Coaching Through iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics: Presence in the moment

This episode includes our interpretations of copyrighted works done by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching or iPEC. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's natural for humans to have a big attachment on being right. And the more we can let that go, the more we can actually be present in the moment. It's not about being right.

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s dive in. 

Alex Cullimore: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”                                                                       

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are continuing our series with iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics, and we are on the ninth of 10 disciplines. We are all the way to presence in the moment, which ironically we are about an hour past when we thought we'd start this recording, so we are very present. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We started presence in the moment by derailing what we were supposed to be doing right at the first sentence. 

Alex Cullimore: To prove that it is a practice and a discipline, not something you just learn and then do forever. 

Cristina Amigoni: We were supposed to be present at 11:30. Well, it's 12:44. Now, we're present. 

Alex Cullimore: Things are good. 

Cristina Amigoni: And also a couple of false starts on even introducing the episode, so we're killing it on presence in the moment. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. Find our blooper reel somewhere on YouTube. But I did forget the word episode, right, which is like one of the first words of most of our episodes, so that's good. 

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, this is going to be a good one. 

Alex Cullimore: When we talk about presence in the moment, we talked about this a little bit with the last one. We were talking about being in the inflow, and presence in the moment has a lot to do with that, too, when you're really oriented towards what is exactly happening right now. There's a really interesting concept that is very difficult to get yourself into but an incredibly powerful place to be that comes with presence in the moment, and that is detached involvement. That is the idea that you can be invested in the current moment. You can really be involved in what's happening but detached from the outcomes and be able to understand that even if you're aiming for an outcome, you're not attached to that happening or you're going to – that's not the breaking point of whether this was the experience you're trying to go for. So you can still be in the moment and be detached and involved. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. I love that detached involvement, which we're clearly struggling with right now or maybe not. Maybe we’re –

Alex Cullimore: I’m fine on detachment. 

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe we have found a way to be involved in this podcast as the recording is still going, and we're going to release it. But, yes, we're completely detached on the quality of it, and our thoughts are linear. Let's see how that goes. If you want to understand detached involvement, just listen to the podcast, this specific episode. Well, probably most episodes. Not that I think about it but –

Alex Cullimore: Yes. There's detached involvement all around it. 

Cristina Amigoni: It seems all around. 

Alex Cullimore: It’s one thing –

Cristina Amigoni: That’s just how we show up. How do we practice presence in the moment? First of all, we take nothing personally, as in getting lots of one star out of this episode. Not going to take it personally. We had fun. If you get two, great. If not, not about me. Making no assumptions, so that's a big one. We usually walk in with tons of assumptions and scripts when we do anything; conversations, any type of interaction, even just expectations of how things are going to go, how experiences are going to go. Especially expectations of how other people are going to feel, which is specifically problematic to have. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. We talked about that a couple of disciplines ago that there's pain in attaching to what other people's outcomes or feelings are. That's not going to help you be in the moment and nothing you can actually have control over. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Most times, people don't even have control. The people that you're having that attachment towards, they don't even have control over their emotions in the moment. There's a few degrees of separation over of our assumptions from our assumptions to that. 

Making as few judgments as possible, that's also – we've talked about that in the past. It's a big energy level state, especially in the higher – in the more anabolic energy levels; five and six, seven. That's also very hard because all of the first ones, taking things personally, making the assumptions we then bring in with our judgment, which is always going to be there. It's not about not having judgment. It's about not giving it weight. Recognizing it and letting it go. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Letting go of judgment is a huge way to get yourself back into the present. Judgment is essentially an assumption and an attached feeling all at once that you're ascribing to something that is maybe outside of your control and often outside of the moment. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. Now, the next big one is letting go of the need to be right. Especially when we are in conversations and when we're having difficult conversations, we do have – it's natural for humans to have a big attachment on being right. The more we can let that go, the more we can actually be present in the moment. It's not about being right. It's actually very liberating when you get to the point of like, “What if this is not about right or wrong? What if it's not about blame or somebody being right or me losing if I am not right?” 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. As social creatures, we are so attached to things like status, and being right tends to play into that like, “We are the most right. We're the most competent. We now have some kind of –” It’s very easy to attach to that. It feels like that would be a higher status, something that would matter to us perhaps. When you can reframe that for yourself, when you let go of like, “I can't,” it's not about being right. Or it's about working with other people, for example. Or it's about we're going to develop the right answer together, and it's not about me having this, and my value is not attached to whether I'm right or wrong in this. It's very liberating. That frees up all kinds of possibilities, particularly for collaboration with others, because it's not about forcing your point of view down. It's about making sure that you are in a space of making things right. 

As Brené Brown likes to say, getting it right rather than being right. Just get moving towards what the desired outcome is rather than assuming that you're already right or trying to defend that you were right before when you might have already made a misstep. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's very, very liberating. Hard to do and definitely a discipline that needs to be practiced every single day, every minute of the day, but very liberating to see the world that way, letting go of the need to control. Hand in hand with assumptions and judgments and wanting people to have a certain emotion for a certain experience. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a huge one that we've learned definitely in the course of doing things like facilitation particularly. We, of course, try and cater and create and curate the best experience we can with the knowledge that will inevitably change. Whatever our mind's eye vision of that is is inevitably going to change when you put 15 humans in there, and they all have their own needs, wants, relationship to the material, relationship to each other. All of that is going to change. Letting go of the need to try to control that perfectly and understanding you can still drive the plane without having every single nut and bolt facing exactly how you thought it was going to face. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. Letting go of control is a good distinction from being prepared. That doesn't mean not being prepared, just letting that just completely go off-script. Actually, script is a good word to use because actually you are going off-script a lot if you're letting go of control. But letting go of the plan, whatever the plan was in your head, is assume that's not going to go that way. It's not, so just avoid the journey of the attachment to things going the way you had them in your head or not. 

Alex Cullimore: That's the perfect example of detached involvement because you should do some planning. You should do. You should understand what could go wrong, what are you going to plan for, what are the things that you'll need to think about. Really walk yourself through the experience so that you can fill in the gaps as much as you want ahead of time with the detachment to the idea that that's how it's going to happen. It's about getting directionally correct and covering lots of holes. You'll be able to also approach all kinds of contingencies that will come up. There will always be some contingencies come up that you didn't expect, that you couldn't have anticipated, and that's fine. 

