Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
"Your relationship with yourself determines every other relationship in your life."
When we create a healthy relationship with ourselves, everything in our lives begins to transform.
Join us each week as we discuss topics such as overcoming shame, letting go of limiting beliefs, dealing with imposter syndrome, finding healthy motivators for achievement, transforming trauma, and learning how to practice self-love and self-acceptance.
The Permission to Love Podcast is dedicated to helping people have healthier relationships with themselves and find the permission to fully love and accept themselves.
About Jerry,
“When I realized I was the source of my own suffering, I realized I could also be the source of my own healing.”
Jerry is a Master Certified Transformational Mindset Coach, author, speaker, and host of The Permission to Love Podcast.
He works with high-achievers to help them create a happier, healthier, and more sustainable life grounded in self-acceptance and self-compassion.
Jerry has helped thousands of people have a healthier relationship with themselves and uncover the limiting beliefs keeping them from the life they so deeply desire and deserve.
He uses a combination of transformational mindset coaching, positive psychology, trauma-informed approaches, IFS, and NLP to remove limiting beliefs and connect with their authentic selves.
Jerry has an undergraduate degree in Political Science, an MBA in global business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and is currently completing his Master's degree in Psychology at Harvard University.
Before becoming a Transformational Coach, Jerry spent most of his career in Philanthropy, raising over $1 billion USD for not-for-profits. He is a survivor of childhood trauma and now helps individuals learn how to create the lives they want from a place of healthy motivators and remaining mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, and spiritually healthy.
New episodes of The Permission to Love Podcast come out every Monday.
To learn more about Jerry, find additional resources, or submit a topic or question, check out: www.jerryhenderson.org
You can also connect with Jerry on Instagram: @jerryahenderson
Permission to Love with Jerry Henderson
Stop Missing Out on Your Life: The Art of Presence
Have you ever felt like life is slipping through your fingers, even as you chase your dreams and hit your goals?
You’re not alone. In this episode, I unpack the hidden reasons high achievers and those on a healing journey often feel disconnected from their own lives.
Grounded in neuroscience and real-world experience, I walk you through five powerful, practical steps to stop life from feeling like a blur — and instead, step fully into the moment.
Learn how to calm your body, interrupt unhealthy thought patterns, and build a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
Plus, I share insights into the new Personal Mastery Framework™ and why you don’t have to sacrifice your ambition to live a deeply present, fulfilled life.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why high achievers struggle with presence and what drives that constant restlessness
- How stress hijacks your brain and makes joy hard to feel
- What the "when-then" trap is and how it steals your peace
- The science of neuroplasticity and how to rewire your mind for presence
- Five actionable steps to start experiencing your life more fully, right now
- Why presence is not passivity, and how it actually makes you more powerful
Resources & Links:
- 🎯 Learn about the Personal Mastery Coaching Program: jerryhenderson.org
- 🎙 Listen to the transition episode: Self-Love Is the Root from Which Personal Mastery Grows
- 📲 Subscribe to the podcast now so you don’t miss the transition to Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson
Chapters:
00:00 — Welcome & Episode Preview: Are you missing out on your life?
