The After Pause?
I recently wrote about an event - The Sustainability Social: Coaching for Climate Change – that took place on 7th November in Winchester. We began that event with a moment of pause designed to bring everyone into the room and start the cognitive process. It was an evening of spirited discussion and, as often happens with this type of gathering, you leave feeling upbeat and inspired. But what can you do to make the most of what you’ve learned after such an experience? I would suggest the ‘After Pause’ as a valuable technique to ensure that moments like these are not wasted.
Why pause again?
The idea of an After Pause is to bring that same strength and clarity to a moment in which your mind might be particularly full. Even if it is brimming with positive memories and good ideas it can still feel like a struggle to put these into an order where they can be useful. Pausing for a few moments after an important event or experience provides space for consideration and allows ideas to start settling. What can be done with what has been learned and where might these insights be useful? Sit and pause for several minutes and you’ll soon see.
Pausing to mark an ending – any ending
Although pausing is still a revelation to many, we are much more open to it as something that happens ‘at the start’ of a process than at the end. For example, if you watch an athletics sprint race we might be used to noticing a moment of pause before the starting gun goes off and the athletes are out of the blocks. However, we probably wouldn’t even consider whether the athlete stops after the race to digest and process what happened and how they might learn from it. In the context of real life there is incredible value in pausing at endings, whether that’s after a race, a meeting, an argument or the passing of a period of time. It not only helps to identify insights that will be important going forward but to prepare for something new.
With a new year – and a new decade – fast approaching, I am now offering coaching built around this idea of an After Pause and how it might serve to prepare us better for what’s coming. Especially given events on the horizon next year it’s something that could be invaluable to all, helping to identify solutions, a path ahead and the best way to get what you want from the next 10 years. With this in mind, I’ll be looking more at the idea of ‘2020 Vision’ soon.