The Power of the Pause

This is no halos here hosted by Jen Lang and Jane Stark, the place to inspire a change in your consciousness to elevate the world. We're to heart centered business owners nourishing our inner rebels while growing our respective businesses.

No halos here is the result of bringing together an opera singer turned spiritual mentor and a marketing professional turned while being coached to meditate daily. Together we unite physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energies into a powerful presence to lead, heal and inspire. We love exploring the shadowed edges of life, the universe and beyond through honest and thought provoking conversations. Let's dive in.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of no halos here with Jen Lang and Jane Stark. We are so excited to see end of June. And it's summer has finally arrived on the West Coast. I

was just thinking we've given weather weather weather update on the last I don't know how many episodes Should we just continue that it's hot here. It's

finally like, it's finally summer. Oh my god. It's very, very exciting. Okay, so for now, we we sped through the web report. It's very thrilling. And we're excited because it's summer. And actually, we have decided we calling this the power of the pause or the power of the conscious pause, because we are taking a pause from new episodes in July and August. And that feels really good for us good to us. We're going to be highlighting some of our past episodes. And I'm gonna forget to like read jig them every week. But definitely follow us on our Instagram and or our Facebook page. And if you're not for our love letters, yeah, exactly. Love letters is the best place because we're going to feature an episode every week, we'll

be sharing some of our some of our favorites from the past year. So we've been doing this for just over a year. Consistently. We did not take a pause last summer. No, because at first, it feels good to kind of just take a breather?

Yeah, it feels. Yeah, I feel it just feels, I think because the last couple of years have been so intense for everybody, that now you have the option to or you can turn some people might not feel like they have an option to take a pause on something. But I feel like, you know, you always have a choice, you just have to figure out how to make it work.

Well, yeah. And I mean, this is a good, you know, it's a good point, too, with even for us making this decision, we had to really go with what felt right. Because, interestingly, we had some pushback or some comments going like, Are you sure you're gonna lose momentum? Or, you know, like, we've built all of this up? And, you know, is it the right thing to do, but for us, we'll find out in September, I will let you know, in September. But as you and I have done with everything that we do together, it's always we always go by what feels right and what feels aligned. And that's how this felt when we felt into it. It's like, no, it feels way more lighter, to take this breather, and to kind of reset like so we're also as we, as we take the pause from recording episodes, we're also kind of in this space of just going into that next level of what we're building what we're doing, both together in our offerings, and with this podcast. So when we come back in September, we may be back with, you know, a bit of a refresh and new direction. We're hoping to, you know, rerecord our, our intro and sort of get that a little bit tighter and figure out what is this? Yeah. It's a recent cast. Yeah. What about where we want to take it really? Right. And I think that's a piece of this is sometimes when you don't create the time and the space to stop and reflect and sit. Like, just allow that to come through. Yeah, then that doesn't happen, right? If we're just constantly go, go, go, go go. And we just keep recording, recording recording. Yeah, it's a lot harder I find to find that clarity. So so that's my hope with taking this pause.

Yeah, me too. I think we well, we talked about it in advance about a month ago. And then we sort of sat with the decision, or they were like, okay, is this the right decision? When you talked about a few things. And then as you were talking, Jane, just now I was thinking that this conscious pause is sort of one that was played out on of course, a huge scale over the past two years where you can't go go go in the same way. And then the pandemic hit all of Earth, let's just say all of humanity. And, you know, I remember those first few weeks, months of those pauses, and being given different time and space to reflect And to shake, like literally shake things up in a very, very different way. And I realized it was probably extremely stressful for many, many people not saying it wasn't stressful. I think that's what basically started this podcast was actually our meditation practices. But when we have the opportunity to, or we are given the opportunity to pause and reflect, then something bigger, deeper and better comes out of it. And I think that is still forming on the like, the massive scale that on the human global scale. Well, yes, it's for me. Yeah,