That's a great example of detached involvement is doing the planning while knowing that the plan is not going to happen that way. Both parts are incredibly valuable. You're still involved in making sure that you are to the best of your abilities creating the environment for that experience that you want while knowing that you can't control how that's going to come out in the end. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That’s where you can actually dig deep into your toolbox, your COR.E Dynamics toolbox, and go back to trusting the process because letting go of control, it's 100% about trusting the process and not controlling how the process actually shows up and what happens. The last three I really like. They're definitely more abstract, but this is where you can actually – the feeling of being in the moment comes in. It's being passionate about all of life experiences, even painful ones, which is very difficult because we don't like to feel pain. Being passionate even about the painful ones, it's definitely a practice. 

Alex Cullimore: 100%. That’s, I think, a huge part of presence in the moment because life is not going to be just all joy and rainbows. We all know that there's all the hardships of life. Being able to be present in those moments is a powerful and very difficult place to be but a very powerful place to be as well, if you can get to that place where you feel engaged even when things seem like they are off the rails or really in a state that you would have rather not have happened. It's totally fair to have all those feelings that you will have in those moments while still being passionately engaged in this experience.

That one's a hard one to describe or imagine when you're not in a difficult experience and until you can get to that presence and realize the power of I have to be here as hard as it is and then realizing the value of that. That's, I think, an experience. Only experience can teach you that, but it's a good thing to think about ahead of time so that you can maybe get yourself a little bit more into that state at the next life crisis that inevitably will come your way as we all have them. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. It teaches you that you can get through it by recognizing, by being passionately present. By passionately, that doesn't mean you're dancing the can-can and celebrating and throwing fireworks about being in pain.

Alex Cullimore: I mean, sometimes. 

Cristina Amigoni: I don't know about your pain. My pain doesn't require fireworks. It doesn't really get better with fireworks. 

Alex Cullimore: My pain always requires the can-can, though. 

Cristina Amigoni: That's the pain of others watching you. That's not your pain. 

Alex Cullimore: Oh, that's on them. I can't control that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Going back to take nothing personally, back to the beginning of this list. 

Alex Cullimore: Now that I've derailed your comment, that was a good starting point on passionately being involved. 

Cristina Amigoni: Let's move on. Being present in the moment also means giving all that you have, your true gifts to whatever you're doing. Not picking and choosing when you're going to give your true gifts or even holding back. It's just being – when you're truly present in the moment, you're fully there with all your gifts and talents, with everything that you could possibly provide. 

Alex Cullimore: Just to explicitly draw the lines there, that very easily connects to a bunch of the other disciplines. I mean, thinking awareness, acceptance, your own conscious choices, and definitely authenticity, bringing yourself, your gifts. That means knowing yourself. There's a lot of prep work that can go into being and being able to be that person in the moment, and understanding who that is, and accessing that, and knowing what that feels like, all the other practices that we've talked about. Getting into your own authentic space come into play here, and this is about really injecting it into the only thing that actually exists which is the present moment. 

Cristina Amigoni: This is a big [inaudible 00:11:46] piece. It's like the past and the futures don't exist. Only the present exists, so you might as well give it all because, otherwise, you're losing out. You're missing out for something that doesn't exist anyway. 

Then our last one is detached from future potential outcomes and results, which you talked about about the detached involvement is you can't control the results. You can't control the outcomes. You can hope for something. Or one of the things that I like the most, especially as we have embodied this or we try to embody this as much as possible, is when we're facilitating or we're in a meeting or we're working with clients, even with ourselves, honestly. If our attachment is to creating space as opposed to what people will do with that space, how they will act, it really helps to let go of, well, we were supposed to get this metric, and why are people still using old language if they learned new language in your two-hour workshop? 

That's a result that we can attach to. We can have involvement and be passionately present for creating space for the learning to happen. We still can't control whether the learning happens or not. We can only control what we are contributing, which is creating the space. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's been our philosophy for facilitation is creating the space and putting the information in the space. People will have to interact with it how they can and how they will. That's always going to be true is people just have their own experiences, their own default reactions, their own biases. Everything that they're going to bring in that will relate to whatever information you're presenting. If you attach to the idea that you're going to get everybody to exactly how you want them to be, first, that kind of tramples all over everyone else's authenticity of how they might want to interact with it. 

Secondly, you're attaching to something you don't actually have control over. People may only have the time and mental space and energy to get some of it, and that's not something you can control. Whether they have just other experiences that are holding them back, whether they're having a current life crisis experience on the outside of whatever you're teaching where that's going to be naturally distracting and pulling away energy, those are the kind of things that you don't have control over. Attaching yourself to those outcomes is not going to be helpful, whereas attaching yourself to an attention like creating space allows you to maximize the potential that you can drive across. As long as you've created enough space, people can walk as far as they are able to. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed, yes. Creating the space. Should we talk more about presence in the moment or going to coaching?

Alex Cullimore: Let's jump to some coaching. I think this is one that's a fun one. There's not too much to understanding presence in the moment, but there's a lot of work that goes into living it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. Let's be present. 

Alex Cullimore: All right. 

Cristina Amigoni: With our presence in the moment. All right. Would you like to be coached or you like to coach?

Alex Cullimore: I think I did the coaching first last time. You want to swap? Want to be the coach?

Cristina Amigoni: Sure. Let’s swap. 

Alex Cullimore: Take your best shot. What you got?

Cristina Amigoni: You're distracting me from being present to the possible questions. 

Alex Cullimore: This is me being present at the moment and knocking you off of presence of your moment. 

Cristina Amigoni: Okay. I will ask the how might a lack of presence in the moment be holding you back currently. 

Alex Cullimore: This is an interesting time of year to ask this. Even though this is probably going to be released in like April, we are actually recording this. 

Cristina Amigoni: At best. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. We're actually way ahead on our recording schedule right now, so this will probably be released in about half a year. It won't mean anything to the people who listen to this right the week that it is delivered. But putting yourself back in the shoes of where we are currently which is mid-December, there is so much happening. There's holidays coming up. You've got – you're planning on heading to Italy, which you'll be in Italy when this is released. 

Cristina Amigoni: I'll be back by the time this is released. 

