Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with Relationship Matters. I hope everyone is having a beautiful morning, afternoon, or evening. It’s a beautiful day here in sunny Chicago and I have to say sunny Chicago because we don’t get sun, you know, that often. Now, um, you know I usually get on my soapbox which I’m going to get on again today and why? Because the numbers here are going up again. The COVID numbers are going up again and what does that mean? That means that you’re not wearing your mask, number one, and I understand because I am tired of wearing it too. I really, really, really am and sometimes I forget, have to run back to the car, get it. It also means that a lot of you have not gotten your vaccines and I do know that and a lot of you haven’t gotten your boosters and uh I have some friends who got the vaccines, didn’t get the boosters and they were very, very sick. But then I have some who really got the booster and they got a kind of a mild case. But in any rate, any it just, you know, we really want to be over with this. We really, really, really do. So I’m encouraging you, I really don’t like being on my soapbox but I’m encouraging you to if you are in a closed place put your mask on at least. You don’t want to catch COVID and you don’t, if you’re a carrier and you don’t know it, you don’t want to give it to anyone else. So I’ll step down off of my soapbox. Okay, who knows maybe one day I’ll just go right on into my show and won’t talk about anything that we can get. Not even going to go up and talk about monkeypox because I don’t even know what that is. So I thought it came from monkeys but I don’t know why they named it that. But anyway, so today’s guest, I am so happy to have today’s guest. His name is Austin Haines. He is an alchemist or alchemist or alchemist. He’s a best-selling author, he’s a motivational and business keynote speaker, life and business coach and he has over 25 years of experience studying self-development and he’s trained under so many people whose names I know that you recognize. Les Brown, we all recognize Les Brown, Darren Hardy who’s the editor of Success Magazine, James McNeil creator of Verbal Aikido, Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins. I’m going to ask you something about Tony Robbins. He’s also the producer and host of the national podcast Flashpoint. So today we’re going to have a conversation about the power of pure presence, exactly what it means and we’re going to talk about how it affects your personal and your professional relationships. So I’m going to bring to you right now Austin Haines. Hi Austin.

Austin Haines
Hello, how are you Dr. Janice and hello everyone.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I am doing great, I’m doing great. How are you?

Austin Haines
I am better than good. I feel great, I’m excited and honored to be on your show here tonight and have some great conversations with people who care. Those folks that are tuning in, we know you care and we want you to get something here. So I’m glad to be here with you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And your resume is impressive and I am humbled to join the ranks of some of the people that you’ve rubbed elbows with, namely Oprah Winfrey, Les Brown, Marcus Lemonis, the Pointer Sisters. We are family, so I’m humbled. I’m like wow, here I am like star struck here.

Austin Haines
Oh please. But you know, I said I wanted to ask you a question about time. Are you a fire walker?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes.

Austin Haines
Ah, okay. Five, maybe five times, maybe plus from, yeah.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
O-M-G. I only did it once, only once. I only did it once. I already walked on fire once. Wait a minute. And you know, they were all behind me, “You can do it, you can do it.” “No, I can’t, no, I can’t.” “Yes, you can, yes, you can.” “No, I can’t.” But I did, people. I walked over hot coals, didn’t burn my feet or anything.

Austin Haines
Good for you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So, Austin, the first thing I want to ask you is you say you were an alchemist. Am I pronouncing that right? Alchemist? Alchemist? What is it?

Austin Haines
I love this. Why are you, I love it. This is so good. We were talking before getting ready for the show and I said, you know, I’m an alchemist. You’re like, what, an alchemist? And alchemy is a, if you go back, it’s got a long history if you look at the etymology of it. But it stems back to basically turning metals or scrap metals into precious metals. And another word you might relate to is transmutation or the popular term today, transformation, which everybody knows that term. But alchemy gives it a different context. And the reason why I say that is because I struggled with self-worth. I dropped out of college, I had some self-concept issues and I really had a lot of chaos growing up. So I was always like, not always, my mode of operation, my mode of operation was everyone was up here and I was down here. And it didn’t matter what I did, how hard I worked, I had to work really hard because everybody was here, you know, and I was down here. And you can’t outwork your self-concept. You can’t outwork your, I shouldn’t say that completely, that’s not entirely true. Work does help. If you have a strong work ethic, it is going to boost your self-esteem. But the self-concept part, there’s some inner work that needs to be done. And fortunately, by the grace of God, that happened for me. I made some decisions, I took the meandering winding road and it happened for me. And so when I say alchemist, I took a situation I was born with and I turned it into something that beyond my imagination at that time. And it continues, the journey absolutely continues. And we have a lot of exciting things which I trust we’ll get to some of that during the hour. But I obviously want to talk about relationships because that’s what this is about. And so does that give you like a little bit of a context? And before I transition back to you, there’s a book called “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and it really paints this parable in this picture of this camel boy, camel boy, sheepherder.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, sheepherder.

