Pause…to Shift
Follow the Punctuation
I keep wondering why I self-inflicted this, why my first article had to be this one. I have agonised over writing it, adamant all along that it needed to come first, the introduction to what I hope will be many more, and that it will only get easier from here. Self-imposed limitations are a thing, at least in the moment. It is also a topic that has sat with me a long time, so here is my best attempt to pass it on.
This piece germinated in my mind three years ago, when I found myself at a defining crossroads in my entrepreneurship journey and, indirectly, my identity journey.
Someone I consider wise said to me: you need to pause to shift.
Those words did not just resonate; they sounded evident, simple. It was as though the penny had dropped, and yet I was not the one who had seen the solution.
I want you to sit with those words before you read on. And yes, follow the punctuation, because this is how I visualised them at the time.
Pause…to Shift
Three years of rumination later, this simple sentence is now my guide.
In a society where first-to-market, speed, pivoting, resilience and grit are praised, how does one really pause, and more importantly, how does that action materialise, how does it reflect on who you are, and, the more complicated thing to navigate, how others will perceive it, perceive you.
Pausing seems to carry an indulgent connotation, a borderline negative one. It is often interpreted as stopping. Or worse, as abandoning the race, the diktat that either, or all, of education, society, or your own inner voice, has put you on. Worse still, that same diktat reads a pause as rejection, as though you were pushed out rather than having stepped away.
Let Me Think About It
I come across as decisive, at times opinionated, but also someone who takes her time. When I know, I know. When I don't, I loathe being pressed for an answer. I will simply say: let me think about it. My family, friends and coworkers will surely vouch for this.
My decisiveness comes from the fact that before a single decision is taken, I have already gone down a rabbit hole of introspection, reading, listening and questioning, and I do that obsessively, and as calmly and deliberately as is humanly possible. My brain never seems to stop. Even half asleep it keeps processing data, the way I imagine a quantum computer does.
Growing up, I was the kid who moved quietly and sat there observing, in sharp contrast to a mother who, to this day, does everything with a high sense of urgency and speed.
Walking as a group, I am often the one at the back. Who wants to speed-walk in the Singapore heat? Skiing in a group, I am the last one down too, still enjoying the speed, my speed. I have a camera roll full of family photos taken from exactly that vantage point, and I wholeheartedly embrace it.
The thing is that I enjoy reflecting, observing, finding correlations and, hopefully, finally, a path. I actually thrive in this rhythm. Some might call it a form of defence mechanism; I suspect only a therapist could really decipher that one.
However, I had never fully taken the time to contemplate a pause at its full wingspan capacity.
To Linger for a Time
Definition of Pause: to stop temporarily, to linger for a time.
When I refer to pause, I do not mean the one that interrupts your day uninvited: a red light, a delayed flight, the pause that simply happens to you. I mean the one you walk into deliberately, eyes open, and decide to stay inside. I am aware that I could be speaking of a break instead, but here is the nuance.
A break is sudden, decisive, violent, final.
Definition of Break: to separate into parts with suddenness, or violence.
A break is often involuntary, not deliberately chosen.
A break is final. A pause is not.
Running on Empty
Running on empty is something I did for years while running my business, and frankly my entire life. Sleeping four or five hours a night earned me some kind of badge of honour. I never believed in this concept, but it is what every successful biography portrays, and what is sometimes needed. It did not unlock my full potential. It capped it, and it cost me the very thing I was chasing.
Think of the moments you find clarity: brushing your teeth, standing in the shower, a quiet car or plane ride with no screens, a walk. If you recognise yourself in that, you already know the power of a pause.
No Exact Steps
Like a manual car changing gears to control its speed, you shift into a lower gear before the steep hill, not after you have already stalled.
Left unattended, a pause curdles into drift: days sliding into each other, nothing asked of them, nothing demanded in return. What separates the two is direction. A pause aimed at something eventually delivers you to the shift. It is in the aiming, not the stillness itself, that the shift is found.
“It is in the aiming, not the stillness itself, that the shift is found.”
A pause, in my books, is in no way a failure. A real one, the kind you plan and sit with, is what gives you the strength, the power, to shift in whichever direction you choose.
As promised, The Missing Script is not where I will tell you the exact steps. I believe they are unique to each of us, the same way there is no single definition of happiness. That definition is not only unique to each individual, it is often tied to a specific situation.
What I will advise is to be deliberate, purposeful, in the quest for your kind of pause.
I am painfully aware that pausing is not something everyone can do, given everything life throws at you. But reframing the narrative, treating a pause as beneficial, necessary, healthy, rather than as a luxury, might carry you further toward what you actually want. Passion, I have come to believe, is not chosen, it finds you, usually after you are already good at something, never before, and certainly never from a list someone else hands you.
Sometimes it is simply knowing that it is allowed. That possibility alone can carry you.
“Sometimes it is simply knowing that it is allowed. That possibility alone can carry you.”
What Opened
As for me, that pause let me recalibrate, redesign what I wanted my life, and my future self, to look like. It opened doors I had not even contemplated knocking on before.
Among them, and certainly not the only ones: teaching, and writing. Something I hope to keep doing for a very long time. Something I did not know I could do. Something I did not know would bring me this much satisfaction. Something I did not know would make me grow, in the best way possible. Something that would go on to teach me some very peculiar life lessons, and introduce me to some of the most interesting people I know, and a few of the more colourful ones too. (It's called living a balanced life.)
If you are at a crossroad, if you are feeling stuck, I would simply invite you to test it. Sit with the pause, the shift will show itself.
Nejla
“Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act”
