WRITTEN BY CHERYL WELLS
Doesn’t that sound like a breath of fresh air that we need? Rest and think and breathe. Last month we talked about fear and past wounds and how they affect us, and that’s hard work. This month we will switch gears and pause and see how that also moves us forward. We all need balance and in order to grow, we have to know when we have to slow down in order to speed up. The Law of Reflection says that learning to pause allows growth to catch up with you.
“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” – Peter F. Drucker
We are going to talk about growth that will come from stopping and pausing to allow the lesson to catch up with you. We get so busy and we don’t “stop to think” and see what it is that is right in front of us sometimes. Sometimes we are just too close and too busy to see what we need to see. I tell people all the time that we need to stop and step back far enough to see if it really looks like what we want it to. It’s another perspective that we need to think about. Time and space give us that perspective.
It may be in my marriage, or my family, or my work that I need to really wait and reflect and let my thinking catch up with my feelings. John talks about this in Law 4 of our book – The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth – and he tells a story about how he needed to let honest insights from someone soak in and change what he was going to do and say. This really is about humility and our willingness to accept that we need to listen and adjust because we might need growth in some area. I can have a path that I’m on and just keep plowing through, unwilling to stop and see what is really needed. That is just arrogance.
I have experienced this so much in my business through the years. I am thankful that there have been good growth points along the way. When developing my business or adding another business to it, there were many times that when I didn’t know for sure what to do, I would ask good questions of the whole team and get their side of what they did and saw. I would go home and sleep on it and most usually, in the early morning as I sat and thought, then it would dawn on me what I needed to know. With that I would then go back and share what I thought and ask good questions again, and then the decision would be made. I would then declare what we were going to do until more information came forward. It has really worked for me. It really has been about pausing with intention so that I can make good decisions and plan and be able to add value to my business and my team.
We have to learn how to ask good questions so that it stimulates us in our creativity. Anthony Rubbins says, “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
In the book there is a list of John’s favorite questions that have worked for him. Read the chapter and you may choose to use the questions yourself. I would agree with John that we need the perspective of what we hold most important. Know what you prize most highly in life so that you don’t get off course. Reflect and allow those things to keep you on course. Let’s take a break-pause and think this month, so that we can stay on purpose and do what we need to do next. Enjoy the journey!
