How to Take a Pause and Save Yourself From Trouble

In all sorts of ways

Somebody probably told you at some point that if you’re angry, you should count to ten before speaking?

And this is good advice because pausing before speaking really can save you in many different ways.

Although I had a mentor who used to pause for so long before he spoke, I wasn’t sure that he hadn’t gone to sleep. And once on a zoom call, it took me a while to realize that he wasn’t pausing, but the screen had frozen.

So while you might not want to take a long pause, pausing for a beat or two has many benefits.

When you wake up

How often do you reach for your phone as soon as you wake up and either read the news or scroll through social media?

You might know that it’s not a good habit to get into, but the phone is in your hand before you’ve properly woken up.

Instead, when you open your eyes, take a pause. Think about your day. What do you want to get from the day?

It might seem that you don’t have a choice about how your day goes if you’ve got deadlines and commitments, but that isn’t true. Starting your day with intention, even if the intention is just to enjoy what you can from the day, sets you off in the right direction, and you’ll get out of bed with a different feeling than you do on the days you scroll through your phone.

Pause before you press send

If you get a shitty email or message, you probably write a shitty reply. But then, stop. Don’t press send.

You know that you’ll feel differently ten minutes after your initial reaction has faded. You might recognize that whoever sent the message is wrapped up in their own head and whatever they said says more about them than you.

When you take a pause, you’ll write a different response. You might feel compassion for the writer instead of anger?

And we all know what it’s like when we’ve reacted badly to an email or message and then wished we hadn’t once the feeling changes.

Taking that pause can stop you from acting in a way you might regret. This works with messages and relationships.

Relationships

I can’t express how taking a pause has saved my relationship.

I used to get the red mist you’ve heard about when I was angry, and I seemed to be angry a lot. And when I was angry, I threw the grenade.

I detonated a few relationships in this way. Still, the relationship that I’ve been in for over a decade I intend to be in forever, and so blowing us up isn’t the best idea I might have.

I’m not pretending that I don’t get angry now, but the feeling blooms and fades in a moment, and the way this happens is because when I experience the feeling, I pause and ask myself where I think the feeling is coming from?

Of course, it’s coming from my partner.

Except it never is. The feeling is coming from my thought in the moment about my partner or something he’s said or done. The feeling can’t come from him.

And acknowledging that is enough of a pause for me to keep the pin in.

And not turn to the bottle.

Alcohol

I have lots of clients who are in recovery but have a blip now and again. And it isn’t pleasant.

Sure, some don’t come to or cause any harm, but they always wish they hadn’t had that first drink again. Not one of them has ever said that they’re pleased they relapsed.

And the relapse often starts not when they’re depressed or down but when they’re in a good space and think they can drink ‘like everyone else.’ So without pausing to think about the consequences, they have a beer or glass of wine. And then another ten drinks.

If you’ve decided to cut alcohol out of your life for a while or forever, and you’re out with friends, a good ploy is to stick to soft drinks for the first two rounds. By the third, you won’t want to drink alcohol and wonder why everyone else keeps repeating themselves and laughing at nothing at all.

Pausing and sticking to soft drinks for the first two rounds gives you enough time to consider what you want to do, to choose how your evening will pan out and how you want to feel.

Weight loss

When clients want to lose weight, they tell me that they want to feel better but then eat the foods they know will pile on the weight out of habit, so I ask them to take a photo of whatever they’re going to eat before they eat it.

This serves two purposes. One is that they have an accurate record of what they eat during the day as everyone unconsciously deletes some of the food they eat from their memory, even if it’s a bite here and there. But this isn’t the main reason.

The main reason I ask them to take a photo is that picking up their phone and switching on the camera is enough of a pause for them to ask themselves if they want to eat whatever it is and how will they feel afterward?

Doing this stops them from having an automatic reaction to a thought. After all, a thought isn’t a command.

Thoughts aren’t commands

It’s so easy to have a thought and find yourself taking action without even realizing.

You know that this happens when you’re in the car. After driving for a while, who thinks to mirror, signal, and maneuver before they pull out into traffic? You have the thought and take action without consciously being aware.

The same with cleaning your teeth. You have the thought to clean your teeth and get on with it.

And this is all well and good when it comes to behaviors like these, but it’s important to remember that thoughts aren’t commands. You don’t have to follow every thought you have.

If you’re walking down the road and the person in front of you drops their wallet, you might pick it up with the intention of handing it back and then see that it’s stuffed full of notes.

You might think you can just put the wallet into your pocket and keep the money.

Maybe you do this, but don’t tell me if you do.

Probably, you would take no notice of the thought of stealing the money, and you run up to the person and give them the wallet back.

Just because you thought of keeping the money doesn’t mean you have to.

If you’re at a party and someone gorgeous comes to you, you might think about snogging their face-off, but unless you’re single, you’ll enjoy the thought before dismissing it. You wouldn’t push them onto the sofa and lunge at them.

Because thoughts aren’t commands.

So when you think of doing anything that might lead to you wishing you hadn’t, take a pause, move on and breathe a sigh of relief.