Practice the Pause
When drama hits, if you are like most people, you may seek relief from the stressors that triggered your reaction. This is because your body is wired to soothe discomfort by any means necessary. You may choose to…
When drama hits, if you are like most people, you may seek relief from the stressors that triggered your reaction. This is because your body is wired to soothe discomfort by any means necessary. You may choose to withdraw and avoid the situation, use several ways to numb out, or maybe you get angry and blame others.
These are a few of the less than effective responses. But there is a more effective tool that can disrupt this reactive cycle. It is powerful and transformative. Simply stated, it is the pause practice.
Could living an empowered life really be that simple—learning to pause before you react? Yes, it could be. When you understand your brain’s neurology behind the pause practice, it explains why this simple practice can be so transformative.
If you practice the pause throughout your day, you are growing new neural pathways in the brain. These new baby neurons literally make space for more skillful ways to engage with life. When you stop, breathe deeply, and simply pause, you interrupt your automatic neural pathways that sustained your previous reactions.
The brain commits resources to whatever actions or practices that it is doing the most. And this is the key. If you notice a triggering situation and have learned the pause practice, you give your brain time to shift gears. Your highly efficient brain has expanded its capacity to choose how to respond in stressful situations. This new space makes room for your Creator wisdom to emerge, guiding you through difficult moments.
Practicing the pause is a revolutionary act because modern life is dominated by being in a hurry. From the moment the alarm goes off, emails, texts, and videos tell you to move faster, think, and react quicker. But the body that speeds up to keep up eventually breaks down.
What the body needs is the opposite. It needs to slow down to access its wisdom. Slow down to consciously override reactive patterns that block your essential self. Slow down to allow your defenses to fall away.
Without a pause practice, it can be difficult to even realize when you are in your reactive habits. Your reactive habits can become so familiar that you no longer realize they aren’t working for you. If you want to transform your less-than-desirable patterns, you must first realize you are in the middle of them. That’s why practicing the pause is so essential.
It is the practice of pause that brings you into a state of contemplation so you can listen to your heart and wiser self. It breaks the mask of the smaller, defensive self that may arise when there’s something you fear, worry about, or just plain don’t like.
Pausing gives you distance from your worrisome thoughts or emotions and helps you to realize you are not those thoughts or emotions. You begin to realize that you are far more brilliant and wiser and insightful than you may have previously realized.
You can pause and see a bigger picture and realize that the danger you detected in the previous moment wasn’t really as big as it seemed when you were triggered. With a regular pause practice, your false self that may be stuck in the drama patterns, can dismantle.
Pause before making assumptions, pause before judging, pause before accusing, pause before you say something you will regret. Practice the pause throughout your day to activate your Creator essence so it emerges as your true and natural state of being.