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Welcome waiting time as ‘pause time’. Waiting for the kettle to boil, waiting for a meeting to start, waiting in the queue, waiting at the traffic lights. We are given the gift of a pause frequently in the day. Notice your automatic impulse to distract yourself - phone, emails, worry, ruminating. Instead, why not deliberately stop? Place your attention on your breath. Notice it entering and leaving you body. Find the micro moment of pause in-between the out breath and the in breath. Enjoy pausing there, just for a moment, before the next breath comes. Start a meeting with a pause Invite everyone to sit for a moment and gather themselves. You might then want to do a quick check-in. Everyone arrives in a meeting with a maelstrom of thoughts, body sensations, emotions and moods. It’s in the room already, Why not pause and name it? Create pause in your speech. Count how long you can hold a silence for before speaking. Try using the acronym ‘W.A.I.T.’ - ‘Why Am I Talking?’ Give yourself a second to answer this before starting to speak. Inviting you to do this isn’t inviting you to ‘go slow’. As Robert Poynton says in ‘Do / Pause. You are not a to do list’ - “Pause is not a ‘nothing’”. For leaders, it's a doorway, a switch, an opening to find a little more calm, a little more steadiness, a little more wisdom, a little more presence. So… have a go finding your own speed-bumps this week. If you want to go further (and have time to) here’s a 10 minute practice to guide you in cultivating “pausing”.
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