Remember to take a pause (& a breath) before action

What we can learn when we tune into our discomforts

CHERRY ON TOP 🍒 is our monthly newsletter exploring the ins and outs of everything that modern businesses need to truly shine. We dive into topics that live at the intersection of our two companies – ORCHARD STREET, a venture studio + angel fund & DALY, a comms+ agency –  as both help founders get the best ideas out into the world, through outstanding operations, comms, and culture-building.

Ally: Recently, I’ve found that my mind’s constant meandering often winds its way to a single destination: the piece I wrote for the final issue of The Daly News (Cherry on Top’s predecessor!) which explored the theme of “Release.”

I realized that, as much as the topic felt timely nearly two years ago when I first wrote and published it, it feels even more relevant now.

So, as we head into the pressure-cooker atmosphere that is Q4 — including annual review season, RFP season, Q1 budgeting and planning, and an off-year but still high-stakes election — it felt like a fitting time to reprise (a slightly adapted version of) the story for our Cherry on Top audience.

Release that breath you’ve been holding — and enjoy.

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On planes, I hold my breath during takeoff and landing.

It was originally a superstition born out of my childhood brain’s untraceable reasoning, which turned into a habit.

I do this on every trip — not just high stakes work travel, which has picked up after a years-long hiatus kicked off by the pandemic and ended by the growing return of the interest in doing business IRL — but vacations and family visits, too.

Holding my breath for those few moments becomes an exercise in presence, in the transition between land and air. My mind can’t wander in its typical, endlessly meandering spiral when I’m holding my breath. As we barrel down the tarmac, my focus whittles down to a smooth, polished stone.

But then the wheels relinquish their grip from the ground.

And I release.

I’ve been on the meditation apps for long enough to know that meditation doesn’t always have to look like: eyes closed, perfect posture, total silence, popping thought bubbles like balloons.

People who struggle with achieving that platonic ideal of meditation (me) are often encouraged to instead focus on practicing small, incremental moments of active mindfulness every day.

One such example involves paying attention to and mentally noting every time your body changes position: from sitting to standing; from walking to stopping; from sitting cross-legged on the couch with your computer in your lap in a decidedly non-ergonomic fashion to reclining on the couch in the fetal position around the warm curl of your puppy’s body.

Hundreds of these shift moments happen throughout the work day in a mental capacity too — flipping between tasks, switching tabs, pivoting from one Slack DM to the next — without your body even moving a fraction of an inch.

Paying attention to these brief, transitional moments is meant to bring a level of presence and awareness in the otherwise mindless daily routine that we power through each day. In practice, it feels like a game of catch and release. Capture your own attention, then let it go.

It’s really hard. Which probably means it’s important to keep trying.

~ ~ ~

Lately, I’ve been interested in what larger scale periods of personal transition (i.e. bigger than sitting to standing) do for my mind, and for my soul.

So much of our lives is set on autopilot that we end up laser-focusing on getting to the next thing — the next milestone, the next life stage, the next client project, the next promotion. It’s so easy to keep scanning for what’s next that you forget to actually live in what’s now.

But constantly looking ahead means we often breeze right through all the smaller, crucial, in-between steps that ladder up to a bigger life change or moment; the living within the life.

I’ve been in a series of transitional periods myself over the past few years. Allowing myself moments of honest introspection during those often uncomfortable times has led to a deeper sense of self awareness and personal growth — which I would have likely missed out on if I let those moments pass without stopping to look straight at the core of the discomfort, and learn from it.

• I explored the roots of my impatience and need for control in the first few weeks after adopting my dog.

• I learned more about the mutability of identity when I moved across the country after eight years spent in a place that felt so essential to who I was.

• I challenged my resistance to uncertainty when presented with an exciting opportunity to embark on a new professional venture.

• I re-examined my personal and shared values and let go of previously held ideas that no longer suited me, while planning a wedding that for years I was sure I didn’t want.

In all these moments, and more, I’ve allowed myself the space to discover more about myself, what gets under my skin, and why I act, feel, and think certain ways.

And then, armed with a renewed, deeper understanding of myself, as I am, I’ve given myself the space to change.

~ ~ ~

The world feels like it’s in a transitional period right now. It’s a time of flux; of contraction — a collective breath held.

I feel it so deeply. Do you feel it, too?

The instinct in periods of transition is to charge on and get through it. Maybe there’s merit to changing that mindset, and embracing those personal periods of transitional discomfort and uncertainty as moments in which we can pay attention, and listen to what’s really going on, within and without. Let our collective focus whittle down to that smooth, polished stone.

And then, release. And keep going, anew.

~ ~ ~

The Cherry on Top: To quote the editor’s note from the original piece: “Going through the motions, running on autopilot, making it through the day— our habitual processes pass the time, but do nothing to bring us closer to our true selves. Although it may seem counterintuitive, it’s when we release ourselves from our ways of being that we learn the things about ourselves that we’ve been missing.”