Practice the pause
Something I have been working VERY hard on…pausing before reacting…pausing before saying something harsh (either to myself or others), pausing to ask myself if the reaction I want to give will sit well with me 5 minutes later…
From me practicing the pause, I have learned a lot about myself…99% of my initial reactions used to be a reaction from a place of fear…fear I would look weak, fear I wasn’t being taken seriously, fear I wasn’t enough…
So much fear has been hiding in all the stories I have attached myself to…stories that weren’t and still aren’t true.
But by practicing the pause, I have been able to catch the words that I so wanted to spit out to prove that I was right, to spit out to make myself feel better, to spit just because I could.
From practicing the pause, I am gaining so much compassion for myself and others in those few seconds between my initial thought and deciding how I want to react vs just reacting.