Alex Cullimore: Probably be back by that point. I hope it went well. I'm going to be present in that moment five months from now. This is like a live telling of how not being present at the moment is distracting. 

Cristina Amigoni: How hard it is to practice. 

Alex Cullimore: I'm currently thinking about future outcomes whilst trying to talk about being present in the moment. There are so many things happening right now. We have our client work. We have prep work for getting to next year. We have – and that's both for our clients, as well as for our business. We're doing all kinds of things in the marketing realm. There's all kinds of personal stuff going on, plus holiday planning. Plus there's a million threads pulling at my current attention. 

I would say that the biggest cost currently is that nothing is getting it all the attention it would need to necessarily drive across the finish line. There's enough distractions right now and not being present with each of these things or allowing those things to be the current focus. It's resulting in they're not being all full energetic engagement in whatever I'm doing, which means I rarely, A, finish all the things that I need to do because I'm already distracted by the next thing by the time I'm two-thirds of the way through one of them. It's hard to stay focused on one thing at a time when there are a bunch of items that are starting to glow red, red, red on the to-do list. 

Cristina Amigoni: That's totally understandable. Besides giving you an oxygen mask so that you can survive all these distractions, what would help you be more present in the moment right now?

Alex Cullimore: Prescription-strength ADHD medication. I mean, this is actually kind of similar. Last time we talked about, there's – I kind of delay on going to bed on what might be a reasonable hour because there's plenty going on that's exciting to do, and I’m engaged with those things. It's kind of like that now. I'm not actually dreading doing any of the things that are on the docket right now. There's – I like doing them all. For that, it's even harder. I guess I have to – I think I probably have to ironically understand and envision the outcome a little bit here. As we talk about detaching from outcomes, I think I have to think about that a little more and think about the cost of not getting to that. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right. Let's dig deeper a little bit. With all these distractions, all things that you actually want to be doing which is good, it's better than having distractions that you don't want to be doing and knowing that there's a cost to that. There's a cost to the performance. There's a cost to how much you can give. There's a cost to the results. Nothing may or nothing. Some things may not get done because there is a lot of switching. Where do you physically feel the fact that you were struggling with being present in the moment?

Alex Cullimore: In the moment of like the day to day, while there's all these things going on and working on different items kind of in a circular fashion without completing them, just walking around my to-do list and scraping off little pieces of them, it feels sometimes like mental fog a little bit. When I'm there, I'm also halfway into another task. During the day, it's like that. During the quieter times when I have to reconsider and try and reprioritize my day, it can be more stress. It can be more kind of tension. Often I feel that in kind of my shoulder area of just like, “Yes, I'm getting a little tight. There's a lot of things that I'm trying to consider to think through, get through.” 

For as much as this going on, there's been many other times life where I've been 80% as busy, but it's been with things that were much more draining, and it felt much worse than this. This just is kind of continually coming back and reconfiguring like, “Okay, I do have to finish this. What's the one thing I can do in the next hour, and can I just get that off the list so that's no longer just circling in the mental to-do?” With that, I guess that is helpful, too, and good to know that you can get to a point where the to-do list isn't overwhelming and that is not energetically overwhelming, even if it is still physically impossible to complete all the things in a timeline.

Cristina Amigoni: That is good awareness. 

Alex Cullimore: I don't think that answers your question at all. 

Cristina Amigoni: No. I mean some. You've talked about fog, brain fog. You've talked about tension, shoulders and neck tension. The typical question that I get asked is when you start feeling that, what could you do to bring yourself back into at least the moment, even if the moment is one second? Which is really the definition of the moment is there is no time in the moment. How can your physical sensations help you recognize that there's a cost, that the distractions are causing some physical sensations?

Alex Cullimore: I think it's being probably more of a mindfulness exercise. It's paying attention to when the voice of distraction is kind of there and pulling it like, “Hey, here's this other thing that has to be done. Here's this other thing that has to be done,” and be able to let go of that. The real kind of power when I can be present enough is being able to consciously say, “Yes, I know that has to happen.” Right now, I have to be on a podcast and forgetting the word episode. 

Those are the two levels and being able to let go of this is not something I have to do right now. This is something that I know I have to get to. I know it'll be on the list after this, and that's okay. Letting go of that and saying unless there's something that's so burning that it has to be done in the next two seconds, I can wait for the next 30 minutes, so I can get to it. I have the space to get to it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That's a good example of how to come back into the moment, for sure. Environmentally, what would help you in those situations?

Alex Cullimore: I think if I took some time, which is hard already foreseeing difficulty, finding time and space to do it, but organizing some of the physical space, even my desk. Just organizing what has to happen, organizing some of the to-do lists. I've got four different areas for to-do lists right now that I need to kind of consolidate. Doing some of that maybe would reduce the frenzy energy, the frenetic energy of kind of flitting between a bunch of stuff and to have it all and a little bit more laid out. 

Or maybe it's about taking even just half an hour or two to parse through some of the things and really set down what has to be done, instead of you constantly having something pop like, “Yes, I do have to get to that. Yes, I'll get to that later. Yes, I'll get to that later, and I have to try this now.” If I can have them all written down and make sure that I have those covered, I think it'd be in better shape. 

Cristina Amigoni: How would you like to make that happen, given that's another item to add to the to-do list is to organize the to-do list?

Alex Cullimore: I think I'm going to have to work at my calendar now. Do I even have time for things like this? Actually, tomorrow we actually have something a little bit open, so I might have some time in the morning to parse that. I think, honestly, more than the even actually writing down or changing to-do lists, I think I just need to have at least half an hour, if not an hour, of quiet meditation. 

I don't think even journaling is going to be a good one at this point because it's going to be too much activity. I think just sitting with it all for a little bit and letting the voices all be heard would probably be the easiest way to get a little bit more on top of what is actually happening and what needs to happen and get into a calmer space of prioritization. Then I'll be out the weekend and then be able to, hopefully, face a lot more it after that point, which is also going to be recharging. There'll be some time spent away from work and doing something completely different. Going back to New York for the first time in seven years. 

Cristina Amigoni: I hadn’t realized it was seven years. Yes, that's going to be recharging, for sure. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. It’ll be fun. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. All right. Well, you've progressed from have to to need to. We switched off from creating a to-do list of the to-do list to quiet meditation. How can you prioritize that?