Austin Haines
Yeah, and it’s really an incredible story and it really paints the picture of that alchemist. So I highly recommend that book.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, okay. I will get, I have to look, you know, that might be in my library somewhere. But anyway, yeah, it might be. So I want to start with your journey of where you are now and where you were. I know you were in corporate America.

Austin Haines
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And how long were you there and why did you leave? Because I know you left.

Austin Haines
Yes, I did. And two days, three days, I’m gonna be celebrating three years from my anniversary. I left, I was at 19 years with the same company and I had a lot of road to go down. I had promotions I was offered, I had a great income, flexibility, and I reinvented my life. I said, I’m done, I’m leaving. And I resigned and I left the company and I gave my notice in May, but my last day was July 3. And I could not have scripted it any better. The day before Independence Day, I had my independence for my 19-year career.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow. Why did you leave? I mean, you tell me you had, you know, it seemed like it was a very successful career in corporate America. Why did you leave?

Austin Haines
They say going sane looks a lot like going insane. And I left because I had a calling that I had when I was a child and I never answered the call because I didn’t believe. I didn’t believe that was possible for me. I had to go down another road. I had to figure something else out because that road wasn’t available. That struggling with the belief. And then I had a tragedy in my life where I literally said my life was over. And it wasn’t so much I said the words, it was that I believed it. I believed it to be true. And that just dug me down deeper. And a lot of people don’t know this because, you know, on the surface, the ego does a good job of covering things up and making things seem good. But in the depths, you know, deep down, I had this inferiority going on that I would sabotage, wouldn’t reach my full potential, I would pull back. And now I did work my way out of that. That’s why I corrected myself because I did have hunger, I did have drive, and I was willing to work. And while my conscious mind wasn’t looking, I did work myself into a successful position. I had a breakthrough and this is where Flashpoint started. I had a breakthrough on that corporate job where I was going to get fired and I’ll tell that story where, and that’s where, you know, I had a breakthrough and that breakthrough lasted me for 19 years. And I could have kept going. I would be, gosh, what would I be now, 20, yeah, 20, 19, 20, 20, 22. So yeah, I would be on 22 years right now had I stayed at that company.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, wow. So your breakthrough, did you do, was this just you, you know, internally, did you have relationships that helped you with that breakthrough or was it the relationship with yourself?

Austin Haines
Yes, I think all the relationships like help us. And I know without family, friends, loved ones, it wouldn’t happen. But sometimes we don’t see that in our family because sometimes they give us stuff we don’t want, emotional stuff we don’t want. They tell us things we don’t want to hear, maybe they’re toxic. But here’s the thing, and I know we’re going to get deeper into relationships, it is our responsibility to learn and to do something different. So for the healthy people that show up, they teach us things that we can learn. For the people that maybe are not a good example, we can still learn. That means everything is an opportunity to learn. And even when I was kind of unconscious, if you will, unconscious, and what I mean is I wasn’t aware of what was happening to me, I wasn’t aware of the process that was happening, there was love, there was support, there was people, there was some friction, there was all of it. But all of it, there was love. And if one person loves you, that’s enough. Yet one person, one person that loves you is enough, in my opinion, to build on. Unfortunately, I had more than one person, but we had some unhealthy stuff too. But that love came through and without it, I wouldn’t be here. My mom, you know, without my mom’s love, my dad, my dad loved me in a different way, but without their love, and then I had some step-parents that came in, and without their love, I wouldn’t be here.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so let’s talk about pure presence. What is pure presence?

