Pause Before Response - Tell Your Anxious Brain to Take a Seat
Productivity and being responsive to people who need you are both good things.
Operating on overdrive to do all things at all times is not a good thing. Why? Because no one can make excellent decisions in a millisecond.
You may have guessed already, but my natural inclination is the latter.
I am the metaphorical lady with octopus arms standing in her living room vacuuming with one hand, checking (and responding) to emails in another hand, plucking my eyebrows with a third hand, Googling “How to make the world’s most delicious manicotti” in the fourth, texting my mom back with the fifth, jotting a few quick thoughts down in my journal with the sixth, drinking the recommended daily amount of water with the seventh, and scrolling aimlessly through memes of babies in snowsuits with the eighth hand.
Honestly, this image is unrealistic. I am doing way more than eight things at any given moment. Yay, anxiety!
Anyway, you get the picture. Do you often feel spread thin in this way? Are you like me and (this is gonna hurt so get a bandaid to prepare for the impending owie) … do you do this to yourself?
I know that I need to slow down, to do one thing at a time and do it well. I have experienced many a consequence from my chaotic multitasking and yet there’s no denying that my natural tendency is to operate at 110 miles an hour.
So I’m here today to offer an alternative, a step off the runaway train and onto the platform to enjoy a nice iced tea while you sit on the bench and listen to the birds chirp above.
You can pause before you respond.
To your boss, your mom, your social media messages, and even that voice in your head that’s telling you things like, “Well we are already going to the basement to grab more dish soap, why don’t we also start a load of laundry while we’re down here?”
Your brain can only learn to pause if you train it to pause.
I do not want the majority of my life to be lived in a dust cloud of hastily done things just because I “had the time” to do “this one thing just real quick” on a loop forever.
I want slow conversations, with lots of depth and no tabs open in my brain that tell me to call the dentist back real quick to confirm my upcoming appointment because my friend went to the bathroom and I have 3 whole minutes to sneak in a task.
I want to be asked a question at work and respond with “That’s a great question, let me take some time to look into it and get back to you later today.” Instead of making an immediate suggestion like, “Hm how about we (do the first thing that came into my head),” then 20 minutes later I’m emailing my coworker back with an idea I hadn’t thought of in the millisecond between when she asked me a question and I responded.
By doing everything right immediately now, I make more work for myself over the long term.
More 10-minute check-ins with a friend because our last 10-minute check-in I forgot to ask about that one thing.
More emails to follow up with more information I’ve thought of and learned after I gave my brain a chance to think and learn.
More downtime I need to recover from the fast-moving energy depleting lifestyle of doing-it-all-now-just-because.
In Theory, Sure. But How Do I Pause in Real Life?
If you have an anxious brain and body like I do, try setting an intention for the day when you wake up in the morning to help stave off the do-it-all-right-now thoughts. Something like “Presence” or “Calm” or “Slow.”
Then as you feel yourself slowly stepping on the gas to accomplish all the things as fast as you can and responding to fake-urgent thoughts, take a breath and recall your intention.
“Slow. Today we’re living slow. Sitting in the chair at our desk slowly and not slamming our butts into the chair and throwing our laptop open to type furiously at warp speed until our next meeting. (I wonder why I have migraines?) Slow.”
For me, overdrive has a function.
Actually, many functions. It is a distraction from my feelings, because I have no time to feel them. Then when I do have time to feel them, I won’t be able to feel bad and wallow as much because I am moving forward, as evidenced by the 45 tasks I checked off my to-do list today…obviously.
I also want to be liked, and that plain just pains me to type on this page. To equate being worthy of love based on how much you do is built on my upbringing. I needed to be liked, because to be liked was to be understood, to have people in your corner, and I needed people in my corner, desperately, to help me battle a problem I couldn’t describe - a narcissistic parent.
Maybe you run at top speed because you feel unseen and are trying to prove yourself in some way, to yourself or someone else.
Maybe you feel like if you don’t do X, then no one else will. But does X need doing?
Maybe you like to do a million things at once and you’re one of those people that neuroscientists don’t believe exists who can do multiple things at once without the things losing integrity from your split attention (I pretend this is me - it’s not).
Whatever is driving you to move through life in this way, know that you can pause at any moment and choose something else.
You can move slowly and honor your human limits. You can embody a sense of calm and trust that the thing will get done, and that maybe some of the things don’t need doing at all.
Be soft, walk through life as intentionally as you can, and say no to the sprint.
Yours in effortful slow,
Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia
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