01:52 — Quick Podcast Update: Transition to Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson
03:13 — Jerry’s Personal Story: Achieving but not living
06:06 — Why Your Brain Resists Presence: Safety over happiness
07:22 — Chronic Stress and Numbness: The hidden cost
08:48 — Overactive Default Mode Network: Stuck in autopilot
10:21 — Cognitive Overload: Why you can’t feel the moment
11:56 — The Dopamine-Cortisol Trap: Chasing wins but feeling numb
13:37 — The Role of the Nervous System: Healing hyperarousal
15:33 — Introducing the Personal Mastery Framework
18:37 — Step 1: Calm the Body to Free the Mind
22:35 — Step 2: Break the When-Then Trap
25:17 — Step 3: Anchor to Small Moments of Meaning
26:36 — Step 4: Practice Stopping and Observing
29:28 — Step 5: Train Presence with Medi
I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
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Website:
www.jerryhenderson.org
🔗 Access the course "Learning How to Love Yourself" here:
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Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jerryahenderson
What if, in the middle of building your dream life, or chasing your achievements or trying to heal, you accidentally wind up missing out on your entire life? And I don't mean this theoretically, I actually mean it Because maybe you're checking all of the boxes, you're winning on paper, and maybe you're even admired by other people, but you can feel it. You feel like life is slipping past you, like sand through your fingers, moments are blurring together. You've crossed one finish line, only to move the goalposts before you can even catch your breath. So today I'm going to show you why this happens. Not the surface level motivational talk, but real facts grounded in the science. And, more importantly, I'm going to give you five powerful steps that will help you to stop missing out on your life and finally live in the moment, and to be able to do all of that without losing your ambition. Right, because there's nothing wrong with your ambition. There's nothing wrong with you wanting to be the highest version of yourself. But here's the thing Many high achievers, many high performers or people who are on a healing journey even they, wind up missing on their entire life because they think that someday they're going to be able to enjoy their life when they arrive when they feel whole or when they've hit that achievement. We're going to talk about all of that today in this episode, but I just want to encourage you. You don't have to give up on all of those things that you want to do in order to be healthy. You can do both. And Hello everybody and welcome to the Permission to Love podcast. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and, as always, I am so grateful that you're here Now.
Jerry Henderson:As a quick reminder, on May the 5th, this podcast is going to transition its name from the Permission to Love podcast to Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson. If you want more information about why that transition is happening, you can go back and listen to the episode that I did on self-love, the root from which personal mastery grows. It explains why we're doing the transition and it also explains how we're not moving away from our foundation of learning how to have a healthy relationship with ourselves. As a matter of fact, personal mastery is about that, and here's the truth about mastery. Mastery is about that, and here's the truth about mastery. Mastery is not about perfectionism. It's about a continual learning and growth process that's anchored in self-acceptance, self-compassion, so that we can be the best and highest version of ourselves and actually enjoy the life that we're building. How can we create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside? Now an additional reminder if you've not yet had the chance to follow or to subscribe to this podcast, it's really important that you do that because with the transition the name change you're not going to be able to find this podcast if you search for the Permission to Love podcast. So if you want to make sure that you're updated and that you follow this transition seamlessly, hit that subscribe or follow button. Now here's something I want you to understand before I go any further about this.
Jerry Henderson:As I said, this isn't just theory. It's definitely not just theory to me, because this is something that I personally lived at the deepest level of my life. I spent most of my life not enjoying it. I was chasing success, I was chasing achievements. I was chasing all of those things to try to make me feel like I was whole, to try to heal me actually, and what was happening as a result of that? I was missing out on my entire life and everything that I thought was going to make me feel fulfilled. It didn't. The career, the goals, the milestones, the recognition had all of that, and yet I'd wake up in the morning and before my feet even hit the ground, my brain was already 30 steps ahead of me. I wasn't enjoying the present moment, and here's what I learned I wasn't in my life as a participant of it. I was actually sprinting ahead of my life, and even the good moments, the ones that you're supposed to stop and savor they all started to feel like they were happening in fast forward. I was never present and I would travel all over the world. I've been to 50 plus countries and there's so much of those times that I feel like I wasn't even present, for I was there as an observer of my life, more than a participant of my life. And if you feel that way, this episode is for you and I want to encourage you that you don't have to live that way.
Jerry Henderson:And, to be honest, one of my biggest regrets in life is how much I missed out on relationships, relationships with my daughters, relationships with my friends and just the experience of life itself. It really did just become a blur. It was like I was living someone else's life, because in reality I was. I was living all of those expectations about what I thought I should be, or I had to be, in order to be loved, in order to be accepted. So no amount of achieving, no amount of hitting the goals ever gave me permission to be present, never gave me permission to be okay. What I didn't understand at the time as to why I was never able to be present was it wasn't just because I was busy with life. Right, you can be busy and still be present. What it was about for me, and what it likely is for you, is that our brains and our bodies get trapped in a cycle that they were never designed to sustain. So let's talk about why this happens, why we get trapped in those cycles, especially for people who are high performers and high achievers, because once you understand this, once you really get your head around this, you can begin to change it Now.
