The Power of Presence and Flow

Part 4 of the series: Now What? 12 Centering Practices When Life Goes Off Script.

Part 4: Be Present

This post is part of my Now What? series—twelve centering practices from improv that help us when life goes off-script. Each one comes from lessons I learned on stage that also apply when the script of our lives falls apart.

Now we come to the fourth practice: Be Present.

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The Beginner’s Struggle

When someone first learns improv, every single problem they have is really the same problem: they aren’t present.

They freeze because they’re stuck in their head, worrying about being funny. They miss cues because they’re rehearsing their next line instead of listening. They panic because they’re thinking about the audience instead of the scene partner standing right in front of them.

All of improv’s problems boil down to presence.

When you’re present, you actually hear what’s said. You notice body language. You trust the moment. You respond, instead of react. And suddenly, the scene works.

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Flow and the Half-Sleep State

The same thing is true in life.

Think about the times you’ve been “in the zone.” Maybe it was during a game, while writing, in a conversation, or playing music. You lost track of time. Your mind wasn’t buzzing with self-criticism or worry. You were just there.

That’s flow.

Jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli once described it like this:

“Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget that there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests, they are thinking only of their God.”

That “half-sleeping” description is perfect. It’s not zoning out. It’s the opposite. It’s being so present that you’re free of self-consciousness.

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Learning Flow from Steven Kotler

I once had the chance to spend time with Steven Kotler, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, and one of the world’s leading researchers on human performance. His work helped me put language around what I had already been experiencing on stage.

Kotler taught me that flow isn’t magic — it’s a neurochemical state our brains can enter under the right conditions. Three things stuck with me:

Clear Goals Create Focus

Flow almost never happens when you’re scattered or multitasking. The brain needs a clear target — whether that’s landing a ski jump, writing a paragraph, or pulling off a scene. In improv, the “goal” is simple: keep the scene moving forward.

In life, this has meant naming the next step when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Divorce. Job loss. Burnout. Instead of solving everything at once, flow comes when I choose one clear goal: just get through the day, the meeting, or the next hard conversation.

The Sweet Spot Between Challenge and Skill

If something is too easy, you get bored. Too hard, you panic. Flow lives in the razor’s edge where your skills are stretched but not shattered. That’s exactly what improv feels like — just outside your comfort zone, but not so far you collapse.

In my own “off-script” seasons, this looked like pushing myself just enough to grow without breaking. Writing the first article after years of silence. Taking the first gig after walking away from past work. Not climbing the whole mountain at once — just the next ledge.

Presence Is Non-Negotiable

Kotler hammered home that flow requires deep presence. The brain shuts off the chatter about past mistakes or future worries. That’s why time feels different in flow — it compresses, expands, or even disappears. Improvisers know this well: you walk off stage after what felt like 5 minutes only to realize an hour passed.

Off stage, presence has been the only way I’ve survived the darkest seasons. When you can’t fix the past and the future feels unbearable, sometimes all you can do is breathe into the moment you’re in. And strangely, that’s often where the breakthrough happens.

That conversation with Kotler gave me a framework for something I’d already tasted in improv. Flow is just another way of describing what happens when you are completely present — whether on stage or in the hardest chapters of your story.

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Presence as a Spiritual Practice

You don’t need a stage or an instrument to find that space.

The mystics and meditators of every tradition have always said the same thing: God, truth, reality—whatever word you want—can only be experienced now. Not in the past. Not in the future. Only here.

Improv reinforced this truth for me. My scene partners deserved my full presence. And when I gave it, the scene was alive.

Life works the same way.

When we aren’t present, we get lost rehearsing the future or replaying the past. We miss the moment in front of us. We miss each other.

But when we’re present, everything sharpens. We actually hear. We actually see. And we actually live.

So, slow down.

Be present.

That’s how you get where you need to be on time.