Practicing the pause without guilt
On guilt, fear, and giving yourself permission to actually check out
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The last 1.5 weeks was vacation time and I actually managed to be OFF.
This is something to celebrate because turning my brain off doesn’t always happen. And although I considered this holiday a true moment of checking out, I have to admit that I baked in the first 1.5 days of wrapping up admin in London.
But after that, I sang and danced to Bad Bunny with friends in London, attending a wedding in Sicily, and then floated in the salty Ionian sea with my partner.
I went on this holiday for many reasons, as you can see above, but also to just daydream. I wanted to read a novel under an umbrella. I wanted to nap hearing ocean waves agains the volcanic rocks. I wanted to explore the volcanic landscapes and visit old cities like Taormina to admire artwork, old tales, and architecture.
Giving myself this intentional pause required effort.
At the same time I know breaks are necessary to creativity and productivity, it is challenging to fully check out. It’s good for you but still hard to do, like any good healthy habit.
The first reason: the checklist of things to do to not do anything.
Oh the irony. You have to send those emails. Update your teammates. Handover your tasks. Email your invoices. Put on your out of office. Perhaps delete apps from your phone so your brain or habits don’t take over. All of that to just do nothing.
It takes effort to do nothing in modern society.
It takes effort to not check emails during holiday.
It takes effort to give your brain and energy a nourishing break.
All of that just to earn the right to rest. No wonder we arrive at the holiday already depleted.
The second reason is more internal: the resistance of slowing down.
What if you miss something at work like an opportunity? What if something goes wrong, or worse it feels like you’re not needed? What happens if you actually slow down and your brain has nothing to think about or fix?
These are the types of fears that sit under the idea of slowing down.
But that’s the thing - they aren’t real. They are just fears. When you put those fears to the side for a moment and practice slowing down, you realize there’s more to gain than lose.
Last year I struggled so hard to turn my brain off on a holiday in Sardinia.
I was in a different and beautiful location, i.e. physically in vacation mode but not mentally. I had a big launch just before, which I planned myself. Meaning I squeezed the most of each day before my holiday to make to make up for the time off.
So I was already ‘making up’ the lost time instead of seeing the down time as necessary. I failed to give myself permission to have a break and slow down.
Silly me.
Underneath the resistance is guilt, which is actually just fear.
Perhaps the intertwined guilt and fear is cultural. For me, being American means we idolize ambitious, hard working people that are used to little vacation days.
Perhaps it’s societal. Working in corporate, branding, marketing worlds is work that’s always on. You can always find something more to do to get that promotion.
Or perhaps the guilt is personal, i.e. from your own ambitions or working for yourself. When you work for yourself, every day off is a day that’s unpaid. It can also be a combination of all three.
All these narratives above demonstrate that there are stories associated with pausing.
Stories about holidays, checking out, being unavailable that are woven into our memories, emotions and nervous systems. Consider these questions:
Does it feel OK in your body being unavailable?
Do you feel good about pausing your work?
Do you trust that if you miss an opportunity because you were off that another one will come along?
What helped me overcome my resistance was starting with awareness. Noticing the resistance instead of pushing through it. Sitting with it because there’s always more to your behaviors than habit; there are stories to unravel and fears to debunk.
Once you reflect, you can put turn your permission into action. Build it into the structure of the trip.
For me that looks like bookending the vacation: a wind-down day before to wrap up loose ends without rushing, and a wind-up day after to ease back in. Then deleting certain apps, setting a real out of office, even changing my WhatsApp photo to signal OOO, anything to create a boundary and remove the temptation to half-check-in.
The goal isn’t perfection but practice.
So if you are like me and have a history of struggling to check out and truly pause, take a look underneath your resistance.
You deserve the pause. You are worth the effort it takes to give it to yourself.
Pausing is needed for creativity and your wellbeing, to stay human and creative in the machine.
-M