Jerry Henderson:First, it's important to understand that your brain is not a productivity machine. Your brain is a survival machine, and part of what your brain's job is to do is to constantly scan for threats, to forecast danger and to try to predict the future. And so, in many ways, your brain is a prediction machine, and the neuroscience is clear on this that your brain's number one job is to try to predict what's next, because your brain functioning like that keeps you alive, it sustains you, right? I've talked about this before. Your brain's priority, as I said, number one is your safety to try to predict what threats might be coming. And all of that is more important to your brain than your happiness, than your productivity, than your achievements, all of it. That is its primary function. And what happens if we're not careful? We get locked into that state. We're always forecasting what's next. How do I stay ahead, how do I stay safe? And in the short term it's very effective, right. But in the long term, it robs your ability to experience what's happening right now, what's right in front of you in this very moment Now.
Jerry Henderson:The second reason that many people miss out on their life is that their system, their nervous system, is on overdrive because of chronic stress. And when that happens, it puts your body in what is called sympathetic dominance. Your fight or flight mode is on all of the time. It is dominating your life. Your parasympathetic nervous system is not activated life. Your parasympathetic nervous system is not activated. You're living a life where your sympathetic system is dominating your entire nervous system.
Jerry Henderson:Research out of Harvard shows that high cortisol, that stress hormone that we talk about a lot, actually numbs the pleasure centers of your brain. So what does that mean? What happens as a result of that? Well, what starts to happen in our lives is that even when good things happen, they don't land for us, they don't feel good, they don't feel like we think they should, because our overall system is numbed. And another reason that this happens is that people are often too busy bracing for impact. They're bracing for the negative to happen, for the shoe to drop, especially if you're a trauma survivor, because you don't feel like it's safe to enjoy the good, because you're waiting for the bad to happen, and so when the good happens, it's dismissed, it's glazed over and it's not really absorbed, and so we miss out on the ability to savor life.
Jerry Henderson:Now, another reason we can feel like we're missing out on our entire life and we're never present is because our brain's default mode network is overactive. So what is the brain's default mode network? I want you to think about it like your brain's autopilot system for overthinking, and when we're not engaged or we're not focused, that system takes over and it can get stuck in an overactive state through things like trauma, through things like chronic stress, and when it takes over, it can start to loop the past worries, past regrets. That's where rumination comes from. It can get into catastrophizing the future or just worrying about what might happen. That often doesn't happen, right, like 80, some percent of what we worry about never comes to pass. And another thing that it does when it's highly active is it gets involved in a lot of self-criticism. Now the research also shows that for high achievers, high performers, who are stuck in chronic stress, this DMN network, it becomes dominant. So even when you're resting, your mind is still replaying mistakes, scanning for threats, questioning your worth. So you're up there all the time in your mind, right? You're so much in your brain that you're not in your body, you're not in the present moment, you're not with other people, and you get told things like you're here but you're never here. I know you, but I don't know you. A lot of what you're experiencing around that is because the DMN is in an overactive state.
Jerry Henderson:Now, the fourth thing that makes us feel like we're missing out on our lives is that our cognitive load is maxed out. What do I mean by that? Well, cognitive load theory shows that when we juggle too much. We've got too much going on in our brains. We're always trying to think about what we should be doing or what we shouldn't have done, or what's wrong with us or whatever's going on up there. Our working memory it gets saturated. Our working memory it gets saturated. You literally lose the capacity to notice the moment that you're actually living in. Your brain stops paying attention to your external environment, your body, sensations, what's going on? Because it's overloaded. That's why you can drive home on. Because it's overloaded. That's why you can drive home mindlessly and not even know how you got there, and that's why a year can pass by and feel like it was a month. That's why you can observe your family members or your friends in your life and stand back and not even remember much of what's going on, feeling disconnected from your most important relationships.
