There’s power in the pause

Lesson #11 of 40

As I approach 40, I’m embarking on a year-long project to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in four decades of life. This is lesson #11. You can read the full series here.

May all your pauses be so sweet. (Getty Images)

I’m wary of one-size-fits-all advice. No matter how well-meaning or well-considered the suggestion might be, it doesn’t always work. Financial advice is tricky because people have distinct challenges and relationships with money. Parenting advice is tough because children are unique, as are the people who raise them. Bereavement advice is difficult because we all grieve differently. A strategy that works for me — with my various intersecting privileges, traumas, support systems, and preferences — may or may not work for you.

Between writing this newsletter, mentoring journalists, and serving on advisory boards, I’m often tasked with giving advice. In my experience, I find I tend to dole out various suggestions with plenty of caveats: take this with a grain of salt; your mileage may vary; remember: what works for one person may not work for another.

That’s why writing this series of lessons has been challenging. I don’t want to promote advice that may inadvertently make someone feel bad or lead them astray. You’ll notice me using words like rarely or some — not exactly SEO-proven tactics, but flexible statements I can stand behind. I’m careful to avoid overly prescriptive or narrow takeaways. At times, I’m certain I fall short. For the most part, though, I feel good about how I’ve approached this project.

And yet, I love advice! There’s a reason I’m devoting so much effort to these lessons — the same reason I’ve practically memorized the wisdom in Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things. I appreciate the wisdom of others and regularly seek it out, especially in times when I feel particularly lost or unmoored. I want someone else to tell me exactly what to do. I want a cheat sheet to avoid all the pitfalls and missteps lurking ahead.

When my husband Jamie died, I was particularly desperate for advice. I didn’t know how to navigate all the paperwork and bureaucracy that comes with death. I didn’t know how to make coffee the way Jamie made it or do the thousand other things he handled around the house. I didn’t know how to get through each day.

As a 31-year-old widow, finding this advice was challenging. I didn’t have any friends, colleagues, or acquaintances who had experienced a similar loss at such a young age. I searched for books (somewhat helpful), online support groups (both helpful and upsetting), and checklists to follow (nonexistent).

The hyper-specific wisdom I wanted was few and far between, with one exception. In the days and weeks following Jamie’s death, I received tons of condolences, plenty of statements like “I don’t know what to say,” and one repeated piece of advice: Don’t make any big decisions in the first year.

Loved ones who had suffered their own losses told me this. The woman leading my grief support group advised the same. Even a stranger in the supermarket, overhearing my conversation with a friend, shared this tidbit.

This advice felt suspicious to me. Why a year? What if a decision needed to be made more quickly than that? How could any of these people know enough about me to make that call? Truth be told, the guidance made me mad too. I’d lost so much in the instant that Jamie died. The idea of also losing the ability to make decisions on my own terms seemed cruel.

Still, skepticism and anger be damned, I did my best to follow this rule. I was so lost and so desperate for guidance that I latched onto the one consistent recommendation I received.

It was good advice, as it turns out. There was a reason people passed it along! This recommendation stopped me from selling my home and buying a wildly painted house just down the street — something, in a fit of panic about six months in, I was convinced would solve my problems. It stopped me from packing up my belongings and moving to a new city for someone I barely knew — something I was sure would make me happy during one of my lowest points, at the nine-month mark. It stopped me from quitting my job with no plan in place — something I was desperate to do from about day one. 

This advice — to avoid making decisions in moments when you’re overly sad, angry, or stressed — isn’t just well-worn wisdom. It’s rooted in science. Stress profoundly impacts our cognitive functions and decision-making abilities. A 2012 study found that participants under stress were significantly less accurate in their professional judgments than their unstressed counterparts. In 2015, researchers found that increasing levels of stress accelerate cognitive decline for older adults. Eighteen months into the pandemic, an undoubtedly stressful time, more than a third of Americans said it was more difficult to make daily and major life decisions.

Stress impairs our ability to think clearly, process information effectively, and make sound choices. When we are overwhelmed with emotions, we divert our cognitive resources towards managing those feelings — leaving us less capable of making rational decisions.

This is why so many people told me to wait to make any big moves. In my deepest grief, I was barely capable of getting out of bed, much less deciding whether or not to further upend my life. As prescriptive as the advice to give myself a year might have been, it was sound judgment — losing a spouse is ranked as one of life’s most stressful experiences.

Taking a pause gives us time for our emotions to settle. By stepping back from our anger, sadness, and various stressors, we can better process those feelings and gain clarity about our present situation. Pausing also provides us an opportunity to change our current habits. As tempting as it might be to deploy the nuclear option — to quit, move, divorce, or burn it to the ground — we can instead focus our sights on the immediate things we can control. Amid deep breaths and small steps, we can find the clarity we’re looking for.

Ten months after Jamie died — not a year, but close — I gave notice that I would be leaving my job. I made plans to take the next year off work and experiment with freelancing. I decided to spend the holidays at a cabin solo. Finally, I was able to make some big decisions. And it felt good.

Photo courtesy Getty Images

A few months after quitting my job, I built a website that offered free mentoring sessions for women and nonbinary journalists. In the six years since creating Digital Women Leaders, I’ve connected with countless journalists who are at breaking points in their careers. They are exhausted from working in toxic workplaces, trying to please impossible bosses, and filling roles that in no way align with their job descriptions. They feel bitter and discouraged. They are looking for a mix of advice and permission: Should I quit my job?

Almost always, my answer is the same. I tell them to wait. I often suggest pausing for six months. I become that well-meaning stranger in the supermarket, offering my best advice.

During these conversations, I advise my frustrated mentees to pick a date on the calendar and, on that day, check in with themselves to see if they're still as unhappy in their job as they are at the current moment. Up until that date, I encourage them to focus on things they can control. I recommend things like learning a new work skill or finally setting up coffee with that colleague they admire. Together, we brainstorm ways they could achieve better work/life balance. Ultimately, this approach helps these journalists regain a sense of control and allows them to make more informed, less reactive decisions at the end of the six months, or however long they decide to pause.

No matter which way they land, they're generally in a better spot.

I understand the temptation to make a big decision in a fit of anger, fear, or frustration. Last month, a period of major ups and downs, I felt tempted more than once to choose the nuclear option. Wouldn’t that feel satisfying?

Then I remember the wisdom lovingly passed along from one supermarket stranger to another: There’s power in the pause. As invigorating as it might seem to make a major choice in a heated moment, it can be even more empowering to give yourself room to reflect.

You don’t have to make a decision right now. You can pinpoint a date in the future to determine what to do — whether that’s one year, month, or hour away. You can use the time between then and now to center yourself. To take deep breaths. To take a walk. To take yourself out on a well-deserved date. To take up that new sport you’ve always been meaning to try. 

Six months isn’t a magic amount of time. Nor was my first year of widowhood. In some cases, you won’t have the luxury of pausing for long. There will be some situations when you need to make a decision within the next month or by the end of the week.

I can’t tell you exactly how much time to take, or which direction to go. But I can offer a bit of wisdom, the same wisdom that was passed along to me. We all have permission to pause and figure out the right choice for ourselves — and there’s a lot of power in that.

xoxo
KHG