my own personal problems. And one of the fastest things that can distract you from your own personal problems, no, I don't mean watching television or watching videos or whatever, that's how too many people end up just sort of - being distracted, yes. - Wasted themselves on a screen. But go listen to someone else, and then maybe try to help that person. What Mori found was that he delighted in helping other people. So when people would come in to try to cheer him up, and they would sort of dedicate themselves to an hour's worth of cheering up Mori. They would show up and they'd say, I'm gonna just cheer up Mori, that's what I'm hearing, cheer him up, make him feel better. They wouldn't last more than five or 10 minutes of the cheer up stuff. And then he would start saying, well, tell me how are things going with that girl you were saying? Or last time you were here, you weren't very satisfied with your work, or are you still being creative and you're, and next thing you know, they would start talking about their problems, their love life, their job, their divorce. They didn't end up crying, and they'd end up coming out after the hour was over, and they'd say, I don't know, I tried to cheer him up, but after about five minutes, he took over, and next thing I know, I was being, I was the one who was opening up, and I was the one who was crying, and I was the one who was feeling better at the end. It was like a therapy session, and when I asked Mori, why do you do that? Why? You just said, Lisa, why wouldn't you just talk about your problems? - Yeah. - After all, you've hit the mother load of. - She's a bit shy. - She's a bit shy. - Yeah. - This is your moment. - Yeah. - To shine. - You can just say, look at me, you think you've got problems. Look at me. I can't move. And he said, Mitch, why would I ever take from people like that? Taking, taking just makes me feel like I'm dying. Giving makes me feel like I'm living. - Ah, that's for the famous quote. - That's where the quote comes from. Giving makes me feel like I'm living a profound sentence. Easy to remember, rhymes. So you can't forget it. And that's what that being present is all about. - Yeah. - Because you are giving of yourself, you're giving of your attention. And it does make you feel alive. And when someone says to you, at the end of a great conversation, like we just referred to, thank you for talking to me. Thank you for talking to me. But that really helped. Or I love you, you know, and you just know that the conversation got through. You feel great about yourself. You feel better than if you went out and saw a movie, you feel better than if you went out and bought yourself a meal, you feel better. If you went shopping online, you have this sense of like, I just did something that mattered to somebody. I made a difference. That's what Mori meant when he talked about finding meaning in the, in where you are now. - Where you are now. - Not waiting until you're old. You're not waiting until you're more successful. Not waiting until your ship comes in. Where you are now. Listen. - Well, find meaning in your present moment. As I said before, do the kinds of things that come from the heart. And open giving, loving heart. When you do that, you're not dissatisfied. You're overwhelmed with gratitude, which is what I find now. You do that by having those kinds of relationships and making them the important source of your life. Not the only thing, but you make sure that they're there. And if you do, you will have to be looking back and saying, oh, if you only were 20, because it's four, you'll be having it. And if you were smart, you would have had a 22, but it takes time. It takes time. But as I say, if you get on to the wrong path, so to speak, then it's very hard to get off because you don't see the alternatives. Or the culture says the alternatives are just soft stuff that you don't want to follow. Because you will lose out. We're all so afraid. We're losing out. We're not making it. We're not getting the right job. Not getting the right house. Not getting the right car. It amazes me. - What he's talking about there at the end is all these things that distract us from being present. I've got to work. I've got to work. Honey, talk to me. I can't talk to you right now. I've got to work. - Oh God, that's me. - Right. How often does that happen? - Every day. - Every day all day. - Yeah, okay. - I think all of us. - I think all of us. - Everybody listening. - I gotta go. I gotta go. I'm gonna let you go. I gotta go. How many conversations in like that when someone else still wants to talk, but you can't? - That's a lot of people with me. When I talk to people on the phone, I'll be like, I'll hear that. Okay, well, I gotta go now. Okay, I have one more thing to tell you. But if the other person telling me, I gotta go. (laughing) - Well, take a hint. - I think anymore listening. I know, I think I gotta take a hint. Oh God. This whole thing is cracking open a big egg for me. (laughing) - Well, if the shoe fits, okay. As I said, I am not a practitioner in general of the right way to do this. I am much more distracted. My wife is the opposite. She is maybe one of the world's greatest listeners. And everybody loves her. And I always say, everybody loves your wife. Everybody loves Janine. Everybody loves her. I said, I know. Well, why do you think it is? I said I know exactly why it is. Because she makes everybody feel important, because she listens to what they say. She remembers how your daughter doing. Wasn't she in ballet school? She remembers all those little details. And she makes the other person feel heard and remembered and not the performer. Yeah, how you doing? Oh, how's everything? Yeah, you know, the kind of questions you could ask a tree in the woods. How you doing? How's everything? So she's a great listener and she's extremely patient. Of course, she's on the phone with her sisters or brothers or family members. She's much of the day. And when I was younger, I used to take offense to that. And I used to say, you're on the phone so much and why are you talking about, and they're calling you again to talk to you again, and they just talked to you before. But I realized that that was her love language, so to speak. That's what people came to my wife for, to be heard. And to be listening, and she loved to do it. And she loved to be present with them and sit down. Every time someone comes over the house on a weekend or whatever, I'll say hi to them as I'm passing or whatever. I'm gone my way to my office and I'm writing them. Hi, I do a couple of quick words. And when I come back upstairs, she's on the couch, off in the corner, sitting there, you know, "Hush to me." Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and like a deep level of conversation that I so rarely get to. So she has already learned this, doesn't need to hear this podcast, about being fully present, but so much of the rest of us do, so many of the rest of us do. So try to do that, try to make yourself really there, really there, not just there in body, but there in mind. There in mind. I'm very focused. Yes. Like that story I told at the beginning, "Mommy, you're not listening with your eyes. Listen with your eyes. Listen with your ears. Listen with your heart. And you will realize the present of being fully present. Great. How to pay attention. Great. That's going to wrap things up for today's little podcast. We're glad you were able to join us. We do this every Tuesday. Check out wetuesdaypeople.com to find out more about our past shows and discussion groups, etc. And thanks to that wonderful woman from Virginia, Richmond and Virginia, who was kind enough to stand up. And I hope you're listening to us now and tell the whole room that they should all listen to Tuesday people, the podcast. We appreciate it. I'm sure one or two people have joined us as a result of that. Totally. That speech. Until we get a chance to do this again, on behalf of Lisa Goiach, my producer, I'm the childbombs saying, "See you next Tuesday." Thank you for listening to Tuesday people. To be part of our conversation, join the Tuesday people community at wetuesdaypeople.com. Subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss an episode and share it with your friends. We look forward to having you with us every Tuesday, because, after all, we're Tuesday people. (upbeat music)