Jerry Henderson:Now the fifth thing I'm going to talk about that keeps us stuck in this state is that you get caught in the cortisol and dopamine trap. This is very common for high achievers, high performers. Why? Because we chase these dopamine hits, whether we realize it or not. What we're doing is we get so focused in on the next goal, the next win, that next payoff. You're always chasing that next moment where you feel like you made it or you achieved. But here's the trap.
Jerry Henderson:Here's what happens when we're in that state that stress once again spiking cortisol. And you know what cortisol is doing? It's decreasing your dopamine receptors, it's decreasing the sensitivity that your dopamine receptors have. And what happens as a result of that? That translates into you now need bigger and bigger wins just to feel alive. And what worked in the past to make you feel good about your achievements, about your success, doesn't do it the same anymore.
Jerry Henderson:And then what happens is every day starts feeling more and more numb, more and more hollow, and then a sense of hopelessness can begin to set in because the promise of the payoff isn't there anymore. And then, as a result of that, we start to find ways to even numb out more through drinking, through more work or whatever it is that we engage in to try to take away that feeling of disappointment, that life isn't feeling as vibrant, as whole, as good anymore. So it becomes a downward spiral. We're trying to escape from what once gave us a sense of escape. That's not working anymore and we wind up not being present for the majority of our life. At that point Now, when you put all of that together that we've talked about, the thing that really starts to happen is your nervous system is chronically dysregulated and this gets into the deep wiring for many high achievers, for many high performers, and the thing that needs to be healed and you have to address this in order to live a life that feels meaningful where you're present.
Jerry Henderson:For Because when you're carrying all of that chronic stress or unprocessed trauma and your whole system is in a state of chronic hyperarousal, the result becomes that your entire nervous system doesn't feel safe anymore. Your mind cannot settle because you're carrying a sense of chronic red alert and your brain, as we talked about in the beginning of this number one job what Survival? And when you're in a chronic state of this, your brain won't settle because it perceives that we're constantly in a threat zone. And when you're in a threat zone, you are not in a relaxed zone. And polyvagal theory talks about this, about how our nervous system can stay in that stuck state and, as a result of that system can stay in that stuck state and, as a result of that, that hypervigilance that's going on with us due to work stress, due to life stress, due to that high achieving, performing state that we feel like we have to keep achieving. When we're there, we're not going to be able to enjoy the present moment. We are going to miss out on our life. Life is going to be a blur because it doesn't feel safe to savor life anymore. So, with all of that in mind, what do we do? Well, here's the good news Every single one of those patterns are trainable. Your brain is plastic. It can change your body, it's adaptable, it can recalibrate and, for you and your life, even though you feel stuck, I want to let you know that you can get unstuck, and I'm going to give you some tips right now about how you can do that, how you can get unstuck from a state of feeling like you can't enjoy your life, that you're missing out on all of it, and how you can begin to be present and enjoy your life so you don't feel like you're missing out on all of the beautiful things that you're trying to create and build.
Jerry Henderson:I want to take a moment to talk to you about the new coaching framework that I've designed, called the Personal Mastery Framework. What is it? Well, I like to say it this way High-performance coaching helps you succeed. Therapy helps you get healthy. This program does both. It's about you performing from a place of health. It's about doing the inner work so that you can create sustainable success and aligning your outer world with your inner world. I like to say it's about helping you create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
Jerry Henderson:You know, a lot of high-performance coaching is simply about grinding success, etc. All good things, wonderful things. I like success, you like success. We like successful relationships, successful businesses, we like our bank accounts to be successful. We love all of that right. But sometimes we've been chasing and trying to achieve and we get to those places and we find that we don't have any fulfillment, that it's lacked purpose, and so that's why I created the Personal Mastery Coaching Program because I want to help individuals get what I wish I would have had 10 years ago. I want to help individuals understand the motivators behind their achievements. I want to help them achieve more, but do it in a way that's sustainable, that doesn't lead to burnout or to recover from burnout. If you're experiencing that, I want people to understand that success and performance doesn't have to cost you your joy, your happiness, your relationship, your health.