Alex Cullimore: I think some of it's going to have to be thinking about what the consequences may be if I don't take that time, as the cost is going to be a lot of like – it's going to be frenetic in times where I need to be much more present. The more I can let go in advance or at least have processed some of these thoughts in advance instead of having them trapped in the halfway points, which I think, for me, is one of the huge benefits of meditation is just letting those thoughts be heard and be voiced and not just in the endless repeating, “By the way, don't forget to do this,” way. But just, hey, this is what I'm thinking about this. This is my reaction to that. 

Whatever it is preempting and getting energy back into – control is a strong term but just more alignment and less fog-like feeling would, I think, be pretty helpful I think. The cost is that I'm not going to be present in times where I would really like to be present if I don't do that. That puts that to the top of the priority list of like, “Okay, it's important to have these.” If it's important to me, and it is, have these next few weeks with all the things that are planned go well or at least be present for because there's just – I think going well is being attached much more to the outcome, which is not what I'm as worried about so much is I would hate to miss the presence. 

With that in mind, that really does bump that to the top of the priority list of whatever else I can write marketing materials on planes and in odd hours. I've done it before, and I'll do it again, and that's fine. That doesn't have to be the most pressing thing. To that point, that's what I know that there's enough going on when suddenly doing things like writing and marketing are suddenly popping to the top of the list. It's so easy when you start something like that to be like, “Yes, but I really do need to wipe down the counter again. Yes, but I really do need to.” 

Now, there are so many things that actually writing and marketing are starting to take that place, which is interesting. That really does carve out like either you can make some time for that tomorrow probably in the morning, or you know the consequences. You're not going to be [inaudible 00:24:14]. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. You’ve talked about the cost of not being present. What is the cost?

Alex Cullimore: You're stealing from the present moment if you're spending all your time worrying about either the future outcome or the past or whichever way you have to be leaning anxiety over the future, frustration or something over the past. Whatever it is, you're robbing from the time to be present. We get to do a lot of things that we enjoy doing, which is great. Most of the day is phenomenal. We get to do all kinds of things we're super engaged in. I don't feel like I – I don't always feel the urgency to do something. Now, we get to go take a trip, and that'll be a nice break. I don't want to miss that. 

Those don't come along that often. It's only every couple months or so at best to go kind of get out and do something different. I'd hate to miss out on the opportunities to have that happen by thinking about all the things that have to happen after that or all the things that need to lead up to it. It takes away from the experience of things that aren't going to come around that often, and so that's a huge cost. You only live one time. You only – this is your go around. The more you're not present, the more you're kind of robbing that experience. The rich life experience is reduced. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. That totally makes sense. It's like you can recreate the experience, but it's not the same experience, so you can't go back to it. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's that old quote that's like, “A man can't stand in the river twice because he's not the same man, and it's not the same river.” 

Cristina Amigoni: It's true. Yes. It's not the same moment and on and on and on. We’ve upgraded to need to, and we figured out that it's the meditation. It's taking time for meditation tomorrow. How can we change that to a choose to?

Alex Cullimore: At some level internally, I feel like it is more on a choose to because I know there is a choice. Either I do it or I don't do it, and I'll still go through, and I'm going to be here for the next couple weeks. Assuming I don't get hit by a meteor, then I'll will totally be here for the next few weeks. It's going to happen either way, so it really is a choice. Remembering that is always kind of helpful to me. It's kind of like the stoic idea of remembering you're going to die or the idea that you're the only person who really has the driver's seat in your life. Would you like to be present for it, or would you like not to? 

It's fine that there are moments where I might not want to be or might not want to be as present, or it's not as important. But that's not this, and so it still is a choice. Knowing that it's a choice, it’s like giving yourself a chance to invest in yourself and what you'd be interested in doing, which you know is important. It’s a good reaffirmation of this is your life and your choice. 

Cristina Amigoni: That’s very powerful, very powerful awareness that you do have full choice into that. We narrowed down the date tomorrow. How can we narrow that down a little bit more to make it a smart goal?

Alex Cullimore: I already have a block on my calendar in the mornings, just to remember to do the – just some workout or reflection, which this month's been chaotic and has not been paid attention to often. I might need just something else on it. I think we have a podcast at nine. We need some time to recover from that or recover before that, just to get centered for podcasting. Realistically, it's about putting it on the calendar at what's going to be 7am. There's no getting around this otherwise. Put that on my calendar now. That’s a very explicit reminder, maybe with urgency. 

Cristina Amigoni: Meditate now. 

Alex Cullimore: Meditate now. 

Cristina Amigoni: Then put another reminder that says like, “You're still not meditating because you just checked your calendar.” 

Alex Cullimore: Every five minutes during [inaudible 00:27:30] like, “Hey, you in the moment? You meditating? How's it going?” 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Are you present? Yes, all right. What could get in the way of that happening?

Alex Cullimore: Thankfully, we're getting a bunch knocked out this afternoon. We have housekeepers coming now. I already ordered cat food so that our cats will have food while we're out. As a matter of fact, having those checked off, and a lot of that's going to be checked off. The other thing that would help then is just coming up with the and/or already packing what will need to be packed so that that's just not mentally there. The more things like that that aren't going to change between now and leaving that I can just take care of and not think about again, the easier it's going to be to take that space. That might be that this evening is a lot of making sure those things are buckled down, but I think that's a worthwhile investment. 

Cristina Amigoni: All right. What kind of support would you need for that to happen, getting things knocked out tonight so that tomorrow can be about meditation?

Alex Cullimore: I think I'm going to leave myself a note with a sticky note here, just to remember that this – just to get back into that. Maybe it's not even a sticky note because I may or may not be at my desk the whole time. It's more of a reminder that stays up on my phone to finish that. Then another reminder for tomorrow morning that there’s just – the choice is here. Choose it now or don't. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. How does that feel?

Alex Cullimore: You know the consequences. It feels good. It feels like – I mean, that's already kind of the prioritizing of the list that I wasn't doing before. There are just things like, “I could get that done and then not have to think about it.” These are just one-time things that can be done that I don't have to wait for more information on. I know what I need. I know and I need X number of outfits. Just put them in a suitcase and be done. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. It's organizing the to-do list without having to focus on organizing the to-do list. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Because there's things that are ongoing that are sometimes frustrating to do. You're got – yes. Clean the house. Clean this. Do whatever. Those are just always going to have to continually happen, so doing – checking any of those off the list doesn't reduce the mental burden. But the ones that are one-time things, checking those off, that just are going to have to be done one way or the other. Get them off the mental buzz. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, excellent. All right. What kind of accountability would help you?

