The Importance of Pause and Thinking

As you lived in a fast-paced world, you tend to do thing fast. Therefore you need to think faster. But, does faster means better? depends, it is not always means better. But, because of this condition, you required to be able to act fast, no matter what you do. At first it seems like requirement but later it becomes a habit that wired in your mind naturally.

That is when the world move fast, you need to slow down and pause. Take your time to think.

Pausing your time gives you an advantage to observe anything that revolves around you, while you observe, you can think how you will respond to any given situation. Basically, it is about buying some time to think your next move. Just like when you play chesse, you take time to observe your opponent's move to strategise your next move, depends on your ability, you can think a couple moves ahead by predicting your opponent's strategy.

In life, that's the advantage you are looking for every time you are dealing with others.

But life it is not a chess game, no matter prepared we are, there will always be an exception, and when that exception occur, we have two choice: to respond or to react.

The chess game is the example of responding, reacting in the other hand is pretty much different. When you react, most of the time it's an impulsive act, like defense mechanism. It is not that you do not have time to think it, it is rather a muscle memory. An instant move that you make based on your pas experience.

Is it bad? not always. But the fact that you live in a fast-paced world, you can not depend on it all the time. Because you will avoid the thinking phase and just do anything based on your memories. When you do this, you will more likely to deny the context.

Then come the realization, when it comes, it is probably too late to rethink what you have done. Unfortunately, real world doesn't have undo and redo button, there's only next and pause.

By now, you have understand the difference between reacting and responding, and you also learn that pausing and thinking for awhile is as important as taking action. Simply to eliminate the possibility to act impulsively and regretting the result of it.

The method of pausing and thinking could be applied in a conversation, whatever conversation you are involve in. But it applied best in much more serious conversation, because when it comes to more casual conversation, it really your sense of humour that will bring the best out of you. Thus, you need to put your sense of humour in the reaction part of you.

That is the exception. Imagine if you need to pause between humour, you will lose your momentum.

Another warning you should understand is that you should use this pause method with consideration, it will used best when you use it to emphasize what you are talking about and taking control of your scrambled mind when you have a lot to think about and a lot to say.

So, pause and think before you make an action.