Permission to Pause
Last week, I coached a woman who couldn’t seem to celebrate her recent wins as a business owner. She’d blocked time to reflect, but kept blowing past it. When we unpacked what was really going on, she shared a familiar phrase from childhood: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
It turns out that, as a child, whenever she slowed down—daydreaming, journaling, just thinking—she was met with warnings that stillness was dangerous or lazy. No wonder she felt tension in self-reflection.
I asked her to imagine her own child one day standing in her shoes. What would she want him to believe about pausing and reflecting? Her answer was clear: That peace and perspective live in the quiet moments. That your worth isn’t in the doing. It’s in the being.
She named the old belief, chose a new one, and mapped out ways to pass that wisdom on—both to her child and to herself. It’s a shift that will serve her not just as a parent, but as a business owner who leads with clarity, presence, and purpose.
Sometimes, breaking the cycle starts with sitting still and finally seeing the good we’ve already done.
What could shift if you gave yourself permission to pause?