Austin Haines
It’s that, it’s you, you feel that, right? Feel that energy, right, of that pause. It’s a moment where we are open. The brain is loaded with thoughts, the body is flooded with emotions, and it’s a ceaseless, non-stop thing. And rare is the moment where we pause. I was addicted to the future. The present moment was a means to an end. I wanted to get through the present moment so I could get to the future. And I put the future over the present, where life is happening, where our relationships are happening. And too often, we try to get a result out of our relationship, and very seldom do we just allow it to be. Do we sit with it, we allow the person to be who they are. And that’s, and by the way, the words that I’m using, they’re just words. Words will never be able to describe the power of the present moment. But the logical brain thinks that it can because we have a label, we have words, we have identity, we have all this stuff that we can label, but it will never be able to define the power of the present moment that we sit in it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, you said that our brains, you know, we have so much going on in our brains. And also, I liked what you said about being addicted to the future because I never thought of it that way. Because we always think, well, maybe not all, well, most of us, well, I do anyway. I always think about, okay, so what am I going to do in the next hour? Or what am I going to do tomorrow? Or what am I going to, you know, I think, my opinion, that the majority of us are very seldom in the presence. I know probably I’m not. And you know what, it’s just like driving the car and you were going somewhere and you don’t even know how you got there. You know you got there, but because you were not right there in the presence of driving, especially if it’s somewhere where you are used to going to, you know, like a habit, you go from here to there and that’s your route and you don’t even think, you’re not there. You were thinking whatever, what am I going to do when I get home or whatever. So how do you practice being in the presence? How do you do it?

Austin Haines
As soon as you’re aware of it. The thing is here, I’m gonna, the dis-ease on this planet, I’m going to say it on your show for the very first time here, the dis-ease in our world today is the addiction to the future, the addiction to the next. I want to bring in the love of my life, I want the current woman to be better. We are mostly in a state of discontent and we’ve been conditioned that way. We’ve been conditioned to believe we’re flawed, we’ve been conditioned to believe that our happiness is in the future, we’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s some other moment that’s going to make this moment better. There’s no future moment that’s going to fix right now. All we can do is step into this moment with our loved ones and our relationships and be present first.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, a comment came in, it says, she said, “Too much emphasis is placed in the future, but who told you that you are guaranteed tomorrow?”

Austin Haines
Exactly. We’re not, we’re not guaranteed tomorrow. And it’s, well, people say, “What about my goals? What about my…” But anything you want, including the relationship, starts right now. “Well, I don’t have the love of my life.” Well, start right now. What would it feel like to have the love of your life? Where would you live? What would it look like? Who would you be for that person? What would you give? Now you’re in the present moment and you’re in pure creation. We live in a state of discontent because we think we’re here and everything we want is somewhere else. And so our brain goes, “Well, I want to get there because I need to get there in order to fix right now.” But we can’t do that. All we can do is work in the right now, the power of pure presence to be in this moment. And maybe it’s an empty moment, maybe it’s a moment of pure observation, maybe it’s a moment, and I have some notes here where you talk about the, when we interact with people. But the first interaction is with us, the relationship with ourself. If I can be present with myself, think about this, this is deep. If I can just be present with myself, in other words, “Oh, your hair looks weird. Oh, you’re putting on weight. Oh, you didn’t eat the right things today. Oh, you got up too late. Oh, you…” Oh, this is people’s self-talk. But can they just be present with, “I’m here. My feet are on the ground. My heart is beating. I feel my finger. I feel the blood rushing through my veins.” No judgment, just pure observation of who you are. You’re alive. People think they’re flawed. You’re not flawed. You’re just, you’re just, you’re not here. You’re somewhere else. Here, right now, it’s, everything starts right now. And the more we can cultivate that pure observation, and people who are hard on themselves, what we say in our community is, we say, “Give yourself time, space, and grace.” What do most people do? Because when you give yourself time, space, and grace, what does it do? It creates spaciousness, expansion. We do the, what do we do? We’re always on a deadline, right? There’s always constriction. There’s always, there’s, we’re here, we got to get there. There’s always a container that we’re in. And then we’re not, we’re not graceful with ourselves. We’re hard on ourselves. And then we get into relationships. We try to stop. And if that’s the way I’m treating myself, I may put on another face to be nice. But if I’m not doing the work, guess what’s going to come out when I’m in a bad, when I’m tired, when I’m hungry? What’s going to come out? The grace that I’m not giving to myself, I’m not going to give it to you, right? It’s going to wear off. And what’s left is, is this. Then you have, then you have friction and challenges in your relationships. So when you just go back, I see the comment. I, I like, I do my best to avoid labels because as soon as you throw a label on it, there’s a context in someone’s mind. But the way I liken it, it’s a practice every single day. The moment you sit and pause before you jump out of bed, you just practice presence. The moment you hear a bird and you just stop and listen to the bird. And we can do it right now. You just take a breath. You just, one deep breath, one is enough to pause and break and sure in the presence. It’s, it’s, and because the lack of presence is shallow breath, presence is a free-flowing breath. It’s natural. And even if we’re not meditating, we’re kind of in a meditative state. We’re just, there’s a different energy. We’re not trying to get somewhere. We’re not trying to get a result. We’re not addicted to some future moment that we’re trying to get. We’re naturally in this moment. And then whatever arises, we can expand from here.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So the question I have, right before we go to commercial and delve more deeply into relationships, if you are always in the presence, how are you going to advance? How are you going to move forward if you’re always in the presence?