Jerry Henderson:The program is built on six pillars that are research-based, evidence-based, that have been developed as a part of my time at Harvard University. The first one is mindset, or the psychology of happiness and success. The second one, resilience, or the science of emotional mastery. The third one is about living present, or the art of living fully. Fourth one is about living present, or the art of living fully. Fourth one is about alignment how do you get the inside to match the outside and the outside to match the inside? That's where we get into strategy, work, vision, goals, habits, etc. The fifth one is around connection.
Jerry Henderson:How can you build meaningful relationships? Because the research is so clear, right, that if you had to choose one thing in order to increase your well-being, it's better relationships. How can you learn to develop healthier, more meaningful connections with other people and also, starting with yourself, that connection, relationship that you have with yourself. And then, finally, learning how to live a life that's filled with purpose, meaning, legacy and service to others. And these six pillars have been shown time and time again through research to be such an important part of allowing us to live a life that we actually want to live, to create success and to sustain it. So, if you've spent a lot of energy trying to master success, master achievement, master everything else in your life, but you haven't learned how to master yourself, how to build personal mastery, self-mastery. Then I want to encourage you go to my website at jerryhendersonorg and apply to be a part of the Personal Mastery Coaching Program, and I look forward to connecting with you and learning more about you.
Jerry Henderson:So let's go through this five-step framework about how you can be present and enjoy your life. Number one we've got to start working on calming the body in order to free the mind. Often, before you can think differently, you need to feel differently, and this is where regulating your nervous system comes into play. And there are simple tools that you can use on a daily basis, like box breathing, like deep breathing, learning to practice that. When you're in a calm state, you can use things like cold exposure, taking that cold shower or those cold plunges that can help reduce your system and get it out of that state of feeling like it's in fight or flight. And here's what happens when your body starts to feel safe, it begins to unlock your access to your thinking brain instead of your survival brain, and when you do that, you can see more clearly you can begin to see the life around you, and so if there are things that you need to do, like somatic therapy, other practices that allow your nervous system to relax, I would encourage you start there, because we're going to miss out on our life when our body doesn't feel like it's okay to be present, it doesn't feel okay to relax and you're shaking your leg 100 miles an hour and as soon as you sit down, you feel like you got to get up and do something.
Jerry Henderson:You know, I remember a time in my life where I'd sit down, try to relax, and I'd get up and I'd start walking around looking for something to do, to occupy me, to distract me, to keep me feeling like I was being productive. And there was a moment where I got up and was going to go do something and I didn't even know why I was getting up or what I was going to go do. I just started wandering around looking for something to fix, something to keep me busy, because I didn't feel safe to be present. So if you're in that state, this is about body. This is about the body being able to feel like it can relax, and there are methods that you can use to help you do that. So I would encourage you, try things like deep breathing exercises while you're sitting on the couch, while you're driving, because what that's doing is it's building a foundation for your body, for your nervous system to feel okay, to feel more relaxed.
Jerry Henderson:If you can start building that foundation, you're sending a signal to your body that it's okay to be and you're starting to turn on that sympathetic nervous system. And when you do that, you feel safer. To be present, to observe it allows you to let go of all that chronic stress, those worries about tomorrow or the regrets about the past, because you can be with yourself in that moment. And here's a tip that can help you when you're doing those deep breathing exercises exercises, really observe your breath, get into a mindful state and just watch your abdomen rise and lower, and that brings you into the present moment, which, once again, is telling your body that it's okay to be here right now. Because here's the truth you can't think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You have to feel your way into a state of calm. And so when you're trying to calm your body, observe it, become curious about why you don't feel safe, tell yourself that you are safe and take advantage of and leverage your body's ability to produce all of these chemicals that tell you that it's okay to be here now and, once again, one of the things that you can do that's really easy is deep breathing exercises.
