The ROCKSTAR Mom

The Power of Pause: Why Slowing Down Is the Key to More Energy, Presence, and Peace

• Megan Caldwell • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Hustle culture tells us to go faster. We chose to question that script and make a case for the tiny, powerful pauses that change everything—your choices, your energy, and your peace. 

As a two-time burnout survivor and coach, Megan shares why slowing down is not a luxury but a strategy for high-achieving moms who want to thrive at work and home without the guilt.

We dig into the Rockstar Framework—values and vision, mindset mastery, energy management, nervous system regulation, and community—and show how the practice of pause threads through every pillar. You’ll learn the difference between big pauses (therapy, coaching, journaling, weekly planning) and little pauses (thirty-second check-ins woven into your day), and how both create space to respond instead of react. 

aThe heart of the method is simple and doable: ask three questions—How do I feel? What do I want? What do I need? This small sequence clears mental clutter, calms your nervous system, and makes the next step obvious.

Megan shares a client stories and why learning to slow down can be so hard. 

Plus a gift for you, especially for those who need some support slowing down or do best with some type of structure.  Download your free five-minute Release and Reset meditation at the following link and enjoy: 

Free 5 Minute Release & Reset Meditation

https://www.subscribepage.com/rrmeditation

 If this episode resonates, subscribe, leave a quick review, and share the episode with a friend who’s ready to swap burnout for ease.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Send us a text

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➡️AND Please subscribe to the podcast now to join our ROCKSTAR community and begin your journey towards living a life with more clarity, energy, peace of mind and FUN!

SPEAKER_00:

You are listening to the Rockstar Mom, a podcast for high achievers who are ready to get off of autopilot and live a life with more intention, peace of mind, and happiness. This is a space to expand, dig deep, get clear, and take action towards living your most authentic, aligned life. I'm Megan Caldwell. As a mom of three, two-time burnout survivor, and empowerment coach and speaker, I've cracked the code on what it actually takes to thrive at work and home, ditch perfectionism and people pleasing, get your schedule under control, and live with more ease. So you've got more time and energy to do the things you love without the mom guilt. It's time to get out of your head and into action. Now is the time to live your most rockstar life. Let's go. Welcome back, my friends, to the Rockstar Mom podcast. I am so glad that you are tuning in today for an episode that is going to be short, but also so powerful. And today we are talking about slowing down. Yes, I know. If that maybe is uncomfortable for you because you are just used to operating at a constant speed and you are an achiever and you are a go-getter and you are a doer and you like efficiency, this might be especially important for you today. Today, we are going to be talking about the power of pause and what this can look like for you on a day-to-day basis to help you really slip into and feel into those moments of peace, those moments of connectedness, those moments of groundedness. Now, if you don't know, I am a huge personal development, self-development, self-help, personal care guru and junkie, if you will. I read lots and lots of books, listen to lots of podcasts and audiobooks, read articles, and really do enjoy engaging in conversation with people who are interested in bettering their lives and bettering themselves. And I am currently reading a book that has been amazing and fascinating. I'm sure I'll have more to share on it. But for right now, I just want to share one concept. The book is Don't Believe Everything You Think. Why You're Thinking is the Beginning and End of Suffering by Joseph Wynne. And again, I could go on for days about the power of mindset and how we shift our mindset, as that, as that is a big piece of the work I do coaching women like you. But one thing that stood out as I was reading a chapter of this book last night, as I was getting ready for bed, is a quote he shared is the greatest power you possess is to shift your thinking. And again, this is so, so true as our reality and our world is really just made up of the thoughts that we have about it. Again, I'll go down that tangent another day. But one thing I was thinking as I was reading this is yes, it is such power and so empowering and enlightening and can really help us shift our reality and our world when we shift our thinking. But in order to have the capacity to shift our thinking, in order to make that happen, there's something that actually comes before then. And it is this power of pause. In order to even identify the thoughts that we're looking to shift or those deeper beliefs, we have to take the time to pause. So what I will actually say is while the greatest power you can possess or give yourself is to shift your thinking, I would say the greatest gift you can give yourself is the power of pause. In fact, pause is one of the six practices that is found within the Rockstar Framework. And again, the Rockstar Framework is the framework that I use with my coaching clients that helps guide women like you from states of overwhelm and chaos and exhaustion and constantly falling into traps of people pleasing and perfectionism and moving into a life where you feel more of that sense of internal peace, where you have more energy, where you have more joy, where you have more presence. And while the framework itself is built on the foundation, as I call it, really getting in tune with your priorities, your values and vision, as well as four other main pillars, including mindset mastery, including energy management, including nervous system regulation and resiliency, and including the power of community, kind of beneath that all, and putting some of this framework into practice are what I call the six rock star practices. And while each one has its own, its own place and is so important, there is one that time and time again just stands out and shows me and shows women like you just how powerful it can be. And again, this is the power of pause. It's the power of actually slowing down amidst this hustling, bustling world that we live in. Now, if me even saying pause or slow down, and you're thinking, yeah, right, I have like too much to do. There's so much on my to-do list, there's never enough time, there's all these things that need to get done. Know that you're not alone. And I also invite you to really get curious and take on a perspective today as to how powerful this can be. Because again, it seems kind of counterintuitive to slow down, to take time to pause, to take time to reflect when there is so much going on. But I promise you, my friend, this can be a game changer. In fact, I'm thinking back to one of my very, very first coaching clients. Now, when I made the transition out of owning and operating my fitness franchise and really wanted to get into kind of these deeper layers of work with women, it looked like it was in the form of health coaching. So I was really helping a lot of women develop more sustainable, healthy habits over time. And again, this has shifted and evolved to the more kind of holistic, comprehensive work that I do with women now, which is really about lifestyle change. It is really about shifting and changing the trajectory of our lives for long-term success. Anyways, I think back to one of my very first coaching clients whose name was Emily. And Emily, you might have many characteristics in common with her. She was your typical high achiever, type A, check the boxes, get the good grades, go to the good school. She then went on to law school. So she was an attorney. Find your partner, have your kids, and just go along with it. And again, from the outside, lots and lots of successes. But she came to me because she felt like the one piece that that wasn't working for her is her actually prioritizing her own health and wellness. And