Austin Haines
Where’s life happening?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, right, yeah, it’s happening in the presence. So, so does this mean you don’t plan for the future? That’s what I’m asking.

Austin Haines
Here’s the difference. And by the way, I have not mastered this process. Okay, mastering the difference is this, in my own life, whatever you bring into this moment, vision, planning, you are, you are giving it the opportunity to expand. What we typically do is we look at a to-do list of what’s not done in the future and we create stress and anxiety for ourselves instead of having like, what is it, what is my intention? What, what do I want this to look like? And for example, you want to paint your house, like aren’t you looking at the colors and are you going, oh, that one looks, I like that color. Okay, you go, oh, this color is no good, but let me put it over here and I’m gonna make myself do it. I’m gonna, no, you’re gonna, you’re gonna put that color aside. You’re gonna say, this color lines up to the energy I want to create in this space. And it’s the same thing, you know, now we, I’m not saying there’s things we, we need to do. I know you need to go to a commercial, so I’m going to pause.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, but I do have to, but, but I kept this question on the screen because it kind of went along with what I was saying. But what about meditating in the present in order to get to goals for the future?

Austin Haines
Yes. Because when you meditate in the present, you something, and here’s the thing I like to think about, when we’re present and we’re, we’re in our parasympathetic nervous system, in other words, we’re in rest, refresh, digest, we’re not in fight, flight, fright. That’s what most people are. I gotta get this done, I gotta get that done, right? That’s what, if you think about it, I’m trying to represent it physically versus we’re in a calm state of being. What we might be meditating, then the, the, the deeper part of us, even our, our brain, function of our brain, the reticular activating system, subconscious is processing billions of bits of information. But if you have a hyperactive, stressed out conscious mind, you’re not gonna see it. You’re gonna, you’re just gonna be bringing in fear. But if you allow yourself to pause and meditate, you allow the natural thing to progress. And maybe that, that future goal, that vision, without vision that people perish. So there’s value in the vision. And the vision happens in the present moment. And when that vision happens in the present moment and it’s sparked by emotion, they can’t stay separate. It will come to pass, but you experience it now.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Alrighty. Okay, so we, this is so interesting to me. So we’ll be right back. So don’t go away, just, just a couple of minutes and, and we’re gonna come back and talk about being present in our relationships. So we’ll be right back. Don’t go away. [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, we are back with Austin Haines and let’s see a couple of comments came in. Let me see what they are, their questions. Okay, so Sarah Crawley said, “I have stopped, I have started reading my book, Practicing the Presence with Joel S. Goldsmith. I practice by every time I see my favorite color, I stop and say, ‘Oh, the color green,’ and honor that moment.” Okay, I love that, I love that. Okay, and something else came in. “With all that is going on in the world, how do we train ourselves to operate in the present?”

Austin Haines
Yeah, that’s a good question. And I’ll go back to what I said earlier. We need to master the micro moments so we can handle the macro moments. Because every big situation is a culmination of smaller things. I had a situation because I’ve been doing this for a while. It’s been a sideline to my work and it’s just, it’s coming through me more and more. And I feel the healing power of this. But I was, I was actually going to a yoga session. I was on my bike. I was in the city because I’m right outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I got my red, white, and blue on, July 4th, you know, city of brotherly love and sisterly affection here. But I was going to a yoga class. I rode my bike. I turned around and this man jumped in my face and he was about to attack me, like hand coming at me, using expletives that I won’t repeat. And I paused. I literally paused. I looked at him. I turned and went the other way. He demanded my reaction. And if I was in like a fight or flight, I might have, I might have punched him. I might have ran. I didn’t either. And that moment for me was like, there you go. That is when you know. Now, does it always happen? No, sometimes we slip. But in that moment, I was there. I was present and I paused. And that really spoke volumes to me and it dissolved the situation. Because when life comes at us, what does it demand? What does it instigate? It’s a trigger. And what does it do? It demands a reaction. If we have a lot of pain, people that have carrying a lot of pain, a feather can set them off. It’s like nobody cuts them off and actually, you know, they’re on a rampage. And so this is a micro practice as much as it is sitting down for an hour and just being still. Again, I stay away from all the stuff. Whoever works for you, if you can find stillness and breath, it’s the wind.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, so let’s talk about presence in the relationships and our relationships. How do we, I think most of us feel that we are present in our relationships, but what does it actually mean?

