Learning to Pause: Rewriting the Story of Urgency

My client got the dreaded, 

“Hey, can I call you?” text from a colleague just as she was stepping onto the train home at 6 PM.

(the 5 words that used to send her into panic mode)

What happened next? I’m 100% certain it will change the rest of her life.

Before working together, she would immediately have responded “Yes”.

Today? She acted differently than she has before.

Instead of dropping everything to answer, she took a breath and replied:

“I’m getting on the train. Is this an urgent fire?”

Her colleague said:

“Just call me when you’re home.”

Then she said something she would have never said prior to us working together…

“I’m not free later. Can this wait until tomorrow?”

If you’ve been showing up this way in your job, the response from her colleague will totally shock you…

“No, it’s not urgent, let's chat tomorrow. Have a great night!”

In our work together she has learned to ask follow-up questions to understand how urgent requests are. 

The past version of her would have said “Ok, great call you later,” and literally called them the second she walked in the house and chatted for an hour instead of playing with her dog and greeting her partner and then been resentful.

Instead she did something she never would have done prior to us working together - simply asked a question to determine the urgency instead of stepping in to handle things assuming and reacting as if it were urgent.

Here’s what I need you to know. . .

You’re telling yourself that others need you all of the time, but they don’t. 

In your mind you're saying everything is urgent, but 99% of the time it can wait - unless you’re an emergency doctor.

Just because your boss leaves you a voicemail that says, “Hey, I need to chat with you about something. Give me a call back,” doesn’t mean it’s a fire drill.

When you treat every ping, text or “urgent” email like an emergency that needs you to step in and handle it your body can’t tell the difference between a true crisis and a work request.

Your nervous system kicks into fight or flight and gets hijacked - your heart rate spikes, your shoulders tense, your digestion slows, your muscles tighten and your body floods with cortisol and adrenaline. This causes your high blood pressure, sleepless nights and random weight gain.

You’re ready to fight a tiger, when really…it’s just a Tuesday afternoon meeting request.

Instead when you pause, breathe and ask “Does this really need my attention right now?”  you shift from reactivity to response.

This is a lot harder than one would think because you’re so conditioned to act, put out fires, solve and “be available.”

That constant doing becomes an identity: if you’re not reacting, you feel like you’re falling behind.

That’s why I teach my clients tools to bring the body out of fight-or-flight and into regulation.

Through grounding techniques, breathwork, and short mindfulness practices, you train your nervous system to pause before reacting.

Meditation — as Deepak Chopra describes in his teachings — has the power to help shift you from reactivity to higher states of awareness, where you can respond instead of react.

When you learn to slow your body, your mind follows.

From that place of calm awareness, you stop saying “yes” out of habit and start responding with intention. You communicate clearly, leave work on time without guilt, and make decisions that reflect your values — not other people’s urgency.

This client made this shift after just 3 months of working together.

If you’re stuck in fire drill culture, let’s chat because it’s time to change that story.