so that's where we began, began our coaching together. And I remember a very, very specifically a conversation I had with her, probably a month or two into our coaching together. And she really, I could see the light bulb go off in her head. And she said, Megan, I can't believe it can be this simple. When I slow down, I can be more intentional. The choices become easier. And it just seems to flow more. And again, hearing this come from such a high achiever, I mean, goodness, she's an attorney, right? That yes, it can be this simple. And it starts with this power of pause and this power of slowdown. We have to learn to gift ourselves pushing against and kind of being disruptors in this society that is just constantly telling us to do more, be more, hustle more. Your worth is tied to how much you achieve and what you do and your productivity. When we take time to slow down and pause, we actually get to know ourselves better and we allow ourselves to really seep into more of how we want to feel and how we want to be showing up, which again, oftentimes is more of the sense of peace with more presence, with more energy, with more of our fullest, most unique selves. Now, when I break down this practice of pause and the power of pause in my framework, I think of it in two very kind of distinct ways. First, there are what I call the big pauses. And the big pauses are times that you have intentionally set aside to do some of this deeper work, to get to know yourself better. So this might look like maybe an appointment with your therapist or with your coach. This might look like taking time and making time to journal or self-reflect. This might be a pause in terms of engaging in one of these kind of deeper conversations with a really good friend. These bigger pauses are where you really, again, take and make the space to tune inward and to really question and think about what do I want? What makes me tick? How can I live my best life? And kind of go into those bigger spaces of what is your vision and setting up the plans for moving forward. Those, again, are some of the bigger pauses. Another example in your everyday life right now might be if you take the time to pause to say, either map out your week to figure out your carpool schedule or your childcare schedule or your meal planning. That is another example of a big pause. My guess is you are doing this on some level at some in some way in your life. Whether it be again bigger pauses to kind of just figure out the logistics of your life or bigger pauses where you're doing some of the deeper work in terms of self-development. What I really want to focus on today, though, are what I call the little pauses. And the little pauses are how are we regularly taking time to check in with ourselves? Okay, again, we live in this culture of just go, go, go, constant busyness, packed schedules. If you're living in that space, if you're listening to this as you're currently schlepping your kid to soccer or whatever it might be, know that you're not alone. But these little pauses can be so powerful. And it really is adopting a practice. And again, I call this a practice because it's not just a one and done. It's not just something that you get. It is something that we try over and over and over again to figure out what works for us and to really see the benefit of it. Is taking time throughout your day, ideally throughout every hour. Ideally, we are living intentionally in the moment to check in with ourselves regularly. Not just to put your head down and plow through and to check things off of your to-do list, but to really, again, touch base with yourself in the moment. And again, these pauses don't need to be, I'm gonna step away for five minutes from my family gathering and pause and check in with myself. These really, the more you practice it, the easier it is to do in whatever situation that you're in. I love bringing this to the table. Right now, it is end of December. We are amidst kind of holiday season, and you're probably in family or social gatherings. It could be while you're sitting at that, you know, Christmas Eve dinner and crazy Aunt Sally is going off on a tangent on some story that makes you and everybody else at the table uncomfortable, is taking a moment in that, in that space to even just pause and check in with yourself. Again, just an example. This can happen at any point. But I invite you in these smaller pauses, it allows the space to really check in with ourselves. And there are three powerful questions I'd like to share with you. How do I feel? What do I want? What do I need? Let's start with the first one there. How do I feel? We as women have been taught for decades to suppress our emotions and that our needs and desires don't matter, that we should put other people's needs first. And therefore, many women get out of touch with how they actually feel. Now I'm thinking back to before I started my own personal development journey, you know, a dozen years ago, is when people would ask me, like, how do you truly feel? I didn't have an answer because again, my go-to response was fine or good or things are great. When really I was so disconnected with how I actually felt in my mind and body. So this question alone can take some practice. But by pausing and even asking ourselves, we are inviting the opportunity to really check in with ourselves in that moment. So I'll bring us back to the example of sitting at a family gathering with crazy Aunt Sally sharing some stories is how do I feel in this moment? Well, most likely maybe I'm feeling uncomfortable or frustrated or I'm feeling angry because the same thing comes up every single year on Christmas Eve. Whatever it might be, but again, it's just acknowledging what we feel. There is no right or wrong. There aren't any good or bad emotions. They are all part of the human experience. But when we can start to connect with them and tune in with them and relate to them, we can then move through them. So that's kind of the first question. How do I feel? The second one, so powerful, one that I believe is women, we should be asking ourselves day in and day out, is what do I want? It's one of my favorite questions to ask women that I work with and women that I get on the phone with for the first