Austin Haines
Hold on, I got a message coming in here. You see that right there? You see what I just did?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah, you weren’t present.

Austin Haines
Right, I did that for a reason because I want, like, we are on these things constantly and it’s a great way to be disconnected in disguise. Like, in other words, if you don’t want to connect with your intimate relationships, “Oh, you know, I got to do something.” And we can easily, “I’m researching something for work. I need to get this email out. I need to get, we need to do,” like, there’s always that, like, this push of something in the future that I need to do. I need to get this done, work. And certainly there are things, but it pulls us out of the present moment. And again, I go back to the micro. I’m not sure, and the one thing I think, how we communicate, I wrote some notes down with this. I think that eye contact is paramount. I’ve noticed that when I worked with couples that are, and by the way, we’re talking about our relationships, but in an intimate relationship, that’s where things are exaggerated or they’re put more on display. You can see more because it’s a, there’s more emotion, there’s more vulnerability involved, and it tends to exaggerate things, good and bad. So what you’ll notice is couples that are in conflict have a hard time looking at each other. And typically when they look at them, it’ll be like, it’ll be like, and then it’s a, it’s not, it’s not an openness because what’s happening is they’re fixated on the way they think it should be. And it’s typically, it’s the old he said, she said. How do you get out of that? Well, you get out of that by creating a space of pure presence. When I, and the thing I wrote down is if you love somebody and you’re in a relationship with them, the gift is empathic listening, number one, eye contact, number two, empathic listening. And here’s the thing, how do I do empathic listening? How do I know when I’m being an empathic listener? You know because you haven’t prepared a response. You’re not listening with your head to respond, you’re listening with your heart to understand. That requires 1,000 presence. And then once you’re able to give this, and it’s, to me, it’s a gift. And there’s a pause, and I’ll talk about the work of Harville Hendrix, right, the Imago therapy. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but Imago therapy is very powerful. It’s a listening to understand, and then it’s a, it’s a, did I get it? Am I, and it’s, and it’s been around forever. So they call it Imago therapy, but it’s, did I understand what you said, Janice? Is this what you said? Am I getting it? I’m sensing you’re feeling this way. Is this what it is? I’m not preparing my response. I am listening to understand. My responses, I forgot, I put them away, right? Because I’m not trying to argue my point anymore. And why it’s a challenge is because men think, we know this, men think logically. Men come in with logic, women come in with emotion. Women will not respond, and I say men and women, masculine energy, feminine energy, right? It’s not the same mode of operation. And the only way out is presence and understanding.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, I know it’s all about communication because I think most of us, when we are talking with someone, you know, call ourselves communicating with someone, we are thinking about how we are going to respond, which ends up with misunderstandings. Because if you don’t say, “Let me understand what you said,” and repeat back, then sometimes the person repeats back as you’ll say, “You’re not even listening to me,” you know, because you’re so busy responding. And to be present in that moment, I think it takes a lot of practice because most of the time we’re thinking about how we’re going to respond. So, so, you know, I’m thinking this, you know, that you’re not present when we’re thinking of your response. So you got to practice that, right? You got to practice that.

Austin Haines
Right. So what I’m hearing you say is that people don’t listen, they’re listening to respond. Is that what I’m hearing you say?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, and you just did that. That’s what I said.

Austin Haines
Right, right, exactly, exactly, exactly. And that is something that you can master. And I, but again, when you got emotion involved and people are upset, they’re arguing for their point. And as old as human history, and it will not stop. Whenever there’s emotions involved, people are going to argue for their point. And the way out, when you have that open eye contact, you’re saying, “I’m here, right? I’m here. I want to understand where you’re coming from.”

