Good morning. Welcome to the second ever episode of the Lobro Show. I'm your host, Lobro. Today we're gonna be talking about presence being present. Last week we talked about awareness. This week we're talking about presence, being present, and how to do that because it's one thing to be aware of yourself, it's another to be fully in the moment, right? So we're gonna be talking about that today. Last week I announced that there is gonna be this glowstick challenge. Well, we're be gonna be talking about that today as well. That starts today. If you'd like to join us, it's just a little challenge that you set for yourself, decide some goals for yourself, and you work on achieving those with our help and, with your community's support and, people rallying behind you. So if you're looking for a community or people to kinda just, help you with a goal or achieve, or if you don't have anything like that in your life, the, our community online is a great place for that. The Wave Rider Society, you can find them if you go to lobro.community. But I'm stoked to give you guys this episode today. I have been running this high since last week where I, did the first ever episode recorded live and released it to the world. I'm super proud of myself. May not sound like a big accomplish, accomplishment to everyone, but it was a big deal for me. You gotta celebrate the small wins, and that one was a big win for me. From now on, you guys are gonna be getting a newsletter every week. If you'd like, you can sign up on the website.

Lobro.show at the very bottom of the page, you can enter your email, get the Wave Writer every week. We'll update you with new shows, what it's about, maybe a summary of that merchandise updates, from the community, glowstick challenges, maybe highlight some glowstick cracks that people have done where they're pretty proud of doing something themself. We'll show those off. We'll highlight any of those where people maybe want to share those with other people. So getting right into it. Awareness. That's what we talked about last week, right? Did you evaluate yourself like I challenged you? We opened our eyes last week with awareness. This week, we are standing firm in presence. Two pillars of being a Wave Rider and, what it means to "ride the wave." Well, next week we're gonna talk about openness, which is the third pillar of being a Wave Rider or "wave riding." It's the last key piece needed to be truly present in the moment without, without any resistance, I'm not even saying I'm good at this. The stuff that I'm teaching, I'm learning with you along the way. There's a really authentic, sense to it because I'm not even, I'm not even coming here as an expert, just a facilitator of growth, someone that just wants to teach and help people learn and learn that stuff over time. And, you're gonna see that over time you're gonna see and hear about that, growth through my speaking. See, I even stutter over my words sometimes. You're gonna hear how much that gets better over time, including getting rid of all those "ums" and "uhs" that became very obvious to me when I had to edit the transcript last week. So growth comes in inches, not miles. I'm not in a hurry, but I do want you to know and see that so that you have a sense of, knowing where I'm coming from, that I'm not some person claiming to be an expert. I am just someone who, wants to teach and loves to teach and am constantly working on myself. So I have set up a curriculum for myself for the next year or so of things I want to learn and things that I want to teach. So starting that out today, I said last time, awareness is about noticing, well, if we're gonna learn about presence today, presence is about staying in the spot of noticing. What do I mean by that? Well, if you're the awareness inside, watching your thoughts, giving you this power to allow some thoughts to go, oh, I see that one. I don't have to get caught in that thought wave. I can let it go. Things that we learn through meditation and mindfulness and being present. Presence is learning how to keep coming back to the present moment. It's not easy. It's a diff, I guess I shouldn't keep saying it's not easy because I guess that's just confirming the distance between me and that goal, but it is something that's difficult for me and maybe some people it's easier, especially with ADHD, my thoughts and my brain are constantly jumping around and learning the state of presence has been objectively a huge confidence booster and helped me, as someone who has, been diagnosed with bipolar, I've had panic attacks in the past. I've had panic attacks in the past where I've had things that felt like they were out of my control and I was having this like heart attack. But with this state of presence and learning the awareness and coming back to the present moment, learning that presence has given me this bird's-eye-view, as best way I can explain it, and this huge distance between a thought and then how I feel about it, because now I can see a mile away when those thoughts or feelings come up that it would normally cause a panic attack or well up inside of me and create this disturbance and storm, so to speak. When that would happen, it would take me over. But now I can see that wave coming from a mile away and you know what I can do? I can rise above it. I can literally, I can ride it because one, I know it's coming before I'm even feeling it. I can be