Alex Cullimore: A loud sounding alarm clock just buzzing every few – I don't know. I don't think there's too much accountability needed now. I just needed to remind myself of what the consequences would be otherwise and have a moment to stretch out how I could make that happen. Otherwise, I think I just would have bounced between things, and it would have all gotten done just more haphazardly. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. If messages had a scheduling, I could schedule a message every five minutes. It's like, “Did you make meditate? Did you meditate? Are you meditating?” 

Alex Cullimore: How’s that meditation go?

Cristina Amigoni: But they don't maybe for this very reason. That's why our messages don’t have future scheduling, and I'm not doing that tomorrow morning. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, that's fair. No, I think that's good. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. How do you feel about the to-do list and the fog and the – how's the body feeling at this point?

Alex Cullimore: More relaxed. There's a lot of stuff to do. But organizing even it just in terms of like, “What can I do that's just checking it off the list that isn't going to come back,” versus what's going to be an ongoing thing, and then prioritizing up to this weekend and after this weekend. I got a bunch of marketing stuff done yesterday. I don't need too much more time to get the other thing done that I wanted to get done this week there. Those are all things that can be checked off. The other things can be pushed after, and that's fine. It'll all get done. 

Cristina Amigoni: Now, tell your boss if it's fine and see what she says. 

Alex Cullimore: Who we talking to here? 

Cristina Amigoni: Imaginary boss, not me. All right. Yes. What else will help you put presence in the moment?

Alex Cullimore: I don't know that there's much else that needs to be added to it. It's helpful to do the reading and re-remember what goes into presence in the moment. One of the reasons this took an hour for us to start is we were kind of laughing about all the things that we were being reminded of of like, “Right, I didn't do those nine things today.” Just the reminder has help kind of recenter that because it resets the intention, and it's a reminder of what the power of being in the moment is. I do want step back into that much more I want to. 

Cristina Amigoni: Sounds good. Yes. You finally get to want to. Well, let me know how to meditation goes. 

Alex Cullimore: Will do. 

All right, welcome back. We did have to splice a little bit of this episode, so you may notice that my voice is an entire octave down from where it was two seconds ago in this recording. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, trying out for a cappella groups. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I could probably get into any base part for the next two days. Then I will tragically fail at my a cappella career. But we're back at this presence in the moment podcast. We're switching over to having Cristina be the client for a little bit of presence in the moment coaching. How are you feeling? Feeling ready?

Cristina Amigoni: As ready as being coached can get. 

Alex Cullimore: That's a good answer. We're going to dive right into a fun one, and I believe this is how we started when we started this recording several months ago. But I believe we started with this one. How might lack of presence in the moment be holding you back currently?

Cristina Amigoni: It's definitely a huge influencer. I guess it's the opposite of mindfulness, if we think about it that way. Lack of presence in the moment means that I'm somewhere else mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Whatever I'm trying to do at the moment is going to get, I don't know, 10, maybe 20% of my focus and concentration and effort. Hence, the outcome is going to be poor to frustrating at best. 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. It definitely would have an impact on outcomes. You've just come back from several months in Italy, and so you're kind of in the period of transition back to what life was somewhat like before. Obviously, everything always changes all the time, so it's a little different. How do you feel about, if you were to put it on a scale of 1 to 10, your presence in the moments generally these last couple days?

Cristina Amigoni: Challenging I would say. It feels like an actual effort to be present in the moment instead of autopilot. I think that when we get in routines or when at least I get in routines, and I know what's expected, and I don't have a lot of other distractions or a lot of other noise in my head, it becomes a little more organic to be present in the moment. It's like, “Okay, I'm here. I'm not anywhere else, and this is where I'm going to focus all my energy.” 

Right now, I mean, even something as simple as unpacking, which I decided to take on a whole spring cleaning and emptying the house project on top of the unpacking, I mean, it's been one of those like, “Oh, I'm unpacking one suitcase.” Then I turn – I move some of the clothes to put them in the closet, and I get in the closet, and I notice that the drawer is dirty. I go downstairs and get something to clean the drawer. Then I go back upstairs and I'm done. Before I even clean, I noticed that the trash can is full. I can't put the paper towels in there, so I go back downstairs. 

Everything is like it's not getting done as fast as it could because I don't just focus on I am unpacking the suitcase. That's the goal. The goal is not to get new trash bags and order them on Amazon. Or clean all the drawers that the clothes that I just unpacked don't belong in. It’s been interesting, exhausting. 

Alex Cullimore: You're caught in a classic side quest loop, where there's just too many other things to do to do the original objective. Or too many things that come up along the way. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. Yes, yes. 

Alex Cullimore: One thing we talk about so much in our work, and we get to work with so many organizations and lots of people in change, and this is definitely a period of change as you transition from life in Italy for a while back to life in the US. Things are both the same and different. We always talk about meeting people where they're at. What would it look like to meet yourself where you're at and just know it's part of the moment?

Cristina Amigoni: Part of that, and I think I eventually got to it, I'm not quite there yet. I’m still very distracted by a couple of things. But it's to have some patience and grace for myself on how long I think it should take to do these things. I don't think I ever thought I could unpack and do all the cleaning and spring cleaning and emptying up closets and all of that in a day when we got back. I knew it was going to take at least a couple days. I was hoping that I would be done by the long weekend since we just had a three-day weekend. I did succeed with part of it. I think I succeeded with our office and my closet, but I'm not quite there with the kids’ stuff yet. That's where I had to kind of regroup and be patient and not get frustrated that I didn't get it done in the time frame that I had established was the acceptable time frame. 

Now, I have a deadline, which doesn't help because we have the house cleaners coming on Friday, and it's a little hard to clean a house when there's just stuff everywhere. 

Alex Cullimore: Where it hasn't been. 

