WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING FOR?

If you want to change your mind - start listening with care.  

If you think that having voices in your head is just you, it's not. We all have them because that's how the mind works. The mind loves to be busy, or rather I should say, it doesn't know what to do with itself if it's not thinking all the time and It stays busy by having a continued conversation with itself. That's why we need to learn to pause more so we are not wasting time, thinking about something that's not getting us what we want or need.

A 2020 study debunked the myth that we have 70,000 - 90,000 thoughts per day. Thankfully because can you imagine how stressful that would be?

The study instead found that most people have around 6,000 thought per day, which still means a lot of chatter or a lot of possibility, depending on what we are doing with these thoughts.

The thing about thoughts is that they come to the mind as questions and some of them come at you faster than you can count.

We might ask questions like, what's for lunch, do I want the red one or the blue one, and what kind of sock should I wear with my new sneakers. And relationship questions like, I wonder if he / she likes me, why am I not invited, and what if they are mad at me? And then there are work questions like, what's the point, what are they asking me to do, what's expected of me.

All of these questions can get you stuck or help you solve problems. The choice is yours! Yes. It's yours because you can pause and choose where you put your attention.

That's why Power-Pausing is so powerful.

WHAT DO YOU NOTICE?  

If you have heard me speak at a conference or team meeting, or read my book, you know that my favorite question is: what are you listening for?

When we are most stressed we notice what's not working because that's the default mindset that is setting us up to defend ourselves and stay safe. In our chronically stressed, high performance, high pressure work environments, we can get stuck in this mindset of what's not working, thinking that we are being critical thinkers. But it's only when we listen for the possibility within the problem and not the problem itself that we actually become critical thinkers.

That's where Power-Pausing comes in. We pause, listen and then ask a question we actually want to find the answer to, because the questions we tend to ask when defending ourselves are about why we are not able to do something rather than what we need so that we can do that something. They tend to be something like: why can I not figure this out, why can I not do this faster, why not this ... why not that ...

Also, the should gets added to it. I should be able to... which is adding insult to injury, getting us stuck listening to the inner critic for far too long, leading us to feeling even more stressed and less capable. And even worse, causing anxiety and depression. 

ARE YOU CRITICIZING THE INNER CRITIC? 

It's easy to fall into the trap of telling ourselves we are doing it wrong, however noticing your thoughts is already a huge accomplishment and cultivating awareness of the quality of your thoughts is a practice that is not a once and done thing, because as I noted above, the thoughts keep coming.

Instead let me encourage you to pay attention to what you are listening for, not just to. Are you listening for how you can criticize yourself or how you can grow yourself?

When we listen for the opportunity to learn something we are in the curious, creative and constructive mindset, and that's where change happens.

Better yet, let's do this together so we can build a better culture where curiosity is the fuel for growth, for everyone.

PAUSE, LISTEN, AND ASK BETTER QUESTIONS. 

The key to change and growth isn't to get it right or know the answers, it's the ability to choose what we are listening for. Are we listening to catch ourselves or someone else in what they are doing wrong? Or are we listening for the opportunity to see things differently? Are we looking for the opportunity to change our minds about something we thought was true, and maybe it isn't? Are we looking to learn something that someone else is seeing and we are not, and it might just be that open door to another way of solving the problem.

Let's hold the possibility that we can continue to learn more about ourselves, each other, and the challenges we all face on a daily basis, so that we can continue to find our way forward. Together.