From Pause to Poise
The word ‘pause’ reminded me of my childhood days when we used to play this game of ‘Statue’ wherein we used to stand still whatever pose we were in. The word ‘pause’ has a deeper meaning now. As we grow older we realize how important it is to use ‘pause’ in every aspect of our life. ‘Pause’ has many meanings as per dictionary, one of them is temporary stop or rest in action or speech, interruption, and cessation. It also means a short time for relaxing and doing something else.
We all are going through stress and challenges in this rat race of life and the latest new challenge being the effects of the Pandemic.
After reading ‘Cockroach Theory’, I could relate to my childhood days, my brother would put this cockroach in the empty matchbox and play the prank on me by running behind me with the matchbox and I would panic and run helter-skelter screaming and even now, I panic when I see a cockroach, but the cockroach theory is very inspiring to learn how the waiter paused for a moment and calmly removed the cockroach from his shoulder when other women were panicking. As we can see here, we went into flight mode and activated our sympathetic nervous system.
The waiter in the above ‘Cockroach Theory’ paused and observed the cockroach’s movements and calmly removed it and threw it away.
Dr. James Doty, quotes Viktor Frankl — ‘Between stimulus and response is a pause and it is within this pause that everything occurs’.
He says that “And it’s the response to things that changes everything. As an example, oftentimes we are approached by people who are angry or upset about something, and our natural inclination is to give that back to them in the same fashion. Yet if we take a moment to pause and think about the reality, these negative emotions and behaviors have nothing to do with us. They are a response to a set of events that occurred perhaps before the person met with us; a negative interaction with a spouse, some negative information about something they cared about’.
He also mentions that “When we are able to pause, this decreases our reactive nature, and we don’t go into a state of engagement of our sympathetic nervous system. As a result, we are able to be much more thoughtful, clear-headed, and creative, which leads to a better world. This is really the summation of all that we are talking about when we talk about war, anger or negative effects on the environment; these are all conditions of the human heart”.
This 5-letter word ‘pause’ is so easy to spell and difficult to put into practice, I often lose my cool when my grown-up 25-year-old adult is behaving in a certain pattern not according to my tailor-made expectations. I often treat him like a young kid and show my authority and use hurtful words. Donna Cameron rightly quotes here in this article that, “A pause may give way to understanding; it may silence hurtful words; it may avert a broken heart.
Instead of speaking or acting in instant response, taking the time to pause and think about what I want my response to activate — and why — has been transformative.
So, how do we exercise this ‘Power of Pause’ and move towards Poise from Pause? Let’s listen to this interesting conversation between Ms. Purnima Ramakrishnan and Ms. Rachael O’Meara in the upcoming GLOW Webinar on 20th February 2021, “Power of the Pause’, at 7 PM IST / 9:30 AM US Eastern / 2:30 PM London Time.
Watch LIVE on https://www.facebook.com/HeartfulnessGLOW or http://bit.ly/YoutubeGLOW
