How Pausing on Purpose will Rock Your World

Brett Hill: 00:00:03

The Mindful Coach Podcast hello and welcome to the Mindful Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Hill, founder of the Mindful Coach association and also known as the Mindful Coach.

You can find out what I'm up to@themindfulcoach.com and what I'm up to is mindful communication and the power of that to transform your life.

I just can't be any more emphatic or passionate or convinced about from my own personal experience as well as the experience of others who I've worked with and trained on this, the capacity, the power, the capability, the resource, the amazing resource it is in your life to focus on how well you communicate. That one thing is something that is so important, it's so crucial. Think about this for just a few minutes.

It's like, how much time have you spent in your life really actively working on how well you communicate? And then let me ask you, how important is communication in your life?

It seems to me that our ability to communicate with each other well is sort of the limiting factor on what we can get accomplished in our lives and also as a species.

I mean, how do you solve a pandemic or build a city or govern a nation or build a building or a road, or figure out how to create, you know, new technology as well as negotiate relationships? Do you want to live with me for the rest of your life?

Do you want to enter into a contract to buy a million dollar building or $500,000 house or 10, $25,000 a year job, what, whatever it is that you're negotiating. Communication is at the core of it.

And yet we don't spend any time, and generally speaking as a culture in focusing on how well are we doing this act of interacting with each other. And to be honest, that just kind of blows my mind.

When I was a young man, I was walking around the university back in the day and I was trying to figure out what the bleep am I going to do with my life. And that's a, you know, a reasonable thought for a university student to do.

If you haven't, you know, got your life all sorted and I didn't at that time.

It was one of those scenarios that's very common in the world where you think your life is going to go one way and it flips into another one through no. And so consequently, I'm trying to figure out, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to go to school.

School that I wanted to go to, I could only go to in this case it was Oklahoma University because the in state tuition was cheaper. And my mother said she would help me, even though she was having to go out and get a job.

After 20 years of raising a family and playing My way, I happen to have. I don't. If you're on the video, you can see my guitar over here.

I happened to play my way and sing my way through college and in bars and clubs and, you know, back in the day when, you know, modern folk singing was a thing. So I played a lot of James Taylor, Cat Steve and Bob Dylan, those things. And. And, you know, to be honest, I wasn't bad at it.

I was never like, hey, I'm gonna, you know, break the charts. But it paid my way. And so I managed to get through school, but at some point I'm going like, what am I going to do? What am I going to study? How do I.

How do I, you know, complete my. My life? And I was wondering, what. Looking around, thinking, what is it that's so. What's so foundational?

What is it that is the thing that you can put your finger on and go, this is the thing that matters the most in terms of what can I facilitate in humanity and in myself to be of. That would be of value to myself and to others.

And I'm not sure where this insight came from, but I just remember one day thinking, it has to be communication. It has to be, because nothing happens unless that happens.

Well, and the things that do happen, whenever that doesn't happen, well, are generally often not. Not that great. Right. And so if you think about the miscommunications, the cost of miscommunication is astronomical.

One of the people in the Mindful Coach Association, Larissa Shapirna, who's a doctor of linguistics and cultural. Cultural expert and helps people navigate the really challenging waters of adapting to a new culture.

She speaks a lot of languages, Ukrainian, Russian heritage, is a fabulous, fabulous person.

She was doing a podcast interview with her, which you can look up is if you look up that past episodes, she was telling me that the misunderstandings from languages is really huge and it makes a big difference. And she gave the example.

When I was, you know, a young man back in the day when, you know, Russia was considered a threat, there's a thing they called the Cold War, and it still is a threat. But there was during the Cold War, how did all that come about?

It all began with Kita Khrushchev, who was the premier or whatever they're called in Russia.

And he and Kennedy had this big showdown and if you look it up, the Bay of Pigs, which was a really big deal back in the day, so he came to the brink of a nuclear war, and he at one point said what was translated in the American press as we will bury you. So the headlines were like, we will. You know, Khrushchev promises he's going to bury America.

And of course, when you hear somebody say in our language, you hear somebody say, we will bury you, you think that's a threat, you know, that they're going to be aggressors. But she was saying, it's not that at all.

It's more like, it's not exactly a friendly thing to say, but it's more like we will be present at your funeral. We will outlive you, we will be the sustaining force, and you will fade away.

And rather than we were going to put you in the grave, it's going to be, we're going to be present at your, you know, when you're over, we're going to be around when you're over, was really the, the backstory in terms of the way of the meanings of, of the language.

