The healing powers of pausing
Making room for rest and reflection in a busy, noisy world
This is the second part in my “healing powers” series. You can read the first piece, “The healing powers of poetry,” here.
I’ve never been good at sitting still. Even when I’m physically stationary, my mind often buzzes at a million miles per hour — conjuring up potential scenarios and overanalyzing past conversations.
The flip side of this, though, is that I’ve always approached life intensely. I like to get things done, try new things, meet new people. I’m a planner, an organizer, a compulsive list maker (don’t even ask how many I currently have…). However, this go-go-go mentality frequently results in burnout and feelings of disconnection from myself.
Before yoga classes, it’s common for instructors to guide the group in setting an intention. This can be a word, an affirmation, or any sort of energy you hope to hold with you as you move through the poses.
Inspired by this, I decided to set an intention at the beginning of July: pause.
Alongside the restlessness, I’ve also been a very impulsive person — making decisions before carefully weighing the options, and sometimes harboring regret afterwards. At the most observable level, I’ve seen this impulsivity manifest in my screen habits. Particularly, in turning to my phone — excessively checking certain apps — as a way to distract myself or self-soothe, and then feeling inadequate or falling into the FOMO trap.
I also fell back into the tendency to overachieve, fueled by the aforementioned FOMO trap. A desire to do all the things, be in all the places.
Life started feeling noisier, and the sense of safety and stability I’d hoped to deepen seemed more and more elusive. I had to stop and ask myself, “How am I getting in my own way? What am I doing — or not doing — that’s holding me back from living from a place of empowerment and equanimity?”
Making a Case for Boredom
Last month, I read
’s Substack piece about what she brilliantly calls a “Boring Girl Summer.” She writes about not having any major plans for this season, and how she previously “would have stressed about this. Attempting to manipulate the situation by scheduling more and spending extra money to ‘get away’ for the weekends.”Lauren then says, “the joys and luxuries I was looking for will be found in the simplicity and quiet moments of my unplanned summer.” After reading this, I realized her words encapsulated my own feelings perfectly.
As much as I love traveling and going on adventures, I realized last year that it had become a maladaptive coping mechanism for me. A way to escape deeper issues I’ve been dealing with, and prove that I lived a “cool” life.
This is the first summer in over a decade (COVID-19 pandemic not counting) where my plans have been relatively minimal. Aside from a few wedding-related events, I don’t have any major commitments. And I’m relieved. I feel like I’m finally getting the pause I’ve been wanting — needing — to reflect on life and live in a way that’s in alignment with my values.
I’m also welcoming boredom, and seeing it as a space for opportunity versus another void to be filled. In these unstructured moments, creative ideas and unexpected insights pop up. I’m forced to take action, whether that’s completing a task I’ve been putting off or reaching out to someone I haven’t spoken to in a while.
The park has been one of my favorite places to intentionally “be bored.” I’ve been going whenever the weather allows (it’s been a HOT summer here in Sacramento), book and lawn chair in hand, scouting out a spot under a shaded tree. I’ll sit and stare up at the sky for several minutes, and these moments mesmerize me.
On a recent excursion, I gazed up at a tree’s leaves, which emanated white noise as they flapped against each other in the wind. My mind went back to high school science lessons. Each leaf houses its own world, a photosynthesizing organism that lives according to the rhythms of the sun and seasons. In the distance, I heard dogs and birds calling back to one another, with the subtle buzz of bugs humming away nearby.
It amazed me how heightened my senses felt. Nothing else mattered at that time. My worries momentarily faded into insignificance, laughable in their trivialities when there was an entire ecosystem performing miracles beyond the perceptions of the naked eye.
Several epiphanies (park-piphanies?) arise in these “boredom sessions,” particularly in the way I want my life to look moving forward. When I tune out the rest of the world, it’s astounding — and sometimes terrifying — to take stock of what’s happening in my inner one.
Reflecting on Bigger Life Changes
My career journey has by no means been linear, but it’s been deeply fulfilling (I spoke to
about it on her podcast recently). I’ve had the privilege of doing what I love within the creative and helping professions. I’ve learned a lot, met wonderful people, and felt like I’ve been able to make a meaningful impact.However, I’ve realized how much I’ve self-sacrificed for the sake of work. Even in off hours, I’ve found myself continuing to think about projects and never fully pull out of “on” mode.
When I’ve taken the time to pause, I continue to ask myself, “Why have I always given 150% if it’s only made me more stressed, sick, and resentful?”
After completing The Artist’s Way earlier this year — an eye-opening creative recovery program — I’ve thought more about the role I want work to play in my life. Throughout my 20s, my identity became deeply enmeshed in my career. In hindsight, this wasn’t healthy — I put up with insanely stressful conditions because, hey, I was doing brag-worthy shit.
I’ve used work as a way to prove myself, believing that a flashy byline or endless amounts of praise could define me as a person. As I’ve begun operating from an “I am enough” mentality, I’ve realized that no amount of hustling, accolade accumulation, or external signs of success will take this inherent fact away.
Having spent so much of this year reconnecting with meaningful hobbies and nurturing current/new relationships, I don’t ever want to go back to a way of living where I’d have to sacrifice that. It’s cliché, but some lessons you just learn through your own missteps: nothing is more valuable than having time and energy for what you love.
I want to look back in 20, 30, 40 years and be able to say that I had a strong sense of community, that I took care of myself, that I remained curious to the world around me. And all of that is finally starting to feel true.
Pause and Be Present
I keep coming back to a specific thought: what I often need the most, I also tend to resist the most. I’ve always considered myself a fairly intuitive person, but I’ve frequently ignored my inner voice to keep up with external expectations.
I’ve known for a while now that I want a slower, simpler, stabler life, yet I’ve always found myself swept up in the tides of constant forward motion. In chasing high highs, and falling into low lows.
As I’m finally accepting what my needs are — and with (less) judgment — I see how much ease and possibility there is to be found here. I’m turning the FOMO into JOMO — a joy in missing out — and remembering that my life is my own.
Not everyone will agree or approve of how I live it. But as long as I’m healthy and content, that’s all that matters. And the same goes for each and every one of you.
Noise is everywhere. Digital noise. Cluttered thoughts. Noise noise — crying children, construction, the myriad sounds of city life. Silence and unstructured time are so unfamiliar to so many of us that we seldom know what to do with it when it arrives. So, we often fill it with more noise.
The more I force myself to unplug, I realize that the answers often await us in the silence we seek to escape. When we tune out the noise outside (especially in the digital domain), solutions to seemingly unsolvable dilemmas become clear. We’re able to connect with the inner wisdom that’s always been there, the source of knowing that can tell us what we hope to know.
So, find ways to pause throughout the day. Take a few breaths. Stare outside the window. Read or journal. Most things we believe are urgent really aren’t. The world can wait, and it’ll keep spinning regardless of what we choose to do — or not do.
Until next time,
Brina
💭 Reflection
Where do you go — or what do you do — when you need to pause? What’s been feeling extra “noisy” for you lately?
🎨 Creativity Corner
A calming video: The Cottage Fairy has such a soothing and grounding YouTube channel. I really resonated with this vlog, “on living a ‘boring life’ - accepting a gentle daily existence”
A fun article: “80 Fun & Calming Things To Do Alone, Outside Or At Home” (this mindbodygreen listicle provides several creative suggestions for activities to do solo)
A quote to sit with: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” — Anaïs Nin
Such a lovely article. Thank you Brina, xx