Presence v. Presents: Unwrapping the Real Gift this Holiday Season

Are you giving presents or offering presence this holiday season?
In this episode of Inside OUT, Jojo dives into the true meaning of the holidays, and it’s not found under the tree. She explores the difference between gifting things and giving your full presence, and how choosing mindfulness, intention, and self-awareness can be the most powerful gift of all.

This conversation blends mental health, emotional well-being, and spiritual growth, with practical tools to help you slow down, reconnect, and show up, especially during the busiest time of year.

✨ You’ll learn:

• Why presence > presents when it comes to relationships & healing
• How to handle holiday stress, family triggers, and emotional overload
• How to ground yourself in the now through simple mindfulness practices
• Jojo’s signature MES prompts (mental, emotional, spiritual) for presence
• A new way to navigate the holidays from the inside out

Whether you're feeling scattered or seeking meaning, this episode will help you unwrap the real gift of being here now.

Happy Holidays! 

Thank you for listening! Don't forget to follow along on social media @_insideout.podcast, rate and review. And Join the MESy Mailing List for exclusive content, insights on what is coming up and more!

Transcript

Jojo (00:07.16)
Welcome to the Inside Out podcast. I'm your host JoJo and this is where we will navigate the mess together that is mental, emotional and spiritual. Let's get into it.

Jojo (00:26.222)
Hello, happy holidays. Wow. I cannot believe that there are only two weeks left in this year. I mean, that's a crazy thought. think 2025 just flew by. I don't know about for you guys, but for me, while it felt so long because so much happened, it also felt like I blinked and maybe you guys can relate, but the holidays are a very interesting time.

They can be very stressful. We can be with our families. We can be in unfamiliar settings. We can be with our significant others family, or we can just be totally stressed out and traveling, or we can be working over the holidays. But the holidays, typically people think about presents, gifting.

And I wanted to flip it a little bit and talk about presence, as in to be present, your presence and what the gift of presence really is. So Merriam-Webster defines presence as the condition of being present in a place or thing, the state of being in the moment. To me, presence means to be.

to be open, to be there, to be attentive, no distractions. And I think we find presence to be kind of rare. There's always distractions. There's always social media, our phones, texting, everything that can take us out of the moment. And to quote Eckhart Tolle, the only moment we have is now.

the power of now.

Jojo (02:17.194)
is something I think that we have all gotten away from. But I think it's something that we all really crave.

And because presence is so rare, there's such a hunger for it. And I want to say that presence isn't just about showing up. Anyone could just like come over to someone's house or be there.

Presence is how you show up.

It's not fixing. It's not performative. It's not to impress. It's truly just to be.

Jojo (03:00.992)
And I think we get in our own way. And instead of just...

truly tapping in and being in the moment.

or constantly future tripping or even what can I do next? Or, I have this on my mind. And if you're not, if there's always something constantly running in the background of your mind and you are not just in the moment with the people in the conversations that you're having and you're having six other conversations in your own head or, I need to do my laundry. I need to pack for this. I need to go there. need to blah, blah, That's not present at all. And we know that.

So ask yourself, are you truly present with the people that you love and care about?

I know I'm not always, I can have 16 other things going on in my head and someone could be saying something to me and I've missed half of what they're saying because I'm thinking about something else. Is that fair?

Jojo (04:05.035)
I don't want to show up like that for the people I care about.

Jojo (04:10.997)
And I find myself, and I'm sure you do too if you get honest with yourself, constantly doing that.

Jojo (04:21.335)
But there's an art in coming back to the now and it's first catching that you're doing it.

Jojo (04:30.743)
But a lot of us don't want to be in the now. We want the distractions, the quick fix. there's silence. it makes me uncomfortable. I need to reach for my phone. I need to turn on music. I need to turn on a podcast. I need to turn on a show. I need background noise. It's also not presence.

That's not even being present with yourself. If you can't be present with yourself, can you truly be present with other people?

If you can't get real with yourself about what you need, what's going on in your internal dialogue and in your body.

Can you really show it for the people in your life?

