Pause to think with care
Do You Pause to Choose Your Words Wisely?
Do You Schedule a Pause to Think?
In Danish, we have a “Tænke Pause,” which translates into Thinking Pause. It’s considered a way to create space for learning. A thinking pause is a scheduled time to explore, discover, and rethink. It’s also a moment to get to know ourselves better.
As modern humans, we value speed and attempt to squeeze every minute out of everything. We expect quick results, fast responses, and immediate action, and we think someone is a strong performer when they have the answer ready. But is that all true, or is that just what we have learned to respect?
Daily, we fill our minds with information, challenges, demands, and worries. And what do we do to unload it? Scroll Instagram, eat ice cream, or drink an extra glass of wine? We tend to distract ourselves from pausing our worried thinking minds instead of directing our thoughts intentionally and giving our minds some space and grace.
What happened to give ourselves the freedom to question and explore in an attempt to challenge our thoughts and stay curious so that we can move forward with a sense of clarity and confidence?
We humans have a unique advantage. We can think with care and discernment. Yet, we often discard this ability in the name of being quick and distract ourselves even when we have a chance to be silent.
There are two Thinking Pauses here.
1. Pause before you respond to ensure you engage with the right mind, speech, and action to further the conversation toward a shared goal.
We often react too fast to an emotional trigger. We are quick to defend or attack instead of fostering a connection that explores our perspectives and bridges the divide of a conflict towards collaboration.
2. Pause to reflect on something that you feel is challenging and want to gain more insight into. Or pause to reflect on something you want to learn, giving yourself time to think more deeply about its impact to make the learning process meaningful and useful.
The mind needs time to learn. We need time to digest and process so it becomes knowledge rather than something we must remember. We also need space and time to cultivate a relationship with what we learn, use it, and learn from it to become experience and wisdom.
Although it might be difficult because the mind likes activity, sometimes we need to pause—not to think, but to sit in silence with ourselves and clear the mind by observing our thoughts instead of following down the rabbit hole. A thinking pause isn't just about thinking. It's about thinking with intention and purpose.
While it is easy for us to fall into daydreams during pockets of silence, it would benefit us to use that time to slow down our thoughts and get off the hamster wheel. We often get lost worrying about our next decision or action, never entirely present in the here and now.
PAUSE TO LEARN
We don’t gain experience without pausing to reflect. Self-reflection is a must for learning and growing, and even though we often search for the answers outside of ourselves, the answers come from asking ourselves questions that explore how we think and feel about something. The thing is, we have been taught to doubt ourselves. Not necessarily deliberately, but society has a way of creating self-doubt over our choices. To learn to trust ourselves, we must pause to listen inside and ask critical questions that help us think in a curious, creative, and constructive way.
PAUSE TO CONNECT
Thinking with others and creating a pause to listen and reflect together will completely change how we connect and engage. When we pause and let others complete their sentences before we jump in, we are facilitating a space for someone to think if there's more before the exchange begins. And we must remember to do so for ourselves, too. Allowing for a pause to finish thinking brings about new and deeper connections.
In our rush to do more, we have lost the power and the magic of pausing; however, we can reclaim it.
A pause is when something can change, something new can come, and we can let a new perspective or idea emerge. If we constantly push our minds to produce results and find answers to problems, we might think we are quick problem solvers but not good problem solvers. We might be solving new problems using old methods, which is not progress and might not produce the best results.
That pause gives us space to allow something new to pop into our minds; it provides space for creativity. Pausing for a little longer will enable us to listen to it before dismissing it, allowing it to evolve and unfold by asking curious questions to learn more about it. Pausing for even longer gives us space and time to discern how we can use it and in what way it might be possible. What do we need so that we can build on it?
Connecting more deeply with ourselves and each other allows us to contribute more inclusively and collaborate towards progress.
PAUSE FOR PROGRESS
In our modern, busy world, where change and progress are constant, it’s easy to forget we don’t have time to pause. But I would say that we don’t have time not to.
Without Power-Pausing, we can get stuck on the proverbial hamster wheel, trying to run faster to do more, only to get stuck in the same old patterns and behaviors, repeating the same old reactions and solutions, pushing harder to be more resilient in the hopes that this time it will work out.
Many high achievers and successful people contribute their growth to their ability to pause and think with care. If we want to harness change and progress, we must start by unlocking our human advantage, ––our ability to pause and think with care.
