Presence: Becoming Great Through Showing Up To Your Past

Join Jen Andrew, owner and founder of Trybe Yoga Studio and School, in this enlightening podcast entitled "Presence: Becoming Great Through Showing Up To Your Past". This is part one of a 4-part series on learning how to become the best version of yourself.

Transcript

Welcome.

This is part one of a four part series about learning how to do your best.

My name is Jen Andrew.

I'm the owner and founder of Tribe Yoga in Leander,

Texas and I've had a lot of requests lately for some sort of podcast or storytelling so to speak.

And so here we are.

This first part to our four part series is about presence and what that means.

Presence.

Becoming great through showing up to your past.

Presence is the state or the fact of existing,

Occurring or being present in a place or thing.

What is presence?

True presence.

Not the BS you master after a yoga class,

A deep meditation,

At a Sunday church,

A self-help series or after you've read that newest book.

Only to be exactly where you started a day,

Week or month later again and again and again potentially for the rest of your life.

Presence begins when you start to remove yourself from the automatic way of life you have been conditioned to live in from as early as you can even remember and even before then.

It can't be found in a single book,

A class,

A podcast,

A meditation,

A therapist office.

Yes,

These things may help you bring definition and reveal those automatic ways but it's up to you to remove yourself from them by doing the work.

We are always ideally doing the work and the funny thing is is that while it's never truly and completely finished we get a little bit closer to learning who the real us is by doing that work.

Until we can understand why we do what we do we will always continue to live in a place that we aren't fully present.

Why?

Because it's safe.

Well and your mind has a really messed up way of convincing you of what's safe and what's not.

It's familiar,

It's ingrained in your neuro pathways.

So what are neuro pathways?

As you participate in new activities they're training the brains to create new neural pathways.

The pathways get stronger with repetition until the behavior is new normal.

In terms of repetition it's estimated that it takes 10,

000 repetitions to master a skill and develop an associated neuro pathway.

So now it makes complete sense why we fall on and off again so many times in trying to do this work.

Trying to be more present in relationships,

Trying to quit the things that don't serve us,

The real us,

Trying to be our best selves and live our best lives blah blah blah hashtag blessed.

All the things.

Think about your age simply as a number.

I'll start.

I'm 35 almost 36.

That is 13,

140 days I've had to repeat a pattern.

To learn a pattern.

I guess you could say I'm a master in a lot of things both good and bad and many things are just things I've learned through the years that I've never thought twice about.

Like how to hold a spoon or how to brush my teeth and now we think about all the negative talk that you've given yourself on a daily.

I bet you mastered some pretty interesting scenarios in your mind to date and then think about something you're really good at.

I'd bet that you have at least 10,

000 repetitions under your belt.

Now for fun I've added up an estimate of the minimum amount of squats that I might have done over the course of the last four years.

The number is 10,

400 at least.

I also happen to have a 501 world record squat.

I had 10,

400 times to tell myself I can either do this or I cannot do this and I promise you that I cannot scenario was there definitely but not often and most definitely under 400 times.

Coincidence?

Maybe but most likely not.

To be present we have to go back to the time where we began the habits that began to shape us that also removed us who you were destined to become.

We all have a story and we all have a genetic predisposition.

Predisposition is the capacity we are born with to learn things such as language and concept of self.

Negative environmental influences may block the predisposition ability we have to do some things.

Behaviors displayed by animals can be influenced by genetic predispositions.

Genetic predisposition towards certain human behaviors is scientifically investigated by attempts to identify patterns of human behavior that seem to be invariant over long periods of time and in very different cultures.

I'm not going to lie when you begin to do this work it is a true mind F.

You will lose sleep,

You'll be angry,

You'll feel grief,

Guilt,

Sorrow and maybe even begin to remember things that you so conveniently slid under the rug because it was more convenient for you at the time than to question why you actually are doing things you're doing.

You may even feel a deep remorse in the fact that you've indeed wasted a lot of time that you cannot get back.

This is not an excuse to not even make a start it's more of a reason to begin now and with an intensity like no other.

If you fall off you must start again being gentle with yourself.

Remembering we need more positive reps not more negative but the simple fact is we need reps and a lot of them at least 10,

000 reps.

These findings are essential for you to become present in all parts of your life.

The keyword here is your because for most of your life you've been living up to other people's standards and definitions of what your life is supposed to look like.

What your life is supposed to be and here's why.

Because it makes other people feel better about themselves in their crazy show of a life that they've chosen to live.

It validates someone else's poor choices but maybe not your choices.

Harsh maybe,

True,

Most likely.

This may ring true for some of you and maybe some so not so much.

This hamster wheel can include people ranging from family.

They tend to be the best at this because they've been with us through a lot of our lives through a lot of that rep work that we've had the pleasure of taking a hat a hack at for X amount of years.

It can be bullies,

Colleagues,

Friends,

Etc.

Usually it's people close to us and they do not do this on purpose most of the time.