Cristina Amigoni: On the floor, just piled. My son, both my sons, but especially my 13-year-old, he grew so much that his entire closet is all clothes that don't fit him, literally his entire closet. The only stuff that he could keep was three t-shirts and two pairs of pants and three shorts that we bought in Italy right before we came here. He now has an empty closet which looks beautiful. 

But he has this huge pile of clothes on the floor that I need to do something with, whether it's donating or see if I can then move them into – it's one of those like it's a sidetrack because now the reason why I've left the pile for four days is because it's a sidetrack thing. Meaning because I have a smaller boy or a younger boy, he could use probably most of those clothes. But before I can give them to him, I have to empty his closet and figure out what fits and what doesn't fit and find room. So it's just like, “Okay.” Then before I empty his closet, I need to do something else and then something else. It’s been one of those fun things. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. It's just in such a time of change. Not only is just your life changing. But, obviously, when one is 13, one grows a lot. There's a lot of clothing suddenly just shedding throughout. It feels like you're just going through skins. With the idea that there will inevitably be some sidetracks that will come up in this, how do you give yourself grace and have that reminder that this is what the moment demands?

Cristina Amigoni: I find that the one thing that I can utilize the presence in the moment discipline is for physical sensations. My mind will never let me rest. That's just not an option. I mean, that's not even an option when I'm sleeping, so it's definitely not an option when I'm awake. It's always going to be thinking ahead and thinking of all the things I didn't get to do and how that's going to impact the things that I have to do and everything else. But my body is becoming much more loud, for lack of a better word, when it's time to stop. 

This morning, I was just sharing how for some reason I woke up. I slept great. I slept nine hours I think, which is finally getting over the jet lag and getting over lack of sleep for a month. I slept great. I woke up. I was ready to go. I was okay when I woke up for the first about 5 to 10 minutes. Then I started feeling very dizzy. I had this whole plan on what I was going to get done before this recording, and I just had to like, “Nope, my body is just – it's not going to happen. I can't stand up. I can't physically stand up, so we’re going to lie down with our legs up and let it go.” 

I'm finding that whenever I've had those moments over the last few days where I just get tired, I get a headache or I'm tired. My energy, my physical energy drops and like, “You know what? I'm just going to sit and meditate or nap or binge on something on Netflix and give myself a break and then start again when the energy goes back up.” 

Alex Cullimore: That's great. You're able to give yourself some of that rest in there. What kind of thoughts tend to come up when some kind of sidetrack, either a different thing that has to be done before doing the thing you're originally doing or something like you're saying where it's like, “Hey, I'm not physically or mentally able to do the thing that I want to do right now or at least not how I would like to do it.”? 

Cristina Amigoni: The thoughts that come up are definitely difficult, I guess. They're draining thoughts for the most part because, again, they distract me from even resting. I'm able to finally get to the point that I'm resting, but it's a constant distraction from doing what I'm doing at the moment for being present because it feels like it's just a never-ending list. The list is eternal. 

It's almost the same feeling as starting a hike to a fourteener and walking, but you never get there. You're looking at the mountain, and the mountain keeps moving away and moving away and moving away. You turn around, and you look back and like, “Oh, I've done a lot.” But you look forward and like, “But it's not closing the distance.” I don't know when that will happen. When you hike a couple of fourteeners, they tell you more or less, “At your speed and fitness level and how many times you've done it, this is how long more or less it should take.” You know that. You know that it's okay if it takes a little bit longer or shorter but you know. This is going to take, I think, three hours to go up or four hours to go up and three hours to come down, whatever mountain that is. You know eventually you will get there. You can take a pause. You can stop for food 15 times. You can look at the view, but you have an idea of that. 

For something like coming back and doing all this house stuff but also getting back into some very focused work stuff, it's been more of a like, “I actually – I think I know how long this should take, but I keep missing that mark.” I keep thinking it's going to take less, and so then it piles up because I'm like, “What else am I not doing?” Because now I'm taking the time to do this that took longer than I expected. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That is something that is incredibly helpful in the work that we do, but I can see how this might be a difficult instinct to have. At this time, you could – continuing to hold the full timeline in your head. If there's an adjustment or adjustments to something or the whole picture in your head, though, if there's adjustment to one thing, you're watching out for the connections and where that's going to affect other things, what the ripple effects are going to be both on timeline and on other people and other activities, et cetera. There's a lot that goes into that calculation or that mental calculus of what needs to be done and what can be done. 

I like the fourteener description. It's funny that you describe the looking back and seeing how far you've come, as well as looking forward to see the mountain because that's the definition of not being in the moment because you're looking at both the past and the future. 

Cristina Amigoni: It is. The funny thing is when I have hiked fourteeners, I have felt – except not the whole time, not the whole seven or eight hours. But I have felt that I've been in the moment. Yes. You pause and you look back and you're like, “Oh, wow.” But that almost brings you to the moment of like, “Check that out. Check what the view is. This is the view, thanks to the two hours I just hiked.” You’re taking that majestic view because you start getting to really majestic views at the beginning, too. But it depends on where you're starting and where the parking lot looks like. But you really kind of take in like, “I am here. I am hiking. I'm in this thing, hiking it. I'm part of nature, and I'm part of this piece of nature right now.” It’s slightly easier than emptying your whole house. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, yes. They might not be quite as majestic of you on top of a pile of clothes, but that's okay.

Cristina Amigoni: No. 

Alex Cullimore: If you were to meld some of the lessons there, though, when you think about the appreciation for being there and being in that fourteener and knowing that this is essentially like you're climbing a fourteener, which you've kind of done before in some ways. You've been here before. You've unpacked before. You've come – you've been from Italy back to here before. It's always a little bit different as well. It's like a fourteener where you kind of know the trail. But, also, people have built new detours or something that's not working right now. There's another path you have to take. 

Transporting some of those lessons of the presence on the fourteener, what would it look like to transport that onto or project that onto your experience in the return?

Cristina Amigoni: It's a good question. Well, I guess knowing that, eventually, I will get there. The mountain may look like it's moving but it's not. It just may be getting steeper, and so it just like – hiking a fourteener the last few hours are much harder than the beginning few hours because you're actually on the mountain. Knowing that eventually I will get there and eventually there will be a return journey from it, I think that would definitely help. 