Jojo (05:12.161)
The holidays are such an interesting time because we're so focused and fixated on buying presents for people, gifts, material things. We think that's how we show love. The expensive, whatever, the thoughtful gift. We don't take physical possessions with us when we go. You never hear people say on their deathbed, I, I want to take that.

book with me. It's never the physical things that we really care about.

It's people, it's what they mean, it's what they offer, it's how they show up, it's how we show up. I think being there for someone or just being around the people you love fully in authenticity and openness and availability is way more powerful than some gift wrapped paper box with something.

Meaningful inside for sure, but time is more important. Time with the people you love is more important. What would happen if you showed up open, available, and really tuned into the people around you? How would that feel for you? Would that feel exposing? Would it feel like too much? Do you need to hide behind your phone screen?

or an Instagram post. With the holidays around the corner, it can bring up a lot of pressure, perfectionism, definitely overstimulation. But I wanna offer you some insight that maybe it's not that you need to be doing more.

Jojo (07:10.26)
You just need to be more. You need to be more with intention. Get rid of the performance. Just get quiet. I think that's the key here. Personally, with the people that I really care about, my best friends, my family, the people I love in my life.

I don't care about material things. Don't get me anything. I just want to be with you, around you, spend time with you, make memories with you.

Jojo (07:48.788)
Or maybe we miss that mark because we try so hard to prove love with the other type of presence. And while a beautifully wrapped gift is always fun to open, I want to offer that just being there and showing up fully is even more beautiful and is even more fun. We can get so outside of our own bodies and in our

own way when we try to constantly control what's about to happen or what we're going to do next. Whether that's even just like, what am going to do tomorrow? Or I need to go to this place and I need to go see this family member. I need to drive there. I need to get on this plane. We're not being in the now. We're not moment to moment, minute to minute dealing with what's right in front of us. How many of us just shoot

straight into the future, whether that's five years with a five-year plan, not saying anything's wrong with that, but a five-year plan or what am I going to do in six months or how is this job going to turn out or where am I going to live? And you're not dealing with what's in front of you and you're creating all of this noise, this anxiety, this pressure and this stress when what you could do is zoom out 30,000 feet, realize that there's a roadmap getting you there.

You're going to LA, you're driving, you might be in New York, you know you're going to get there, but you don't know what's going to be on the road in front of you. You don't know if there's going to be an accident. You don't know if there's going to be a detour. You don't know if there's going to be something in the middle of the road. You don't know if there's going to just be a flock of geese standing in your way. But when you're on the road, you know, okay, if there's a stoplight, I'll stop. I'll get to that when I get to it.

the age old saying of we'll cross the abridge and we get to it. We don't do that enough in our everyday lives. We stress and we overthink and we get in our own ways and probably pump a lot of cortisol into our system with all that stress. And I do it too.

Jojo (10:10.431)
But lately...

Jojo (10:15.207)
I've been trying to do the opposite where I'm like, you know what? I don't even know what I'm going to be doing at five o'clock. I might go work out. I might not. Might turn on a movie. Might get dinner with a friend. I'm keeping my life as fluid and as open and as moment to moment and as present as possible because I notice in myself, if I start to run away down the road,

that hasn't even been paved yet, I can truly stress myself out. So where in your life are you doing that? Are you doing that with stressing out about the holidays? What gift you're gonna get someone? Are you doing that with a job? Are you doing that with a move? Are you doing that with a relationship? Are you doing that with anything? A health scare, a health situation?

Jojo (11:10.015)
Trust that.

The more you are focused on the right now,

Jojo (11:19.231)
the less problems that you're even gonna make up in your head or create in your own life because you only have now.

Jojo (11:32.371)
And how many times do you start thinking about something and you get that just like pit in your stomach or your heart starts racing and you're just like, my gosh, how am I going to get that figured out? How am I going to overcome that obstacle? How am I going to climb that mountain? You always do. You always figure it out. And if life has shown you anything, look back, has it always worked out? Have you always figured it out?

Maybe trust that.

Jojo (12:08.447)
Because when you run away on that crazy train...

Jojo (12:14.032)
You just create more chaos.

Jojo (12:22.411)
One of my best friends always says, oh, that's a tomorrow problem. And I always looked at him and I was like, what? How do you, how is that just, oh, it's a tomorrow problem. Well, you know what? The way he lives his life is so present and in the moment because he's like, I don't know where I'm going to be tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to be doing, but I'll figure it out when I get there. So why am going to worry about that right now?

