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An awkward, brave, and kind plan to rest and create some silence in the noise. From Brené “B
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An awkward, brave, and kind plan to rest and create some silence in the noise. From Brené âBetween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.â âViktor Frankl If you wrote this quote as a formula, it might look like this: S( )R. I didnât grow up with any understanding or even awareness of this space. I grew up with the R starting before the S was even done. Something happened, someone did or said something, and Iâd come out swinging or fearing or worrying or apologizing. No space. No choosing a response. Hell, not even the parentheses. Just responding in a way that led to more stacked stimuli and responses. There was very little growth and very little freedom. The very first time I became aware of the potential for that space was when I got sober. My sobriety birthday is May 12âIâll have 26 years this year. For me, the gift and superpower of sobriety is being able to pry open that space. Over the years, the parentheses between stimulus and response slowly came into focus. It looked a little like this: S()R. Sobriety gave me the strength and focus to pry open the parentheses just enough to stick my foot in. While I wasnât actually wrestling with parentheses, I was emotionally wrestling to create space. I try to keep that space wedged open with my sobriety, sleep, prayer, working out, practicing curiosity, therapy, and intentional breathingâto name a few. This effort to create space is probably why our team lovingly refers to our podcasts as pause-casts. I stop now and take a breath before I ask or answer a question. Itâs awkward, but itâs life-giving. They call it the sacred pause in Buddhism, and it is core to my well-being. The quote above has become the source code for my life. The past couple of years have been hardâpersonally and professionallyâand Iâve found that space closing in on itself again. My responses have started sliding too close to the stimuli. Iâm tired, and the pause is suffering. I canât let that happen to me or to our organization. We need breath and space. To reinvest in that space, Iâve decided to take a sabbatical this summer. Iâve never done it before, and just the thought of taking off 14 weeks is anxiety-producing for someone who can struggle to take a week off. And, to make sure we have a critical mass of restorative time in our organization, weâre closing the offices every Friday for paid time off, and everyone in the organization has been asked to take four weeks of paid vacation time this summer, in addition to their normal vacation time. [Hands (wearing awkward, brave, and kind bracelets) in a circle] Members of our awkward, brave, and kind team. To make this work across our organization, we are going dark on social media effective today. We are also going on a podcast hiatus over the summer. We will be back on social and return to podcasting again after Labor Day. There are three more donât-miss podcasts hitting the airwaves in the next two weeks. And Iâve got one [event, on Ted Lassoâstyle kindness]( thatâs been on the books for a year. In one of the best speeches Iâve ever heard, actress, screenwriter, director, and producer Michaela Coel said, âDo not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.â Iâm a big fan of silence. I canât wait! We set audacious goals in our organizationâlike âStart global conversations about shame and vulnerabilityââbut this might be our boldest move yet. Weâll be back this fall. Rested and ready for our next audacious goal. P.S. Very tricky attribution on the stimulus/response quote. Itâs often attributed to Stephen Covey, but heâs on the record explaining that he read it in a book while on vacation in Hawaii and was not able to find the book or attribution again. Itâs very in line with Viktor Franklâs work, but itâs not verbatim in any of his published books. Itâs possibly Rollo May or B.F. Skinner. No one knows for sure, but Iâm going with Viktor Frankl. [Brené Brown] Stay awkward, brave, and kind, Follow Brené on social!
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