I think it goes back to the hiking the fourteener, or at least the way I've done it because I'm not a professional hiker or competing, there's no pressure on time. If it takes me seven hours, eight hours, nine hours, six hours, five hours, I don't care. It's going to take me however it takes me. There’s no failure. There's no expectation that it should take this long, while there's an idea that this is what we're talking about. This is the time rage. If we keep walking and there's no injuries and nothing happens, it shouldn't take days. I should be done way before dark. You have a sense of what the path is like, but there is no attachment to like, “It has to take this long.” That’s a big one that would help in these moments where the distraction of how long I think it should take takes more energy than the actual actions of what I'm doing. 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. In what ways can you remind yourself that this takes the time it takes?

Cristina Amigoni: Well, I would say definitely comparing it, so using the analogy of something else and also going back to internally thinking like, “What am I attaching? What's my attachment here?” If there's a frustration, it's because I have an attachment to an expectation. If I can unpack that expectation, I can let go of the frustration and just do what I'm doing. 

It also helps to have a good audiobook. That's what I've done. I either find a good audiobook to listen to while I'm doing it. So then time, it's not a thing because now it's – I'm doing something, and I'm not looking at the clock. Or I put on whatever movie or TV shows I want to binge on and just whatever. I'm just watching it. It's background noise as that happens. I'm not sitting there counting how many episodes have I seen. Or, “This is the end of the movie. Oh, my God. It took me this long.” Yes. I'm here. I'm doing. 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. Yes. Get some of that distraction in. Get some of that – just it's not about the time. It sounds like the expectation then has a lot to do with time, the time that it should take, the time that it will take that. If you were just distill that down and unpack that expectation a little bit, what do you think is the fear driving or the fear of what might happen if the expectation is not met?

Cristina Amigoni: I think the fear is what else am I supposed to be doing with this time that I'm not getting to because this is taking longer. I had all these things I wanted to do, and those are not going to happen. So then it's like the doctor's visits, the doctor's offices. It's when the first thing takes longer. Then everything bumps. When you have a lot of things lined up, then it becomes that mountain that keeps moving because you don't see the end. There's no end to things that need to be done. 

What I have actually – I was stressed about a couple of slides we needed for yesterday for one of our client meetings because I kept thinking like, “Oh, I didn't get –” I got my plan was to get to them over the weekend, and I didn't get to do them over the weekend because the packing, the unpacking, and the cleaning took longer than I wanted to. But then it dawned on me. I was like, “Wait. But I'm not alone, so somebody else could actually do this.” That was super liberating when I just woke up and I was like, “Nicole, Alex, can you take care of this?” It doesn't have to be me doing this. That was super liberating as well. 

Remembering that I'm not alone, which after five months of being on the mountain of caretaking, it's been very hard to remember I'm not alone. After a week or 10 days of packing everything up, emptying to living spaces we had temporarily had coming back, it's just, “Wait. If I don't do it, it doesn't get done.” I have to get past that. How true is that that if I don't do it, it doesn't get done?

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. That sounds like a huge lifeline then in knowing when you're not alone, which something you talked about before. It’s a core value of being connected to people, as well as feeling just that general support and ability to be there without – as you said, you have had a month or two directly of pretty intensive caretaking for lots of people. Coming out of that is a bit of a hard one to remember that we aren't the sole – the atlas with the world on our shoulders. We have others. How might you keep that more top of mind to help yourself?

Cristina Amigoni: I would say just recognize. Recognize the feeling of I need to do this. The only option is whatever this is, I'm the one that has to do it, and question that. Ask the question like, “How true is that? How true is it that I'm the only one that has to do this?” I've also – my kids grew a lot maturity-wise, not just height-wise. 

Alex Cullimore: Not just out of their clothes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Not just clothes size-wise and shoes size-wise but also maturity. They took on a lot more responsibility, and they did great with that. One of the things that I'm trying to not step into because we're now back home where we were five months of maturity less, I need to get into the habit of asking them to do things, as opposed to assuming like, “Oh, they're not going to do it.” Or it's going to be a big deal if I ask them because then I have to explain how to do it, and it takes more time and all the reasons why we know we have to delegate stuff, and we never do. But then I realized. I'm like, “Well, wait. They're totally capable of handling this, so I can just say can you take care of these things.” 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's a great insight. There's both work delegation and home delegation. Looking into your next week, what's an opportunity for some home delegation that you can ask them to take on some of this mountain?

Cristina Amigoni: A home delegation. I think just the daily things, which is where I started yesterday. It's like, “Empty the dishwasher and put the dishes in the dishwasher when that happens. Do your own laundry,” which they were doing before. But then we switched to we didn't have a laundry capability, so then they stopped it. But they can do their own laundry, so do your own laundry. They have things that they're not our pilot that they always do, but I think it's more of it's okay for me to ask, as opposed to assume, “Oh, they didn't do it. Now, it's on me.” 

Alex Cullimore: That's an interesting one, too, because there will be times when you ask. Then if they don't do it, it feels like, “Okay. So that delegation didn't work. I'm just going to take it on.” What would you like to do in that moment when there's that challenge presented?

Cristina Amigoni: I think just ask the – be very clear with having the physical. Physically, what am I feeling? Going back to the body feels way before our brain interprets our emotions. Figure out like, “What am I feeling? I'm feeling this. What does that mean?” Usually attached to expectations or panicking that I won't get to it or frustrated that I feel alone and then going down that path of questioning that. Am I truly alone? Is there somebody else that could actually do this?

Alex Cullimore: If you were to think back on a time when that has happened either recently or in the past, where in your body does that show up? How does that show up?

Cristina Amigoni: Lately, I've been getting a lot of migraines, which I'm not a headache person. I used to get headaches couple times a year very rarely, but that's where I've been feeling a lot of the tensions. As soon as I get really stressed and tense and overwhelmed, it's like my whole head feels like it's going to explode. Some shoulder and neck pain but not as much as the head. My head and my eye area is where the overwhelming feeling shows up, and it's like a red traffic light flashing. 

Alex Cullimore: It's kind of hard to ignore the feeling of a head exploding. Rather hard to tune down. That makes sense. That's definitely a signal that maybe this is a time where there's a delegation or something else. They say that you can only adjust about an hour a time zone a day when you're coming back or coming back from somewhere. You are at about exactly the time where you might be on this schedule. It's been about the number of days. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. It's been eight days. Yes. Today is the eighth day. Yes. I am sleeping, which helps. It did not help that I wasn't sleeping at all during the jet lag and before. I think I went – I don't know I think I spent like two to three weeks of sleeping three to four hours a night. It’s not a fun thing to get to that point. 