definitely. Right. I mean, I'm, it's not just the podcasts, you know, I'm definitely I'm really trying to take that conscious space right now, as well, because I'm feeling it, I feel I need it. You and I have had a lot of conversations over the last month, not just about the podcast, but in general about where we're going, what we're need. Also, recognizing, like, sort of you brought up the last two years, and the collective trauma that we've all gone through in looks different for everyone. But I think, you know, I'm gonna go as far as say, I don't think anyone has come out unscathed from what we've just know, gone through. And for me, I know, that looks like definitely, you know, starting to sit with like, Okay, I actually thought I was doing okay, through the last year, the last two years, and I was, but at the same time, I wasn't like, there's a lot of things that now that we're sort of things are shifting, again, a little bit, I don't know if I would say light lifting, because it's just shifting, but some of what we were in for the two years is lifting, and it's, it's definitely brought some stuff up for me where I'm like, wow, okay, like, I'm, in some ways, I feel like I can get a breath, and also reflect and look at how that has impacted me how it's impacted my family in different ways. And there needs to be time, right? We need time to process that we need time to grieve some things we need, we need to give ourselves that space. So that is a piece of, of what I think is playing into all of this. And I think for you and I mean, yeah, it's funny, right? We basically started this in the middle of a pandemic, with, but as well as, as what what we're growing together like our Yes, our work together, all of it started at the beginning of COVID. So that's also interesting to sit back and reflect on

right and that. Yeah, you know, that's really interesting. You mentioned that because it's I'm wonder how many other new projects and new talents and new hobbies and your course there was a whole sourdough bread baking craze? Still, I'm sure. Like, I'm sure every bread sourdough producing country in the world is like, whoa, more bread. It's funny, and then, you know, maybe actually, that might be kind of a fun question to ask our listeners and ask our audience is like, what new talents? Or what new skills did you pick up out of the pandemic? And it could be anything from whether it was a hobby or not, you know, somebody, somebody might say, Oh, I picked up my bass guitar more frequently. Or, or it might be that you picked up meditation, or you started

to this, though, to write of like, or you didn't pick up anything new, because you literally were trying to survive. Exactly. And that's real, too, right? I mean, we were, we managed to start to start this and that kind of came about organically. But I also look and it's like, you know, all of a sudden, like a lot of other families. I had two children at home, I ended up having them home for two years, in certain capacities. So you know, I think there's definitely the flip side of, it's been a wild two years, and all of a sudden, your life got turned upside down. And maybe you didn't pick anything up. And that is totally okay. acceptable to. So yeah, there's, I mean, I think that really just goes to show even what we're living through right now, the polarity and the duality of the world, right? It's very, it's, it's amazing to just sit back and try and observe it a bit and just see where it's showing up everywhere.

Yes, yeah, it's showing up in like, I'm just as easy to see it's showing up in random, like social conversations too. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is interesting. It's like one or the other. I'm like, boy, why can't it be both? Yeah. Right. And sometimes catching myself in that in much in that line of thought, where I have to choose one or the other. I'm like, why can't it be both? And then asking, how can it be both? Like, sure, show me how it can be both and everything in between.

So does that mean that you have to sit in neutrality and everything, but it's back to this. You know, rather than either picking aside or, you know, just being able to step back a little bit and see a different perspective doesn't mean that you're gonna take that that viewpoint on, but even just to be able to see it, I think that's where some of the both lies, right? It's like, yeah, okay, I might lean more this way. And I can see that your reality is this,

imagine how public conversations would be different. In that perspective, when you can see one side or the other, or the, or what is gonna say, broadly, broadly, what is portrayed in the media is either one side or the other. But it's not. It's not, there's very little mention. Or if there is, it's like three quarters of the way to the end of the article about commonality or difference. And so it's, it's, I don't know, this is like, this is talking about the pause. But sometimes we need to pause to pull back to go, Oh, I didn't see this before. But I found this in karate, too, actually. So I recently, as you may have heard on other episodes, I've recently gone back to training and karate, but not at the same level that I am not at the same frequency that I was back in September. And I was reflecting on this. And in September, and earlier, I was finding it really hard to show up on time for class. I wasn't prioritizing it. And yes, of course, they say karate is 90%, mental 10% physical, like getting to the class is sometimes the hardest thing. Totally true. However, I was not making an effort to get there on time. And to honor that, my own body and my own exercise honor my fellow instructors and the other students. Now that I've returned, I'm finding it easier to set that priority of showing up on time, it's like, Nope, I'm going to show up at 7pm, not 720, not 730, not 745. I'm going to arrange my days that I make sure I show up at seven, I start stretching, and I'm ready to go for class. However, I'm also not going as frequently. I'm going to classes a week and not four.

