Trust on Purpose

What if the answer to overwhelm isn't working harder?

• Charles Feltman and Ila Edgar

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Overwhelm never asks permission. When it hits, our reflex is to work harder and push through. Yet that often distracts us from the one thing that restores clarity: pausing. In this new episode of Trust on Purpose, we dive into the difference between a nourishing pause and disassociation, how awareness of our sensations helps us return from checkout mode, and how small rituals create the space where we can make better choices.

We share simple ways to practice pausing to regain calm and rebuild trust in your own inner wisdom. Then we connect the dots to leadership in unlocking a team’s intelligence, reducing decision anxiety, and sparking creativity in the uncertainty most leaders try to outrun.

You’ll hear candid stories about over-planning, the fear of not having all the answers, and how surrender-in-doses becomes a practical skill. We talk about listening to the uncomfortable answers that arise when we finally get quiet, and how to hold them without rushing into action. Expect grounded tools, warm honesty, and a reframe of uncertainty as fertile ground for innovation, trust, and more humanness in our work.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, my name is Charles Feldman.

SPEAKER_00:

And my name is Ela Edgar. And we're here for another episode of Trust on Purpose. And Charles, where are we going today?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I would like us to explore this idea of pausing and taking a look inside. I got a newsletter, I get newsletters from someone I follow, whose newsletters I really appreciate. Her name is Mellie O'Brien. And in this particular newsletter, she starts off, she says, Recently I was speaking with an elder I deeply respect. I asked her what had carried her through the hardest times in her life, how she managed not just to survive, but to thrive and keep making a difference. And this is what the elder replied with. When I feel overwhelmed, I slow down, replenish my body, and tune into my heart. I know that taking a pause helps me begin again from a place of strength. So that's how Nellie O'Brien starts her newsletter. And so I want to think we both talked about this a little bit in our conversation before the conversation, but I think it would be worthwhile to kind of explore this idea of trusting, taking a pause, disconnecting from all the stuff that's going on out there and how that's kind of playing out in our minds, and connecting instead inside with our heart, with our source of other kinds of wisdom than just our knowledge, other than just what's going on outside. So I and I know this is this is something that's kind of you know getting your juices flowing. So um what's going on as you listen to this and begin to feel into it?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh already I'm like, and stop recording because we're not going to talk about this, because it's too, it's too close. I can feel my body just like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, hang on, hang on. Um, which is really interesting because I I do pause. I do slow down. It is a practice that I have. Um and so as you were as you were setting us up for this conversation, and I'm listening to the slow down feel, tune into your heart, trust that inner wisdom, my brain immediately went to what's the difference between a pause and a disassociation? Because and yeah, so so yeah, and I think why this is fittingly the mug that I have today, why this is so spicy for me, is I think that I actually I don't think I I know that I spent some time this week absolutely disassociating. So I didn't want to feel, I didn't want to trust the pause, I just wanted to push that away and not feel anything. And so, yeah, that's where I'm coming from this morning. What's the difference between feeling into that pause and actually like severing and disassociating from what I'm feeling? And I think as I roll this out a little bit further, what's the cost and the impact to us as humans in our lived experience, but then also as professionals, as leaders, as individuals that navigate relationships, because we're not in relationship just with ourselves. So let me pause there intentionally.

SPEAKER_02:

Great place to pause. Thank you. Well, so it strikes me that sometimes disassociating is important and valuable. And to discount it or say that there's something wrong with that robs us of something that is a valuable tool in our own uh toolkit for getting through. When things are really difficult and challenging, um, being able to do that, and I've I've I've done it certainly at times in my life when things have been kind of overwhelming, it's the trick is to not stay there for a really long time, um, but rather to come back into come back into the world of of presence, of being, of recognizing and and trusting um our own inner resources. So yeah, check out when it's really hard and disassociate a bit and say, you know, I'm I just don't want to feel anything right now for a little while because it's too much.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like universe enough, like just let me tap out for a few minutes, let me do what I need to do for well, probably more than a few minutes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I mean, it can be a few minutes, it can be a few days. Being able to know when it's time to stop doing that and move back into being present in the world and being connected internally and externally.

