Pause – Don’t just do it!

“Go for it”, “just do it”, “do before you think”

Heard of the above phrases? Did you follow?

I am here to tell you, request you, and urge you – to pause! And not always fall for such phrases.

Why do I say that? Am I demoralising you? Don’t I want you to move ahead? Let’s see!

This world is filled with so many social media pages, news channels, entertainment channels, etc, bombarding you with numerous statements, incidents and stories every minute. So many books, videos, images, etc. is pouncing on all of us every moment asking us to forget thinking and just react to an incident. Or time and again change the way we think.

This age of Twitter and Whatsapp where anything one sees or hears anywhere in the world, within a few minutes, reaches every corner of the globe; along with their personal interpretation of those events. It’s so easy to be moved by such overwhelming number of talks around us.

But think about it. If you start acting on every word people say or everything you see you would probably waste your enormous energy in so many futile activities. Firstly, there are huge chances that such news would not be true. And secondly, many such news or incidents might not be something you would like to even think about, let go take action on it. Thus, if you give your focus to those you might waste enormous personal resources, and probably get distracted from what you really want to do.

Therefore, to be able to best use your potential you must pause and choose – Where will your focus go!

If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.

If you don’t pause to think and choose it’s easy to fall for anything. This would make it difficult – almost impossible – to move ahead and do or think about other things that really matter to you. Every individual is different and we all might not be interested in everything happening around us – not because we are insensitive – but probably because we have other graver concerns driving us. And where we can be far more productive.

I recently watched a video clip of the world-famous, award winning American singer, songwriter and philanthropist Lady Gaga that made perfect sense. She was talking about herself and how she had to actually start making choices and turn down offers she didn’t really want to go for. She had become a money making machine, and, although she was earning millions she had been unable to enjoy any of those. She had started to feel pressurised to take up every assignment and in fact, psychologically became very weak. Later, she realised that she doesn’t want to do everything and so began to make choices. This made her more focused on important tasks and therefore brought more fulfilling results.

Oftentimes we seek external validation to ‘feel good’. And so don’t act as per our own wishes and desires but that of the outside world. This, in turn, sure enables others to accept us, and might even give momentary happiness to us. However, it might also handicap our ability to accept ourselves.

So if you are trying to make others happy at your own cost how many people’s happiness is in your control? One? A score? A few thousands? Speaker and author, Dr. Sean Stephenson, in one of his talks, says that we all need love – not from anyone else – but from our own selves. And that we got to love ourselves even when the whole world doesn’t.

As shared in one of my previous articles too, there will always be people unhappy with you or putting forward negative comments about your action. However, you can be strong only when you stand, act and speak for your personal satisfaction and joy. And for that you must sometimes – pause!