And, you know, you may have a different take on this, but this is from her point of view, which was, and she is, you know, a linguist, and not only that, a native speaker of languages in that area. And so I have high value on her expertise. As a result of that, America felt so threatened.

It started this entire Cold War thing, which cost hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. And there was a lot of, lot of fear around what we do. And there was all this concern and worry and dramatic buildup of the military.

Unfortunately, fortunately, there wasn't an outbreak of actual bullets firing at each other, but the stress and the cost was huge because of that. And I'm sure there are other examples of not misinformation, but misinterpretation of information, of communication.

You said, he said, she said, they said one thing, you said another thing. Somebody think misunderstands you. So what can we do?

How can we focus on how to be better communicators in our lives in, in such a way that it up levels every aspect of your life?

And I'm here to tell you, if you were to spend just a few weeks focusing on how you communicate, and I'm going to flip another bit here and say how you show up, then it would radically up level almost every aspect of your life. And I'm trying to tell you, you can't really overstate this. I mean, you could.

It's not going to like cure you of a disease, but it will dramatically improve the quality of your life. Not only that, your satisfaction with your relationships. Authentic improving connection. Loneliness is an epidemic thing in our country.

People feel more disconnected than ever. They don't know how to connect or you don't have the opportunity to. But when you do, how do you create rapport without being weird about it?

You know, without overreaching? Being present enough to say the things that create opportunities to go deeper. And if those opportunities are present, it will go deeper.

If they're not present, you're not trying to make something out out of nothing. You're not trying to manufacture false connection just for the sake of it.

You're actually trying to create meaningful, connected relationships and moments. And these can be very simple moments. There's a saying in my work I call turn ordinary conversations into extraordinary experience.

And I'm absolutely serious about that.

You can take mundane, casual interactions and have really, really luscious moments that just are beautiful and then they go and beautiful and then they go. And if you think about it, it's really a metaphor for our entire lives.

In some ways, our lives are just these moments that they happen in, then they're gone. Because all of our lives are going to go at some point or another. That's just a fact.

And so being present for those moments and then learning how to cultivate the opportunities you have to become really rich experiences seems to me to be kind of job number one. And I'm, you know, I'm scratching my head going, what the heck is going on?

That people seem to disregard the power that you have been given to use your words consciously because if you did, it would change your world. It'll rock your world to the core. This blows my mind that people advocate for such sloppy communication.

There's, you know, there's all this language around. Well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm just gonna be really rude and crude and speak the most vile things I can think of because I believe in freedom.

Well, yeah, okay, great. I believe in freedom too. But why would you want to say that even if you're feeling it?

Why would you want to say something that's so crude and rude and mean spirited? Even if that's what you're feeling, that doesn't mean you have to make the choice to put it into the world.

What is going to be helpful is if you go deeper and realize that you can make choices and those choices can make a difference about what you say and how you show up. So how does that all begin? It all begins by slowing the F down. People think I'm too busy. I get. I can't sit down and meditate for 15 minutes a day.

And you know, God bless what we are busy. We have crazy, crazy, crazy busy lives. And it is hard to slow down.

But I'm here to tell you that if you want to get more done, for the vast majority of us, slowing down is the answer. Now, if you're sitting around and you're concerned and depressed and you're inactive, that's not the thing.

In that case, you need to focus more on what's the root cause of that. And that's challenging work.

But for the most of us that are out there, who are, who aren't suffering from, you know, like a clinical depression or withdrawal, it's. It's like there's so much going on and not. And a lot of it isn't necessarily the kind of stuff you're excited about in general.

And even if it is, it can overtake your nervous system so much with this gotta do, gotta do, gotta do, gotta do. This continuous stream of staccato, like to use a musical metaphor, you know, staccato is like. It's like very quick notes, one right after the other.

And we live like that. We live, you know, just kind of does this and there's back to back meetings and I've got to do this, and I've got to pay my taxes.

Now I've got to fix my car and now I've got to make the phone call. Now I've got to. You know, there's a bazillion things that we gotta do because the world we. That's the world that we've constructed.

But what happens if you simply take a breath, a conscious breath? I saw this beautiful thing said one conscious breath. It's like, oh, yeah, wait a second, hold on.

Slow the boat down in the raging waters for just a moment. Long enough to see. Oh my God, the boat isn't out of control. I'm swimming in raging waters I'm boating in raging waters There's a storm to notice.

And the minute you do that, what you begin to do is expand your field of awareness. And when you begin to expand your field of awareness, what happens is that you notice more about the context in which your life is unfolding.

