The Magic of a Pause

Happy Wednesday, y’all! I hope you’re having a good week so far. My week has been pretty standard. Work is fairly busy and home life is well…fun and chaotic as ever! Never a boring day with a toddler around!

I wanted to share a lesson I relearned again this week. After sharing on IG via a story, I thought it was too important not to share here.

You’ve heard me share (and likely have seen elsewhere) that…

Event + Reaction = Outcome

I want to revise this and add a few elements…

Event + Pause + Reaction + Pause + Action = Outcome

First of all, the pause is so critical. This may likely be a three second pause, but nonetheless it’s key to evaluating how you want to act and how you want to take action. Without a pause, you may have a knee jerk reaction which may lead to an action that harms more than it helps.

The pause is starting to come more naturally to me because I talked to my peer coach about this for 12 weeks. We discussed different situations and strategies that I then tried out on a weekly basis. This has been a gamechanger for me because now I can actually separate myself from the event and really think through my reaction and action.

Next, I added action to this equation. While your reaction may as well be your action, I see them as two separate things. For me, my reaction is my emotional response. My action is what I do given the event + my reaction. Thinking of it this way shows me how much power lies in my reaction (my thoughts, beliefs, and feelings).

The less I learned this week had to do with an email I was expecting. I hadn’t heard back from someone after sending two emails, and my mind went to the worst case scenario.

My initial thought was to send a 3rd stern email, but instead of doing that, I thought about what else I could do. That pause gave me the idea to call a good friend who I could talk this out with. After that conversation, I decided to wait until Friday to respond. Lo and behold, I got an email back less than 30 minutes later. The Universe was watching me!

Had I not taken that pause before acting, I would’ve likely pissed someone off and/or lost an important opportunity.

Now if only we could rewind and add a few pauses around past events! You live and you learn though, right?!