like, aha, I see that pattern. And that's all it is. It's a pattern. People think it's disingenuous to like, to, like, how do I say this? If you have a preference about something and you don't like a certain way a thing is done or you prefer it this way, people think that is like baked into their personality and they have, you have to be that. But that is the furthest thing from the truth. The only thing more genuine than being yourself, in my opinion, is choosing who yourself wants to be. Which means, if that, is means you choose, you don't want to be the type of person who has those panic attacks anymore that lets that bother them. You can choose that. I'm not saying you can choose your feelings away. This is work. This requires active conscious, work in your brain that when you have the state of awareness and you get better at that, when you see that stuff coming, you can see it a mile away and say, oh, you know what? Not, not today. I, am done. That's the old me. I want to come back to the present moment. That's just the wave dragging me into the past. I want, I'm gonna ride it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna rise above it. I'm gonna ride this wave. I'm outta here. Let it go beneath me. Right? Fred Rogers, one of my biggest inspirations, had a huge impact on me as a kid. One of the most genuine, authentic people I can even imagine or think of up there with, Steve Irwin and, Bob Ross, as far as just wholesome legends, people that you gotta hold on to. And Fred Rogers was one of those to me. He said, there's nothing more important. Sorry. No, sorry, that was the wrong quote. He said, the greatest gift you give is your honest self. That means the greatest gift you can give someone, and something he was extremely good at, is being present with them. What is a better gift than being fully present with another person? Your time is the most valuable thing you have, and yet you let that voice inside of you start, saying things and all these disturbances start coming up, and you let that voice, as soon as it starts speaking up, you're like, oh, I'm gonna give that my full attention. All those worries, all those anxieties, I'm gonna listen up and hear what it has to say. One of my favorite authors, Michael A. Singer, from a book called The Untethered Soul. Now it is a spiritual quote unquote book, but I'm gonna demystify some of that, all right? Because as much as I love the spiritual, mystical and all that stuff, I, think it's really interesting, I'm not here to teach that. That's, what I'm here to teach, is very practical, down to earth, showing you objectively why it would be valuable to be present and to be aware in the present moment. Well, Michael A. Singer, the author of the Untethered Soul, he says that inner voice that you hear, he calls it this inner roommate. So you got this voice speaking inside your head all the time. And when a feeling arises in you, and it starts speaking up, oh man, I don't like that. I'm pretty, he cut me off. That pisses me off, man. Like, I'm mad, I'm angry, or, It starts speaking up about something you're anxious about or sad about something that happened long ago. You could be driving down the road and you see your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend's car. It's not even their car. It just looks the same, right? But now you're thinking about it and what happens? That wave takes you over and you're in it. You're just fully in that feeling and that place again, in your mind. Well, if you were aware that you were aware and you were in that place of presence, and you came back to the present moment, you could let it go. I'm not even saying, don't feel your emotions. I'm actually saying the opposite. If the mo, the emotion is here, the best way through is feeling it, but if the emotion isn't here yet and you can see it that far away and you've got that bird's eye view, you can say, no, that's not me anymore. I'm having an identity shift. That's the old version of me. I am the kind of person who doesn't respond that way anymore. You know what I do? I, something I do every morning is I meditate. I have, I do two things. I meditate in the evening and I meditate in the morning. The morning. One is a visualization, a guided meditation. The evening one is just, I used to do a guided one for evening, but I needed to start getting better at coming back to the present moment. So I started just nothing, just sound something to, in fact, I think I'm using Brain.fm. My friend Zach recommended that to me, and I've been using that to meditate in the evening. So I just listen to that and I just let it play and I just try to stay in the present moment. But in the mornings I do this visualization. And what that visualization is, it's, well, first of all, I spend some time, a few minutes getting in the present moment and practicing that. Then after about maybe five minutes, it guides me into a visualization, thinking about my future, the type of person I want to be. Why am I doing this? What's the, why do we visualize and wanna manifest quote unquote things? Well, it's not any different than accidentally seeing your girlfriend's car and getting caught up in a well of thoughts about that, right? What if you could prime your brain to think about something you want and like, and enjoy? So if you spend intentional moments every day, visualizing, thinking about what you want. You have the power to see things