The Power Pause

Become a better leader & a calmer person in seconds

I've been helping smart, driven, excellent women and leaders for over 20 years.

In that time I've worked with 100's (literally) of people and spent thousands of hours exploring better ways to work, live, and build relationships.

It's been fun, it's been hard, and more than anything else, it's been educational.

Today, I wanted to share the most powerful and life-changing action you can use to reduce stress, level up executive presence, make better decisions, communicate powerfully, and just, well... live better.

When you first learn about it, you're not going to believe it.

It seems too simple.

But I promise you, I've taught this strategy to patients who were burdened by crippling anxiety and depression. We've practiced it with executive leaders who needed to up their executive presence to command the attention of a room. I use it daily to make better decisions. To this very day, it's the #1 thing clients practice when they're on the brink of being overwhelmed or burnt out.

Ready?

The Most Powerful Action You Can Take Today

The most powerful action you can take as a human - and especially as a leader - is learning to master the pause.

A pause can last as little as a second or as long as 48 hours.

Here's a guide to using pauses:

• 1s pause - To broadcast greater confidence and poise. Great communicators emphasize punctuation as they speak.
• 3s pause - To capture the attention in a room and show up with greater authority. At the end of an important statement or question, capture the room's attention, give them time to think of their response or build some anticipation for your next statement. This is very powerful.
• 6s-13s pause - To avoid undermining yourself or sounding nervous. Use this pause when you ask an important question or make an important statement that requires an answer but makes you uneasy. Give people time to react to what you say.

• 2min pause - To deal with strong emotions and thwart stress. When you notice that your emotions are running high. Two minutes is plenty of time to practice our 5-step-check-in. Do a body scan to note where you're feeling tension, breathe out, relax your muscles, label your emotions, identify the trigger, and decide on one immediate action to reduce stress.
• 5min -15 min pause - To become more effective, efficient, and productive. Use these throughout your day to reset your brain and your energy level. Look up the Pomodoro method for more details. At Noteworthy we recommend 5-15 minute pauses every 25-45 minutes.
• 24h- 48h Pause - To live better & be more fulfilled. Take at least one weekend day off from work and worry. Better yet, take two. Your to-do list won't end until you die. Your workload is never-ending. Doing more all the time won't get you less work, it will earn you more (more in this Thursday's newsletter).

Bottom Line:

The most powerful thing you can do as a human is learn to master the pause.

Your Challenge

Practice one or all of the pauses I listed.

Ready to massively level up your leadership and your life outside the office?

Subscribe to my newsletter, and get challenged weekly to show up better for the folks you serve and yourself.

Worldwide, smart, ambitious executive women work three times as hard for a fraction of the influence they deserve.

Excellence-driven, they show up fully for everyone, all the time, and discover that high-level success can come at too high a cost if you don't have the right systems or support.

I've made it my mission to help women in senior leadership show up with authority, own their value, leverage their influence, and make a meaningful impact without sacrificing everything on the altar of success.

I lead this work through Noteworthy, an exclusive executive coaching and consulting firm that advances senior executive women in STEM and finance and supports companies that seek to retain, elevate, and attract them.

This work has transformed the lives of hundreds of executive women in the US and Europe and changed workplaces for the better at scores of companies ranging in size from agile start-up to Fortune 100.

• Connect with me on LinkedIn here.
• Jump on a 20-minute connect call here.
• Need a great speaker for your event, newscast, show, or podcast? Email me drwall@noteworthyinc.co.