P A U S E
Think about the word for a minute. Actually stop and reflect what the word means. What does it bring up for you?
It made me uncomfortable. In the pit of my stomach, an emptiness that I quickly tried to replace with something, to get busy with the things I told myself I ‘should’ be doing.
The word ‘Pause’ in itself holds meaning to an ‘Awkward Moment’ and aptly so.
We are experiencing a pause. Not a stop. There will be a start again or a trickle before the flow comes back. It’s an uncomfortable moment in which there is no certainty.
What a great lesson to be held in this. How often are we so busy getting things done, focus on the future that we forget to pause?
I’m guilty of that this past week. I’ve been intent on creating the future, over-achieving to fill my days with study during this pandemic that when I came to a grinding halt over the ‘weekend’, the answers to questions I didn’t know I had, poured onto the page beneath my pen.
Journaling is magic like that.
Sometimes it takes a rainy day to wash away the armour, the layers we create and build around ourselves to feel whole. For me, it took the pause in my absorbed study focus to pour the depth of feelings onto the page for review.
The things that make me feel alive; I’d shunned them too for the anxiousness that presided over my focus. So eagle-eyed that I couldn’t find the pause button.
As a mindfulness practitioner, it would be remiss of me to deny that I too can lose myself in the fogginess of these days. Whilst my 5km is lush paddocks of semi-rural Mornington Peninsula, it doesn’t offer me the dense woodland trails that I both get lost and find myself in.
“Nature itself is the best physician.”
-Hippocrates, the father of Medicine
With my hikers, I often share the notion of acceptance, learning to sit with the uncomfortable, messiness of life in order to pause and reflect. Managing the reactivity of a stimulus with a more mindful approach. When we hit the trails, we are given the opportunity to accept the conditions and enjoy what is.
With my awareness firmly realigned in the present, I attune my purpose for the week ahead to ‘Find Balance’. Generate space for the creative expression, for getting lost in the pages of a good book, or to craft my own, to soak in the bath until I am pruned, and lose time in nature.
It’s so evidently clear that now more than ever we need to be mindful in the ways we approach the days. It’s all too easy to get lost scrolling socials, binge Netflix, drink too much or move too little. These things comfort only fleetingly and often leave you feeling less than you are.
There is no universal answer to how to create balance, but instead bring awareness to the aspects of your life that are overloaded or conversely, those that are lacking. Identifying these allows you to correct, leaving you with a greater sense of self.
“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go”- RUMI
What are you holding onto now?
What do you need to let go of?
With reflective optimism, this week I will pursue an equilibrium in both tasks and state of mind.
Amanda x