SPEAKER_00:

So Well, and and so I did realize that point that there was a point this week um I could physically feel, physically, mentally, emotionally feel like, okay, it's time, it's time to do something different to come out of this disassociation. And it was an interesting noticing for me, and no coincidence, um, I happened to receive a newsletter that I follow and very much appreciate. And there is uh an invitation to actually do some practice around feeling. And when the world can be overwhelming, when I, the world was overwhelming for me, when I disconnected, it can be tricky to find what's the segue back. Is typically in a normal everyday when things are going normally, the wheels and the bus are going round and round. I'm a deeply feeling person. So I do feel a lot, but that jump to I've been disconnected and disassociated to now I need to find my way back. And it was really interesting. This exercise was simply about what temperature do you notice? And you know, it can be something as simple as, well, the tip of my nose feels cold. Or, you know, my right armpit feels warmer than my nose. How curious is that? Or my breath feels a particular temperature. And so as a segue back into not am I, I'm not jumping off the deep end into some really big feelings that probably not ready to sit with, but segueing back into how do I start feeling again into my body and noticing what I'm noticing. And that was a really helpful exercise. That was a really helpful exercise with not sense making, like not, well, of course your armpits warmer than your nose. So not the sense making, but just the noticing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, and and it strikes me that you're you're noticing sensations, physical body sensations, as kind of a precursor, perhaps to then allowing in some of the emotions uh that are maybe a little more challenging. Um and then from there, perhaps uh really connecting deeply of why why am I here? And what is what do I need in this moment? What's important to me in this moment? Um, yes, there are these big emotions that are here, and what do I want to do with them that are different from then sensations? Because yeah, it's interesting um that you mentioned for you, you know, tip of my nose, and um I'm gonna date myself here, um, and probably also reveal something else about myself. But um many, many years ago, uh I read a book called The Teachings of Don Juan, and uh in one experience that the uh Carlos Castaneda, the author, he talks about being um really kind of tripping out on uh some kind of I think it was um uh peyote. And um to the point where he's pretty lost. And and Don Wong brings him back by telling him to look at his hand, boost see his hand, feel his hand, notice and then bring the other hand and and and um my older daughter used to have night terrors, um, which is kind of a dream state that you're awake, but you're also in a dream state and you're seeing basically hallucinating. And I would use that to help her get out of that state, and then I figured out, well, I can use that to get out of my own disassociated states if I need to, yeah, and have used it. So yeah, it's that again, that sensation, you know, connecting with sensation first, and then moving from there to emotion, which is different.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. And so if we go back to that statement that you started us with, where Melly O'Brien is speaking with this wise elder and saying that I learned to trust the pause. And so is this pause really a lovely opportunity for us to reconnect with and get out of the 80-bitty committee or whatever's going on in our thinking and in our doing and connect back with our being. And I don't know, it just it feels in a world that's really heavy right now, that there's a a lot of things that um are sad or upsetting or disturbing are all sorts of things, that that ability to connect with our inner being is even more important right now. So as humans and also as humans that are interacting and potentially impacting other humans. And so that jumping off point from I'm gonna stay here, I'm gonna figure out what I can do, or I'm gonna stay here and disassociate. This feels like a gentle and an inviting segue into how do how do I feel a little bit more? And then how does that lead us to actually trust that pause? And what keeps us from trusting the pause?

