Center Institute

After a long pause: a thought about pauses [video]

It is 6 a.m., incredibly humid, and the rooster has been crowing for at least an hour already, but the sun is just starting to come up so he will get quiet soon. I haven’t written to you (or shared a video) for quite a while, and it may seem like an odd time to resume, being that I am on vacation on Kauai right now, but I have been thinking about the pauses – the spaces, the moments – in between what we do. I teach therapists how to run a private practice. How to grow their income. How to do the work they feel driven to do. But what happens if we go, go, go and don’t take the time to pause (or pay attention to the pauses that naturally exist)?

Pauses come in many forms. This summer, one form has been reading a couple of really enjoyable novels that have nothing to do with therapy (at least in an overt way), but which really spoke to me nonetheless: The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho and The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. I’ve also been spending some time on this website: http://www.quietrev.com/ and I can’t wait to read Susan Cain’s book, Quiet. As an introvert, not being in constant go, go, go and interaction mode is critical. I have spent days on rivers, slept on just-discovered islands, found birds’ nests with perfect eggs, and caught sunrises and sunsets.

The act of recounting brings a power to those moments. In acknowledging the spaces in between, they become more imprinted on my memory, and are smooth little stones I can use to rub my fingers against and bring myself back to calm in moments when I am go, go, going. I would be remiss if I didn’t talk with you about NOT building your practice all the time, if I didn’t mention that it is not all about the doing.

As we push into August, please take a moment to think about your pauses, and the non-doing moments you wish to create in the last bits of summer (and how you will keep creating such pauses during the hustle of back-to-school season).

Talk soon,