Today I want to talk about the power of the pause. And no, pausing is not a negative thing!!

Urgency culture would have you filling all your time and all spaces and gaps to do, to act, to rush forward.

The pause creates a space to ground into your values. The pause creates a space to respond from.

How can you work with pauses that are thrust upon you from external forces? How can you build pauses into your business for sustainability, reflection, alignment and growth?

Let’s dive in.

Resources, links & mentions:

• The original celebration board from Janet Beckers I mentioned - i’ve adapted my approach to suit me but if you need a starting point it could be supportive.

• EP 27 Seasons, cycles & business

Episode Transcript

Hello, hello and welcome to another episode, episode 32 in fact, of the dietitian values podcast. today I want to talk to you about the power of the pause, and how we can build pauses and spaces for reflection into business and life. So let's dive in. So the power of the pause. It's something that for me has always been something that I've I've used as a tool. And like so many things that just come naturally to ourselves. We don't really see the opportunities or see the potential power in them until someone points them out. And we don't often see that what we're doing is any different than what other people do until someone points it out. And so this has happened recently with the power of the pause. And for me, I saw how I tend to respond when pauses come up or create spaces for pauses, where I can respond from.

And so what is a pause? well we know what a pause is just a gap, a space - maybe in our actions may be a pause in how we react to something. It can be a pause in our business, so maybe setting pause on our business plans. It can be a pause that sees us, for me over my career, I've had different pauses where I've been in private practice, and then I've paused that part and gone back into working for state based health services until I could build networks and connections up to set my practice back up. And so that was sort of like that pause space. I've had pauses with children, having babies there's usually like a pause in all aspects of life but definitely in business. And so this is what I'm talking about that kind of macro level of pause, but there's also just small micro level pauses, so pauses in your day. So one of the pauses I have in my day if you follow along on Instagram is I have an iced coffee at a time, which is like a pause. It is a time for me to kind of recalibrate. It's a space in my day, a little bit of me time. We can create pauses in our day or in your work. Maybe it's a pause between clients like a little gap between clients where you can regulate your nervous system or grab a snack, go to the loo whatever it might be, or pause where you can just sit. I try to, and I don't always achieve it, create a pause when I'm transitioning from mum to entrepreneur or vice versa. Just create a little moment to take a breath.

So what can a pause be used for? A pause can be used to take a breath, a pause can be used to regulate our nervous system to ground ourselves to bring ourselves back into that kind of secure and social state. Apause can be an opportunity, a space where we can reflect. A pause can be a moment that we take between a stimulus, a trigger, a pause can be the space in between that and our reaction or pausing can create a space to respond from. And this is where I think the power of the pause lies whether it's at the micro level or at the macro level, like the big picture thing, where we can pause. We can create a space a gap, a breathing space, where we can create an opportunity to ground ourselves - absolutely ground our nervous systems and also ground us back into our values so that we can respond. So it's a place to respond from is how I think of a pause versus react from. and our current culture particularly around business particularly around you know, online business is one of urgency of not pausing, of actually just trying to push into action before any of that grounding can occur. Grounding in our values and responding from them. so urgency culture creates this push to act, to do. And absolutely there's power in taking action sometimes before we're ready, etc. But that can still happen with this grounding in our values. And this is what I feel like the value of a pause is. So it's building in spaces and micro spaces in your day or macro spaces like over a year or over a career that give us an opportunity to respond and respond while being grounded in our values. So rather than reacting to, creating a space that we can respond from.

