Power of The Pause
- June 19, 2020
When did you last post on social media, or send an email, and within minutes regret it?
Technology has provided us with tools that give us the ability to send messages instantly to anyone in the world. It’s fantastic…. or is it?
Our comments can be forwarded, screenshot, or shared with many others. You can delete social media comments but sometimes it is too late. Once you have sent an email there is no undoing it.
A heat of the moment email or social media post can do significant damage to your friendships, your work life or even your family. The power of the ‘pause’ is so significant in our online lives today, as poor judgement can have a long term impact.
If only you had paused.
When did you last jump into a conversation before the speaker had finished?
When you think of your best friend, what do you value in them? As humans, many of us prefer to speak than to listen, yet being a listener and taking that golden moment of silence when someone is speaking to you is a true indication you are genuine. One of the most important skills of listening is simply to pause before replying, taking time to comprehend and understand, rather than jumping in with the first thing that comes to mind. Take three to five seconds to pause quietly and wait.
All excellent listeners are masters of the pause, and this will enable you to respond thoughtfully rather than saying something that you later regret.
If only you had paused!
Why is pausing so important in our lives?
We encourage our girls to speak up for themselves and to have an opinion, but the need to be reflective and to pause is a skill, an art form that indicates great strength of character. In writing, we have punctuation; in speaking, we have the magic pause. Giving our emotions time to settle so that we respond rather than react is part of having emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is one of the personal attributes in our Connecting Learning to Life strategy.
Pauses can also be an incredibly powerful tool if we are speaking to an audience, yet they are often underutilised.
The word ruminate means to “chew things over”. As parents, one of the greatest skills we can give our children is to teach them to ruminate or to think things over, to pause, particularly when emotions are running high.
When we pause, not only do we show strength but also compassion, understanding, and empathy for those around us.
We can all benefit from the power of……………. the pause!
- Featured
Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.