A beneficial guide to navigating change, Press Pause: And turn challenges into opportunity offers a clear and positive path to identifying what is important, so you can prioritise those areas in your life that you wish to recalibrate. Photo: Supplied.
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”, goes the maxim. It’s crazy how fast time flies and how things progress. Life is more than the fact that it happens.
Every so often we sit ruminating on the nature of our existence – about life’s mundane experiences, along with the not-so-tedious … celebrations, tragedies, pandemics … and so much more. It is during such times we should take a moment or two, seek emerging opportunities … to pause and reflect on our life, and perhaps make changes that will lead to a favoured future.
According to Steve Macdonald, an organisational psychologist and high-performance coach, before we realise it, it has been five, 10, 15 years after an unexpected event in our lives that has momentarily stopped us in our tracks — and yet nothing has really changed in the long-term.
“Sure, we have been busy: working diligently, doing our best as a partner, raising children, building friendships … the list goes on,” Macdonald writes. “Although these are all worthy pursuits, occasionally we might find ourselves pausing to ask the ‘Is this it?’ question. ‘Is this the sum of my life? Is this my reality?’
“For some of us, this question arises only after we’ve stumbled into one of those all-too-rare introspective or reflective moments. For others, it has been nagging at us for a number of years. For others still, we arrive at a point in our lives where we feel we can no longer ignore the question.
“The event that prompts this question might be the death of a loved one, a job loss, a relationship that no longer seems fixable, kids finally moving out of home, a financial calamity, unexpected prosperity or just a gnawing sense that there has to be something more.”
For many of us caught in the midst of the global pandemic, there was the impetus to ask this question. Macdonald says after having coached many people through a life transition, he wrote this book as a guide to creating a structure around the thinking process we go through during such a time.
“Whether their ‘press pause’ moment has been work-related or personal, I have found that most people struggle to leverage the opportunity out of these transition points,” Steve reiterates. “By the time they come to me, they are often frustrated by their inability to break their old patterns and truly step into the life they are striving to lead.”
Since periods of transition can often feel confusing, frightening or challenging, Press Pause provides a clear and positive path and was written to help process what is important to you, and to prioritise those areas in your life that you may wish to recalibrate.
By dividing the process into clearly defined steps and posing a series of key questions, Macdonald offers a well-thought-out and cognisant method to the self-reflection we all go through during a life changeover – something that can often feel confusing, frightening or challenging.
Press Pause offers a self-help and personal development opportunity, and the process adopted by Macdonald includes four steps to break down and illustrate the different parts of the transition process: reset, review, reacquaint and recalibrate.
Within these steps are five key questions that help us work through all the obstacles — conscious and unconscious — that are holding us in place and preventing us from moving easily from one phase of life to the next and/or creating a more fulfilling way of living.
This method is a mix of ideas, based on the work Macdonald has done over the years, helping people move through the switching procedure and on his own research. Being practical helps, along with initiating interactive activities. You can answer the questions at the end of each section or take the time at the end to bring all your thinking together and put a plan into action.
There’s also a transition plan template where you can reflect on each of the five key questions to help you put in place a plan that will assist you to make the most of a change period. There are options for how you put in place an action plan that will assist you to make the most of a transition period.
“My hope is that you can use this process to take your own pause in life and successfully find your pathway to a new and more fulfilling future.”
Press Pause: And turn challenges into opportunity, by Steve Macdonald, Echo Publishing, $29.99
