Hold On
“Hold on...”
“In a second…”
“Just a minute…”
If you cataloged my most-said phrases to my children these would top the list.
What precedes these? Usually something like:
“Mom, can you get the milk?”
“Mom, can you help me with math?”
“Mom, can you read me a story?”
“Mom, come see my fort!”
Maybe you’ve heard this too as you’ve been working and schooling from home in whatever remote-virtual-hybrid world you’ve been living in.
A False Equation
It was Christmas Eve that I caught myself saying, “Hold on” to my son. I wasn’t working, I wasn’t in the middle of a phone call, I was sweeping the kitchen floor and he wanted to show me something he was proud of. “Hold on,” I said and then was struck by how unimportant sweeping the kitchen floor was in comparison to what he wanted to show me.
And then the memory of all the times I’ve dismissed and delayed and deferred came flooding in. It’s a habit. It’s my habit. I’m so oriented towards task completion and achievement that my wrote response to any interruption reflects an ingrained (but not necessarily correct) belief that:
task > person
Time = scarce
Pause = it all falls apart
Achievement > relationship
And so no matter what I’m doing, whether I’m sweeping the kitchen floor or on a phone call with a coaching client, my response to the interruption is the same. And I’m not sure I like this about myself.
Sure, this task orientation and ‘get it done’ mentality have their place and in some ways (when harnessed correctly) can be an asset. But when it comes to relationships this attitude can be detrimental, destructive even.
What I am really saying
Whenever I’m trying to make a change, I try to drill down to what’s going on behind the scenes, because it’s not as simple as “Hold on” and the solution is not as simple as to stop saying ‘hold on.” Whatever change I’m seeking doesn’t have to be a ‘massive overhaul’ either, it just has to be a little bit better.
When I think about the source of my response, it comes down to anxiety: I’m worried that if I step away from my task it won’t get done, the time will be lost and as a result, everything will fall apart.
All that anxiety creates a distraction, impatience, frustration, hurry, and more stress and that pulls me away from all my relationships. It takes me out of being present, it dampens my ability to listen and negatively impacts my ability to be warm and empathetic.
So really, saying “Hold on” is saying, “I’m so anxious I can’t be in relationship with you right now.” I am elevating the task to utmost importance and diminishing the relationship and in so doing I’m making my anxiety the most important thing. And so the anxiety takes control, not just over my relationship with the person I’m talking with but also my relationship with myself.
Whispers
At Rise.Run.Retreat. I talk a lot about honoring and nourishing ourselves. About listening to the things that are in our heart and instead of saying, Hold on. In a second. Just a minute. to ourselves I encourage everyone to embrace the whispers from their heart for their own attention.
Those whispers, the seeds of our dreams, desires, and ideas, are who we really are and when we choose to lean into them, choose to make space for them, they can thrive and grow. When that happens we begin to fully embody who we were meant to be.
So when we say, “Hold on,” to ourselves, when we say, not now, not this year it’s too late, I’m too old, we’re really saying, “I’m so anxious I can’t be in relationship with myself.”
And when we can’t pause long enough to be in relationship with ourselves anxiety grows, fear grows, worry grows and the inner narrative becomes exceedingly negative, easily swayed by distractions from the outside like social media and the news and the opinions of others.
Then all we have is the task to hold onto, so we cling tighter and tighter to getting things done, to being busy, to achieving the to-do list or the next promotion or the new house or the new car. And we keep saying, “Hold on” to ourselves and our kids.
I know I want to change. I’m in a constant evolution of working to not be ruled by my anxious, negative mind. First, it manifested as an eating disorder and I navigated through that, now I am navigating through other areas where it impacts my life and relationships.
Find the Truth
Whenever I’m tackling change like this I believe that finding the truth in the situation always leads us to a solution and so for me, this process looks like exposing whatever I’m currently believing (task > person, time = scarce, pause = it all falls apart, achievement > relationship) and finding a true anecdote to diffuse the fear-induced belief.
Task>Person
There are critical and non-critical task and sometimes the milk or the math or the story or the fort have to wait. So I’ve been asking myself, “how important is this?” in each moment. It’s a cumbersome process, because “Hold on,” is so much quicker and easier it feels like a pause, it feels like your making space to make a decision, but really you’ve already decided. “Hold on,” means it is not important. But asking “how important is this?” that is a pause and it’s in that pause you can weigh the importance of the task and make an appropriate choice, not just a habitual response.
Time = Scarce
The truth is that time is both scarce and abundant. It’s scarce in the sense that our life is limited and has an end point, that we each only have 24 hours in a single day. It is abundant in the sense that as Albert Einstein wrote, “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” If time is both abundant and scarce that means I have a choice in where I dwell. If my mindset around time is grounded in abundance rather than scarcity then my anxious responses related to time will diminish.
Pause = it all falls apart
There’s a name for this one and it’s called catastrophizing. Assuming the situation will all end up in a catastrophic outcome because it didn’t get done. This idea of pause is something I’ve thought about before because I’ve noticed a pattern: from the pauses in my life have come the greatest and most positive changes. It’s in the margins that life happens.
Achievement > Relationship
I value achievement more than relationship because for most of my life my own value has been measured by achievement. Unfortunately, this concept is ingrained in all of us by our society from very early on: color in the lines: get praised, memorize the facts: achieve a good grade, get good grades: get into a good college, a good college leads to a good job, a good job leads to financial stability, the house, the car and the retirement you’ve been planning for all along. We’ve been oriented for task completion and achievement from the very start or at least since age five, when play, creativity, and imagination gets relegated to “free time” and task and achievement becomes a moral responsibility.
The truth is that our value has no correlation to our achievement, in fact our imagination, creativity, the affinity for one thing over another, the natural talents and abilities developed in our early years is at the heart of who we are.
If we can get back to that, if we can make space for the milk and the math and the story and the fort of our own childhood, if we can stop saying “Hold on,” to ourselves then maybe we can change our habit of saying “hold on,” to our kids and in so doing empower both ourselves and our kids to follow the whispers of our hearts and embody who we really are.
Daily practice
Ask yourself each morning:
What is the truth about my time today?
What is the truth about my tasks today?
What is the truth about what I achieve today?
How can I create or find pause today?
-Sarah