The Pause
Building in a pause between feeling and reaction can be life changing!
10/2/20261 min read
One of the most powerful things that's come out of my mindfulness practice is the ability to pause.
To pause between meetings, to pause before or after stressful of difficult events, to plan pauses in my day for my brain and body to settle. The most useful has been learning that I can pause between feeling an emotion like anxiousness, angry, upset or fear and the quick fire reaction that our brains and bodies can fire off - usually without me even having the time to think!
This pause is very well based in research and can really help us gradually change out auto pilot responses, allowing us to change our behaviours and react to ourselves, different situations and others with more kindness and in a more deliberate way. Moving away from regretting the way you spoke or acted "in the moment" by allowing you to the space to think before you act.
Mindfulness is a really powerful tool here as it builds awareness of our brains and bodies and what they are doing; we learn more about our default behaviours and start to see them just as that; defaults that we do, often without thinking, and that we have the power to change. Mindfulness allows us to tune into the small signs of increasing emotion, notice it early so we can build in that pause. And in the pause we can make a choice; how are we going to act towards ourselves, towards others or in general. The pause gives us back a little control and day in how we act and behave.
The even better bit is that the more we pause, give ourselves time to think and decide on a different approach to our usual auto pilot the more we gradually reshape our brains and change those autopilot behaviour.
So next time you find yourself snapping at your partner, getting irritated at staff on a delayed train or berating yourself about a mistake remember; you have the power to change those default reactions. And those changes can being you so much more calmness, and clarity.