“I yam what I yam and tha’s all what I yam”, said Popeye the Sailor. Now there’s a guy who has a certain presence, oft associated with bulging forearms and a penchant for spinach. Another screen personality and author Willard Scott perhaps said it more eloquently: “Positive feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all”. And then there’s my yoga meditation teacher who talks about people finding the level of comfort they have with themselves.

The point being, there is incredible power in being yourself and being comfortable in your own skin, and mind. The more I research presence, the more I am convinced it starts within, not just the stuff you do with others. Of course how you behave and project yourself to the world plays a key role but you need a strong base or platform to be able to do this effectively. The way I see it, presence is about being totally in the moment, focussed on the person you are with, the situation you are in. And that is very hard to achieve if you are worrying about yourself, how you’re coming across, what others are thinking about you. The more you can eliminate the self focus, the more present you can be, the more presence you project.

To look at it another way, top performers have incredible focus. Magnetic stage and screen actors who you can’t take your eyes off, sports stars who appear to effortlessly cope with pressure and dazzle with their ability, presenters who engage the audience and take them on a journey, even the person at the party you could talk to all night. These people are fully absorbed in what they are doing, not in themselves. This is often referred to as being in the flow, in the zone and it begins with full focus. This doesn’t mean these people don’t work damn hard. A top baseball coach, Joe Girardi, put it this way, “If you think too much, you fail, because the game happens too quickly. The key is preparation… The data has to become instinctual. You can’t think about it in the middle of a pitch.” Daniel Goleman, author of ‘Emotional Intelligence’ and ‘Focus’ puts a more scientific spin on it: “When the prefrontal cortex activates and we start thinking about how we’re doing, how to do what we’re doing-or, worse, what not to do-the brain gives over some control to circuits that know how to think and worry, but not how to deliver the move itself. Whether in the hundred meters, soccer, or baseball, it’s a universal recipe for tripping up”. I know for myself the horror nights on stage were when I was thinking about my next line, how I was coming across, what the audience were thinking and almost watching and critiquing myself from outside my body. Present? No. Stage presence. I very much doubt it.

I often talk about shifting the focus from self to the audience when presenting, to manage nerves and engage. I would take this further to say that in life, in business, those that have presence have the ability to forget about themselves and focus on others and in the task they are engaged in. To be able to do this, you need to work on yourself, be comfortable with you are and what you offer to the world.

To borrow from Greek philosophers and the perpetually present William Shakespeare, “Know thyself” and “to thine own self be true”.