Experience the Power of a Personal Pause

Forget New Year Resolutions            

I'm standing at the top of a hill at Evergreen, looking south at the landscape stretching before me, just like the new year of 2026.

The holiday season has been hectic for a lot of people as they catch up with family and friends, asking them lots of questions and paying attention to their often complex or convoluted answers.

• How are you?

• What have you been doing?

• What are your plans?

• Why do you feel that way?

Now that it’s the first week of the New Year, many of us are scribbling down possible New Year Resolutions to make this next year more focussed, more rewarding, less difficult.  

But a better idea is to ask ourselves the questions we’ve been asking others, and to listen to our own often complex or convoluted answers.

In the online Mindful Living Summit, Dr. Jeremy Hunter gave a talk titled Mindful Leadership: Live and Work with Purpose. Dr. Hunter is the founding director of Executive Mind Leadership Institute and associate professor of practice at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management. In other words, he knows what he’s talking about.

A question he asks his students is:

What are you experiencing right now?

The people in his lecture room want to transform the way businesses operate. They want to create ethical organisations. They want to change the world.

But he asks them: 

What are you experiencing right now?

The point of this question is to bring them to a state of present-time self-awareness. If someone’s current state of mind includes emotions like anger, frustration or regret, then they’re not able to do grand things for other people. What they do will be tainted. It will lack purity of purpose. I suppose the point behind the question is: Fix yourself, and you’ll be fixing the world.

Another question he asks is:

What’s important to you right now?

Maybe it’s time we met ourselves at a favourite café or garden, sat down and asked ourselves these very interesting personal questions.

The Power in a Personal Pause

When you ask someone a question, there’s usually a pause before they answer, especially if you’ve asked it with sincerity.

So, when you ask yourself a question, ask it sincerely, and settle into that pause.

The pause allows you to tune in to your deeper well, where meaningful, honest answers dwell.

What am I experiencing right now?

What’s important to me right now?

Sit quietly with your questions and answers.

Meaningful answers come from within.

You’ll be shown the way forward because you’ve taken the time to listen to your deeper self.

What makes these questions so powerful is their emphasis on right now.

These questions aren’t about yesterday or the year stretching before us.

They’re about now.

And that’s all we’ve got to work with.

Carry these two questions with you into 2026 and ask yourself them from time to time.

• What am I experiencing right now?

• What’s important to me right now?

Experience the power of a Personal Pause.

With love, Marlane