“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as
effective as a rightly timed pause.”
(Mark Twain)

“Don’t push my buttons.”

We’ve all said it, hoping our kids, or our spouse, or our coworkers will get the message: “Don’t you dare press my emotional buttons.” I’ve even heard it around the world, in different languages and different cultures.

What I haven’t heard, however, is people asking a simple question of themselves:

How did I give these people access to my remote control in the first place? How have I made it so easy for someone else to easily push my emotional buttons? Here’s how: we forgot to push our own. In particular, we each forgot to press our own pause button.

Whenever we need other people to manage our own emotional reactivity for us, we usually don’t realize we’re actually handing them our own remote control. And then we complain about how they use it. This is not a path to personal peace.

When we press our own pause button, however, we take back our own emotional controls. When we learn to press pause, we give our brilliant human brains the chance to consider what our hearts want most: personal, practical, peace.

So, how do we press our own pause exactly? Truth is, I don’t know. I am learning how to press mine, but I am not you. I’m hearing from people all over the world how they press theirs, but they, again, are not you.

How you press your pause button is unique to you. Is it prayer? Deep breathing? Meditation? Exercise? Those certainly seem to be common elements throughout human history. As are reading, time in nature, and the beautiful experience of agenda-free time with your closest family and friends.

We at ScreamFree want to help you discover the right combination of elements that clearly reveal your own personal pause button. In many ways that is the key to our entire mission: to help people pause, so they can learn to respond more, and react less.

To that end, today we have launched an entirely new website, along with a new logo and a new, daily message to replace our popular eQuips. So today is the first edition of The ScreamFree Daily Pause—just a moment for you to focus on you, to the benefit of all those who surround you and love you.

Of course, these messages are free, as are so many of our blog and videos and articles at screamfree.com. All I ask for in return is feedback. I want to get to know you. Comment on the blog. Criticize the articles and videos. Email us at info@screamfree.com and let us know anything we can do to make your own pause button easier to access, and make our mission easier to share with others.

As you’ll see, we are going all-in on the idea of pause. We believe the world is desperately searching for a timeless peace for our 21st century chaos, and we believe such peace begins with pause.

You in?

Peace,
Hal