The Power in Your Pause

We do not hear ourselves, or our own needs and desires, for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is practical. Most of us are very busy, juggling work and home and family and friends and community and it seems there is little time to set aside for ourselves.
On a deeper level however there are perhaps other barriers to us hearing what we really need. By the time we are grown up, we have many layers of beliefs and skewed self perceptions that we have picked up along the way.
When we were small, our parents, schools and cultural leaders all had their input, and despite what we were told, they were not always right!
As adults we carry many an unconscious bias. These beliefs and even prejudices skew our decision making processes without our even knowing it. We make assumptions regarding gender, people’s accents, or our own abilities day in day out without even knowing we are doing it. Our societies and communities hold such a strong pull on how we should behave and the decisions we make.
In no way am I saying that these influences are all wrong. What I am saying is that buried within these layers are agendas that both belong to others there will inevitably be ways of being that no longer serve us in the here and now.
So how can we in-choose the bits we no longer want? Firstly we must hear them. And how do we hear them? We can learn to pause, to check in with our true response. Many of us will learn to know on our body If something is right for us. There will be a ‘gut’ reaction, or a ‘heartfelt’ response or perhaps a ‘pain in the next’. All these idioms guide us if we learn to pause & listen. 
How long to listen? Usually it is a matter of taking a deep breath. Literally, as simple as that, it buys you the time. In these seconds you can register the impact of the request or decision and choose how to react.
This is the power of the pause, it provides the space for you to hear yourself, to choose to act instead of continuing to re-act in the same old way. One definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome’. If we desire change we must pause and listen to where we actually are.

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