And with some practice, you can learn to notice and name the things that are happening in a way that helps you just say, oh yeah, I can see I am just driving like a maniac through my life and not really experiencing or even directing the quality of my, my moment.

Choosing in directions that give you a more satisfying day, give you more satisfying life, that connects you deeper into your conversations and deeper into your connection with what is really true and real in you and others that is possible. But you have to do the work. You have to not continue to run on automatic. In the mindful world, there's a thing called the default mode network.

The default mode network is a neurological phrase. And all of this is actually brain science. And that's why you can, we can, we can look at the research and the brain scans.

You can say, oh, this really does work.

There's actually research that shows that if, if you do mindful training that it actually changes the structure of your brain and the benefits are astronomical in terms of, I mean there are, there are reports and studies that show it improves creativity, it improves your health, it increases your, decreases inflammation, it helps you with pain, it helps you with, with chronic pain, it helps you be more resilient under stress. There's so many facets of our lives that are improved by simply building the capacity to be present with your experience non judgmentally.

And I'm put that in bold. And what does that mean? I need to do another whole other podcast on the meaning of that.

But it doesn't mean you don't you give up the notion of discerning between good and bad or justice and injustice, or you let people walk all over you. It doesn't mean being okay with whatever happens to you.

Like you, you don't want to have a, you have a flat at the side of the road, you know, go, well, I'm so mindful, I'm just going to sit here in my car because everything is perfect. No, it's not being non judgmental, that's being, being ridiculous.

You, you fix the car because you're, you're wishing or you want, you want to have a car that's working and that makes sense, right? Obviously. So we don't want to be ridiculous about the notion of non judgment.

What that really means is let's say you start to slow down, you take a moment and you notice that you're having thoughts like, like I'm not getting enough done or this is ridiculous or this is stupid. There's no way I can get more done by not doing, which is, you know, a reasonably. It's a rational thought, right?

It's like you don't produce more in a factory by turning the factory off.

So you know, with having a very production oriented Mindset or a product or oriented mindset, output, more oriented mindset, which is of course a very reasonable mindset to have in a culture that's oriented around material gain. But what if your product is well being? What if your product is peace?

What if your product is walking through the world in such a way that you lift those around you? That's what you quote, unquote, produce. In that case, you have to kind of, you need a different machine.

You have to kind of recalibrate what's going on. It doesn't mean you can't be what you do, what you do professionally. Like you can still be that, have that kind of orientation.

I'm going to live a life where I uplift others and I'm going to be a great accountant and I'm going to, or a coach or, you know, acupuncturist or teacher or whatever artist, whatever it is you do. Waiter. It doesn't matter. The judgment though would be, oh, I'm not getting enough done. I feel bad because I'm not doing something.

Nothing wrong with that. The act of non judgment is, oh, this language is important. This is a kind of a level, level 3 tip. Using the language.

Oh, there's that part of me that doesn't feel comfortable unless I'm getting things done. There's that part of me that doesn't feel comfortable unless I'm doing, producing. There's too much to do.

And as soon as you start to say that, you can start to feel your nervous system go, I've got to get into action. I've got to get stuff done. Yay for noticing. Just notice, that's the way it feels.

And then some part of you might also notice, oh my God, I feel this way all the time. I feel this constant press of get it done over. I mean achieve, achieve, achieve. And you don't know how to stop it more. Sleeping is hard, right?

Taking breaks is hard. Doing things that are fun can be hard because you're not getting things done. The point here is by slowing down you can achieve more.

Imagine you're in a snowstorm. I use this analogy, a snow globe. And like a snow globe means blizzards happening and you can't see anything.

And you're, and you're, I gotta do, I've gotta go, I gotta go. And it's like you're going, I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know which way I'm going, I don't which path I should be taking.

And then you stop for a minute and in this case, the snow is a metaphor for your mental activity. And you stop for a minute and the snow begins to settle. And. And as it does, it reveals this magnificent landscape, this amazing.

And the path before you becomes really clear. Not only that, you notice that there are diamonds on the ground. So sometimes I'll say there are diamonds at your feet. We just don't notice them.

When you begin to slow yourself down enough, some amazing things happen. The first thing happens is that you begin to create a buffer between when you experience something and when you react to it.

I'm talking about consciously considering your next few words. In this case, interacting with someone.

They say something kind of mean or hurtful to you, and how much space is there between what you say next and what you say? Do you know what I mean? How much space is there between the act of hearing it and your response? Viktor Frankl has a famous quote.

It's like between stimulus and response, there is a space. And I'm not sure the exact quote, but effectively goes, that space equates to freedom. In that space, there's choice. Those choices mean freedom.