So thinking about what goes on for you, what happens in your business, what happens in life, looking for opportunities to create pauses to create spaces to take a breath to ground can be really supportive. So when you are thinking of building a values based business, what we want to do is use our values to guide and use our values as a filter to taking action in our business. And so if we can create these spaces to pause at the daily level, and also then at the weekly level, at the monthly level at the event level at the annual level, five years however you like to plan and pause. It can give us that opportunity to stop and to ground ourselves particularly in our values before we take action. And so let's talk about a few examples of where you could use this and how it could look. So we're coming towards the end of the year. And it's a time when there's a really good opportunity to reflect. And so a pause can be a space of reflection, a space where we can sit back and kind of take stock and think about what's happened, what's gone well, what hasn't, what's moved you towards your values, what hasn't. And a pause and a space of reflection is a great opportunity. It's a really, really useful thing to do before jumping into planning for the next year. Because the planning, going from sort of the end of the year and straight into planning for the next year is kind of like that, starting into action and reaction without a pause which you know, it still works. And I think there's a lot of value in taking space to reflect, taking place to take stock taking place to celebrate wins. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that next week about celebrating wins and how we can actually plan that in and the benefits of it. So spoiler or hook or carrot, whichever way you want to think about it. So creating that space at the end of the year, which is where we are at at the moment. A very long time ago like I reckon it would have been in around 2011 I came across an approach from, actually she's an Australian exnurse, I think, Janet Becker's her name is she does like a lot of online stuff. Anyway. She was the most, one of the most values based people I came across in my very early days. And she used to do this thing and she had this strategy, which I've always enjoyed doing, of sitting back and getting out big piece of paper, a4 piece of paper, and just in the different areas of your life just really writing down and reflecting and looking at what's happened. And I think this is a really supportive something that you can do. You can do it in any way you like, like her approach was, you know, lots of coloured markers and on a piece of paper, you could do it in a Google Doc, you could do it in a debrief with a coach or with another human to really look back and think about well, what's happened over the year what's worked, what hasn't worked. You know, we have just survived another year of the Panini. And so maybe at the start of 2021, there was lots of planning, there was lots of different things going on and then life happened. And one thing that I'm taking from that in my pause time in my reflection time is to, to kind of reflect on that and think about what how can I plan for the next year. What do I want to take from that for planning for next year and what I am going to be planning in is more times for pausing ,more time to reflect and more plans that can be more flexible. I've never been particularly rigid with my planning, but planning things in a way that there is inbuilt flexibility that there is actually almost like an assumption of a pause coming up, an assumption of something putting things on hold. Because for me over this year, I have in the last two years to give you a bit of an example or a bit of a brief look into my life, bit of a tangent. well, not complete tangent it's relevant but slight tangent for just that topic I was talking about. So, we returned from an around Australia caravan trip at the end of 2019. I was seven months pregnant. I had baby number three. So cue pause in my business. Oh than here was a pandemic and I thought it would be a really short pause and I'd be jumping back into business stuff because third baby I know what's going on here. And then this baby happened to have a few, let's say throw a spanner in the works. So there was that piece and then there was the panini. You know, coming along and throwing things out of whack. homeschooling, having kids at home being schooled. You know, disrupting all of that kind of stuff plus just general extra stress and pressure on life. So pause and then I started going back to getting back into work towards the end of the year, you know, getting a bit of a flow. Then we moved, we bought a new home and moved, so pause again because that was a really intense time. Lots of packing lots of you know if anyone's moved, and if anyone's moved with three children you know how hectic that is. And then you know came back into the new year, excellent pause button off, getting things in line with my business getting some support with the kids around like you know, having a bit more time and things like that. And then boop delta wave pause button. So this has just been the two years the pauses that have happened and I could go up through my whole career and highlight so many so many pauses. But with each of these pauses there's the opportunity to use that knowledge to see what is needed going forward. to create flexibility for things that might pause your business or pause where you're at outside of you those external things. So there's that piece of pausing, and then there's also the planning of pauses so that you can create breathing space and space to respond from so in my reflection of the year and reflection of the last couple of years, I see these pauses, these external pauses that I have no, they're not about me. Exactly. They're about me. They impact me but they're outside of me. External forces. And I have three small children, ranging from the ages of almost eight to almost two and so I've still got a few years of, I think, very much could almost guarantee some regular pauses. And so when I'm thinking about that, and reflecting on that, I really want to make sure that as I'm going forward and planning for my business, as I'm building the ways and strategies I do my business that I actually have planned in an assumption that a pose will happen. So that's one piece of planning so doing this reflection. So creating pauses yourself for accessing reflection. So this time of the year is a great time to pause, reflect, think about what's going on. And like I said, we'll talk a little bit more about that next week we'll be talking about celebrating wins. And then also using that to plan , to use that knowledge to then guide into your planning for next year or, you know, what I'm thinking of for myself is hyper flexible planning, which has the assumption of external forced pauses built in. And so that is one piece of the pause and the power of the pause and that I feel there is like planning that timing and also planning to be planning in a way that's responsive to those external pauses. And I talk about planning at the moment, just because I know, for me, it's on my mind and I imagine for you too, as we wrap up the year moving to next year, but I just would really encourage you if you haven't done it already, or if it wasn't on your radar to add in some time to pause and reflect and just take stock of what's been happening for you. And particularly around if you are wanting to build values based business, if you're wanting to embed your values into your business. It's just to take stock of what's happened there. What's gone well with that, where do you want to, quote unquote, do better? What have you learned from the process so far that you can you know, build into your planning.

