Pausibility. What a lovely word I ran into 1 year ago when I was writing an assignment for altMBA.

There is much magic that go on when we take a pause, and the one I’m talking about today is during conversations. Have you ever thought why are we so eager to skip pauses?

You see, I’ve been the kind of person quick to fill the silence in conversations, business and personal ones. I  couldn’t stand the tension. I had a coaching session about this issue with my altMBA coaches where they helped me practice silence in conversations by counting to 5 between full sentences. That was so hard! Looking inward during that silence, I felt unease in my heart, like I was taking up too much space and time out of people in front of me, and they might have other things to attend to than give me their full attention including my pauses. What an insight of a limiting belief I had. That was also a very good explanation why I used to (I hope) talk so fast.

Talking to my friend about this also helped both of us realize that when a relationship is a bit stressful or there are things at stake, like an upcoming performance review for example, we are more uncomfortable with silence as we need continuous reassurance from our superiors, so we fill the space with words until we get that reassurance, or not.

One year later after those insights, I think I’m getting better at introducing pauses and being patient if they arise in conversation. Having my own podcast helped me so much in trusting my voice and my story-telling competencies and also to take my time.

If we were to re-frame silence in conversations as a gift we are offering the other person, a chance for them to check inward how they feel with what we w proposing, that would really change our behavior and feelings around pauses in conversations. Asking questions and not adding more words until the other person answers is just beautiful and precious.

I want to offer this gift to others. This safety. To think for themselves until they make up their mind about their next step. This way they are more likely to go through with it. They would have figured it out themselves.