SPEAKER_02:

I know for me it's up here. It's the stories that I generate and and get kind of stuck in that are based in fear primary primarily. The fear centers are active and always vigilant, and um then I get hooked, my thinking gets hooked into that, and I'm always trying to figure out how to you know be safe, how to, and that sort of thing. So I that actually dissociates me from my body. Although the the fear uh the center of my brain, if you will, the brainstem de amygdala, those aspects of my brain nervous system activate my body and provide this negative feedback or the feed, it's not negative, it's just feedback. Feedback, yeah. Yeah. Um, but then my my thinking brain gets hooked into it. So, yes, so pausing from that, I think is part of for me what's important. And then, like you said, what do I do, then? What do I what do I trust in that pause? And I think when it works, when hung that pause, it really takes me to a place that's more um generative. It's it perhaps begins by connecting with what's really important to me. What's in my heart that's important? Where what am I what am I here for? What am I doing in the on the planet? Um, and I may not know the the complete answer to that question, but connecting, taking a pause from all the the thinking and the fear-based thinking in particular, and connecting with that question, what am I doing here on the planet? Almost always leads me to a sense of deep connectedness with the universe as a whole. So that's that's I think an important part of the practice. And out of that like connection to the larger universe, what's my part in it?

SPEAKER_00:

I uh this is a very scientific, very scientific survey I'm doing with myself right now. Um but I feel like sometimes paying attention to that pause, um, that I end up in the emotion of uncertainty. And I don't like uncertainty. Anybody anybody? Let's do a pool of our audience right now. Anybody like uncertainty? Yeah, no. I like it when there's a surprise coming and I know the surprise is going to be fun, then uncertainty is lovely. But on a day-to-day basis, it's it's not necessarily an emotion that I'm comfortable sitting with. So learning to be more comfortable with it and using my volume button. Um, but uncertainty tells us that the path isn't clear.

SPEAKER_02:

And and when when has the path ever been completely clear?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, when I control it. When I control it, when I have planned, because I'm an organizer, that I know 12 steps ahead of any given something, I've mitigated, I've got a backup plan, whether I'm facilitating or speaking or cooking in the kitchen, I have uh what's the word I'm looking for? I've mitigated risk and uncertainty because I overplan. Because I don't want to be uncertain. So I want to like stay here for a minute. What's the what's the invitation for us to stay in the pause and be in uncertainty? Because over-controlling or over-planning or over-scheduling or over the whatever I do, over functioning at times is really good because I don't have problems. Um, but obviously there's a cost to that as well. What's the cost? I'm exhausted, I'm burnt out. Not currently, because I'm trying really hard not to do that. Um but if we sorry, if instead of saying we, if I think about in my even last few years, how much time and energy I've put into navigating uncertainty to reduce it or push it away. But you're right, like life is uncertain all the time.

SPEAKER_02:

And I find, well, maybe it's just me, maybe my planning is faulty. But I I you know, I don't plan for enough contingencies. But it seems like, you know, I planned for all these different contingencies and think I've got it covered, and then something happens that's out of left field, and I, you know, it's like, wait a minute, where did that come from? I didn't plan for that one. What do I do now? So that's a moment for pause for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh, and tying that into our many of our trust conversations is breakdowns happen. How do we navigate a breakdown? We rely on our network of support, and that requires trusting them and trusting that we've built those relationships, that we have the ability to navigate a breakdown, that breakdowns are just part of life. Oh, this is just not where I thought this conversation was going to go today.

SPEAKER_02:

Me either. Wow. We could have planned for contingencies and other of other kinds of conversational directions, but here we are. And yeah, uncertainty is is part of life. And it's actually part of what really uh allows us human beings to to be creative, to innovate. Uh, because if we are always constantly planning and overplanning, we're not ready to take advantage of those amazing accidents that show up. You know, those chances out of nowhere. Or when they do show up, we're we're knocked for a loop because our our best laid plans have just been dumped in the trash.

SPEAKER_00:

So I I'd like to do a tiny little like I've got Ross from friends screaming in my head, pivot, pivot. Uh so we're not gonna do a pivot. We're not gonna do a pivot. How how does this pause and being a little bit more comfortable with uncertainty help us when we're in a leadership role?

