A story for you.
A story shared with permission from a follower who paused and discovered more than she ever imagined. Let it put a smile on your face as it encourages and inspires you to keep exercising your PAUSE muscle…
I paused today, and it was transformative. I’ve fought a migraine for most of today, and all I wanted to do was get through pre-bedtime and bedtime with my three-year-old twins with minimal yelling and power struggles. I had told them that I had a headache and asked for their cooperation. Everything was going relatively smoothly, until…
…I came back upstairs from cleaning up the kitchen to find all of the clothes from their hamper upended on the floor of their room, and they were both pouring the water from their bottles onto the pile. I was LIVID. I forced myself to PAUSE, to remain calm, and that’s when I noticed they were both beaming. I asked, as quietly as I could, what they were doing.
My daughter’s answer: “Mama has a headache so we’re helping. We’re washing our own clothes. Now Mama doesn’t need to do laundry!”
What a smile this put on this Mama’s face and heart! What could have been a major meltdown on everyone’s part changed instead into a moment of real and meaningful connection–and a bedtime that followed smoothly. All because of her PAUSE. Transformational, indeed.
Her PAUSE allowed her to see the caring, compassionate little girls she was actively growing. It allowed her a moment of complete disbelief and then joy in a circumstance that, quite honestly, could have any one of us pushed over the edge. This mama, by her moment of pausing, deposited--in magnificent ways--into her relationship with her daughters. It deposited magnificently into their confident, capable, competent little souls.
HOW did she PAUSE?
Here is what she said:
“Pausing doesn’t come naturally to me. I literally had to slow my breathing down and clench and un-clench my hands to get my self to remain silent for a minute. I’m a work in progress for sure!”
And I just had to reply…for we are ALL a “work in progress!”
Here is what I told her:
“You’ve just discovered’ a way to create a PAUSE that works for you–THIS is fantastic. Clenching and un-clenching your hands–a physical action that had you able to stop and calm down. And keep in mind, there is no end goal…we are always a work in progress 
. Now you have a way that works that you can exercise again and again…and I encourage you to keep on noticing other ways you already are growing that pause muscle…other ways you have been successful at focusing first on yourself and finding that calm within in.”
A “simple” PAUSE can be and often is transformational. In little and then in quite tremendous and meaningful ways.
THIS can be your story. Let it be your story.
Alice
Author and Parent Coach
©2018 Alice Hanscam