In this short solo episode a share a simple yet powerful technique, S.T.O.P., for taking a purposeful pause throughout your every day. Stop, Take a breath, Observe, Proceed.

00:29 Motivating STOP

01:50 What is STOP

04:37 Using STOP

11:19 Towards making STOP a habit

13:58 End

Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

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I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick and this is

a podcast series where academics and

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others share their stories, provide

ideas and provoke discussions about what

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we can do individually and collectively

to change academic life for the better.

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What if there was a really simple,

yet incredibly powerful way to

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handle stresses to handle those.

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Difficult moments when we feel pressured

into making decisions or struggling

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with back to back meetings and so on.

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Well today, I just want to

share with you a very simple

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technique that we'll call stop.

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That will highlight the power of

just taking a purposeful pause.

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Before I get to describe that.

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Just want to recognize that we missed

the last episode, Mainly, because

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of my travels and because some of

the arrangements for doing another

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interview, didn't quite work out.

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So this will be a short

solo episode today.

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And I want to talk about stop.

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Because it is a technique that no matter

who I talk to about it, whether it's

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in the PhD class, on, from surviving

to thriving or whether it's talking

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to a group of leaders, Stop is a

technique that people report again

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and again, and again, as something

that's made a huge difference to them.

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And something that is so simple to do.

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So what is stop?

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Stop is an acronym that

stands for S for stop.

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T take a breath.

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O, observe.

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P proceed.

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And let me walk through each of

those in a little bit more detail.

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So stop.

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It's about just interrupting your

thoughts or feelings at the moment.

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And just taking a purposeful pause.

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In whatever you're doing

in whatever you thinking.

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And in that pause, you really can

find your power and your presence.

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The T take a breath is.

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Just noticing your breathing for a second.

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And then you might just deliberately

take a breath in gently and

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slowly through your nose.

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And.

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Expanding your belly as you do that.

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And, and an even slower

breath out, if you can.

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And in that pause.

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Doing the O, the observe.

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Now what you observe.

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will, make sense relative

to the situation you're in.

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It could be that you're just taking

a moment to observe your thoughts

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and feelings, your emotions.

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It might be observing

your physical sensations.

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How your body's feeling.

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It might be observing the

situation and surroundings.

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Who else is around, what else is going on?

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What's the story going on in your mind?

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What reactive inclination

do you have in this moment?

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So it's actually stepping

out of reactivity.

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And just taking a step back and taking a

little bit more of an objective stance.

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And then the P for proceed.

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And again, what this actually means

will be dependent upon the situation.

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But it's about having stopped, taken

that breath observed what's going on.

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It's about making some

more purposeful choice.

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In how you then want to move forward.

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Like it could be how you want to respond.

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What's one thing you want to focus on.

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Uh, what could be a next

step that you want to take?

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And again, it's just that

shift from being reactive.

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To taking more control

of being responsive.

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And we can talk about using stop in a

myriad of situations in our everyday

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lives, where people have found it useful.

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And it could just be.

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Remembering to stop when you actually

feeling really stressed at the moment.

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And you just need to step

back for that minute.

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And this whole stop routine

can literally take seconds.

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Or you might want to extend

it for a minute or so.

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If you want to just sort of breathe

a little bit more or just do the

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observing and thinking about how

to proceed for a little bit longer.

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But we're only talking

about seconds to minutes.

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So when you're feeling

stressed, you may just want to.

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Take that breath.

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Just become more centered

and more focused.

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Before you move on.

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It could be stopping before you

react and blow up at something.

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You know how sometimes we're in

situations where we feel that this

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reactive response coming up that we

know is not going to be very helpful.

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One student a couple of years ago reported

that they applied this technique when they

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were writing a paper with a co-author.

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Who wasn't delivering

in a very timely way.

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And it was coming right

up to the deadline.

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And they were just about to send off

a really snarky email to this person.

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And somehow they had the presence

of mind to remember stop.

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So they actually literally stopped,

took their hands off the keyboard,

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stood up, just walk to the window,

looked out while they did that

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take a breath and just observe,

have a think about what's going on.

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And then they could come back and

handle the situation and I'm much

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calmer and more rational way.

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That was more likely to result in

the relationship being preserved

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and in getting the input that

they needed from the person.

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So we recognize those situations

where we can tend to react.

