Take back control of your response! Barry shares his “five-second rule." An intentional gap between stimulus and response that interrupts automatic reactions. He teaches five steps (supported by scriptures) for adding pause to your response.

Join the FatherSeekers community! https://www.skool.com/fatherseekers

FS Facebook

FS Instagram

FS YouTube

Ask Barry a question: [email protected]

CHAPTERS

00:00 Why Five Seconds Works

01:00 Psychology of the Pause

03:59 Five Steps Stop to Speak

07:02 Benefits in Real Life

11:41 FatherSeekers 5 Second Rulex

12:24 Theology Reaction vs Response

13:44 PAUSE Acronym Practice

15:42 More Resources & Support

--

FatherSeekers helps fatherless fathers become better fathers.

Get discussion guides, devotionals, and more at FS Website

The power of five seconds is a strong concept, but its power is not that five seconds is some sort of magic

The power is that it's a brief intentional pause that creates space between stimulus and response

Enough space to listen, to regulate emotion, to examine motive, to choose words that serve truth and love rather than impulse.

This is Barry with FatherSeekers.

This is the podcast, Teach Me to, to Father: Restoring Fatherhood to Original Design.

There's psychology behind the five seconds.

A pause that interrupts what psychologists call the automatic or prepotent response.

The immediate reply that's defensive, offering correction, sarcasm, interruption, or an emotional counteract- attack that wants to come out before reflection has occurred

That involves several practical processes.

The first, response inhibition, the capacity to stop an initiated reaction long enough to decide whether it's fitting.

The second, emotional regulation.

Strong emotions can narrow attention bias interpretation and make it harder to stop or to choose a response wisely.

Third, perspective-taking.

Silence creates room to ask, what did they actually say?

And the fourth, choice restoration, the pause that transfers leadership from reflex intention.

You are no longer simply expressing what arose in you, but you are pausing it.

You are stewarding this opportunity and what will come through you

The five-second pause is a powerful tool.

I've used it for many years and I try to master it every day, especially in my communication with my wife, my friends, my close friends, my family, my children.

It is a powerful tool But it can be an on-ramp.

It keeps, it keeps the mouth from outrunning the heart and the emotions.

Wisdom shows up in that gap, that five-second gap.

Not m- not merely, not merely just being quiet and staring and trying to be manipulative and, and, and overpower somebody with wicked glares and sarcastic looks, but it allows five long seconds to pause and to perceive and to choose wisely

I wanna tell you five things that will help you if you can remember these in the five-second pause

A moment in the five seconds is so powerful, I cannot tell you.

And I will tell you that personally I've used this, again, I'm telling you this because it's been such an influential tool in my life, that it's helped me catch myself and get wiser words as I listen to the input of the Holy Spirit or remember scripture.

Number one, stop.

I do not have to obey my first impulse.

The scripture says, "Whoever restrains his lips is prudent." Number two, listen.

What did this person actually mean?

What have I missed?

If one goes… Or, pardon.

"If one gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame." Proverbs 18:13.

In the five seconds, discern.

Is my reaction driven by fear or pride or pain or anger or love?

The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer.

28.

Aim.

What is the response that serves truth, love, peace, and the good of the person?

A soft answer turns away wrath.

Prover- Proverbs 15:1.

And then speak.

Can I say what is true and timely and fitting and gracious in a compassionate way?

Let your speech always be gracious.

6.

This makes that five-second framework more than self-control.

It becomes relational stewardship.

I have seen, you have seen, we have been party to observing people saying things in, in the spur of the moment and, and hurting people for m- weeks, months, years.

It is not worth it, and it gives us opportunity to pause, to be humble, and to be kind.

In the book of James in the New Testament, James.

Says this, "The anger of a man does not produce righteousness of God," James 1:20.

The pause is therefore a practical refusal to let human anger become your counselor.

Boy, have I failed at that.

I don't want you to fail at that.

I don't want you to drop the ball that way.

I can tell you that I have hurt people's feelings by, by quickly responding, just like many of us have.

And looking back over some of those conversations, it absolutely is not worth it.

It's just not.

As you get older, you will see that relationships mean more, and sometimes being quiet and listening and letting things surface that are important are beneficial to the overall healing and the process of continued family relations.

Let's talk about some of the benefits of the pause.

It lowers the likelihood of impulsive, destructive speech, especially, especially defensiveness, interruption, contempt, accusation, and verbal escal- escalation.

If there's one thing I hate is I hate, I hate to be interrupted, especially when I practice that five-second pause.

It wears me out.

Does it wear you out?

Does it bother you?

Here's another benefit of the five-second pause.

It makes genuine listening possible.

You can hear both the content and the emotional weight of what's being said rather than merely just waiting for an answer to reload.

Listening to what's being said and hearing what's being said are two different practices.

Now, depending on your understanding of semantics, what we want to do is we want to, we want to hear people.

