Get Here. Get Now. – Episode #722

In this solo episode of Live On Purpose Radio, Dr. Paul Jenkins records while gathered with his Positivity Artisans group, a small circle he meets with a few times a year for deeper, in-person work on the principles of positivity. Ahead of this retreat the group read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now together, and rereading it put the idea of presence squarely on his mind. He offers listeners two simple invitations drawn from that reading: get here, and get now.

 

Get here means noticing that your body can occupy only one place, even when your mind has checked out somewhere else. Dr. Paul lists the familiar ways this shows up: eating dinner with the family while thinking about work, sitting in a meeting while scrolling a phone, talking with a spouse while replaying yesterday, spending time with the kids while running through tomorrow's to-do list. He returns to a principle he often teaches, that awareness precedes choice. Then he borrows a small example from Tolle: washing dishes while feeling the warmth of the water and the texture of the soap, instead of treating the task as something to get through on the way to the next thing.

 

Get now is the second half of the invitation, built on the idea that now is the only moment in which anyone can act. Dr. Paul walks through why the past is useful for learning and the future is useful for planning, but neither one can be lived in. He calls it a kind of insanity to get pulled outside the now: regret, guilt, and shame come from dwelling in the past, while anxiety and worry come from rehearsing a future that has not happened yet. He connects this to the phrase "it is what it is," arguing that presence is not about pretending things are fine, but about facing what is true right now so you can ask, now what. That is where the present becomes a gift in the fullest sense. Not because the moment always feels good, but because it is the only place where choice and power live.

 

He closes by tying the idea to the platform he has spent the past year building, Positives. It grows out of a distinction from a recent episode between breakthrough learning and transformational learning, since presence, like positivity, is something practiced rather than known. Learn more about the show at liveonpurposeradio.com and about Dr. Paul's work at drpauljenkins.com.

What is Live on Purpose Radio?

Live On Purpose Radio features principles of prosperity, abundance, and positive psychology to help you create and live the life you love. As you listen to Live On Purpose Radio, you’ll hear powerful stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Dr. Paul Jenkins interviews inspiring people about principles that empower them to live on purpose. Living on purpose means that you have a purpose, and that you do it intentionally. Live on Purpose Radio, LiveOnPurposeRadio.com, started in 2007 and has been helping listeners worldwide overcome the effects of noxious negativity with a regular dose of Pathological Positivity. Share Live On Purpose Radio with anyone you know who would appreciate a dose of positivity in their life. Visit DrPaulJenkins.com for more resources to Live On Purpose.