SPEAKER_02:

It's a great question. I'm just putting myself mentally in that situation and noticing when it helped and when I was able to use it to move things forward in a good way, to move the whole team forward in a good way. I think for me anyway, it helps to connect with again with what's important to me. Um, I guess I'll say it differently. What do I love? And what brings joy, not just to me, but to whoever I'm working with. So pausing for a moment and just connecting with that is valuable for me when I'm leading a team trying to do something together. Um, it gets me out of a space where I'm supposed to be able to do it all and puts me in a space where, hey, there's a team here. My role is to just really help this team collaborate well together, work well together, keep things moving forward or sideways, whatever the the important movement is in this moment. Um, but being aware of that and and being the person that kind of just opens up the possibilities and frees them. And I can't do that if I'm worried about having all the answers or having it turn out exactly right or whatever that stuff is that I get myself worked up into. And pausing is how to get out of that for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Even as I asked that question, and I'm not in this moment in a leadership position, navigating anything that's uncertain, but even speaking that question out loud, I my breath went shallow, I went more rigid, and I was worried about how to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting noticing, right? And so yes, the pause is really important. I feel like also that this, oh, what just happened with my sensations? What just happened in my body? Because if I stay in that breath shallow, rigid, go back into my head, I need to figure this out. I'm the leader for gosh sakes, I've got to have the right answer. We can't be leading into uncertainty, then of course that impacts my language, my behaviors, my actions, which impacts the team.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Noticing, whoa, hey, I notice my breath is shallow. I'm already thinking about how I have to figure this all out on my own. Is that actually true? Is that what I need to do in this moment? Is there something else that might serve me? Maybe pausing for a moment. Letting a couple breaths out, letting the shoulders go down. I'm currently also just letting my belly go out, because you know, we hold so much constriction in our core. So just let the belly go out. Wait.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And already that uncertainty thing, no problem. We can figure that out.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Um, and that's interesting because as you were talking about, that it reminded me of a different situation where I'm not leading a team, but rather leading in front of the room, leading a workshop. Okay. There's a this really what's the word? Uh it's like a a bear stalking me. Um that that that bear is is I gotta know all the answers.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, I've gotta know that I've gotta have the answers when these people ask questions, or they say, I've gotta have the answer. I've got to have the right answer. And that bear is terrifying, knowing it's right there somewhere behind me. And I learned this, I I keep learning it over again, but um I remember very clearly uh being in front of the room as part of a team um led by a very wise leader, who after being in front of the room and kind of being stuck in that place for a little while, uh at a break, he said, you know, if you just let go, even a little bit, and then let in the possibility that the other people in this room who are very smart people might have answers that are as good or even maybe better than yours, that's okay. In fact, that's a good thing, because that's what's really going to make this workshop work. And so next time you're up there and you start in your head running a mile a minute, and for me it was running from the bear, um just stop for a moment, pause, and let the room be. Let the room take care of itself for a few moments. And your job will simply be to kind of um uh what's the word, summarize and uh whatever it is. You know, make sense of everything, basically. You know, pull together what people have said, and that made a huge difference, and it still does, because I still have to remember to do that when I'm in front of a room full of people. It's it's them who have uh who I want to hear from and who want to hear from each other and from themselves. Um, not so much me.