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Using stop to help us shift to a

response mode can be really useful

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because it helps, it helps us shift

from some sort of instant judgment or.

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Instant sort of, uh, you know, like

maybe aggressive action to becoming

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more curious or, or stopping us from

saying the thing that we'll regret.

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We can also use stop

before making a decision.

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One of the big pressures in academia

is often the pressure to feel

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like we ought to be saying yes.

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And how difficult it is

for people to say no.

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Especially if it's a power relationship

and someone has asked us to do something

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and we felt pressured to, to just jump in

and say, yes, and our gut is telling us,

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this is not what you want to be doing.

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Stop here can be really useful as well,

because it can allow us to actually

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connect with what our gut is saying.

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You know that observing what

your body's telling you.

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And instead of doing the reactive yes.

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To something that you

really don't want to do.

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You may be able to say.

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Thank you for asking me, can I get

back to you on this and actually

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take some time to really seriously

step back and think about it.

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So the stop just creates that

pause that enables you to.

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To stop making it a reactive, yes.

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To a more considered response

later on that may or may not end up

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being yes, but at least it will be

something that you will feel like

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you've had more of a choice about.

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Another situation where

stopped can be really useful.

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Is.

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Doing it between tasks or between back

to back meetings or appointments or

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whenever you're changing contexts.

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And this is somewhere where I, I

personally find stop incredibly helpful.

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Often in my role, I have had relatively

back to back meetings are often with

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not with a lot of space in between.

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And just very deliberately

taking time between each

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meeting to do this sort of stop.

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Helps me let go of the last meeting.

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Become more centered and focused.

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And be ready to focus on the next

meeting or the next interaction.

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I also use it when I'm switching context,

say coming home between work and home.

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And before I put the key into the

door, when I get home, I'll do

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a stop just at the front door.

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Just to become more present and more

focused to make that deliberate

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decision to step back from all the

things that are running around in my

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head that I've carried with me from work.

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And I know that that's something

that many people have reported

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as being really useful.

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Stop can be also really useful.

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When we're talking to people that we're

trying to develop and grow, and we know

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that we often have a temptation to jump

into advice mode often inappropriately.

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And it's not saying that

advice isn't useful.

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Um, and there's a previous episode

that you can listen to about this, but

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sometimes we're too quick to give advice.

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And I also find stop incredibly useful

and incredibly powerful for just

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recognizing, I can almost feel that

advice coming up in my throat and the

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stock just gives me the moment just to

say you go down, just hang on for a tick.

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And it lets me access then a curious

question to go back to the person and ask

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for a little bit more information or ask

for what they've been thinking about it.

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What solutions might they come up with?

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And again, the number of times I've

been so grateful that I've actually been

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able to access that stop that purposeful

pause, ask that curious question.

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And we've actually often come to a

situation that's far better and far more

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impactful for the person because they have

felt much more empowered to find their own

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solutions with support with scaffolding.

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So there are many, many

situations that I'm sure you'll

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be able to come up with as well.

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About when it may be really

useful to make use of stop.

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And accessing stop though, as a

technique, take some work because

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it is about developing a new habit.

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So one of the things that I

often recommend to people is

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you may want to think about.

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Just in terms of starting to get familiar

with it and for it to become a little

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bit more of a first reaction for you.

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You may want to look

at setting a random timer.

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Just to have an alarm or an alert

or a notification at different

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times during the day or at some

regular intervals during the day.

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And whenever you get the notification,

you use that to take your 15 seconds,

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your 10 seconds, whatever it is.

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Just to do that purposeful

pause to do that.

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Stop.

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You might have a little stop sign

hanging on you on your laptop screen.

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That reminds you between your meetings.

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Just to stop.

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Take that breath.

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Observe what's going on.

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Decide purposefully how

you want to proceed.

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It's such a simple technique and

yet it's so incredibly powerful.

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For managing stress for enabling us

to be more present to ourselves and

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to the others that we're interacting

with to give our full attention.

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To make more reasoned

and reasonable decisions.

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And just to have a better day.

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So I look forward to hearing how

you go, trying out, just stopping.

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Just taking a stop, taking

that purposeful pause.

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And finding your power in that pause.

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You can find the summary

notes, a transcript and related

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links for this podcast on www.

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changingacademiclife.

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com.

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And I'm really hoping that we can

widen the conversation about how

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we can do academia differently.

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