Jerry Henderson:Now, another thing that can be helpful in allowing you to be present is to break the when-then trap that's so prevalent among high achievers, high performers and people who are on a healing journey. And here's how that win-then trap plays out when I achieve X, or when I arrive to X place, then I'll feel peace, then I'll give myself permission to relax. Guess what? It's a lie. It's a trap, and I tell people all the time that we have this narrative in this story, that the season that we're in of chronic stress, always trying to perform, never being able to be present, is a season. We keep using that language. Well, it's just a season, and when the season is over, then I'll recalibrate, then I'll allow myself to relax and enjoy things, then I'll recalibrate, then I'll allow myself to relax and enjoy things.
Jerry Henderson:But can I encourage you on something that if your season has turned into months, years, decades, it's not a season anymore, it's a lifestyle, and it's living a life that's in a dysregulated state and there's no way for you to feel present in that and there's no way that you're not going to feel like you're missing out on your entire life when you're in that state. And here's something really important to remember in all of this If you can't give yourself permission now to enjoy life, you're not going to be able to do it then, because the same version of you who is here now is going to be there when you get to whatever place in your mind that you think you need to get to in order to allow yourself to enjoy your life. So how can you break that when-then trap? Build micro moments of presence into your day and, if you need to schedule them, put a reminder on your phone or an alarm to have joyful interruptions throughout your day. And, if you need to schedule them, put a reminder on your phone or an alarm to have joyful interruptions throughout your day. Maybe it's taking time to get out and get some sunlight. Maybe it's listening to some music that you really enjoy. Maybe it's a 60-second pause to just allow yourself to express gratitude All of those things. What they're going to do is they're going to bring you into the present moment and allow you to observe and engage in your environment. And here's the great thing the research backs this up that if you take these moments and pause and connect, you're going to build more resilience and you're going to increase your vagal tone, which is a part of that polyvagal theory that I talked about earlier. And when you increase your vagal tone, it helps you get into a better state of relaxation, and when you're more relaxed, you're able to be present and enjoy your life.
Jerry Henderson:Now third thing you can do to stop feeling like you're missing out on your life is to anchor into small moments that feel meaningful, and what we're trying to do here is to train our brain to start looking for meaningful moments. And a practical way you can do this is to keep a journal around this or to make notes on your phone and ask yourself what moment today made me feel alive? Was there a moment today that I felt alive, that I savored it for just a moment, that I was able to experience it? And this ties back to what we just talked about making those interruptions throughout your day to allow yourself to have and experience joy. And the research shows that if we'll allow ourselves to experience it and then savor it by journaling it, by anchoring in it, by marking it. What it does is it boosts dopamine in your brain and it starts to rewire your brain towards more appreciation. It starts to wire your brain to see all of the things around your life that you want to connect with. And guess what that's doing? It's pulling you out of stress state. It's allowing you to see your life, experience it and stop feeling like you're missing out on it.
Jerry Henderson:Now, the fourth thing you can do is to practice stopping and observing. So what do I mean by this? Well, this is the practice of allowing yourself to pause and to observe between the transitions throughout your day. So, between meetings, between calls, between tasks, use the stop technique. Take a moment, stop, take a breath and observe what's going on in the moment, observe how you're feeling, what's going on with your body, just observe, step into the observer mode so that you can be present before you just move on to the next thing. And what this is doing is it's building what is called meta-awareness and it's activating the insular cortex. And what that's doing is it's improving your ability to emotionally regulate. And the research shows that when we're in this practice of a more mindful state, which is pausing, observing our environment, observing what's going on with us without judgment, just letting it be. What these mindful pauses are doing is they're actually reducing activity in the amygdala, and when we do that, stress is lowered, cortisol is lowered, all of the things that are keeping us from being able to enjoy our lives and to savor them are reduced and we're able to be more present.