As a paraphrase, if someone says something mean to me and I just come back, well, you can't say that. That's just not right. That might be true and I might be justified.

I'm not trying to say this is wrong, but I am trying to say that there was no one home when you said that. Meaning you're not considering, oh, they said this to me, and it feels bad, it feels hurtful. And I'm noticing that.

I want to react, I want to say something mean, hurtful, defensive back, noticing what you want to do. That is the part there's a little space there where you're noticing. And in that noticing, you then have the opportunity to go, what makes the best.

What's the best choice here? I'll tell you a quick story about John Eisman, who was a master teacher of Comey in Portland at the Medicine, which is now folded.

But I took some amazing courses there. And this is not a story that John told. It's a story that a student of John's told, who I heard he'd studied with as well.

And we were sharing stories about our experiences with him because he was a masterful teacher. And this guy had gone through the same training I had, and he did not like it. He was going, I have all kinds of problems with this.

I was not that guy. Not that I was actually amazed, but he was going, no, I don't like it. I don't like the way he does this, I don't like. And so he walked up to.

During a break, he walked over to the table where John was and he said, and John says, hey, how's it going? He said, oh, it's going okay, but you know, I'm, I'm not sitting well with some of this content. He goes, yeah.

And then he said some pretty critical things of John. And then John just looked at him and goes, well, tell me more. And he, and he wasn't expecting that.

Now see, that's an unusual response, don't you think, when someone says something really critical to you about your life's work and instead of going, oh, I'm sorry that happened for you, or well, wow, that's really unusual. Don't normally get that feedback. All of those things are things I've said when people give me criticisms. But John said, tell me more.

Now the magic of that is it's a connecting statement, right? Instead of putting an end to the conversation, it asks for more engagement. That's really a master class lesson right there, right?

Someone gives you criticism instead of defending yourself, you go, tell me more.

Wow, well now, who do you have to be to be able to be so secure in what you're doing that you're simply able to respond to another person like this from a place of not defensiveness or fear, but curiosity? He asked that and the guy said, well, and so I just kind of unloaded and then he said it again. And then at the end he said, is that all? Is that it?

I mean, is there, is there something else? Not like, is that all? But like, oh, is that, Is that everything? I mean, is there anything more? Right? And asking him to be complete.

And he said at the end of it, he realized that John was modeling for him the methods that he was teaching and he was doing it brilliantly in this example of one on one communication. And I love that model.

I love that example because it's a case of someone standing in what I call your embodied authority where he's not pretentious, he's not like, I know and you don't. So who are you to tell me anything? Not at all. It's not ego, it's invitation to connect, continue to connect.

And by the end of it, the guy completely had flipped, of course, because he was able to discharge his concerns and he could see that John was.

The results of this work created an experience in that, in their conversation that this guy said, you know, if that's the result of this work, I want some more of that in my life, and that's what I'm here to say to you, is that you can have some or all of that, more of it by connecting to who you are, how you show up right in these conversations. Who are you in the conversation? And it begins with slowing down long enough to ask the question.

And I'm going to put this out there as probably in my life. It's the most serious question there is in humanity. What is my experience now? Or in another way, what's it like to be you?

What's it like to be you right now in this moment? Moment. And for some of us, it's like you, you ask that question and all these alarms go off. Oh my God, I'm. I'm sick or I can't deal.

And that's not wrong. You can't flee from that. It's just acknowledge. Oh yeah, it's pretty, pretty hard. It's hard. It's can and letting yourself own.

The fact that that is so is the beginning of living a rational life. And by rational, I mean aligned with what is actually true. Not wishing that your life wasn't as stressful as it is.

Acknowledging and embracing the truth of it, even if it's unpleasant. The fact is I've got a terminal illness. That's a fact. And I. It's horrible thing to have happen in a person's life, but it is.

So the fact is I'm getting a six figure job offer next week. That's so exciting. But I'm not going to just identify as the guy who made it. Instead, I'm going to be myself.

Show up, be present, facilitate every relationship I'm engaged with and enjoy the opportunity. Or, you know, the fact is I have a test next week that determines my future and I'm worried about it. I can feel the anxiety. That's just a fact.

I can feel that anxiety in me. Yeah, there's that part of me that is anxious, taking a breath and noticing.

Yeah, well, I have a right to be anxious, but I don't want that to be my life. I don't want that to overcome my moment. I just want to notice that that is so. Because. And when you do it that way, you.

You establish yourself, if you will, as something bigger than your experience. That's really important when you say it like that.

