The Power of the Pause

My favorite blog is Brazen Careerist, written by Penelope Trunk. The blog's subtitle is "Advice at the Intersection of Work and Life" and most of Penelope's posts can be tied back to work and life. But that's not why I read her blog. I read it because Penelope is irresistably irreverent. She is bold - yes, brazen - and she says exactly what she means, whether it will draw in rancid snares or not. And it does. I read it for those comments, too.

Recently (sort of), she wrote a blog titled, "Why You Have More Trouble With Silence Than With Chatter" that reminded me of the extraordinary power of silence. Not one to partake nearly enough, I am particularly aware when I am being silent. It's like my mind is getting a massage. It's like I've been given a free coffee at my favorite coffee house. It's like vacation in the depths of my flurried brain. It's giddy. Makes me wonder why I don't choose silence more.

The struggle is, silence is hard for many of us. (It's not hard for my husband, for the record.) It's hard for us because acitivty is the cornerstone of our culture. Action is productivity, if we're not looking too closely. Of course, productivity does require action. But meaningful action almost always requires some amount of silence in the process. If we don't check in... if we don't wait and see... if we don't listen to ourselves or others, particularly to our and their silences, there's a good chance we will take wrongful action.

So today, I am embracing the pause. I promise myself some silence, especially in my head. Because I can be silent outwardly relatively easily (okay, maybe not easily - but I can do it with some focused intention or when I am totally exhausted) but silencing the continuous chatter in my mind is incredibly difficult. My top goal today is to find five minutes of total silence. Wish me luck.

Landing

This blog is something of a landing pad for me. I've always believed that the real impact and benefit in communicating comes in the landing. Knowing that my message has been received, tossed around, contemplated, celebrated... abhorred, adored... whatever, has always been a huge piece of the value.

It's why I don't journal much. Journaling, for me, feels incomplete. It feels partially processed. That's not to say - at all- that journaling is not valuable. I know quite a few people who journal faithfully and find immense pleasure and positive growth from the experience. After all, intrapersonal communication is so important and meaningful in life satisfaction.

And yet, it just doesn't work for me to journal to just myself. This is where you come in, whoever you all turn out to be. This is my invitation into a conversation, hopefully right here on this blog. But if it need be, your end can be done privately and in your own life. Because I do believe in energetic effect. That said, please comment when you are inspired. While the landing is a huge deal to me, there is NOTHING as valuable to me as committed, engaged exchange of ideas.

The mission of this blog is to explore communication in everyday life. The best part about that is that virtually everything communicates! So, who knows what will arrive on this landing pad?! And if something strikes you, send it my way via michelle [at!] eloquencecommunication [*dot] com (all that strange stuff in my email address info is so that crazy spam-seeking pirates don't steal my email address and bombard me with emails). Assuming it inspires me, too, I'll blog about it and we can carry on the conversation here. In any case, thanks for showing up and providing me a landing pad.