Jerry Henderson:Now the fifth thing that you can do to help yourself be present, to not miss out on your life, is to train yourself in the ability to be present with practices like meditation or centering prayer. Things like meditation or centering prayer whatever you want to use really are not optional if you're going to live a life that's grounded in presence, because what it is is, it's actually strength training for the mind. You're building a foundation, you're building the muscle of learning that it's okay to be present. The world's not going to fall apart if you take time to experience the present moment. Now here's the key for many of us. When we start a practice of meditation or centering prayer, all this stuff comes up right, all the worries, and we think I'm wasting my time. I should be doing these things over here. I'm too busy to take time to do this. I want you to think about it, like I said earlier, that you're building a muscle, You're going to the mental gym, you're allowing yourself to feel, to be present, to let all that stuff come up, observe it and then to notice that life didn't fall apart because you took some time to center yourself, to be with yourself.
Jerry Henderson:And once again, it is your mental gym, Because you took some time to center yourself, to be with yourself. And once again, it is your mental gym and it's going to help you perform better and, most importantly, it's going to help you be present. It's going to help you experience your life, because once again, we do not want to get into the trap where we have built a life that we're not even giving ourselves permission to experience. And here's the great news behind this the research shows that if you just start with five minutes a day and you start by focusing on your breath, allowing yourself to relax, you do a quick body scan of where you're carrying stress and you just allow yourself to be and observe your thoughts without judgment and just engage in the present moment, the research shows that what it's going to do is it's going to reduce that default mode network hyperactivity. It's also going to build more gray matter in your prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that has reasoning, that allows you to be more calm, that can look at situations through a lens that is more relaxed, more reasonable.
Jerry Henderson:And when that part of our brain is more active, we're actually able to be more present and, as a result of that happening and our brain being rewired, we're building a foundation that we can carry forward throughout the rest of our day. It gives us the ability to notice when we're getting stressed, when we're starting to kick into that hyperactivity, and it helps us to notice when we're not present and gives us something to anchor back into, to bring us into the present moment. Because for many people who are in these states of chronic stress, or always trying to achieve or not feeling safe, they don't realize that they've slipped out of the present moment. And building that foundation through intentional times of meditation, centering, prayer will give you the awareness of what presence feels like, so that you can become aware of when you've slipped out of it, when you're not practicing it and when you're back into that loop of missing out on your life. So let's just do a little recap about these steps, or this roadmap to help you practice presence.
Jerry Henderson:Number one calm the body so that you can free the mind. Number two interrupt the when-then trap. Number three anchor to small moments of meaning. Number four practice stopping and observing. Number five train presence with meditation.
Jerry Henderson:And here's something that I want you to think about when you think about presence. Presence is not passivity, presence is actually work and presence is power, because when you're fully here, you make better decisions, you have better connections in your relationship, you're feeling more alive, you have more energy because you don't feel like life is passing you by, and you're releasing more of these feel-good chemicals in your brain that help you stay more motivated, that help you achieve at a better level. Because guess what? Ultimately, this moment, right now you listening to this podcast this is your life. Your life isn't in the past, your life is not in the future.
Jerry Henderson:The only moment that exists is the present moment, and we're living a lie. We're living in a space of self-deception when we think that our life is out there, somewhere, that we're going to build a life that we're going to arrive to, then we're going to have the permission to enjoy it. Not going to happen. Why? Because life is right now. This moment is your life. The present moment is the only moment that exists. You actually get to feel and savor the life that you're working so hard to create, and guess what you know? What starts to happen is that you start to build a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Well, thank you for joining me today, and I hope you found some value in learning how to not feel like life is passing you by, that you can actually enjoy your life, you can be present and you can stop feeling like you're missing out on your entire life, and I want to remind you, as I always do, that you are worthy of your own love.