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So a question came in, “What is the difference in being present and having presence?”

Austin Haines
That’s a good question. What is the difference between being present and having presence? I would say this, this presence is pure consciousness. It’s not all, certainly it starts in the brain as a concept, but the idea of presence is to be out of the brain and into the moment. And what I mean is, is more of a receiver, right? You’re more observation, receiving, and you’re creating a state of presence from your being, as opposed to, “I’m practicing it from my mind.” So the way I interpret that question is, “I’m gonna practice presence from here. Okay, now I shut my mouth. Okay, now I repeat back.” Right? So I’m doing it as a mind, as a logical mind process, versus creating a state of presence is coming from the depth of your being and listening with every bit, every bit of your soul. And what I mean is like in your, and that’s what your intimate relationship requires. You know, I believe it does.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right. Here’s something that came in also, let me put it up. It’s not gonna comment on this. Gwendolyn Dunbar says, “I believe that we learn from our past. We take every moment to enhance our presence, but always keeping in mind preparing for a better future. Being in the presence is being more focused on all three.” You believe that?

Austin Haines
I believe that we learn from our past. I’m just reading. I believe we learn from our past. We take every moment, yeah, sorry. Yeah, we learn from our past. We take every moment to enhance our presence, but always keeping in mind preparing for a better future. Being the presence is being more focused on all three. I half agree. I think that, I think we, different states of being. In other words, if I’m reflecting on the past and I want to learn, that’s happening in the present moment. I’m still bringing that into the present moment as a lesson. I might reflect on the past. I think the difference is when people go to the past and they’re not conscious about it, they’re like, “I made a mistake,” and they’re replaying it. That’s what we call living in the past. But if I go to the past from a reflective state where I’m recounting a memory, like a beautiful memory, and I’m going, “Wow,” and I can reflect on that, and maybe that reflection that’s happening in this moment is adding more life texture and depth to this present moment. Because that present moment, we actually do this in my show, we have the hourglass as a reminder. The present moment is always unfolding. And then to the degree that I can, like right, the hourglass, the sand is always fun. If I just sit here and look at it, I’m observing. But when I reflect on the past or I’ve set my goals, I can begin to move and I can begin to set an intention. And now I’m actually directing where that sand is going in real time. And I liken this to the present moment because it’s always unfolding. And I think that, so in some combination, I absolutely agree that there’s this synergy of all these things. But when we’re fully in the present moment, we’re fully in the present moment. And I look at it, let me say it another way. There’s this cup, right? I can imagine this cup. I can look at this cup, right? And now I’m in the present moment. I’m in observational mode. Right now, what do I hear? I hear a bird. I hear the air conditioner. So all these things, imagine that they were, each time I observe something in the present moment, I put it in the cup, right? It’s the present moment unfolding. But hold on a second. This is the present moment. Couldn’t I pour something in this cup? So what I could pour into this cup is my intention. So for example, “Oh, when I did that in the past, I need to change. I’m going to do that differently.” Now it’s in the present moment, isn’t it? So the present moment is filled with observations of life happening around us. But because we’re a part of life and we have the power to intend, we can pour into that present moment. And that present moment can be a future vision. It can be a reflection from the past. The problem is if I don’t even realize that this, and I’m just in the past, right? And I’m not here at all. I’m playing this thing over and over again in my mind, and I’m lost in it, and I blew it, and I ruined it, and I messed it up. And I’m saying, “No, even in your relationships, somebody did something bad in a relationship. Let’s get here and now. Let’s get present and see if we can turn things around by fully stepping into and accepting what is.” It’s hard to do often.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
But you’ve been practicing this for a while. You know, I’m gonna try. I have this book by Eckhart Tolle, and he talks about being in the presence. So you practice this for a little while, but then you get distracted. So, you know, okay.

Austin Haines
A bird can distract you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
A bird can distract you.

Austin Haines
A word.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
A word, okay. Like, what’s an example?

Austin Haines
I’m talking with you, and then someone just says, “Well, you just did it. You said, ‘What’s an example?'” So that kind of distracted me a little bit. But I can be in the present, and someone could say something else, and I’m distracted. I turn my head, and there I go. Now I gotta try and get back.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
How does that feel?

Austin Haines
Actually, it’s frustrating.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Frustrating, okay.

Austin Haines
Yeah.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So you feel frustrated when you’re focused on something, you’re in the present moment, and someone says something, and now you’re distracted. So now you’re frustrated.