a mile away and have the presence to see that and to come back to the present moment. And when you see your girlfriend's car, ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend's car, whatever it is, whatever trigger it is for you that comes up and makes you think about that moment, again, you have a choice. And you can prime yourself in the morning, every day, whether you visualize or write down, gratitude journal something, whatever you want to do. But if you spend time visualizing and you actually put time and work into this, what you're able to do is prime your brain to start thinking about those things instead of these past memories. Maybe you'll have a moment of, oh, this is the type of person I want to be, and that person would be doing this in this moment. That's why I visualize the placebo effect is real people. It's a real thing that scientists have to account for. So why not use it to your own advantage? I'm just saying. What am I getting at here? I'm saying being present gives you these skills and abilities when you learn how to bring yourself back to the present moment. Now, I said I was gonna demystify spirituality because as much as I love the mystical, the, myths and stories and spirituality and all that stuff, Michael A. Singer and Untethered Soul where I, learned a lot of having this sense of awareness from that. As much as he calls that spirituality, I guess it is. I am here to make it practical and to teach why it's practical.'Cause he says the highest spiritual state is simply being okay with reality as it is. He says the highest spiritual state is simply being okay with the way reality is. So that means being present, being aware of it and being open. But I, as much as I like all of that stuff, the myth, mystical and spiritual, I'm here to demystify that for you and bring it down to earth.'Cause what I'm giving you is practical tips. I am, this is all objective reasons why it's useful to be present, right. I'm not learning this to achieve nirvana or like enlightenment. Maybe that would be cool, but I'm here to teach it because this is waking up from the matrix. When you are aware that you're aware, you become a whole different type of person. It's like you're no longer an NPC and now you're aware. You can see your patterns. When you're aware, you see every negative bad habit about yourself or every positive one. You see all of your own self judgments. You see all of that, and when you become aware of it, you naturally change because you want to, you don't want to feel those or be that type of person. Well, you're actually sitting in the seat of awareness, you get this. Now religions have been talking about it as spirituality for ages and it being this mystical thing, and maybe that's true and have I had some like really otherworldly moments? I don't know how else to explain it if I'm honest. Yeah, But that all came with learning how to meditate and being present. So I'm not teaching spirituality, but I am teaching you objective reasons why it's important to learn self-awareness and to learn how to come back to the present moment. We learned awareness last week. This week I'm teaching you how to come back and it's practice. That's how. You, have to spend time. And this could start, remember I said progress comes in inches, not miles. I teach this to my dog-training clients. You can't expect your dog to, to suddenly know how to do something overnight. If you want them to stay in a spot for a long period of time, you have to teach'em how to stay for three seconds first. So if you wanna learn how to meditate, be present. You gotta learn how to be present for one second first. So don't fault yourself. Don't be mad at yourself. Don't give yourself a hard time for it. Be present. Allow yourself to learn that and start at a second at a time. Three seconds at a time. If you have an Apple watch or any kind of smart device, they have these automatic reminders for you that remind you to breathe or whatever throughout the day. That's a great one to use. You take a moment, you take some deep breaths. It's, grounding. It's fantastic. Yeah. Repetition. That's right, chat. So then, if we aren't our thoughts and we're able to watch them and we're this awareness up here, who are we really? Well, let me think about myself for a second. I'm Lobro, but I've only had that nickname for, man, you're making me count, 15 years. Okay, so I'm not just Lobro. I'm more than that. I existed before Lobro became a word. Well, my name is Loren. I've always been Loren, right? But I'm not a collection of letters, so I'm not Loren or Lobro. I'm the same me I was when I was in a child body that I am now when I was 18 and looked in the mirror, I am in the same body, but it's not the same body, it's changed. So I'm not the body. Then, what am I? What are you? Are you the same awareness dreaming that you are awake? The best answer you're probably gonna come up with is, "I'm me." "It's me in the, I am in here." Well, you know who else has that experience? Every single other human on earth. So I'm not gonna get religious, but when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself... You're the one inside your brain noticing. You're the, you're not the object of your awareness. You're the awareness seeing your thoughts, you're watching this show right now, or listening, and the fact that you're aware that you're listening means there's this space. You can hold this