This is Live On Purpose Radio episode 722. Get Here. Get Now. Now is the only time to create and live the life you love. I'm doctor Paul Jenkins, the positivity psychologist. My job is to connect you to powerful positive psychology principles that immediately upgrade your relationships, business, and mental health. Are you ready? Let's jump in. Hello, and welcome back to Live On Purpose Radio. This is doctor Paul the shrink who expands your life with another episode, and I am feeling it today. For the next couple of days, I am gathering with the Positivity Artisans group. This is a group of people who have been doing some deeper work with me around the principles of positivity. And we get together a couple of times a year on-site, in person, in three d. And that's kind of a rare occasion for a lot of folks ever since, we've gone virtual. You know, the pandemic changed a lot of things and, many of the meetings that we do are virtual. This one is on-site, in person. It's a lot of fun. And recently with this group, we've read together a book by Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. And so the idea of presence has been very much on my mind, especially as I gather with the positivity artisans this week. So let's take a look at that. To be present means to be here in this place and now in this time. And in English, present has another wonderful meaning. It means a gift. Maybe the present really is a present. So today, I've got two simple invitations for you. Get here. Get now. Let's start with that first one. Get here. Your life is happening where you are. When I say get here and I told you I'm hosting a retreat this weekend for our positivity artisans, it sounds like I'm saying, hey, come, get in the room with us, be here, be present with us. And that is one of the meanings. For this episode today and as you listen to me and I say get here, I don't mean come to Utah and join our positivity artisans retreat. Although we'd love to have you consider that if that's right for you. What I mean is get here where you are right now. We can physically occupy only one place at a time. Now a lot of times we're in this place, but mentally we're somewhere else entirely. So picture this for a minute. You're having dinner with your family while you're thinking about work. Or you're at work, you're sitting in a meeting while scrolling through the phone, right? You're talking with your spouse while you're rehearsing something that happened yesterday in your mind. You're totally distracted. Or you're spending time with your children while you're thinking about that to do list, what it is that needs to happen next. Our bodies are here, our minds aren't. The lights are on but nobody's home. Presence begins with noticing where we actually are and who is present in this space with us right now. Connect to this awareness. You can't choose where to put your attention until you notice where you've been putting it. Awareness precedes choice. And the invitation isn't to never become distracted, it's to notice when we've left and come back. You don't have to stay here perfectly. Just get good at coming back. This connects beautifully to our relationships across all seven of our key relationships. The people who matter the most don't merely need our proximity. They benefit from our presence and actually inhabiting this space that we're in right now. I had an interesting experience with this and I was reminded of it when I was rereading Eckhart Tolle's book The Power of Now in preparation for our positivity artisans conversation that we're having during this retreat. I reread it. Now, I read it years ago, but it lands differently every time that you read it. Have you noticed this in general in the field of personal development or even in sacred writings or scripture that you'll read it and it lands differently than it did before? Yeah, that's because you're a different person than you were before. So it makes perfect sense. And as I'm rereading the book, I picked up on something that I think I remember hearing before but it landed differently. And he said, When you're washing the dishes, be present washing the dishes. This is a kind of a silly example maybe, but maybe not because many of the tasks that we do in the course of our life can become very mundane or routine or it's just something we have to do in order to get to the next thing and we're not particularly present. And so his invitation was feel the the warmth of that water on your hands. Notice the texture of the soap. Smell the fragrance or the aroma of the soap. Notice as the dishes transform from dirty and soiled to clean and shiny and and be fully present in that moment. It's actually a form of meditation. And this is one of the benefits of meditation is that it it helps us to get here and get now. In fact, let's shift over to that because that's the second part of my invitation today. Get now. Come to this moment in time. The only time that you can exercise agency is now. And there's a new definition of insanity. I was kind of picking this up from the Tolle book too. Insanity could be defined as being outside of the now. Now think about this for a minute. There's three places where our minds can go when we think of it in a temporal sense or on a timeline. So we've got the past, we've got the present, the now, the gift, and we've got the future. Are there any other options? Not in the traditional way of thinking about a timeline. So past, present, and future. But only one of those is actually happening. Now, the past can be useful. We can learn from it. We we gain experience and knowledge and maybe even wisdom if we're open to it. We remember. We can appreciate. We can grieve because of our memories, and we can make meaning from it. But we can't go back there and change anything. This has kind of irritated and annoyed me from time to time. In my industry, in the mental health industry, people say, well, we need to go back into your childhood. Really? How are we going to do that? And what we're really saying is we're going to think about your childhood now Because the only time we can do it is now. We can't go back into the past. And everything that we think about in the past, we're thinking about it now. It's happening now. The past doesn't exist except in our current thinking about it. So now is all we've got. Now the future is also useful. We can plan, anticipate, engage in a process of mental creation of what is to be. We can prepare for it, but we can't be there yet. We will be eventually, and when we are, it'll be now. Problems emerge when we mentally move into either one and start treating as though it's happening now. So the past focus, for example, regret. Oh, I'm so sorry that I did that. It was such a bone headed move. Okay. Regret. What are we doing? We're focusing on something that happened in the past and we're thinking about it now and we're feeling the regret now. Guilt. Same thing. Shame. Sadness. Depression. This is all from a past focus. So remember a moment ago, I said the new definition of insanity is when you're outside of the now. When we get pulled into the past, that's where depression lives. That's where regret, guilt, shame come into play. Now what about the future? Future focused predictions can contribute to anxiety, fear, worry, apprehension. I did an episode recently called the power of I don't know. A lot of our anxiety comes from mentally experiencing a future that hasn't even happened yet. It's all imaginary. It's all prediction. And you don't know what's going to happen. How are you doing next week? You don't know. Oh, you've got predictions. You've got expectations. You probably even got plans and you definitely have something to do with it. Don't forget that part. But you don't know. So our anxiety comes from projecting ourselves into that future and anticipating even worse things to come. The past is where you learned. The future is where you're going. Now is where you live. Now is where you choose. This is the only moment in which we can actually do anything. We can't change yesterday. We can't do anything tomorrow. I mean, when it's tomorrow, it will be now. Right? We can only act now. I think that third definition of present in the English language, it also means gift. Right? Let's visit that for a minute. Being present doesn't mean that the present moment is always pleasant or easy. It might be very difficult and painful. Sometimes right here, right now, includes pain, disappointment, frustration, grief, something that we would actually prefer were different. And that's important because otherwise living in the present can sound like another version of pretending everything is peachy. The positivity model gives us a powerful distinction here. What it is is already what it is, right? And you've heard the phrase it is what it is. That can be really annoying depending on who's saying it and why. For our conversation here today, all it means is the way things are. It's who you are. It's where you are. It's what you have. It's who you're with. It's the way things are right now without changing anything. It is what it is. Now my evaluation of what it is determines much of my experience about it. Presence allows us to stop fighting and resisting reality long enough to ask, okay, this is what it is. Now what? See that leads us right into the creation mode. That's agency. And perhaps this is why the present is such a gift. Not everything in this moment feels good. But because this is the moment where our power lives See, the present isn't a gift because it's always pleasant. It's a gift because it's where you get to choose. It's where you have some control. You've been intentionally creating your life as you go whether you know it or not. When we become more conscious of it, we're more in a position of choice. You've heard me say this before that awareness precedes choice. And hopefully, as we talk about being present, get here. Get now. As you do that, you're in a position where you can powerfully move forward. I've shared with you also, I want to just leave this with you as we wrap up today. I've been working very diligently for the past year on building a new platform. It's called Positives. And it's getting into exactly what I talked about in the last episode here at Live On Purpose Radio, that there's two kinds of learning. There's breakthrough learning. There's transformational learning. And one of my frustrations professionally has been that we're really good at turning the lights on for people. What are we doing to help them actually reprogram their brain? And that's what positives is all about. As I'm spending these next couple of days with our positivity artisans group, I'm reminded that positivity isn't something we simply know. It's something that we practice. And we can only practice now. Right here. Right now. Would you go take a look at what we've built there at positives? If you decide it's not for you, that's fine. No harm, no foul. If you've got something better, please go do that. If you're looking for how can I actually make the changes I have been promising myself to make, how can I be more present, more here, more now for myself and for all of my key relationships, it's all about installing that as a practice? We'll put a link in the show notes, but you can go to positives, that's plural, positives.life, and you'll get right in to what we're doing there on the platform. It's powerful, and I invite you to come and check it out. Wherever your mind has been today, come back. Get here. Get now because this moment, the present, is where your power is. Can you use this? Okay. We've heard it. It's time to apply it. Let's go live on purpose. Did you get what you came for? Give yourself the gift of taking real action action on what you realized today. Please share this episode with someone you know would value it, and leave us a rating too. It's time now to live on purpose.