But interesting how Yeah, I'm perhaps having to pull away from it altogether to be able to go, Okay, I actually do miss this, but I don't need it at the level you were in. Whereas I think we can often get stuck in that routine, that habit, right, where it's just like, well, this is just what I do. And this is how it has to look. So yeah, that's a that's a good example. I don't have an example like that. But I definitely, I feel like I'm in that space in my life right now. Like in going into the summer. I'm trying to be a bit more intentional about this where yeah, I'm, I feel I got to the point where I was feeling like I had to take the pause. The you know, just, there was just some areas where I'm like, You know what I'm, we called it, you helped me we call it dissatisfaction, deep dissatisfaction in certain things, right. And so that was getting to the point where I couldn't ignore it anymore. And now I'm sort of sitting back. And it's like, it's interesting, where I was pushing through on a lot of things, and not wanting to look at what was kind of feeling unsatisfactory. And then projecting out into various areas of my life, when really I just needed to like, I just need to pull back and take the pause and look at all that I've had going on in the past couple of years. Even the past six months, is, you know, when we look at 2020 to 2022. It's interesting for me, 2022 has been the hardest year of six years so far.

Yeah. Yeah, I I actually agree. on many fronts. I think there's and I think that's part of like, we talked about the squeeze where yes, we the squeezes, you know, we thought the pandemic was the squeeze. But in actual fact, this, the pandemic was like the new thing that brought us to the squeeze. Yeah, and now we're coming out. But it's like being squeezed squished through this tube. It's like rebirthing, honestly, like, it feels like hey, and you know, the last couple years have been sort of a multi year gestational period for wherever it is we're headed. And it's this level of squeezing, and we all have it in multiple periods in our lives individually. But we're just experiencing mass. We're experiencing a massive collective squeeze right now. And it's showing up in major media headlines. It's showing up in our day to day lives, is showing up in employers not being able to find enough people. And existing interesting like, where all the people everywhere. Do

you how many times have had that conversation lately? Everybody's like, yeah, you go, it's like all these labor shortages and you're like, Where did everyone go? Like,

Where did everybody go? And like, honestly, I'm kind of curious. I'm like, how are they making money? Like I'm really I'm really curious, like, what are they doing? Because not everybody is a YouTube sensation. If I'm talking to Kirk's friend's son's when they're both in their city, they're twins, they just turned 17 Recently, and, you know, having different conversations with them about work and work ethic. And they're like, I'm just going to be, I'm going to be YouTube sensation. It's definitely I was like, Okay, great. Have you started? What have you got? And so yeah, they're in those early stages of those conversations where not both of them, but one of them is very much thinking that way. And it's like, if they're 17, they're figuring it out. I remember at 17 I was like, I'm going to university. I don't know what I'm doing something until I feel like

really, we shouldn't be going to university at 17. We don't know what we're doing with our lives at that age. I feel like I digress on that one.

Again, the power of the pause, right, I feel like so academically, intellectually, I was quite driven. I went straight to university out of high school. I was 17 when I arrived 17 to 18. And looking back, yes. It wasn't a bad year, honestly, all things considered. I had, you know, I had lots of great experiences. I you know, I didn't do great in all my courses, but I passed them all, you know, I got clear on what I wanted to study and how, however, looking back now, I'm like, I would have done better to take a pause until work to take that break to travel. Yeah,

I absolutely agree. I found it after two years of university, but smart. But it took me two years of university to figure it take the pause. And I still it definitely same thing. It helped me find my my way. But yeah, I look and I'm like, Yeah, I like that's the one thing I was actually reflecting on this on the weekend. I think the one thing that I sort of regret. I don't like using that word. But yeah, what other word to say is that I didn't travel more when I was younger. So it'll just have to be traveled when I'm older. But ya know, you know, but but I'm also I was also reflecting on what a different experience it is, there's something so powerful like, so that didn't travel at all. But I didn't travel to the extent I would have liked to.

