The purposeful pause is one of the simplest but one of the most powerful practices that we covered on the program.
It may have slipped past you because it's really so straightforward and seems so inconsequential even though we made a big deal of it by integrating it the way we did into the program.
This is a wonderful way of bringing attention to your present moment into your everyday life by employing this simple technique.
It's a great thing for using when you feel yourself under pressure,
When you feel stress or strain,
When you feel like,
Oh boy,
I can't think my head's about to explode,
Or when you just simply want to chill a little bit.
And it is no more complicated than simply repeating your seat and feet process along with the six breaths.
So you start with either the six breaths or the seat and feet and you can use it to reestablish presence and focus to calm yourself before something like a presentation,
A critical call,
A tough meeting.
So if you're feeling a bit wound up and you're about to meet that important client or you're about to meet the boss,
It can be a great way to calm yourself down.
And it's a wonderful way of punctuating your day so that when you finish a task and you think,
What am I going to work on next,
That's the time just to take that one minute for the purposeful pause.
And Dan Harris,
The author of 10% Happier,
Which I recommend you read,
It's a great laugh but a very meaningful book at the same time.
He says exactly that,
That,
You know,
Grab those few moments in between tasks to boost the muscle of focus.
And as I say,
It's as simple as doing your seat and feet.
In fact,
As you're listening to this,
Why don't you just take a minute?
I'll time a minute and just bring attention to your seat and your feet,
Whether you're standing or you're sitting or whatever,
And do those breaths at the same time.
And remember,
The general approach is to make the out breath longer,
As much as two times longer than the in breath without straining yourself.
So take a minute and just notice how easy it is to do this purposeful pause.
And when you do that three or four times a day,
As we did on the program,
You recall what we did.
We had somebody ring the bell at a random time throughout each of the hours.
And then when that bell was rung,
You stopped and you did your purposeful pause.
Well,
You can't have somebody walking around behind you with a bell ringing it for you.
So here are two handy apps that you can get your hands on.
The one on the right hand side is from the potential project.
And I know it's available on Apple and it's available for Android.
It has a lot of off the shelf guided meditations and it has a practice log and so on.
What it has that I really like is the random reminder bell and it will ring.
You can set the frequencies,
Let's say,
To once per hour and randomly it'll ring.
And the aim really is just to stop whatever you're doing and just bring attention to your seat and feet.
Do your six breaths.
And if it's not practical to stop for that amount of time,
Well then just stop a beat and just notice.
And that can ring in your pocket that you could be talking to somebody and you just notice,
Oh,
Where am I?
What am I thinking?
What's going on in my mind?
And that is enough a few times a day to build the muscle presence and attention.
The second app,
Which is extremely useful and you really should get into it before you get into too far into this program,
Is the free Inside Center Meditation app,
Which again is available on Android and Apple.
And it has a wonderful timer that's very,
Very easy to use.
You can save your stacks in there if you want to.
It'll give you multiple bells in any one session to remind you to transition from one practice to another if that's something you're doing.
And it also keeps a record of your practice over time.
One of the things that appeals to some people about this app as well is that it's online.
So you can actually see how many of the community,
And there are millions of them who use this application at any period in time,
And how many were meditating with you.
So two very,
Very useful apps.
So what I suggest is for sure,
Get the potential project app and set up that random bell,
Perhaps every hour,
Every two hours,
And just get the habit of that purposeful pause.
You'll notice a major difference.