Austin Haines
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, and what else?

Austin Haines
Well, probably won’t get back into the present, that’s for sure, because I don’t know how.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You want another most beautiful gift? The most beautiful gift, here it is. The moment you realize you’re out of the present moment is the moment you’re back in the present moment. The frustration is an interpretation of the moment, but you don’t have, see, this is the beautiful thing. This is the micro moment. And I was just at the Eckhart Tolle retreat in Phoenix, Arizona, a couple of weeks ago. So this is something I’ve been practicing, and then I went there, and so I got to experience. So I’m training myself. But once you realize, and you say, “Oh my gosh, I’m frustrated,” you’re basically saying, “I’m frustrated in this moment,” which is part of the present moment. I’m in the present.

Austin Haines
Okay, never thought of it that way.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, so what I say now, so now, like, here’s the cup. I got distracted. I’m aware of the distraction. Now I’m frustrated. Boom, that’s in the cup. I accept it. I’m not going to go, because here’s what people do. “My gosh, I’m frustrated. I blew it again. I’m trying to be present, and I blew it again.” But what I do is, I’m frustrated, and then I now I observe the frustration. I put it in the cup because it’s part of the present moment. Because if I reject the frustration, I’m stuck, and I’m in resistance, and then it just keeps going. So the moment I say, “I’m frustrated,” I put it in the cup. Here’s what I do. I just created this in my mind. Frustration, now my intention, when I feel the frustration, now I want to move toward creation. So if I’m frustrated, I step back in the present moment. Okay, what’s important right now? Now I want to go right back into creation mode. And that’s what I’ve been training myself. So instead of getting frustrated that I’m frustrated, or frustrated that I’m out of the moment, I accept it. And I just say, “There it is. There it is. I’m back. There it is. I’m back.” And it’s not like somebody arrives and goes, “Oh, I’ve mastered presence. I’m here.” It’s an epiphany. No, it’s, “I’m off track.” It’s a constant exchange of energy and awareness and consciousness. And it’s almost a duality. And I know we’re up against time, but it’s a duality. There’s a duality to us. We’re mind, body, spirit. Actually, it’s more three. But you think about spirit. Spirit is, you know, it’s always there.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, well, we, yeah, we are, you know, sometimes you look at the hour and you say, “Oh, you know, that’s a long time.” But it’s not really for you. So look, you have a show on E360 TV. And tell us about your show and when is it on.

Austin Haines
You know what, my show is called Flashpoint TV. It’s on every Thursday at 3 p.m. But what I’d rather do to make it easier, we just did a documentary on it. It tells the whole story. It’s 20 minutes long. It tells you my story, you know.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so how can people get there?

Austin Haines
It’s austinhanes.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, wait a minute. I can give you the link if you want. It’s austinhaines.com. And I should, I actually could have given this to you before, but that’s okay. I’ll give it to you now.

Austin Haines
Okay, austinhaines.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yep.

Austin Haines
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You can find the documentary is right on the front page, and then it has its own tab. The premiere is this Sunday at 8:30 p.m. So that’s when it’ll be airing live for the first time on its own. So yeah, austinhaines.com, and you can find it there. There’s a YouTube premiere, and I just, I recommend everybody watch it. It’ll move you. You’ll get something from it. I guarantee it. I guarantee it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, Austin, this has been a plum-pleasing pleasure, and I have gotten so much out of this. And I know my, I can tell by the comments and questions, and there are some that came, but I’m like, I can’t get to all of them. But this has been so valuable, and I don’t know about the, you know, my audience, but I am, Sarah Crawley, since you were reading that and you’re practicing being in the presence, I am going to practice being in the presence. I really, I really am, because I can, I never looked at it the way that you were talking about it, and definitely wanting to be in the presence in my relationships. So I want to thank you so much for being on my show. I really appreciate it. You have been an amazing guest with some valuable, valuable information.

Austin Haines
Thank you so much for having me, and I’m definitely going to check out your documentary. And I’m going to leave it running across the lower third just in case someone has to run and get their pen and write that down. So you have a beautiful, blessed rest of your evening.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You too. God bless. Have a great night, a great night, everyone. Thank you so much. Wow, this is, that has been great. That has been great. I didn’t even get to my other commercials. I didn’t get to my stuff, which I’m getting ready to do right now before we go. [Music]