how often do you feel something in your body and immediately go looking for an answer? you feel tired, so you google it. something feels off, so you ask someone what they think. you have a decision to make so you look for advice. you feel uncomfortable so you try to fix it. you feel uncertain so you reach for your phone. the pause gives you enough space to tap into the knowing. not the loud voice that says “what should i do?” not the voice of your friend, your family, the expert, the algorithm or the hundred opinions waiting for you online. your own. there is a difference between instinct and anxiety. between this doesn’t feel right and your mind creating reasons why everything is going wrong. but you don’t learn the difference by overriding yourself. you learn it by becoming familiar with yourself. that is what the pause creates. instead of googling your symptoms, as what am i feeling right now? come back into your body. start listening before you start searching. you can receive information without handing over your inner authority. you can listen to someone’s opinion and still come back to yourself. you can say “thank you. let me feel into that,” that space changes everything. because when you constantly look outside yourself, you slowly lose the relationship with the person who has to live with decision - you. the pause helps you rebuild that relationship. and this is what it means to meet your own medicine. not always finding another thing to take, another person to tell you what to do or another solution. your medicine is sitting still long enough to discover what you actually need. it could be rest. movement. saying no. asking for help. even doing nothing. wisdom isn’t always dramatic. it’s incredibly simple. i’m tired. i don’t want to go. i need space. this doesn’t feel right. i don’t want this. i’m ready to change. when you pause long enough, you trust your inner voice. the world will always have advice for you. google will always have an answer. someone will always be telling you who they think you are.

https://open.spotify.com/track/4ZcugZkw368UfCm8lD5L2B?si=CxaByS1BQF6-HXimIpWdNw&utm_source=copy-link

have you ever noticed how quickly something becomes dull once you think you know it? a person you thought you understood. a routine you once enjoyed. a place you used to love. at first there is a curiosity. you are paying attention. you are interested. then, your mind says, i know this. and that’s when the experience begins to go to sleep. not because the thing itself has become less interesting, because you stopped meeting it. you are meeting your memory of it. you are meeting the story you created about it. you are no longer looking with fresh eyes. this happens all the time. we decide we know someone before we actually do. we decide we know someone better than they know themselves. we decide we know what we want. we decide we know we are. without realizing it, we start living our own conclusions. conclusions are comfortable. but they aren’t alive. the unknown is different. the unknown requires trust. you can’t predict it, so you have to pay attention. you have to listen. you have to feel. you have to be willing to discover something you didn’t predict or expect. there is a freshness in that. this is one of the reasons living from the heart feels so different. the heart doesn’t need to have everything figured out. it doesn’t need a plan for everything. it doesn’t know exactly the next step, it can simply say, i’m here. living from what you know says, i’ve seen this before. living from the heart says let me see what is here now. the unknown can feel uncomfortable because we can’t control it, but is exactly where life is happening. you don’t need to know who you are becoming, you can let yourself not know. the moment you becoming willing to say, I wonder… something wakes up. and that something is life.

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what is holding you back? really, not the answer you give because it sounds good. not the circumstances you can point to. not what someone else did. what is keeping you from moving? we make it much more complicated than it is. we say we don’t have enough time. we don’t have enough money. we’re waiting for the right time. we’re too busy. we need to figure things out first. and those things can be genuinely true, but underneath all of that, there is something simpler. we’re scared. scared we’ll make the wrong choice. scared we’ll disappoint someone. scare we’ll fail. scared we’ll succeed. scared to leave what is familiar even when familiar isn’t making us happy. and sometimes we’re not even scared. we’re comfortable. that’s a hard one to admit. because staying where you are can feel safer than the unknown. so you keep thinking about change. you talk about it. you read about it. you plan for it. you tell yourself you’ll do it when the time is right. months go by. maybe years. this why the pause is so important. pausing is the most honest thing you can do. you stop long enough to ask: what am i really waiting for? what am i afraid of? what am i holding onto? and the biggest question: what would i do if i stopped talking myself out of what i already know? because when you stop running from the question, you’ll discover you already know the answer. what is holding you back? and more importantly… are you willing to stop holding yourself there?