show in your thoughts and mind while you are thinking about something else or while you're sitting here. If we evolved to get to this place... Alan Watts says he, I'm not even subscribing to everything he teaches, but I really like this quote. He said, "You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at itself." And if that's true, because we're all the same, "I am." You're me living a different life. We're all the universe experiencing itself. I hope that this gives you a whole different level of compassion with other people. So when you are aware that you're aware, you have to remember that you are not the thought. What? You're the Wave Rider. You're not the wave. You can see the waves, but you don't have to get caught up in them. You can ride them even because you saw it coming. You're like, yeah, I'm getting on that and I'm getting outta here. Right? So my point is, you can ride the wave no matter what it is. Don't make, don't mistake yourself for the wave. Be the rider. Be the one who notices the wave and allows it to pass. You don't have to let every thought control you. You get to be the one that decides, yes, I'm gonna go with that thought process. Yes, I'm gonna be the one. You have this choice up here to do that. I'm pointing to my head. If you're listening. Imagine what it would be like if you had that inner voice outside of you talking all the time. Wouldn't it be nice to quiet that down? Man, what am I going to eat today? I'm thirsty. I need to, I have that thing I gotta do later... and your brain just goes on and on. So what's the point of being present? Well, it's learning how to actually, for the first time in your life, maybe, actually having a moment of peace. Now, I shouldn't say the first time in your life, because I'm sure that you've had moments of not thinking before. Have you ever driven to work and forgot that you were driving? Been like, how did I get here? You've had moments of nothingness. Now i'm saying to do that on purpose. Being bored, having space slowing down, it's probably one of the most important, useful, impactful things you can think about doing in 2025. In the age of distraction and disinformation. I spend the first two hours every single day, making sure I get no outside influence, no news, nothing, no scrolling the last hour of the day, no scrolling. I protect my brain from that because if I'm gonna be the one that's aware that I'm aware, I can also protect myself from unwanted, I'm saying triggers, but I just mean things that cause you to think of things you don't want to think about. Disturbances. Okay? How do we not drown in every wave that comes through? You have to be aware of it. That's it. Being aware of it gives you the space you need. If you're lost in it, then you're in the storm and you don't see the storm 'cause you're in it. But if you see it coming, you can let it pass. Right? Does this track? Does it make sense y'all? Because like I said, we live in a world of distraction. There's emotional storms that causes us to cling. There's even resistance. There's things that we want to cling onto because we have an extreme preference about something. Well, I'm not gonna do with that 'cause I don't like that. That's not okay. But if you have a problem with everything out there, then is the problem with everything out there? Or is it something in here? Right? Emotional storms cause us to cling. So cling onto a board. What do I mean by that? Take slow down. Do something grounding. Because distraction culture is ruining your glow. It's killing it. It's ru- it's just, it's keeping you sedated. And I'm not even saying don't use your phone. Don't scroll. I'm saying practice. Maybe protecting yourself from influences that you don't need all the time. We have to be in the world and live in the world and be aware of what's going on. We can't, be blissfully unaware. Right. But you can protect yourself. Marcus Aurelius. He is a stoic. We'll talk about stoics a lot here because they, stoicism is the, it's where cognitive behavioral therapy got a lot of its bearings, like a lot of the way that CBT teaches or even dialectal. A lot of that came from the way stoics looked at the world and taught. And we look back at people like Marcus Aurelius, and they have some of the most wise advice. And Marcus said, "At dawn, when you wake, tell yourself, I have to go to work as a human being. Why am I grumbling if I'm going to do what I was born for?" He believed that there was duty in his presence and waking up and being intentional, protecting his mind from undue influences. Seneca a- another one, a- another stoic said, "True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence upon the future." Well, imagine those emotional storms that you have about the future. I'm talking about that car driving down the road where it made you think about your ex or someone or whatever that trigger was for you. I'm talking about that."True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future." So now I have to ask you, have you ever actually felt true happiness being so present, riding the wave? So you're gonna do it with me right now in this moment. No matter what you're doing, you're, if you're driving, if you're sitting listening now, you can't close your eyes if you're driving, if you're doing something like that. But you can do some breaths, take some breath with me. So what we're gonna do, okay, I want you to take some breaths