Power in the Pause
We live in powerful times. With the click of a button, and very little thought, we can have anything we might want or need delivered to us. We can distract ourselves with the illusion of connection on social media. We can flare our temper over injustice, click more buttons, and lash out in reaction, feeling powerful and righteous in our perception. But this is NOT where true power lies. Our greatest power is in our ability and our choice to pause, and notice what’s really going on.
I’m not talking about pausing to notice the latest news, stats on the virus, or what your neighbors are doing. I’m talking about a hard stop and a deep look inside yourself. Without addressing fear, grief, aggression, and impatience that’s inside, there’s no way to change those things when they manifest in our world. The best we can do, is to pause, look inside, and really see what’s going on. Only then can we be empowered to create change, first and foremost, within ourselves.
YOUR BODY
Our bodies can offer us great insight, if we take the time to simply notice. The key is, you have to slow down, and give yourself the space for self-observation. It’s all too easy to point at what’s happening outside of you, but can you stop and notice what’s going on inside? Get familiar with how your body feels in times of stress, when you feel afraid, and when you’re angry, as opposed to when you’re relaxed. Have you ever felt true relaxation, when your shoulders and jaw are soft and your digestion runs smoothly? How does your body respond when you are having a heated argument? When you’re reading the news? When you’re with someone you love? When you’re in nature? Take time to pause, and allow yourself to notice. The pause offers the opportunity for self-reflection and softening before you choose to take action. This is important because it affords us the ability to connect with all our wisdom centers (body, heart, mind, and gut), and THEN decide how to move forward with the best course of action (which sometimes means no action at all).
YOUR HEART
Emotion is so entangled with our point of view that it can be challenging to step back and observe. Sometimes emotion can be a reaction of our nervous system - to our perception of a life or death circumstance - whether or not that’s objective reality. For instance, have you had the experience of being frustrated, to the point of overwhelm, because of a long line in the grocery store, or traffic? If you pull back and just look at the emotion, did it feel like you were being attacked by a bear in the woods? Did your feelings match the situation? Or was it an overly emotional reaction? Most of us experience emotional overwhelm from time to time, and all of us might describe it differently. Maybe it’s frustration, anger, grief, disgust, joy, or love. Power lies in being able to see your emotions, acknowledge them without hiding from them, making excuses for them, criticizing yourself for them, or acting on them right away. What if you could just say, “Yep. This feeling is in me right now.” Sometimes the act of shining the light of awareness on your emotions allows the intensity to soften, without you having to “do” anything. Then you can take inventory of your body, mind, emotions, and instinct, before moving forward. There’s power in being able to see clearly. There’s power in understanding the complex relationship between emotions, thoughts, bodily sensations, and instinct. So let’s continue to explore…
YOUR MIND
Our minds keep track of everything that’s important to us: events, circumstances, reactions, and the stories we tell ourselves about it all. We have to create those stories, because communication is imperfect. In all honesty, we don’t quite understand the what and why of someone else’s actions or words, so our brain fills in the blanks. The only problem with that, is the story we overlay is deeply colored with our past experiences, our fears, and our insecurities. It’s important to cultivate awareness of our thoughts, and tease away perception and opinion as much as possible. This isn’t easy, but the more we exercise the logic and reason center of the brain, the more we can practice looking at just the facts, AND see the mind’s tendency to overlay “what we want,” and the inner tantrum we sometimes have when we don’t get “what we want.” With training in mindfulness, we can practice acceptance, which is no more than the ability to see reality clearly. A perfect example of this:
The mind has the ability to see reality and focus on just the facts, and it has the ability to overlay those facts with rambling, stream of consciousness, opinionated stories. Learning to watch this process offers you great power: the ability to see clearly and set aside “the story,” in an effort to be more present and focused, ready to use logic and reasoning to ascertain what is in your control and what isn’t. Knowing that, is real power and here’s a hint: we only have control over our own individual response to whatever is going on, nothing more.
YOUR GUT
Following your instinct can be life-saving and life-changing, but many people have been conditioned to tune out this decision-making powerhouse. Gut instinct isn’t just some mystic concept, it’s based in science and it can also be interpreted through a lens of spirituality. The gut’s enteric nervous system contains neurons that not only govern the function of the gastrointestinal tract, but also can function independently from the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, acting almost as a “second brain.” Yes, your gut acts as a second brain. You might have realized the connection between stressful circumstances and your gut when during periods of difficulty, your stomach becomes upset. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of feeling an instinct about a person or a situation, a strong sense you can’t explain, but you choose to brush it off, only to later find that you should have followed your gut. Some consider this kind of an instinct to be a “shoulder tap” — a connection to your soul or to God — trying to guide you in the right direction. More times than not, our instinct, whether it’s based on the enteric nervous system’s second brain, or your higher self, is spot on. Learning to cultivate awareness and discernment between logical thought, emotion, and gut instinct can help you make better decisions, because you’re utilizing all of your body’s wisdom centers, rather than letting one take over and knee-jerk react.
THE PAUSE
Our true power lies in our ability to pause, and with patience and awareness, look inside ourselves. What is going on with the body, emotions, mind, and gut? What is simply a reaction, and what is wisdom? These might not be questions you can answer the first time you pause and look inside. That’s why we need to practice. That’s why self-study and reflection is the most important work we can do. That’s why we need skills to learn to look at, calm, and balance the body, emotions, and mind and listen to our gut. THAT is where real power lies: the realization that the answer to everything is in the simple but challenging to implement serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (other people & certain circumstances), courage to change the things I can (my own thoughts, emotions, and actions), and the wisdom to know the difference (taking the power of a pause to look deeply at the wealth of the wisdom we have inside). Then you know what’s really going on.
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