Have You Remembered to Pause Today?
Taking a beat before responding in difficult scenarios has helped me close the gap between who I am and who I’d like to be
Recently, my husband and I were in the middle of an intense argument over something inconsequential. I was winding up to double-down on a point I was making when we heard a knock at the door. It was our neighbor dropping by to return the bowl we’d left at her house during a neighborhood potluck. As moments passed and we all started chatting about the blueberry cheesecake bars that had been such a hit at the gathering, I could feel my shoulders relax and my chest unclench.
Once she left, my husband and I did not pick up our fight again. All the heat of the conflict was gone, and we could separate out the actual issue from the feelings surrounding it.
Right then, I saw the power of the pause.
The pause, as I like to call it, is the space where you can take a moment to assess what is actually happening in any given scenario. It’s something I’ve been trying to practice. “When shit goes down, we generally have two options: react or respond,” Laura Thomas writes in her book Just Eat It, which is part of a movement to give women power and control over their bodies. “Reactivity is like a knee-jerk reaction…
