The Space Between

Sometimes, the greatest breakthroughs happen when we stop chasing them.

Sometimes, a phrase or sentence just sticks with you. It doesn't matter where you heard it or who wrote it. It settles in your mind and tends to resurface when you least expect it. That's exactly what happened to me with a line from a centuries-old sonnet.

"The more we pause, the more we progress."  For whatever reason, I can't seem to shake those eight words.

At first, they felt completely backward. From the day I started working, I've been conditioned to believe that progress comes from movement: work harder, move faster, fill the calendar, and always stay "busy" (whatever that means). Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that the busier I became, the more progress I was making.

The more I've thought about that sentence, the more I see it showing up in every aspect of my life. Before speaking engagements, it has caused me to stop rehearsing and focus on the audience. When I'm writing these blogs, I've realized that stepping away from the keyboard often leads to better ideas than just staring at the screen. Even during my morning runs, I've noticed that solutions don't come when I'm chasing them. I'm learning that answers often appear after I stop trying so hard to find them.

Hell, I've realized that the same thing is happening in my daily conversations. The moments I recall most aren't when I bounced in with what I felt was the perfect response; they're the ones when I paused, listened, and took time to process before expressing myself. I suppose the point is that I'm starting to see that real clarity often comes when we stop trying to fill every moment with words.

To put it plainly, the pause isn't interrupting progress as much as it's creating room for it. In my mind, I've been calling that “the space between.”

When we pause, we give ourselves a chance to think instead of just react, to notice instead of assume, and to question our own assumptions. These quiet, thoughtful moments are rare these days, when everything pushes us to move faster and work harder.

I've also realized that very few of the decisions I regret happened because I paused too long. On the contrary, most of those decisions happened because I didn't pause at all: I answered before I understood, reacted before I reflected, and confused speed with importance. Looking back, it's hard to think of many situations where slowing down would have hurt me, yet I can think of plenty of times when it would have helped.

I don't believe that old sonnet is encouraging any of us to become less ambitious or less productive. If anything, I think it's suggesting we reconsider what progress actually looks like - at least, that's how it's hit me. We live in a culture that celebrates speed with faster responses, more accelerated growth, getting to the "next thing" quickly, and immediate results. To be sure, there's certainly a time and place for velocity, but I do wonder if we've become so obsessed with moving fast that we've forgotten about the value of standing still.

I have, however, come to believe that some of life's greatest breakthroughs happen in the space between the activity - those moments that naturally happen when we finally stop long enough to notice what we've been too busy to see. That pause creating the space between isn't where progress stops; it's where it begins.