Presencing

"To succeed in all things you must pay attention to your intention."
Deepak Chopra 'The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success'

It's interesting to observe situations where people want change, they talk about change, and yet nothing much happens. Do you notice this ?

What can we do in order to sense the future and bring it into the present - into the now ? One way is to understand the power of intention and the belief system that shapes the way we interpret our experience so that it serves our intentions.

Clearly we are comfortable in our 'comfort zone' and get locked-in to old patterns of behaviour. How do we escape and feel comfortable in the 'change zone' ? We have to learn how to challenge our assumptions and identify the beliefs that are limiting our ability to make the choices that serve our goals or life purpose..

Change involves learning. Not so much learning from the past, but bringing into the present possibilities that can create a preferred future. This is what Claus Otto Scharmer calls 'presencing' or what Eckhart Tolle calls 'the power of now'. This thinking can be found in coaching approaches such as The Solutions Focus, and in NLP techniques such as meta-modelling and representational systems, where you become more aware of how you are distorting or deleting information in order to make sense of your in-the-moment experiences. It's about noticing what is going on for you by calling on all your senses, including your intuition. In his book 'The Art of Living Consciously', Nathaniel Brandon talks about ways of bringing appropriate levels of awareness to our pursuits to know what we are doing and how it serves our intentions.

To achieve this kind of change requires us to examine our inner world - to learn from the inside-out, managing our emotions and setting ourselves achievable things to do. This requires self-knowledge and inner leadership. Wayne Dyer, in his book 'The Power of Intention' offers a range of strategies for changing the way we look at things to ensure we pay attention to our intentions.

Let's remind ourselves that leadership is an action, not a position. Each of us need to be leaders for change if it is to happen at all. Leadership begins 'inside' before moving 'outside' to influence, guide, support and lead others.

For this to happen you have to link yourself, in an authentic way, to your highest intentions and then pay attention to them by taking action in the moment. It requires 'inner work', a deeper understanding of consciousness, mind and spirit.

Exlore the work of Sydney Banks

I have used the presencing approach to great effect when coaching individuals and teams. It involves:

Turning one's thinking away from judging to exploring
Consciously focusing on appreciation from the heart
Opening your mind to future possibilities

Being in the present is about getting closure on the past whilst keeping the future open. A useful tool for helping to achieve this is the Personal Focus Exercise.

The Personal Focus Exercise
Allocate a few hours to run the exercise below and then share the feedback. The idea of this session is to listen and not judge, acknowledge and appreciate differences and allow others to reveal their authentic selves.