The other spaces I think that insering a pause is really important, the other spots where I think there can be a good pause - the theme I'm thinking here is around the opportunity to pause and gather information. And reflect. So you can think of it from the point of view of reflection, or you can think of it from the point of view of gathering data and gathering information too. And both of those things can be ways to gather data, I suppose, but to also then integrate that back into your business, how you plan, the business systems that you have, how you are moving towards your values, integrating it back into your marketing plans into your business plan to create more alignment with your values. And so the pause is that opportunity and so that can be an annual thing, which I think is really helpful. The other time where I think it can be used is post events or post launches. So, if you are doing any or if you have done over the year, any launches or if you're planning any coming up, to actually plan in time to pause for a couple of reasons. One, there's the opportunity to do that data gathering, to do that reflection and collect some information and insight that you can then use to inform your next launch. moving forward the practices to learn what went well to reflect on what didn't necessarily go as well. What felt aligned to you, what didn't and use that information then to plan in the future or to make choices about the way that you want to think, the way that you plan a thing. You can reflect on stuff and you know, and you can reflect on how it felt for you as far as your energy levels and things like that. And so I talked a few weeks ago about you know, seasons and seasonality and I'll pop the link in the show notes but around how we can gather information around what works for us depending on the season. And that can be the seasons of life. It can be the season of the year it can be the season and cycle if you're somebody who menstruates it can be around that. And so that's information that you can gather and you can use that to plan. So let's say if you plan to launch when you went through it and if you are someone that menstruates - I'm going to use a very specific example. You know, you you get your period or it's like the week before you get period and that impacts on your energy levels. So then you can use that information then when you're planning to maybe, if it's possible, to not plan to do launches or things that are high energy around those times when you know your energy levels are not as high. This is the power of the pause to give you time to stop and reflect and think about how things are and think about yourself as well. And so then the other power of the pause at the end of things whether it's like for me today, I'm recording this a couple of days before it drops and I ran a workshop today the seventh this comes out on the ninth, and I ran a workshop this morning. And so what I planned was a space for pausing this afternoon where I could just regulate my nervous system again because even though I enjoy talking and presenting you know there is that impact on your nervous system and I created the pause because I knew the couple of weeks leading up to that I was going to be like you know, maybe talking about things more, doing more posts on social media, all of those kinds of things. And so creating a space to pause can also be a space to rest. So a pause can be a space to reflect, a pause can be a space to respond from and a pause can be a space to rest. And that can be a really great thing to add into post launches, post events, posts like a programme if you run say a six week programme or 12 week programme. It could be post particular busy times for you. So maybe your work does have some seasonal sort of cycles. I know for a lot of dietitians, and probably a lot of other health professionals in Australia in the southern hemisphere because this time of year leads into Christmas and summer holidays. This can be a time when sometimes things slow down when maybe referrals slow down or people reaching out or project work tends to slow down. So it's a great time to utilise that for that reflection and pausing and resting. And so sometimes we can plan things and just block time out and sometimes we can be opportunistic about the times of our business and gathering that information that data and then planning around that so that we can go with times where maybe things slow down or maybe where there is just a pause or a lag in client interest or client referrals or however you interact with the humans you want to work with or have access to them. So maybe there can be those kind of cycles, where there are dips and pauses and that can be something you can utilise to create spaces for rest.