There's that part of me that is experienced experiencing stress, fear, anger, guilt, shame, joy, peace, love, bliss, whatever. You establish yourself as something that is bigger than that experience. You're able to have that as a part of your world.

But it's not you so important. So, so vital. We identify with the stories of our experience. I'm the one who's unlucky. I'm the one who is walking around with a.

A lip because I was hit and I'm a victim. I was hit by a car and I'm a victim of drunk driver. And that trashed my life. And my whole life is trash because the car hit me.

And I'm not saying those people any you. There are serious injustices in the world and they can radically affect your life. They can end your life. They can be horrible to deal with.

The question isn't, is it okay? The question is, who are you now that that is a part of your life? This always comes back to having the choice.

Remember we started started with the choice of words. What words do you use to create connection, to create the opportunity to be in deeper rapport with somebody? And it begins with this one simple thing.

Slowing down. Now, I'll give you a quick exercise that you can practice and then report back next week at the show and we'll. We'll see how you're doing.

And this is to pause on purpose. We're called pause on purpose.

And the reason this is an important exercise is because if you want to become more conscious in the moment under stress, you have to practice when you are not under stress. Just like you don't learn to ride a bike in a race. You practice.

You know, when you first started, you practice on the sidewalk and you've got training wheels and you know, it's kind of like, oh, it's intentional learning. You can fall off the bike and it's okay, you get back up. It's.

You don't wait until you actually have to get on a bike and go in a hurry somewhere to figure it out. You have to practice. And so here's the practice. The practice is pause when you don't have to on purpose in the moment. Decide, I'm going to pause now.

And it doesn't have to be anything that anybody notices. Somebody says something to you like, hey, how's it going? Pause. Hey, things are fine.

Or if you prefer, you can say what's true, Things are kind of tough. As appropriate, pause when you don't have to. You're getting into the car before you put key in. Or you start the car. Pause, oh, I'm in a car.

How does it feel to be in the car? I know it might sound strange, but try that. You know, it's really different being outside. Giant sky overhead Unbounded space inside a metal box.

Very different somatic experience. I went through a training where we practiced those kinds of awarenesses so that they weren't lost on us.

There was a transition between pause at those moments and notice what's true for me now. What's it like for me to be me right now? Pausing on purpose. If you add, I'll make this promise to you.

If you add 5 to 10 of those in your day, every day for a week, you will begin to notice significant changes. Because what happens is it changes the conversations that you have, because when you take that moment, you're creating that space.

Remember we talked about between standing, stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space, there's a choice. That is everything. That's the magic moment that you're working hard to achieve.

Then if you do this enough, somebody says something challenging to you, you've already got the muscle built to pause. Oh, that doesn't feel good. What am I going to say? Is it appropriate? Is the context for you to say, tell me more?

Is it appropriate for you to say, you know, that's not a conversation I want to have, or declare and enforce a boundary?

It's another thing that I teach, make a choice, rather than, well, you know, you're a jerk, which may be true, but it's not going to further your cause, so to speak, of, you know, owning your space and being more at peace than reactive in the world. So that's a powerful, powerful tip that you can use right away in your life. Super easy to do. Nobody even needs to know. Doesn't take hardly any time.

You just have to pause on purpose multiple times a day. And when you do, then you'll find that you are creating a muscle that gives you the capacity to pause under stress.

So that's, you know, the lesson, if you will, the talk for today. Slowing down, pausing on purpose and then choosing learning. Having an experience of making a choice about what you want to say.

And so that's what I wanted to talk about in this first podcast of the year, because I'm so passionate about mindful communications, and I believe that there are simple practices like this that can change your world for the better and change your conversations so that they become more satisfying, more connecting, allow you to express yourself authentically, and that's going to change the way you feel about yourself and the world. And you'll have a better conversation as a result of that.

So you can find out a lot more about these kinds of skills@themindfulcoach.com where I'm starting to offer a training on this particular secret. There's a whole bunch of these. So if you like this, there's a whole bunch of this stuff which I've been working on for a very long time.

As you can see, I've been around a while and I've been accumulating a lot of masterclass stuff from some incredible teachers. And I'm happy to be presenting this in a structured sequence that will rock your world.

And so check it out@themindfulcoach.com it's called mindful Presence in Professional Communications and also works for unprofessional, non professional. Unprofessional. That was very unprofessional. You know, also works in personal conversations. But that I hope you check it out. It's going to be amazing.

Blessings to you and may this new year bring you goodness and grace and unexpectedly delightful ways. Thank you. The Mindful Coach Podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.