Because I did a ton of travel. And I'm so grateful that I prioritize that and that my parents understood that need, you know, like, I lived in England for a year, I went to university, which great, again, good experiences, but I had that travel, and I even got credit for some of my foreign university courses back home, which was really good. And then the following year, I went to Germany and I worked in a restaurant for three months, one summer to improve my German skills. And that was again, like life growth.

Yeah. You know, I mean, in all directions are right, yeah, I moved. I moved away from home and back to home away from home. And I moved to Whistler and had, you know, different experiences there and whatnot. But yeah, anyways, I don't know how I got us there. But

we were talking about, like pausing and traveling.

Yeah, and just what is it? Exactly? That's it is right. And so there's lots of different ways that it can look. And some of us, you know, we might not all be in a position to do a pickup and travel. But where can you? Where can you just slow down a little bit to I think, and we talked about this a lot. And I feel like it starts to become a little bit of a Lego. Here we are, again, like just slow down and whatnot. But it's it can be as little as like you say, like shifting up some habits and looking at what's going on in your life. And, you know, like you said, we're finally you were like, You know what, I'm just gonna take karate out for a little bit. Now you've put it back in, in a different way. And it's shifted everything. You know, I, you and I are talking about shifting up how we work together, the amount of time that we spend on Zoom, doing our work and whatnot, because it just was starting to feel a little bit like is this the most productive? Is this actually getting what we need out of it? Can we work smarter, not harder, and things like that, but we have to actually be like you say that conscious pause or conscious intentional about doing that. I think we probably could have done this probably a couple of months ago but we were in our

in our in our rhythm and our groove and what was scheduled but I think what we can

but it's it's allowing space, like I can feel that we're it's allowing space for the new to come through. And who the other thing is we're in this time so we just had the in the western or sorry, in the northern hemisphere. You know, our summer solstice, last week, northern northern hemisphere, obviously. Sorry, I'm switching it around. Okay, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere. Winter. But, you know, there's a big shift that happened even energetically with that. Were moving. One of our mentors was talking about how we're moved Going from a yin energy to a more yang energy, which, when she unpacked that even more, I thought it was really interesting because she talked about how the yin energy that we've been in for quite a while was more of this traditional energy of busy, busy busy, you know, productivity from a place of, you know, what we kind of all know as like capitalist cultures and consumers just how much output go go go, I can always be doing something more something different. And moving into this yang energy that is more of a hyper focused productivity like, and yeah, a productivity that is functional and not about?

Well, yes. And I'm just gonna say brief seeing this reflected in look at the number of countries now that are exploring a four day workweek, with that being for five, like Australia and England are exploring that. And I'm just waiting for Canada.

Not that it actually matters for us. We're self employed.

But what I'm really interesting, take on the workweek, and how there is that recognition for the balance of quality of life.

We talked about this, but really great example of shifting to that new paradigm, which talks

about this just before we recorded where the looking at the Dow I've lost it, like real time real time conversation. I can't remember. Oh, come back. Okay. Yeah.

So moving in, you know, it's sort of in because I was interesting listening to her in that update last week, because I was like, oh, okay, I think this is a part of what I have been feeling over the past couple of weeks leading up to this, is this real longing to change up the pace to look at go like, what am I doing that I don't need to be doing? How do I get even more focused and intentional so that I can put my energy to be honest, where it really matters? Like, home family, work is important to me. But again, I have the tendency to shift into a busy myself with work, probably, if I'm being totally honest, to avoid things that I don't want to look at, at home or, you know, that's a

very human habit.

Do the same. Yeah,

I call it noble procrastination.

