Practical Practices

Pause, Process, and Proceed

“You always have options. Think before you act.” Karen Fraiberg

Simply put, your thoughts lead to your emotions, and your emotions produce your actions and responses to a particular set of circumstances. Considering this process, it is clear that controlling your thoughts is directly aligned with the quality of your life. My focus as a coach is to help you to better understand your thoughts, perceptions, and ultimately, to assist you with adapting a mindset that better serves you and your goals moving forwards.

When you encounter a situation, your unconscious brain quickly evaluates what is going on, and crunches a lot of data, to produce a response aimed at ultimately keeping you safe, both emotionally and physically, or at least that is its intention. The problem is, the resulting thoughts, emotions, and actions are built upon your prior experiences, your core beliefs, and your own personal understanding of reality, which is often irrational in nature, and counterproductive to the situation at hand. Think about something that triggers a quick, seemingly uncontrollable response out of you. These triggers are rooted in your prior experiences, and the consequent belief systems you developed throughout your life and ultimately determine how you perceive an event. For example, you find yourself in your first debate with your new partner, and he or she makes a statement that triggers an emotional response based off of something you experienced from your last relationship, and you say and respond in a way that you quickly regret.

Let’s break down a few key points from this situation, with the goal of mitigating this response in the future. For starters, you are allowing what occurred in your previous relationship, to impact your current one, which is both unfortunate and avoidable. Any failure, including a previous relationship, has countless lessons for you to take with you if you choose to see it that way. We all fail and make mistakes, that is part of being human, but if you make the same mistakes over and over or refuse to learn your lesson, that represents a lack of accountability and self awareness on your part, which will ultimately hold you back from living your best life.

I want you to utilize the pause, process, and proceed or “Triple P” technique. Understand that your initial interpretation of a situation, the first thought that comes to your mind, may be misguided, so I advise you to simply pause for 3 seconds before you say or do anything. Training yourself to pause, even for a few seconds, allows you time to process and prevent words and actions you may regret. It also allows you time to think, and evaluate what is going on more clearly and block a potentially harmful, irrational response. At the same time, you have now established a bit of control over the situation, and the resulting conversation, or interaction should go more smoothly. During the process phase, I want you to honestly think about your perspective, and identify if it is actually based on facts, or present evidence, and try to see things from the other person or another perspective in general. The “put yourself in others shoes” saying, rings true here.

There are countless things that are out of your control, however, you always have control over the words that leave your mouth, so choose them wisely. Words carry meaning, and can not be taken back once spoken. Pausing and processing before you proceed, are the foundations of self-control. Once you have allowed for time to evaluate a situation for what it really is, you can proceed with confidence and control, which can only serve you well moving forwards. If you must walk away from a situation to process, than do so. If you look at some of the great intellectuals of the past and present, you will find they often pause before they speak, and value quality over quantity in terms of what is spoken.

“Speak only if it improves upon the silence.” Mahatma Ghandi

When possible, never speak or act when you are emotional, instead, give yourself time to better understand your circumstances. The “Triple P” technique is simple, but powerful and easy to implement with a little practice. I hope you enjoyed this post, and as always, take care, God bless, and be well.

Written By: Manwithaplan aka Jeffrey Kalinoski