 our happiness is more closely correlated to how present we are for an activity than the activity itself. So if you are having phenomenal sex, but you're actually thinking about your inbox or like worried that you're gonna miss something at work, you're not gonna be as happy as if you're just sitting on the couch, kind of mind wandering, but you're not distracted. You're just there or you're playing a game with your kid, whatever it might be. So we think that we have to have all these great activities in our life to be happy, but we actually just need to be where we are, to be present. Now, does this mean that if you're constantly doing terrible things, you're gonna be happy? No, so right, this is within reason. So that study was aptly titled, the wandering mind is not a happy mind. And it traces directly back to the teachings of all the perennial wisdom traditions. So enlightenment and Buddhism is all about becoming this feeling of one with the universe. How do you get there through full presence? The Tao and Taoism is about the way and kind of merging with the rhythm of the universe, full presence. Arete from ancient Greece is a kind of excellence in flourishing the number one precondition, full presence. The concept of flow, Mahali chiksetmihi being in the zone, full presence. So you've got all this ancient wisdom, you've got modern psychology, modern neuroscience, they all point towards the same thing, which is, hey, if you wanna feel good and be happy, you have to be present. Now, what's fascinating is that the more present you are for your activity, the less you're worried about yourself. So your ego gets out of the way, right? Because egolessness is another part of these in the zone moments, these moments of complete union. Because when you're doing the activity and you're fully focused for an activity, ideally one that you care about, the best feeling in the world is like when you wash away, because you generally generates a lot of worry. And if you don't have to worry about yourself, you're just doing the thing, it's phenomenal. It's like being in a basketball game and you just become the game or writing a book and you don't even know that you're writing. Writing is just happening. And all these experiences rest on a precondition of full presence. How do you bring in full presence? So many different directions to go on. I think because we talked about distraction a little bit, I wanna start there and then I'll let you all tell me if it suffices or if you wanna dig deeper. So the analogy that I like to use with coaching clients is brown rice versus peanut m&m's. So if you're really hungry and you're distracted and you're in a rush and someone puts a bowl of peanut m&m's in front of you and a bowl of brown rice in front of you and you're anything like me or most other people, you're gonna eat the peanut m&m's and they're gonna feel great. They're gonna taste delicious and maybe you'll eat them for 10 minutes, 15 minutes. If you eat them for an hour straight, you might not feel so great. If you eat them for a day or a week or a year, you're gonna start to feel absolutely gross. Whereas the brown rice, the first bite, completely boring, like cardboard. It's really hard to resist the peanut m&m's, right? When you got them right next to you. But if you eat brown rice for an hour, a day, a week, a year, you're actually gonna feel great. And for listeners that are really literal and are telling me like they have an allergy to wheat or rice or whatever, brown rice stands in for nourishing food, right? Peanut m&m's could be Swedish fish. The point is that there's often this trade-off where things that are really nourishing over the long term don't feel as good the minute that we do them is cheap candy. And the metaphor holds away from just food. So so many of the activities of our life that require full presence are really hard to get into. A deep and intimate conversation, working on a creative project, even just going to the gym without your phone there is a distraction and like really getting into a good groove with some sort of physical practice. Relationships, whether they be intimate or just friendships, these things are brown rice. Peanut m&m's, checking the news that's trending, binge watching Netflix, cheap thrills and relationships. And if you eat peanut m&m's for a very long time, you start to feel like crap and you're just highly distracted because there's no need for sustained attention. Whereas if you can just break through that inertia and eat the brown rice and push through that first 10 minutes and maybe it not feeling so great, you actually have a much easier time focusing and your life becomes more fulfilling.