Exactly right. And so, but then, but But I, my balance went too far, where I could feel this, like, Okay, I'm feeling disconnected from my house, my house feels like a house, not a home, I really like, I know, for me, my home needs to feel that like warm caring home, you know, I can tell like, there's, we're all in the household feeling a little bit disconnected, where we all just kind of go into our own spaces and do our own thing. And we're not connecting as a family as much again. And so like little things like that, starting to notice, right, and so and starting, and then it finally, just got to the point where I'm like, I don't want this. And if I don't want this, I have to choose to change it. And so that was that dissatisfaction piece. Yes. Yeah. And so where can I free up my time? And where can I focus more energy into other things and let go of some of the productivity. And I think, you know, that's going to be one of the hardest things for us to do as we move into this new space of a yang energy and a more focused productivity, because we are conditioned to do doo doo doo doo, right? It's all about how much we can do. It's about doing more. That's what we've, we've, society looks at success based on, you know, how much have you achieved? How much money are you making? And how does that look outwardly? Yeah. And so it's gonna take a lot, I think, for us to start to break some of those beliefs. Some of those habits and patterns, I think we've talked about this, though, is where we're going

as human projectors, human design, projectors, you and I, as well as other projectors are out there to sort of lead the way in how that what that might look like. But at the same time, we're also deconditioning. From that, from that piece of Oh, over productivity. And so I think even you and I talked about on a couple of boxers about you know what, right now we have a couple of time blocks a week where we work and CO create and work with our clients. And I sort of put it out there. I was like, what would that look like if we worked for 90 minutes instead of three hours?

Exactly.

And maybe we can ask you the listener sort of the same question, where can you find, let's call them efficiencies, even though that sounds really corporate, but where can you find efficiencies in your life? Or in your practices or habits or your schedule? Whatever language speaks to you? Where can you say it's like me swipe whatever the principle what's the rule that says The task will take the time that you allot it. Yeah, I can't remember what the name.

I don't remember that I what that yeah, there is, I can't remember either principle basically,

not always true for me because I would always overscheduled myself I'd be more ambitious, I'd be leaning to the other side. So that the lesson for me in that has been not to over schedule and to really open up spaces, you know, at my block, I purposely blocked time in my calendar. So yeah, my calendar looks scary. But I also put blocks in going do not book do not book do not book. One of the other things we talked about doing on a broader scale, which I've already put into my calendar for the rest of the year, is taking every fourth week, as a study week. So a note no clients week, where we make an effort to dive directly into the craft and into that self improvement. I use that term very loosely, learning space learning space, so that we don't have the I'm gonna solve the background harm or the background noise of, of the other stuff we're working on. I think that's obviously what the podcast is two, in terms of taking this policy over the summer, it's like, we don't have to think about new content all the time, we can go back and go, oh, let's refocus and and, you know, read detail and re energize this space in a new and exciting way so that we come back even stronger in September. I don't have too much more to say about this. I think we've covered our points. I think so. Yeah. As listeners, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you'd like to, like yes,

we're not going away completely. We're actually going to show up. I think we're going to start to show up more. Again, we've all we have. Interestingly, we kind of unintentionally but probably sort of intentionally took a pause from social media. Yes. And and this is just kind of coming to me too. As we're talking through this. I think we are probably going to start to show up more again on social media while we take this pause from the podcast. So that's been that's interesting. We, we just kind of, again, I think to be honest with the social piece, it sort of fizzled out a little bit. We never like it's not our main outlet. No, it is a great way to connect and to show up and whatnot. But it's not our main outlet. It doesn't, it didn't feel it wasn't feeling aligned. And it wasn't it was feeling heavy, not light. And that's off. Like that's a really big piece of how I try and operate now is like what feels light and what feels heavy. And so, again, like I say, it wasn't totally intentional. It wasn't as conscious as this is where we've talked this through and really made a decision. But we just kind of slowly went really quiet over on our social channels. And I think that's going to shift now because we're starting to feel that energy come back. We've got some new new things and actually a new support that is helping us get that back up. So look for us over on our social channels, Instagram and Facebook at we are Jen and Jane. Yeah, we'll continue with our love letters.

Yes, I'll be right.

Yeah, and we'll be back here in September.

Yeah. Have an amazing summer. Do let us know what your paws might be. You can always email us at Hello at we are Jen and jane.com and have an amazing July and August wherever you are in the world. Take care.

Bye bye.

Thanks for joining us for these conscious combos. If you're ready to dive deeper, head on over to Dr Jenn and jane.com to continue the conversation.