SPEAKER_00:

And so we're we're back to trusting that pause.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We're back to trusting that pause. And what becomes available. Now the other word that's popping into my head right now is surrender, which again, not a word that I or not an emotion that I'm wildly excited about because full surrender feels very vulnerable, right? Too open. I'm basically standing naked on the highway and everybody I know is driving by. Like here I am. It's not a good visual. Sorry. Um but again, we don't have to feel, and we get to we get to decide and navigate to what volume or intensity are we going to feel these different emotions? And so whether it's uncertainty, whether it's surrender at a 0.3 versus a seven. So what what is this a little bit of the letting go and a little bit of the opening? How does that allow us to feel a little bit more of the pause and to stay there for even a nanosecond longer? And it's interesting. I I have been practicing pause very intentionally for the last couple of years. And I had a couple of um colleagues share back that, like, oh Eli, I just can't do that. Like I try I've tried to pause, I just can't do it. And I'm like, well, what do you do? Well, I'll sit on the deck with my, you know, coffee for five minutes in the morning and then I got I got stuff to do. So I got like I gotta go to work, I gotta go do things. And so I just can't do it. I'm like, well, what if you stayed? As soon as you feel that that energetic move, like I've got to get moving, that that's where you go, oh, hang on. Three more breaths here.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Or I remember we were joking about it, but it's actually not a bad strategy. Um, a leader that worked in a very, very um, very busy environment, an athletic club, like there's lots of movement, there's lots of moving pieces all the time. And so for her to find a moment or two to pause was pretty difficult. She was always surrounded by people and things and requests, and it's like, you know what? Sit five more seconds in the bathroom. Five seconds, that's it. And what does that five seconds give you more of than if you hadn't gifted that to yourself? So how do we how do we give ourselves more of this pause and then learn that we can trust what we're listening when we do that?

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm pausing intentionally here because I'm part of me, my my head wants to jump in and say something, you know, something at least marginally profound. Um there ain't nothing there. Which is another good time to take a pause. And let that be okay. Yeah. And that I don't have that I don't need to have something to say that's you know, I'm impactful or profound or whatever in this very moment. Um that I can trust that someone somewhere, somehow it will show up, maybe in just in the mind of a listener, that we will never know about.

SPEAKER_00:

I think one of the other interesting things that's popping up for me is that when I am in the pause and I'm maybe not intentionally thinking about can I trust it or can I not trust it, that my inclination to not stay is when I don't like the answer I'm hearing. It's like, oh no, I don't want that. Oh, I don't want that. Yeah, that no, sorry. I excuse me, that that doesn't work for me.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So in that pause, I and that learning to develop our listening and trusting our listening, that we can't cherry pick, like, oh, I like that answer, I like that feeling, I like that outcome. I yeah, that feels good. I trust that. I'm gonna take action on that. That there's also this possibility that we may listen to something that is uncomfortable, not what we wanted, or an awareness. I sitting yesterday out on the back deck in the few moments of sunshine that we had. And a thought popped into my head that I've never had before. And I'm like, wow, where did that come from? And is that something that I want to dig into? I'm well into my 50s. How is it possible that I've never had this thought before? So in staying in the pause, okay. Now I don't have to do anything with it. I can just hold it, tuck it in my back pocket for now. But yeah, there's this interesting piece about what happens if I don't really align with or like what I'm listening when I'm pausing. And is that when we push away and say, no, I don't trust that?

SPEAKER_02:

