#3 The Power of a Daily Pause

Welcome to episode number three of different points and today's topic is I suppose the power of a daily pause or a pause and I know that I heard you talk about that you went into that in detail and even with Toastmasters and speaking I would have kind of seen the power of a pause I suppose I'll hand it over to my co-host Catherine to take the stage. Thank you. The power of a daily pause so a daily pause that suggests that you you pause once in the day and I'd say that's a good place to start but I also think having pauses throughout the day is really really important and to me this this connects back to the the energetic rhythms of being a human being you know we're not actually designed to be full on the entire time just like we're not designed to be chilling out the entire time it's just not how we are designed and built you know we're animals we need to be active we need to be resting we need to be nourishing ourselves we need to be playing uh you know we need to be in all these different modes and the thing about a pause is it it interrupts any kind of automatic pattern that can take hold of us and take us out of ourselves so if that pattern is just staring at the screen before you start staring at the screen you know that staring at the screen is not the whole of life but if you stare at the screen for an hour two hours three hours four hours you almost start to believe that staring at the screen is the entire purpose of your entire life you lose touch with your full humanity and a pause will break that because it will suddenly remind you there's someone mowing the grass outside there's a cat mewing outside wanting to come in there's my stomach wants something to eat i'm thirsty it suddenly brings us back to reality when we have a pause so it's very important that we have pauses in our life in in my opinion for that very very reason and it's also very good for our system so our system can actually go let go of something regroup and then come back in so what's your take on this roy i can kind of give a few different angles on that so one from the the speaking kind of part what i noticed is sometimes people were kind of conscious that if they pause it was bad and if you're making a point and it goes into podcasting as well like sometimes if you're asking the audience a question there's some things people would say something and then they just go on straight away and you have to allow the pause for the person to go into their own brain and kind of answer it and then just listen to what's actually going to be said so that's one kind of the pause regarding the working is something that i do a lot like so if i'm doing a certain task whether it takes an hour half an hour maybe two hours i'll step away and cast that as a pause not that i'm just sitting here i make sure i'm moving away and if you look in the workforce like you know you see people they take their smoke break at an hour but that's a breath work as far as i'm concerned it's just that they're putting toxins into their body but i encourage everyone even if you can't get up you know sometimes people you know they're really controlled in their work environment and they you know they need permission to go to the bathroom and stuff like that which is sad but that's the world we're living in but you can just sit back take a deep breath relax and that's your pause and you can even close your eyes or you can just you know because i think we tend to chug through things and then like you mentioned about you know that you realize you're hungry i know a lot of times previously i'd be working so much and then i'd stop and i get extremely i'd go i'm extremely hungry because i'd be so focused and that's because i didn't take the pause and the pause would allow me to tap into myself as well and see how am i feeling and you know just you know just take a walk down the stairs walk back up or go outside just you know admire the sun ground yourself and not thinking taking a pause is a bad thing or someone's looking at you you're having a pause because you know if you're in a work environment they're saying what are you doing i'm thinking about what i'm doing you know use use it as i'm in creative thinking mode if there's somebody that's controlling you that you can say something like that they can't say anything to them because nobody can actually track that i mean if they could the government would tax us for thinking but thankfully they can't i don't know they'd want to tax me for thinking it just reminded me that um again a yoga example um there are certain breathing exercises in yoga where you you actually pause at both ends of the breath so you breathe in and you pause at the top of the breath so in that moment you're not breathing in and you're not breathing out you're just pausing and then you breathe out and you pause at the end of the breath now that's quite an advanced thing in a way in regards of course because because for some of us just consciously breathing is a pause but adding that extra moment of sort of nothingness on either end is a really beautiful spacious thing to do it it almost feels like there's more space and light and air in the body and then there's more space and light and air in life itself so even just a tiny pause like you were saying when you're speaking in a podcast and you pause and the person can respond or you're in a meeting you know some people listen to this might be running board meetings or other kinds of meetings you probably know that the power of okay guys we're just going to pause now excellent what's next on the agenda makes such a difference and just one thing as well when i was doing the editing at the very start because now they go out as ill unless as is unless there's a disturbance but what i was doing at the very start is you know if there was pause fillers or big pauses it was taken out and then i realized that's unrealistic because if i'm having a conversation with you whether online or in person we're not just talking straight away after each other there's always a pause and i'm i kind of think is there a disconnect by doing that and i know a lot of podcasters do that they take out the pauses thinking oh i'm saving my listeners time but should you really i think you should leave it as is because that's exactly as it is in real life and people can connect to reality instead of like a i know i 100 agree finally you mentioned ai i've noticed something it's impossible to get it to stop talking you know you ask it to do something that gives you the answer and you say that's brilliant thank you and it goes and immediately goes well i've actually had another idea of how it could be even better and da da da da da da and actually the experience on the receiving end is no no no no i just want a pause now you've given me what i asked for i just want a pause to let that sink in and do what i'm going to go and do with it and so i think the importance of the pause is something that can only be experienced by an organic being like a human you know it's it's just like the body needs to it's got the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system but you know that work differently and within that we we need those pauses to digest our food to digest what's been said to us to tune into what we're feeling and what we're experiencing and to give ourselves a moment there was a very funny not that funny but i i wrote off my car once because someone turned in front of me and then just stopped and i couldn't stop so i hit the car i was very upset i loved my car so i pulled over and these two people jumped out of the other car and he said i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and he had a woman with him she'd obviously decided to sort everybody out she was one of those people and i said look i just need a moment and i walked off down the grass and she came running after me trying to talk to me and i turned around and said i'm sorry what i meant was i just need a moment by myself she went okay okay and she went i had like 10 seconds on my own just to kind of swear in my own head calm down and then i could go back and be civilized so pausing is also a really good way of not starting a war with somebody you know actually getting into a fight with somebody but don't pause your car in the middle of traffic yeah there's a lesson there everybody but you know that i remember that moment because it was like my whole body needed that moment you know and she didn't understand and then she did understand and then it was fine oh excellent well different points again but very valid ones so thank you very much again catherine thank you so much roy and i look forward to seeing you tomorrow yes and i would just like to say to the listeners make sure you pause now before you listen to the next episode take care