Alex Cullimore: No, no. Not only is that not fun. It truly accrues. The actual sleep debt is accrued and continual. What would it look like to factor that into your expectation of what can be done in a day?

Cristina Amigoni: It's definitely helped for me to let go because, again, the body doesn't give you an option. When the body shuts down, you're done. You can have all the expectations of what you're going to do all day long. But the body's going to be like, “Nope. Feel free to try it. Let's see how it goes.” 

Alex Cullimore: See how I stop you this time. 

Cristina Amigoni: I have been going to sleep early. I mean, I've had a couple of days. I think it was Friday, so two days after we got back and about, I don't know, 13 days into non-sleeping at all or very little sleep every night. I fell asleep at 3.30pm. I went upstairs because I needed to rest and I – my head and my body was like, “You're done. Just lie down for 20 minutes. Watch something.” I fell asleep while I was watching something, and I woke back up at 8pm just to actually get into my PJs to go back to sleep for the rest of the night. 

I think just listening to that very clearly and not having – and I've been attuned to that, so I can – with the jet lag, even sleeping through the morning. My body says enough. It's enough around eight still. I can push it a little bit. I've been able to push it to nine, just as getting ready but past that. That's where I need to just be like, “You know what? It's time to go to bed. This is it. It's not time to do anything else. It doesn't matter that I didn't finish what I was supposed to finish. It's bedtime.” 

Alex Cullimore: Two signals then, the feeling of getting tired and knowing that that's time to retire, regardless of the checklist that was initially thought for the day. Plus head exploding, the migraine and the stress that can start to accumulate in neck, shoulder, and eventually blossom into the head. 

Given those instances, you just mentioned that you're like “Okay.” You know when you're getting tired. It’s just time to like, “All right, I'm going out.” If you start to feel that headache come along, what thought would you like to have?

Cristina Amigoni: What's my body telling me? That would be a very fast thought. My body's telling me that I have – I'm stressed about something that I think I should be doing. Then the next thought is what can I let go of, both in expectations and in actual tasks. How do I make that letting go happen if it's tasks to delegate?

Alex Cullimore: Here's what the consequences are of letting go. Let's say it's something that can't be delegated and something that can't be done immediately. What are the consequences of not doing something? Or how do you reason about that situation?

Cristina Amigoni: There's not much that can't be delegated or that needs to be done immediately. I mean, it's anything that I think needs to be done immediately. It's my own expectations of saying this is what it needs to be done. Well, when those instances happen, what I think I can do is let go of whatever I'm doing. I can just switch the task. It's whatever I thought I was going to be doing or whatever I'm doing. Now, reprioritize. It's like that gets to be abandoned and it's okay that it's abandoned, even though it's halfway done or a quarter done, and pick up this thing. 

Alex Cullimore: Makes sense. Being able to abandon that task, and you've already got the ability to kind of swap those tasks out. It's just the letting go of the expectation that it should have been done or that it needs to be done now. There's a lot – there's kind of a theme here of like going back to what is my body telling me and how am I going to choose to respond to that. Looking forward into the week, what support can you get around from me, from whoever to help you stay in that space of, hey, what's my body telling me now?

Cristina Amigoni: I think it's, first of all, having a clear not just the chaos in my head list of things that need to be done. But actually write them down and clear the head on here's the things that I expect to be happening. Then figuring out who can do that. One of the things that I was thinking when I woke up this morning and even last night was going back to a presentation we have for one of our meetings tomorrow. I remember like I wanted to look at it again and add an agenda slide and do a couple of things to it. Instead of having that swim in my head as a burden is, okay, let's write it down and figure out who else can do that or when I can do that. I can just – if it's on a task list, where am I going to do that?

Alex Cullimore: Makes sense. Looking forward into the week, how does it feel facing that with those thoughts in mind?

Cristina Amigoni: A little bit freer. I would still like the house to be in much better shape than it is now. I do have – tomorrow's the deadline, so today should be interesting. But then it'll be done. Then I'll be on top of one of the mountains, and I'll get to just walk back down. 

Alex Cullimore: Let's face one last fear here because we're wrapping here. You've got a deadline of tomorrow. What happens if that deadline's not met? 

Cristina Amigoni: I mean, not much. I can always take all the clothes from the floor and put them on the bed and then put them back on the floor after the floor gets cleaned. 

Alex Cullimore: How's it feel thinking that and thinking about that on the deadline?

Cristina Amigoni: A little bit overwhelming because I just want it to be done. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, understandable. 

Cristina Amigoni: I just need to prioritize it. 

Alex Cullimore: What else helps you when you think about presence in the moment? How might presence in the moment help you for the next two days getting to Friday?

Cristina Amigoni: I think figuring out what distractions can I write down so that they're out of my head. One of the challenges with not being present in the moment is that we're always – we have these 900 or more words swimming around. It could be anything. How can I extract some of those so that they're no longer points of let's remember to do this? It’s not just I want to do this or I have to do this. There's also the added, “But remember to do this.” Then you have to do this. Then what happens if you don't remember? The added stress is that remembering everything more than actually doing it. Looking at what can be written down and just get out like, “Now, it's written down. Or it's been delegated, so now it's no longer my responsibility or in my head.” 

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. Well, any accountability I can offer on that as you go forward into the week?

Cristina Amigoni: I would say just maybe ask me if I have made the list or how clear my head is or unclear my head is. What can I write down or provide or list out so that it frees me both mentally and time-wise?

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That makes sense. You can definitely do that. Any other thoughts to close the session?

Cristina Amigoni: I don't think so. I'm looking forward to being done with this mountain. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes, no kidding. It sounds like one you're ready to be done with. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, which the weekend will help. We don't have any plans for the weekend, so I can finish some of it over the weekend. 

Alex Cullimore: I wish you the best of luck. I think you've got a clear head of what the obstacles are facing you. The question is how it goes getting around those. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, thank you. 

Alex Cullimore: Good luck. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you and thanks for listening.

Alex Cullimore: Thanks for listening.

[OUTRO]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood. 

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always uncover the human.

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