As you have very likely experienced through mindfulness practice, our ordinary state is one of mind wandering—a state in which our attention drifts between the present moment and thoughts about past and future. When we practice presence, we begin regularly shifting our attention back to the present moment whenever our mind wanders.
Turning attention into engagement is similar. Think of it as “directed presence” or as cultivating presence in the midst of the activities we engage in, whether it’s brainstorming with colleagues, working out, catching up with our partner, or putting our kids to bed. Psychologists have a name for this state of full engagement. They refer to it as “flow.”
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the first psychologists to carry out research on this experience,. He describes flow as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”