They do it because they're not present in their own lives.

When someone you're being influenced by hasn't done any work on themselves they're oblivious to the wrongdoings and the hurt that they may have caused others.

So let me be clear it serves no good in getting your reps and trying to convince them of what they are doing or make them try to choose greatness when you figure this out.

It will not compute and here's why.

You're trying to upload your software into someone else's system.

Your energy is best spent creating new rep patterns that go against the grain of what's been ingrained not trying to rewrite the old software that's no longer up to date.

So for a moment let's go way back back to a time when you remember feeling like you wanted or craved presence in your life.

Maybe it was your childhood or early adulthood.

What made you feel like you had to compete for that presence you craved?

What did it look like?

What were the obstacles you competed against?

Let's just go to our parental relationships our caretakers.

Maybe you had one absent caretaker or parents that worked 100% of the time that didn't show up to your games or extracurricular activities.

Maybe some that had alcohol or substance abuse issues.

Maybe they were physically or verbally abusive to you or to someone else.

Maybe they had many partners in and out of your childhood with a rotating role of mom or dad.

Maybe you had a tragedy of a lost parent or parents.

Maybe you were raised by a stranger.

The list can go on and on but also maybe you had very present parents and they made your games.

They helped with nightly homework.

Maybe they stayed married happily to one another.

How is presence displayed to you or not displayed to you in your life as a young child?

The answer to these questions are super important because they allow us to see the areas that we ourselves will really need to work on as individuals.

They'll really put the reps in so we can be better and let me stress not perfect because no matter who you ask about their childhood even if the parents did all the things to the best of their ability the children would have a memory of something that was not perfect in their mind.

Perfection is never the goal.

The goal is to do and be our best where we currently are and to know and understand that that's constantly changing.

So for example if in our childhood we had an alcoholic parent that was not present for most of the time we need to make sure that we ourselves are careful not to go down the same path because we have already started our rep ticker.

Most likely at an earlier age than some because we were in it we had easy access to it and at some point we made the choice to make it our own because it's what we knew.

This can apply to any of the above scenarios whether it be alcohol or abusive or finding something in between.

So when we start to go back we have to begin to undo a lot of the habitual stuff we've taken on as adults.

We have to undo the things that don't get us where we're striving to be where we can do our best.

It's hard work and downright depressingly wretched at times.

That is why when we begin to do the work it's so easy to fall back to our old ways because it's hard it's ugly and to be quite honest it's often embarrassing to take a step back and see how we are repeating history when we swore we would never be like that fill in the blank.

We fill the gap with insert your vice food sugar alcohol a pill whatever distraction from how effed your life is is a much easier and quick fix to get you out of that hole you like to frequent but no is no damn good for you.

Now throw that into the repeat cycle and hit the insanity button over and over again.

To have presence in your life you must remove the obstacles that prevent you from seeing everything as a whole and yes this is going to look messed up for many but one by one and over and over again we think about this thing called reps.

We are very good and conditioned to see the areas we want and ignore the things that cause us suffering and pain.

So when we look at the whole and we begin to start making those different choices we're beginning the rep one by one.

In the sports world 500 games speed reps per week is what most professionals in the respective sports try to simulate to prepare for their season.

That would be 20 weeks to reach 10,

000 reps.

Think about your thoughts and how frequently you're speaking to yourselves and and in what light and then think about the actions that follow those thoughts aka these are reps just so you know.

I'd say you're already putting in a lot of reps and most of them being on autopilot.

So what happens when we start to put a focus to our thoughts focus to our actions by going back to look at the hard parts.

We step back we take a look at the hole and we begin our very first steps.

No matter how old how young you are we take initiative.

We take a look at where we came from what's happened through the years who is important now in our lives.

Who's looking up to us for support.

We look at every single thing not just the good but it all.

We look at what's happened in our childhood that makes us desire to be more present.

We look at what's here now in our life currently that's making it harder to get more connected and present.

If we look at the lifespan of what 10 10,

000 reps looks like I think it's safe to say that it's a fact that it won't happen overnight or even in a week and most likely not even in a month.

It's going to take time but if we think about how long it took to learn our habits and patterns to date we realize that this work is going to take a little bit of time patience and willingness to see a lot of things that we've chosen to forget over the years.

The thing is we don't truly forget our struggles and hardships but we create patterns to justify why we do what we do based on those hardships or complacencies.

We're really really good at manipulating so the secret is to go back to take a look straight in the face and choose the choice from your own will to keep doing what you've always done to get what you've always gotten or you can begin to do things differently one day at a time one step at a time one rep at a time.

All I know for certain is that we all have this choice and no one can make it for us.

Now is the time to start showing up for yourselves and by default you'll be a better partner,

A parent,

A spouse,

A family member,

An employee,

A player in your sport,

Whatever it is.

Stay well friends and get to work.

Reviews

Thank you for these insights. Now: to the work....