Hit The Pause Button...for a Present

Thich Nhat Hanh, in the above quotation, and other practitioners of meditative arts separately, often state that each present moment is the only one truly available to us. The past has already happened, and the future has yet to arrive; it is through meditation, and other intentional "hitting of the pause button" that we fully access the present moment, recharge, refocus and connect with the realities of our lives.

We all work long hours; we expect our staff, teams, colleagues, vendors and stakeholders to work hard and produce great quality efforts while doing so. Yet how often do we demand, of ourselves, or our networks, that we take the time to get aligned with our present moments so that we might enrich the life we are actually living, i.e. that we take the time to hit the pause button?

From my own vantage point, I work in medical communications, at a specialty agency. I work in excess of 60 hours per week, every week, not taking into consideration those really crazy weeks with multiple business trips, client presentations and staffing demands. Yet I've found, as a relatively new practitioner of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), that it is much harder to carve out 10 minutes for planned meditation during each day in a 5-day workweek, i.e. to make 50 minutes over a 3600 minute week available to pause, than to just do one more task, take one more meeting, review one more slide deck, read one more journal article, etc.

However, when pausing, I find myself falling awake, able to see things with a greater sense of clarity, able to identify a more rapid path towards disciplined problem solving and embracing a feeling of lovingkindness, of natural empathy, towards my fellow colleagues and clients, from just that brief moment of pause. In reflecting on the pause of the meditative space, for the intention of just doing nothing and observing the present moment, I've accrued short-term benefits that are their own gift.

I'd invite you all to try a similar practice, whether it is calendaring "Reflection" on Outlook, planning to "Hit the Pause button" right after lunch, or building this into your daily review of pending items. Alternatively, what strategies do you already employ to get in touch with your present moment, be it MBSR, yoga, or something similar? How successful have you been in integrating these practices into the workplace?

I hope you are able to seize your present moment, hit the pause button, so to speak, and reap the rewards!