So building pauses in, leveraging times when there are pauses and creating space to use the pause for these few different reasons. So one of those, or purposes or opportunities I suppose you could think of in a different way. So one can be the space for pauses a space for reflection gathering information, gathering data and looking at where you're at a pause can be a space of grounding yourself in your nervous system. grounding yourself in your values and responding, giving yourself an opportunity to create space to respond from and a pause can be a space for rest. So they're the three functions or key functions that I see pauses create.

Pauses can be micro so it could be a pause in a day, like 15 minutes between clients to maybe do meditation or ground yourself or like I said, often what I do on my own Friday, every second Friday, I have like a full workday. And I'll be like getting all the kids ready and sort of sorting all that stuff before I commute to the office which is upstairs or at the back of the house depending on the season for the temperature. And when I come I try and do something like a meditation or a grounding exercise. One week I did like some sketching and that was really fun. Just something to create a pause like a space, a breathing space between Laura focusing on being a mum and Laura now transitioning into try and focus back on doing this other part of work. I'm still the same person and both parts of me come along with both adventures but just that pause can really help. So you can create micro pauses things in your day, you can create seasonal pauses or event based pauses at the end of a launch at the end of a programme. And you can create annual spaces of pausing which can be spaces for rest but also can be that space of reflection.

So as we go into the end of the year, I really encourage you to think about where you can utilise the pauses coming up, maybe with reflection time or if you are in a part of the world where referrals slow down over Christmas and those kinds of times that could be useful. And also I'd really encourage you for next year planning pauses in, planning spaces to have pause in the year so that you can take those times. and I know for me one thing I did earlier this year was I had two nights away which was a really lovely pause and I plan to in the coming year do a little bit more of that having these actual like spaces. Spaces where we kind of pause the responsibility and some of the responsibilities, maybe a pause some of the things that take up a lot of our headspace and for me as a mom. And as you know an adult lifeing all of that day to day stuff can really take up a lot of head space. So having opportunities or creating them. For me I want to be really purposeful about creating little pockets of time where I can put that stuff on pause where I can just step outside of that put that on pause and create spaces for reflection and really creating plans and ways of responding that are grounded in my values. And so as you move into your planning, I really encourage you to think about how you can plan pauses in so if you're planning programmes you're planning launches actually physically blocking time out in your diary or on your calendar to create it, so that you can use your pauses for reflection. And data gathering. You can use your pauses for space to respond to and you can use your pauses for rest and thinking about what maybe you need more of going into 2022 and how you can create space for that.

So that's what I wanted to say about pauses and the power of the pause if this resonated. If you have questions, comments, concerns, let me know. And I'd love to ask a favour if this resonated for you, share it with somebody that you think would benefit, share it with somebody that you would think would really enjoy it. I'd love for this kind of different way of thinking to get out but also of course it helps to boost the podcast and another action that you could take if you felt called to it or it felt aligned for you was leaving a review on the podcast player that you listen, listen to the podcast on. I would be really appreciated that as we wrap up 2021. Those kinds of ratings and things supposedly improve the reach and how your podcast comes up. So if that's something you feel aligned with, I would love to give you a call to action today for this podcast is either to share this episode with somebody that you think it would resonate and support. Or if you want to leave review wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, well, I'm gonna sign off and wherever this finds you, I hope it finds you. grounded. I will talk to you again next time. Until then, bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai