Welcome to the Infinitely Precious Podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

Hello, beloved. It's me, James. It's another opportunity for us to be companions together on the journey toward recognizing our own infinite preciousness. Today, I wanted to talk to you about showing up. That's what's been coming up for me the more I think about life as it is.

Let me say a little bit about what I mean by showing up. Showing up is being where we are. I've talked about it before in lots of different ways, recognizing when we're distracted, releasing that distraction and returning to the moment we're in. But what that really amounts to for me is showing up in the spaces where I am. So, when I go to the office, I want to be there at the office.

When I'm on the road driving to a place, I want to be there, not fast forwarding into some other part of my day, some other part of my week, some looked forward to vacation that is down the road somewhere. I want to be where I am. I want to be in this moment because this is the only moment I have. Over and over and over again, we forget that yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is not here.

Even for me recording this in the afternoon, this morning is gone. The early afternoon is gone. I have this moment to be with you and I want to make the most of it. So I want to show up in the moment where I am. How many places in our lives do we miss the opportunity to be with the people we're actually with?

Now, sometimes there are people that we would say really matter to us, Family members, significant others, people we are dating, people who are our best friends. We would say we want to be there and yet we distract ourselves out of the moment. There are lots of devices that distract us, but it's also our own minds. Rather than being able to be fully with the person we're with, we are partially with them at least physically, and our minds are all over the place. What would it look like if when you go to that boring meeting, you don't like all that much that you do your best to avoid if you actually showed up for that meeting.

If you actually were fully present in that meeting and taking in everything that was said, you might notice things about people who are in the meeting with you that you never noticed before. You might see what gifts they bring to the meeting. And the meeting that you thought was so unworth your time becomes a meeting where you get to really be present with the people that you work with or that you're working on a project with or that you're just hanging out with for fun. You get to maybe catch a glimpse of who they are. And showing up is all about recognizing in part that we are a part of this moment in which we find ourselves.

This moment is irrepeatable. I may do the Infinitely Precious podcast every week. Record it every week. Drop it every Wednesday at 1PM. But this recording, this podcast, this moment at which I am recording this is the only moment that will ever be like it.

The sounds that are in the room, what's going out on outside the room, the way I find myself breathing, my particular temperature, this particular space, all of those pieces together are unique. This is the symphony of this moment. Maybe that's a way to think of it. If we show up, we live in the symphony of the moment. We play the note we are meant to play in the symphony.

We are a part of what's going on because the bottom line is we're a part of what's going on whether we pay attention to that or not. We can add to every moment or we can just detract from every moment that we are engaged. Because when we're fully engaged with the person that we're with, they sense that we are with them. Not just in the room with them, not just adjacent to them, but we are with them emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. As a whole person, we're bringing ourselves into that room.

It states to the person or persons with whom we find ourselves that they're worth our time. And even if we're showing up to the space that's by ourselves, for instance, like when I sit in my chair every morning for a morning meditation, when I truly show up in that moment, I'm saying my time, my time with the eternal, with the divine in that moment, it's worth my time. It's not me showing up distracted somewhere else unengaged. It's me showing up and being present. And in so doing, saying how valuable this moment is.

And if I can practice how valuable a moment is when I'm by myself, Then I'm practicing being in every moment as if that moment really matters. And I happen to believe that every moment does matter. Every encounter matters with people we know, people we don't know, people we may never see again. I think every encounter with a blade of grass and with the trees outside my window and the birds that happen to be singing outside when I am there. Every time I get to pet my dog, talk to my wife, my mom, my son, my daughter, my son-in-law, my friends, people I barely know, people I really know.

Every time I show up in every one of those moments, if I'm truly showing up, I'm saying this moment really matters. And I get something out of that moment that I might otherwise have missed. I don t want to travel through life missing the moments that appear regularly for me every single day And yet not wanting to is not the same thing as doing something about it. The pattern we've talked about, I've talked about in our podcasts and in other places is to recognize when I'm distracted. Distracted means that my attention is being drawn away from where I am, who I am in this moment to something else.

Something else that may feel more entertaining, less painful, more interesting, at least at the surface level of my mind in a sort of frivolous way perhaps, something else, anything else would be better than this. We might think to ourselves when the truth could be that this moment contains everything that I might need, everything, this infinite moment of being present. If I'm truly present, there's so much to experience in this very moment. The beat of my heart, the cadence of my breath, the rocking I'm doing in my own chair as I'm talking to you and excited about the topic I'm talking about, the gestures of my hands, the warmth of my body, or coolness of my body. The words that I m saying as they arise up within me, all of those are experiences I m having for the very first time.

I could have written a script for today, I didn't. But even the first time I say it is the first time it is experienced in that way. The second time I say it is the first time it is experienced that way because I won't say it exactly the same way. No matter how many times I practice the line or practice the thing I'm going to say, it's never the same twice. Even when I use one of my favorite catchphrases, the benchmark phrase of my entire understanding of myself and purpose in this world, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

They're the same words that I say with some frequency. And yet the intonation with which I say them, the people who will hear me say them, the placement of saying them at this point in the podcast as opposed to later on when I'll be saying it again anyway at the end. Those words carry a weight because I'm doing my best in this moment to truly show up for this podcast. Wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this, I want you to know that this is for you. I don't know exactly how or in what way, but I trust the divine.

I trust the movement of spirit to know that this may be exactly what you need to hear. This is my calling to speak these words. This is how my life has been shaped. And so I'm trying to live into that by speaking them to you. I bring myself to these moments and do my best to show up.

I catch my breath before I come to talk to you. And then I seek to show up. And when I find myself distracted by sounds of my computer that's backing up next to me, by the chirps of the birds outside, by a change in the lighting of the room when the sun passes over, it happens to be a gray day today. The sounds of hammering our neighbor's house or other things. All those things could take me out of this moment.

Through practice, I recognize that they're trying to do just that. Through practice, I come to recognize it. I come to release it. And I find great joy in returning to the moment in which I am showing up right now. I invite you to do the same.

Show up wherever you go. To the places that you're looking forward to going, you're going to naturally want to show up and bring your excitement, enthusiasm, your vivacious encounter. But there are places that you show up that are required of you that perhaps don't carry that same level of excitement about showing up. What would it look like to show up fully there? Really bring yourself there.

Pay attention to what's happening in the room. Look around at the people who are meeting with you. Pay attention to if it happens to be grocery shopping and you're doing it by yourself, there are all sorts of people in the store. Think about all the hands that have gone into putting the products on the shelves that you're taking down or the person that you engage with behind the deli counter or the bakery counter or whoever it happens to be in whatever way, showing up allows you to catch a glimpse of even more of life than you realized any given moment might carry. That's the power of showing up.

So remember, it's always a good thing to show up as best you can. And whether you do or whether you don't, you are truly infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. I wish you all the best, my friends, and thank you for joining me on this journey.