Could be. Yeah. Yeah. You need to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. All of us, I think, to to some degree or another. It's um usually a pretty high degree. Uh, which drives a lot of, I know for me it drives a lot of my behavior, like you're saying. Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Want that certainty, man. I want to know what's going to happen. I want to know what's going to turn out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I want to make those plans. I want to make that decision. I want to prepare for that outcome. Those are things that oh, those are things that matter to me. Those are things that I want, that I care about. And so to not know or have uncertainty around how they're going to work out or if they're going to come to fruition or what they're going to look like. Uh no, I don't want that. No, thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So trusting the pause. Trusting taking a pause and uh and not trying to control it, not trying to um take it in a particular direction. Being okay with the uncertainty of where that pause might take us, uh, what might show up in that moment is part of life. And even in that uncertainty, I think there's a great value in taking that pause and hung and being okay. Being okay with that uncertainty and and with what shows up being I think it takes us makes us allows us to be bigger than our thoughts. Alone. Which my thinking mind is just rebelling against 100%. Wait a minute. No, my thoughts are what's all what it's all about. Right. What and and there's something bigger than my my ego thoughts. Yeah, there is. And that's I think for me what taking that pause is about is connecting with that.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm thinking again about this from our leadership lens. And what an incredibly bold, courageous, authentic, and vulnerable declaration that a leader could make to his team to say, here's what I'm uncertain about. Here's what I here's what we are certain about. Here's the data that we know, or here's what we know to be true. And this piece, wildly uncertain, we don't know, we don't have data, we've never been here before. And so I'm openly declaring that collectively I need your help to navigate this uncertainty. Like I'd like goosebumps if a leader said that. And I welcome those.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. That that when that happens, when leaders make declarations like that, boy, it opens up all sorts of powerful possibilities. Team, it unlocks it unlocks the game. And I've seen the consequences of both that and the opposite, where the leader believes that they have to have all the answers and uh locks the team into their own uh the leader's own sort of relatively small world. Yeah. The leaders can be have a pretty big internal world, but they can't be as big as their team. And so trusting that. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

And and and the opposite, like, oh my gosh, if I even if the leader didn't use these exact words, but the message being implied was I know everything, I've got it figured out, I don't need your help, you don't have anything of value to contribute. I can't what a horrible, horrible environment to be part of.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

So where where do we want to leave our I think there's an invitation here for our listeners to practice?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

How can we what's an what's a lovely, delicious, maybe uncertain practice that would help them stay in the pause and and learn to take a pause a little bit more than they are now?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, first of all, taking a pause, because I'm I suspect that some of our listeners don't really do that as a practice at all. So making it a practice to periodically pause and connect inside. Um then whether it's asking and doing so with a particular question in mind, but not taking the thinking mind in, not just simply stopping for a few moments from talking and mulling it over in the thinking mind, but rather connecting with what's important about this to me. What should what am I what am I paying attention to? And what am I missing? What am I not paying attention to? And just let that sit, those questions sit without answering them, which is uncertain, without answering them right away, let that just percolate. Um, so that's part of the pause for sure. And then, as you say, staying in it for a little bit longer, and I know for me, and you described it really well, my body starts to want to move forward, right? It's like it's conditioned to, okay, let's get going now. We've been in this pause for 30 seconds. Um, and rec learning to recognize that not as a sign that it's time to jump into action again, but rather simply as a sensation the body's having because it's trained that way. And let's just say, okay, thanks for the, you know, thanks for the invitation to jump into and back into action. Do I really need to do that right now? No. Let's stay in the pause for, I don't know, another, like you said, suggest, 10, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute.

SPEAKER_00:

And and if that feels overwhelming, literally three breaths. That's it. Start there. Start so small that it's something that you can do. The tiny tweak I would add is see if you can habit stack when you're gonna check in with yourself and do the pause. And so maybe it's every time you get up to go refill your coffee or your tea or your water, you that's it. Okay, when I do that, I'm gonna check in and pause. Or when you come back to your desk or your working space with your fresh hot coffee, tea, or some delightful cool beverage, that you take five extra seconds to pause before you jump back into work. And so be really clear and really intentional about we've said this quote like hundred, it feels like hundreds of times on our podcast, but dig the well before you're thirsty. Yeah. So build that practice intentionally. And then notice what happens.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, thank you. That's great. All right.

SPEAKER_00:

This would this is the conversation I didn't know I needed today. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Me too. Yeah. Um, that's why I really enjoy Mellie O'Brien's newsletters. Um, by the way, you can find her on LinkedIn and uh find her newsletters there.

SPEAKER_00:

So and we will we will make sure that we uh take her on our posts and also add to our um uh add how to find her in our resources.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. All right. Thank thank you all for listening. We'll be back again next time with another trust on purpose.

SPEAKER_00:

We'll see you then.

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Charles Feltman

Host
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Ila Edgar

Host