I’m taking the weekend off. Doing just about nothing, which for me is its own kind of discipline. And when I sat down to think about what to talk to you about this week, the answer showed up before I finished asking the question: presence.
This morning I walked out for breakfast in Toronto, a city of several million people, and found myself genuinely present to it. Not gritting my teeth through the noise or scrolling past it. Present to it. The quiet pockets between traffic. The particular quality of morning light on a street I’ve probably walked a hundred times without noticing. There’s a kind of tranquility available even in a major city, if you’re actually there for it instead of moving through it on autopilot.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence, or at least not one worth ignoring. It lines up with our upcoming issue of choice, which is all about presence. A lot of you have already submitted pieces, and more are on the way, which tells me this theme is landing somewhere real for this community right now. Presence isn’t an abstract virtue coaches nod along to. It’s the thing that makes the work work. You can know every model and framework in the field, but if you’re not actually present with your client, none of it lands.
If you haven’t subscribed yet and you want that issue when it comes out, you can do that at choice-online.com/subscribe. Easy enough.
In the meantime, here’s my ask: take a moment today to be present. Not a retreat, not a ritual, just a moment. Notice where you actually are instead of where your head has wandered off to.