time, is like, well, what is it that you really, really want? And again, we could go into a whole coaching session on this and go deep into like, what do you want in life? What do you want in the greater world? But I'm talking about in that moment of pause, again, whether it be amidst chaos at the Christmas Eve, you know, holiday table, dinner situation I was just sharing about, or maybe it is asking what you want as you're sitting in the rain at your kiddo's soccer game, is again just tuning in with what are your desires in that moment. Do you want to stay and be part of that conversation and maybe put your two cents or set a boundary and ask her to stop sharing the story? Do you want to excuse yourself from the table to go take a break? Do you want to just sit and observe? It is so important for us as women to start to again ask ourselves, what is it that we want in that moment? And then the third question is what do I need? In that moment, again, depending on what feelings or emotions are coming up, might change what it is that you need in that moment. But maybe you need to remove yourself from the situation to take a quick break. Maybe you need to set a boundary. Maybe you need to lean in and ask for support. Maybe you need to cancel the meeting that's causing so much stress. When we take these small moments to pause, feel some of the feelings, we can then check in with ourselves and we can be more intentional moving forward. Just like my client Emily was sharing, is when I slow down, when I check in, when I pause, it allows us to be less reactionary and be way more intentional with our choices. And you may have heard me say before your life, my friend, is just made up of thousands of choices. And when we take the power to pause, we can be more intentional with what we are choosing. As I shared, when we as women are finding ourselves on this hamster wheel of constant overwhelm and constant go and busyness and life just feels like it's constantly moving up. This whole concept of slowing down can actually be really intimidating because our body isn't used to it. So our nervous system is literally saying to us, nope, keep going, keep going at this speed because this is safe right now. When in reality, again, slowing down allows us to feel more of that sense of peace. In fact, I love this quote by an author and teacher that I follow on Instagram. His name is Corey Allen. And he says, You are not moving too slow. You are moving at the speed of peace. Let me pause and let that sink in for a second. I'll repeat it again. You are not moving too slow. You are moving at the speed of peace. My friend, when we learn to slow down, when we learn to check in with ourselves, when we practice the pause, the big pauses and the little pauses, it allows us to get closer to that sense of internal peace. And I know if you are like any of the women that I work with, that is something that we crave and desire so much to stop the racing thoughts, to be able to be more present, to feel more grounded and know that that is possible. And leaning into this power of pause, which really comes down to checking in with yourself, tuning in, being aware. I always say awareness is the first step of change. The pause allows us to bring to awareness what's actually going on in our body and our mind. And that, my friend, is so powerful. So no matter where you're at in this season of life, or no matter what time of year you are actually catching this episode, I invite you to think about leaning into this power of pause. I'd also love to invite you, if you're like, oh, I don't know how to do this, here's a couple different ideas as to where you can start. One of my favorite, and you may have heard me say this before, is to set a timer. Set a timer for a time during each day where oftentimes you are feeling more of that heightened stress. So for me, it used to be around that kind of like three-ish in the afternoon hour when I was transitioning from work mode into full-on mom mode. And I would have an alarm go off on my phone, and you could have that alarm say pause. Mine now actually goes off at 3:35 every day and it says you are awesome. But again, it's it's becoming that cue and triggering my brain to check in with self to just pause and say, How am I doing right now in this moment? Setting alarms can be a great one. Again, we kind of laugh and might think that it's kind of silly, and again, it kind of cues and triggers us to actually do it. Another thing I'd love to invite you into is I recorded a very quick five-minute guided meditation called Release and Reset. And this is a great opportunity for, again, this kind of straddles between kind of the small pause and the big pause. But if you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out and kind of on edge and not sure how to reset into the space where you can show up as your best self, this quick five-minute guided meditation could be a really good start. I guide you through kind of releasing some of what's going on, being more aware so you can step up and be more intentional moving forward. You can grab that free release and reset guided meditation at the link in the show notes here. And I'd love to hear how it goes from for you. I've gotten some great feedback from women, how powerful it can be. You can use it regularly or as a one-off, but that is my gift to you this holiday season. Thank you, my friend, again, for showing up for you today, for taking a moment to even pause and listen to this episode, for getting curious, and for really thinking about what it takes to live your best, most rock star life. I am sending you so much love and cheering you on always. Thank you so much for tuning into the Rockstar Mom podcast. If today's episode resonated with you, here's how we can keep this momentum going. First, be sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Next, I'd be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Your feedback helps us reach even more women who are ready to live more intentional, fun-filled lives. Lastly, please share your insights on social media and be sure to tag me at Megan Callville.com. PDX so we can connect and inspire other rock stars to live their best lives too. Again, I am so glad that you are here and I'll see you next time.