The Power of the Pause: How to take a break, and make it count.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”    - Viktor Frankl        

When was the last time you paused?

And I mean deliberately created space between waking up and immediately reaching for the phone, feeling hurt and instantly reacting with anger, or leaving a job and leapfrogging into the next? 

 If you’re a human in the modern world, your answer is quite possibly, “Never.” 

Our culture encourages constant motion; from a young age we learn to shift gears on the fly so we can move from one activity to the next without changing our speed. We fear and avoid liminal spaces – filling every last minute with scrolling and micro-tasking.

But here's the catch: sprinting from one thing to the next leaves us feeling overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. 

I’m as guilty of this as anyone. As an entrepreneur obsessed with changing how we learn, launch and lead, I’m hardwired to move headlong toward every goal and the work is never done. As an antidote to my innate wiring and our “always on” culture, I’ve manufactured transitions for myself: a meditation each morning, a digital sabbath each week, and a silent retreat each year. 

Earlier this year I downshifted in a way I never had before. The experience brought me face to face with what I’d preached but often forgotten to practice: the power of the pause. 

In May I announced that I’d be taking a sabbatical – a few months to reflect, rest and dream. I knew a purposeful pause would help me make sense of one chapter before beginning the next; but the prospect of months of unstructured time was daunting.  

In my role as Founder and CEO at Global Citizen Year I’d helped thousands of emerging leaders find power in a pause between high school and what comes next. And as I contemplated the parallels between their transitions and mine, I realized it was time to take my own advice. 

1) Define your questions

The first step in any transition is knowing what questions you most want to answer. Your questions create the scaffolding for your experience; they also serve as a compass to orient your time and attention. 

There are a few ways to frame these questions. One is to think about your past, your present, and your future. What are you most curious to explore and learn about each? Shortly after beginning my sabbatical, I landed on mine:

What have I learned from launching and leading Global Citizen Year?

Who am I now, and what are my deepest desires? 

What work am I being called to next??        

Another approach is to articulate an “internal” and an “external” inquiry. The inner question probes the depth of who you are:

What brings me joy?

Who am I when no one is watching? 

What gets me out of bed when there’s no alarm clock?          

And the external question focuses on the world and your relationship to it:

Where are there unmet needs in my community, or beyond?

What opportunities light me up and feed my soul? 

What issues break my heart and won’t let me look away?          

You may not find a definitive answer to your questions, but that’s not the point.

By letting go of the need to “figure it out”, and to making space for the answers to emerge, the answers will be more robust, intuitive and reliable than anything you could think your way into.

2) Find your Teachers

Once we know what we're trying to learn, we can figure out who or what will help you gather the insight you’re seeking. 

Finding our real teachers often means moving beyond our associations with the term. These people don’t need to be older, wiser, or traditionally successful. The task is to find people whose way of being lights you up and have the courage to tell you what you need to hear (not just what you want to hear).

During my sabbatical I decided to take a “wisdom tour” visiting people who have known me at different stages of my life, and whose clear-eyes and warm heart could help me see myself more clearly. 

I sought out people who had been where I hope to go, and who awaken a sense of possibility in me – always remembering the quote Joseph Campbell quote that I live by: “If the path is clear, you’re on someone else’s.”

There were two exchanges that stood out as inflection points.

The first was a visit with my oldest friend (now 88 years young) at his retirement community. By all measures Tom built an illustrious career – serving as a college president and law school dean at prestigious institutions. But what struck me in our exchange was a story about a professional setback that left him unmoored when he was well into his 60’s (!) But just as one door closed painfully, another opened and he entered the most generative chapter of his career. Tom reminded me that the arc of a life is long, and while we can never predict the future – looking back the dots always connect.  

At the other end of the age continuum are two of my best teachers – my sons who are six and seven. Mid-summer they gathered a dozen caterpillars who they observed through each stage of their transformation into butterflies. Together we learned that when caterpillars enter their chrysalis they don’t just twist their fat little bodies into a new, lithe shape; they completely liquefy. Could there be any better metaphor for what it takes to make a transition a true transformation?

To find our metaphorical wings requires letting go of who we were to make space for who we are becoming.        

3) Get uncomfortable

It is tempting to stay in our comfort zone, particularly if other parts of our lives are in flux. The problem is we don’t learn when we’re comfortable: we learn when we’re stretched. 

Leaving our comfort zone can feel terrifying, but it’s an essential step toward growth. 

Global Citizen Year was designed to support young people in leaving what was comfortable and familiar, to spend a full school year in their stretch zone. By living with a family and working as an apprentice to a project a world away from their original home, our Fellows shed the assumptions and identities that had defined their lives. In the process, they learned to see themselves, and the world, from an entirely new vantage. 

During my sabbatical I nudged myself to do things that disoriented me. I picked up a guitar for the first time and struggled through the awkwardness of learning basic chords. I pulled old clothes from the depths of my closet and noticed how it felt to wear things that no longer felt like “me.” Toward the end of the summer I spent a week in Sicily traveling with no agenda beyond spending time not with myself. I followed my own rhythms and preferences, observing my instincts and inclinations when no one was watching. 

Being in an unfamiliar context doesn’t require traveling halfway around the world; changing your running route or exploring a new neighborhood can be enough to heighten your awareness and freshen your attention.

The goal is to knock yourself out of what is rote and habitual in order to see your intuition, patterns, and preferences anew.          

4) Reflect rigorously

An essential part of finding power in the pause is creating practices that help us deepen our relationship with ourselves. 

One form of reflection that I’ve found profoundly impactful is a daily writing practice. I’d always been curious about “morning pages,” a practice first outlined in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. During my sabbatical I committed to writing three stream-of-consciousness pages by hand every morning when I first woke up. I would often pick up the pen and wonder whether I had anything to say. Then, three pages later, I’d realize I was just getting started clearing the debris from my mind.

Some days I followed Elizabeth Gilbert’s beautiful advice to write myself a letter from love, an exercise which helped me feel seen and accompanied through whatever I was experiencing. 

There are countless ways to reflect – whether it’s meditation, writing letters to your future self, or keeping voice memos on your phone. 

What we do every day matters more than what we do once in a while, so don't set the bar too high.  

Develop practices that are easy to commit to so you’re checking in regularly with the only one who truly holds you accountable: yourself.         

Taking the leap

The term “sabbatical” often has rarified associations; we think of tenured professors at fancy universities, or folks with big salaries and cushy benefits. And while pausing work by choice may feel unrealistic to many of us, a pause doesn’t need to be long or expensive to be powerful. 

The process I outlined can be applied in so many contexts: a day-trip to the redwoods, a week-long staycation, a month-long road trip, or a year in a foreign country. Even unplugging from technology for a few hours can create the conditions for a reboot.

Regardless of its length or format, it’s crucial to make sure your pause isn’t so packed or structured that it’s just another form of busy-ness.

The most powerful transitions have the right amount of structure but leave room for spontaneity and discovery.  

As I say to my students – and now, to myself – it takes courage to let go of one monkey bar to swing for the next. Suspended in the air – between past and future, what’s known and what’s still to be written – everything is possible.  

It’s rare that someone else tells us to pause, or grants us the space.

Ultimately, we need to give ourselves permission. Because taking time to understand who we are and who we're becoming isn’t selfish. It’s the most important thing we can do to figure out how we’ll spend our one wild and precious life, and to get to work doing it. 

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Abby Falik is an entrepreneur and the founder of Global Citizen Year. An expert on social innovation and education, she currently serves as an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Emerson Collective. 

This article originally appeared in Fast Company