And I started to adopt that. It started to rub off on me and it's hard to sort of, you know, really shift that, but it makes life more fun. It makes it more spontaneous. makes it more lively.

And then there's really no expectations and there really aren't any letdowns because you're so in the now that nothing can really shake you because you don't have the expectation of what I'm going to be doing in two weeks and that's not going to work out. Then I'm going to be disappointed.

Jojo (13:28.414)
So to me, the art of being present actually opens up so much more than it taking away anything from you.

Yet why are we always so stressed about what's coming up?

Jojo (13:43.826)
Why are we always hiding behind a phone screen? Why are we always on social media? Why are we always dealing with the stuff that's not even in our immediate vicinity? You know how unnatural it is to know where 90,000 people are in the world at one point in time? Having your friends' locations, having what? Why do you care? What do you need to be doing in your own life? What do you need to be doing right now?

Jojo (14:13.332)
So who cares what she's posting on her story or who cares where he is in the world? Just be.

Jojo (14:22.814)
And the more that you can be with yourself, the more that you can be there for other people. Let's get messy with this mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Mentally, do you know where your mind goes when you're not present?

And what are the thoughts that are keeping you from being here right now?

Jojo (14:50.194)
Is it the anxieties of how it's going to work out? What am I going to do when X, Y, and Z happens? Or how am I going to get to that point? Can you go a step deeper? Can you get to why you're even thinking about that right now? Are there things that you can be doing today and focusing on right now that set you up for later and then just trust that and let it go? I know that's asking a lot. I get it.

As someone who overthinks basically everything, I get it. But challenge yourself. I know I'm challenging myself and damn, this is hard. know, my God. But it's so necessary. Emotionally, what emotions are you trying to escape by staying busy? By picking up that phone, by listening to the music, what are you blocking out?

What uncomfortability are you not allowing yourself to feel? What are you avoiding?

Jojo (16:00.68)
And spiritually, how can you be more present with yourself every day? Let's start with this moment.

Can you just close your eyes for 10 seconds and breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth slowly and intentionally?

Jojo (16:28.459)
Can you leave your phone face down and not keep checking it every five seconds for a text or an email or a call or an instant gratification or a DM or a dating app notification? Can you just be with yourself and focus on what you need to be focusing on and what's important for you rather than what the external world is or is not doing?

Jojo (17:00.052)
Can you just arrive today?

Can you just be here now and have that be enough?

Do you believe you are enough?

And can you keep showing up that way as whole?

Jojo (17:28.872)
I was in a seminar a couple weeks ago.

Jojo (17:33.674)
And the question was asked, what is the most attractive thing in a man and a woman?

and the unanimous.

answer was presence.

When someone is present with you, when someone is fully there and available and open, you feel it. You're magnetized to it. You're attracted and drawn to it. That's what you want. That's what you crave. You feel like you are just being so focused on.

It's a really powerful feeling.

Jojo (18:17.162)
You ever find yourself in conversations with people and you think to yourself, well, they're not even listening to what I'm saying. Like, why am I even talking?

And then have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you feel like they are just tapped into every word you're saying? It's mesmerizing. You feel really loved and cared about when someone is truly listening to you, truly there.

So the gift that I would encourage you to give this holiday season is the gift of presence. Truly be there. Not in your head, not in your phone, not in the future, not in the past, in the now.

Jojo (19:07.754)
Thank you for getting messy with me this week. I hope you all have a beautiful holiday season. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy whatever you celebrate. And May 2026 be a beautiful present year.

where you actually start to see changes in your life and in your physiology, and you're not so stressed out because you're not always grasping at something that isn't even there.

Jojo (19:48.212)
So with that, you guys know where to find me at underscore inside out dot podcast on Instagram. I'm also on sub stack. I prefer that method. You guys want to find me there, sign up for the emails that go out weekly with updates and episode releases. I'm going to be making a few changes coming up. So stay tuned. Some exciting things in the works.

And as always, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your presence. It is a gift to me that you are here with me every Wednesday. See you all next year, back on January 7th. Bye now.