“Practice the pause.
Pause before judging.
Pause before assuming.
Pause before accusing.
Pause whenever you’re about to react harshly, and you’ll avoid doing and saying things you will later regret.”
This quote really resonated with me, as this past week I noticed I was rather impatient with my family. A lot of it was when they weren't listening to me or supporting me in the ways I needed. Nevertheless, I found I was letting those old “tapes” of I Don't Matter play again.
There was at least one interaction per day where a pause would have done a lot of good.
Instead, I jumped to conclusions, assigned blame, blew up or stomped off.
Not my finest moments.
I'd be left feeling guilty and ashamed about how things transpired. I want to be a star model of patience, calm and understanding for my family, but as with all things, it's a work in progress.
Recently, I had an Aha moment about The Pause.
Pausing is both an act of self-care and an expression of unconditional love.
In the pause, we create distance from the Stories we tell ourselves, eg. No one ever listens to me/I'm not worth listening to - and move closer to the Truth: eg. I matter, I'm loved. And right now this person simply has a different set of priorities than me.
In the pause, we connect to our internal Nurturing Parent, who can lovingly guide us to the best version of ourselves.
In the pause, we can “see” the goodness and humanity in the other person, and we can tap into our wisdom of how to interact with them in a way that honours that.
In the pause, we can access our innate power to choose a response from a place of connection and love rather than separation and fear.
And all this can happen in the span of a few seconds or minutes! Wow.
That's powerful stuff.
So, if you also feel you’d benefit from bringing more patience, calm and understanding into your interactions, I’m going to propose we experiment with a new practice.
Whenever we are “triggered” and can feel that familiar rise of emotion, let's think of it as a signal... to Stop, Breathe and Choose the path of love and connection.
What do you say... Will you join me in practicing the Pause?