and while you're taking these breaths, think about who's feeling these breaths. Who, is the one that feels 'em? Because there's this subject object relationship you have with yourself, with your body. You're this awareness, seeing it breathe and feel okay, there's this distance with this subject object relationship, which proves you are not your feelings. It proves you're not them because you're the one seeing them. I'm not the computer in front of me.'cause I can see it in front of me. I'm not this, am I controlling it? I think so, but I think it's an illusion. I don't really know. Maybe I'm getting a little too, existential. But my point is, you, have this distance. So we're gonna, we're gonna intentionally make some more distance to come back to the present moment. When you see those storms well up, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna take some deep breaths. Now I'm gonna count. Okay. Inhale for four seconds. Exhale for six. Just slow down and focus on the breath presence. Inhale. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold it for a second. Out for six. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. How do you feel? It brings you to the present moment. If you are the aperture in which the universe sees itself, then breathing and doing something grounding like this, what it does is it, takes that aperture and it focuses you right down exactly into that present moment. Right into the absolute now, when you focus on the breathing, you know what else does this? Going outside in the morning, taking your shoes and socks off, and feeling the ground, looking up in the air, taking a walk in the morning, there's something grounding about that feeling. So my challenge, my mini weekly challenge for you this week is to find something grounding for yourself that helps you focus back down in on this present moment. Okay. You can do any kind you want. You can literally go touch grass. You can do some breathing. Do something that grounds you. I don't care what it is. Find something that works for you. But try that this week and try to practice that presence. Coming back to the present moment, maybe you decide you wanna start practicing meditation or mindfulness or what, whatever it is, but whatever you choose, that's your board for wave riding. That's how you get out. You need something grounding to be present, to get out of there. Okay? So when you're caught and you're clinging to the emotional storm and you're inside it, instead cling to your board, get outta there. Take a deep breath, find something that squares you right back down to this present moment. Because let me ask you a question. If you truly are present right now in this very second, this moment, if you're here with me, is there anything to worry about? Is there anything to worry about? Is there anything that you should, because if there is, maybe like if there is actually something truly worrisome that you, gotta fix, maybe you should be doing that. Well, Loren, I can't do anything about it now. I gotta wait till Monday. Exactly. You can't do anything about it right now. It's literally a "future you" problem. Let tomorrow's you solve that when it comes. Don't let it get ruined with all this anxious anxiety, remember what Seneca said, true happiness is that being in that present moment when you're out there thinking about the future, you're in a storm of disturbance again, lighting it all well up inside of you, lost in it. Come back to the present moment. You can't do anything about it. So do I- I'll ask you again, is there anything really to worry about right now? Learning true presence brings you peace. It gives you space. So whatever goal you have for yourself, you can join us this week if you want to. We're doing a glowstick challenge starting today for seven weeks, then one week off. Sometimes we'll take more weeks off, but this time we'll take one week off. Do it again. But if you'd like to join us, you don't need a glowstick. The idea is you use the glowstick principle. You set a smart goal for yourself, something a achievable, right? And you work towards that within seven weeks. You can join our discord Lobro.community, Lobro.community on any web browser, and you can join our Discord, get the glowstick challenger role, and decide. My goal is simple. It's showing up seven times in this seven weeks doing one of these episodes with you and for you. So this week, if you want to join us, pick a goal for yourself. Post that glowstick challenge this week. You gotta start this week with us and join us along these seven weeks and work towards a goal update us. Mine's really easy. All I gotta do is show up here with you because growth happens in inches, not miles. So all I want to do is show up. Nothing more, just that consistency because I got 56 weeks of episodes to get through, right? Victor Frankel, remember what he said, and this is the guy that remember, he was in Auschwitz. He was a Nazi concentration camp prisoner. Imagine a worse life than that. Imagine. And he said, and wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, and he is the one that said, "Between stimulus and response, there's a space, and that space is the power to choose our response." So this week you have the power to choose between stimulus and response, and then we'll get to openness next week. That's it everybody. This has been great. I'm Lobro, your host, and remember, ride the wave.