Ease Anxiety. Return to the present. Live more mindfully with intention and joy.
Ease Anxiety. Return to the present. Live more mindfully with intention and joy.
At backtothepresent.net, we exist to ease the anxiety that pull people away from the only moment where they can use their Gifts and truly enjoy life — the present one.
When you return your awareness to the present moment, you limit unnecessary anxiety and regain the ability to utilize your time and energy — your Limited Resources — with intention and efficiency. Here, you learn to apply awareness, challenge, patience, and honor into a practice that can help you return to presence, minimize suffering, and experience more joy.
Find Your Way
What is the LIFE-MAP?
"The LIFE-MAP" is a core part of the backtothepresent process. It's a synopsis of the Critical Understandings needed to find a more mindful, joyful and fulfilling life.
It's not just a set of directions, but a new way of seeing your journey. It helps you navigate away from Anxiety and back to the joy of the present moment.
A New Way To Be
Our program provides exercises for improved consciousness and mitigation of Anxiety. We guide you through a personal journey to a more peaceful, mindful, and fulfilling life.
Toolbox for a Joyful Life
Practical tools to help you live with loving intention-bringing more joy into every moment.
Critical Understandings
of the Life Map
See the principles that guide your actions, feelings, and thoughts to a more joyful, present life.
Our Creative Abilities
Discover the human tools that allow us to create our life’s direction.
F.A.S.T. Emotions
Don’t act F.A.S.T.—nothing good comes of it. Pause before reacting—fear, anger, sadness, and temptation can mislead.
Sources of Anxiety
Find out what steals your joy—and how to take it back.
Karmic Responsibility
Every emotion, behavior, and response you send out returns-karmic
responsibility helps you understand why.
Mindfulness and Presence
Come back to now—where joy actually lives.
The Three Gifts
Use your physical, emotional, and spiritual Gifts with intention.
Attributes of Knowledge
Balance the brain and the heart. Let your intellect and intuition work together as one, creating a joyful life.
The Three C’s of a Good Relationship
Balance the brain and the heart. Let your intellect and intuition work together as one, creating a joyful life.
Decision Making
Learn how your Impulse, Intention, and Implementation shape contentment, happiness, and joyfulness—and how using loving intention can guide every choice.
Mindfulness
Return to the only moment you can live - the present.
Meet the Founder
Dr. Wayne Johnson, MD
Dr. Wayne Johnson practices medicine on Hilton Head Island, SC. Through his years of practice, he has developed this program to encourage and support people of all ages in the pursuit of a Joyful Life.
Using techniques of mindfulness, this program guides each person through a personal journey to mitigate anxiety, focus on fulfillment, and find their way "Back To The Present."
Why Mindfulness Matters
In this TEDx talk, Dr. Wayne Johnson shares the deeper reason behind this entire approach, explaining how anxiety affects young people today and how mindful awareness can transform the way they navigate stress. This video offers the foundation of everything we teach, showing how presence builds confidence, clarity, and a more meaningful life.
The Science Behind Our Framework
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“Mindfulness reduces anxiety and fosters joy.”
Khoury et al. (2015) found that mindfulness practices reduce anxiety by 8–20% and increase positive emotions.
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“Conscious choice over instinct enables purpose.”
Fleming et al. (2010) showed that prefrontal brain activity is linked to stronger self-regulation.
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“Balancing sources of knowledge prevents suffering.”
Gyurak et al. (2011) revealed that combining intuitive empathy and intellect leads to optimal outcomes.
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“Decision-making with intention leads to flow.”
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and Harris et al. (2020) found that flow states boost well-being, and mindfulness helps achieve them.
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Mindfulness training enhances activity in the anterior insula (body awareness) and diminishes recruitment of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), which specifically "attenuates maladaptive habitual self-views.
Hölzel, B. K., et al. (2011). Training-induced structural brain changes in the context of meditation
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Self-affirmations enable individuals to be "better able to view otherwise-threatening information as more self-relevant and valuable," contributing to resilience and decreasing health-deteriorating stress and rumination.
Falk et al. (2015). On the neurocognitive basis of self-affirmation (Cited in a review on Self-Affirmation Theory)
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Empirical findings show that "negative feelings about time were associated with greater rumination; and... more frequent thoughts about the past were associated with greater rumination," demonstrating the high cognitive cost of maladaptive temporal focus.
Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2023). (Time Perspective, time feelings, time frequency, depressive symptoms, anxiety, rumination)
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The Strength Model of Self-Control states that "decision fatigue describes the impaired ability to make decisions and control behavior" following repeated acts of decision-making, which causes subsequent choices to "seem impulsive or irrational."
Baumeister, R. F., et al. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource? (Cited in a concept analysis of Decision Fatigue)