And then we want to understand what they've said.

Here's another benefit.

It improves accuracy.

Research distinguishes a more reflective response profile not as being merely slow, but as processing at a pace that preserves both accuracy and control.

I'm telling you this works.

It works.

It works.

It works more on me than it does the other person

Because during that five seconds, most recently, I've been trying to hear myself and to say, "Why am I feeling that way right now based on what they've said? And how can I ease into this and make this a kind, loving, truthful response that creates peace in the long run?"

Here's another benefit.

It creates room for conscience, prayer, and discernment.

Lord, what is it that you would like for me to say here?

What's going on?

Give me the words I need to say.

Cannot tell you how many times I've done that, and I will tell you it's absolutely amazing.

You'll be surprised if you can just pause your emotions.

In other words, for five seconds, put your emotions in a jar if you're an emotional person and hold them there.

Another benefit, it helps fathers model emotional maturity.

Pausing, listening, looking intently at the person, perhaps even nodding or smiling or engaging, especially with young children.

A child who sees their father pause before responding learns the power is not in loudness, it is not in anger, it is not in being the, the immediate authority in the home.

It's, it's not about who rules and who's in charge.

It shows humility and kindness.

It helps children learn that their father is wise.

It also shows a great deal of love and respect to your wife.

Another benefit is it can strengthen repair.

Five seconds before responding to a spouse, a child, a colleague may be the difference maker between you always and help me understand what happened.

It, it pauses us to, to looked, look correctly and circumspectly at ourselves and then to hear what the other person's saying.

You know, some people have the temperament and the emotional makeup that if, if you hurt their feelings, you shut them down, and then you never get the whole story.

That's not the way to do it.

Open communication, healthy communication, not always perfect and not always emotionless or anger-free, but controlled and well-stewarded using love and humility and kindness

Here's a possible def- h- well, here's our definition at FatherSeekers for the five-second rule, and we're using this more and more and more.

The power of the five-second rule is the disciplined practice of pausing before a response so that the spirit, rather than the impulse, can govern our words.

It creates room to hear fully, to discern the heart, to restrain anger, and to speak truth and love.

Even more so, in just one sentence, it says this: five seconds is the space where reaction becomes response and where wisdom gets a voice.

Now, there are some theological distinctions to this five-second pause.

One of them is reaction is often immediate, self-protective, emotionally driven, and unconcerned with outcome.

Response is chosen, other-aware, truthful, and submitted to a higher purpose.

Wisdom is the capacity to perceive what the moment requires and act in a way that honors God and serves the good of the other person.

Do you see that we, guys, that we have to be humble, kind, compassionate, without toxic empathy, without sarcasm, and being rude and powerful, and wielding the sword of the husband father?

Jesus was the most humble man that ever walked the earth.

He was kind, and he was gentle.

He was the king of the universe.

He created all that exists, both seen and unseen, known and unknown, revealed and yet to be seen, and he died for our sins.

Humility.

Now, I'm gonna land the plane here, and I'm going to give you five concepts, five tickler ideas, five explanatory, brief, little d- words with a, a slight definition that you can begin to practice, and you can teach your family.

You can teach your team this.

You can teach people that you lead how to do this.

Here it is.

It's a usable five-second practice.

Here it is, an acronym.

The word pause.

The P, pause.

Do not let the first feeling write your first sentence.

P, pause.

Do not let the first feeling write your first sentence.

A, attend.

Listen to the words, the tone, the pain, the fear, and what may be underneath those words.

Attend.

U, understand.

Ask, what am I feeling?

What story am I telling myself?

Understand.

S, submit.

Holy Spirit, govern my mouth.

Help me speak the truth in love.

Give me your wisdom

Submit.

And E, engage.

Respond with a question, a gracious sentence, a boundary, or a request for more time.

Engage.

Again, the acrostic PAUSE.

P, pause, A, attend, U, understand, S, submit, E, engage.

I hope this helps you.

I hope you're encouraged, and I hope you'll go to our website and take a look.

We have just remodeled it, made it streamlined.

We have added, uh, such a simplistic pathway through the, through the website now.

It's minimalistic, it's short.

Be sure and click on every button.

It will take you to all the platforms where all of our content, our information is stored.

You can literally connect to anything we're doing from the website, fatherseekers.org, fatherseekers.org.

Hey, if this podcast benefits you and it's helped you, whatever platform you're listening on, Spotify, Apple, or YouTube, like, share, comment, and subscribe.

Like, share, comment, and subscribe.

It helps us spread the word, get out there a little broader.

And also, remember that we're listener and viewer supported, meaning that you, if you benefit, we need your help to keep this going, to continue to produce quality content and up our game to better communicate to you and all the listeners and the viewers.

And also, please remember that Father Seekers and Teaching Me to Father is here for you.

This is Barry with Father Seekers.

The link is in the bio below.

Be sure and connect.

Love you, man.

Talk to you soon