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Episode 28 – Practice the Pause – Real Life Case Study
Podcast Episode 28 - Practice the Pause - Real Life Case Study

Episode 28 – Practice the Pause – Real Life Case Study

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In this podcast episode, we dive into an actual real life example of practicing the pause during the week of Hurricane Laura 2020.

Links to resources/articles referenced in the episode:

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hello! Welcome to the Sally in the Zen podcast. I’m your host, Sally. I’m a Zen Buddhist caregiver taking care of my elderly folks, and always and pursuits to find Zen moments in everyday living. If you’re new to the podcast, welcome! If you’re not new and you’re returning, welcome back.

Hope everybody is doing well, staying safe, staying sane. And when you think about it, that we’re already into September, that’s like almost 6 months of staying at home and having our new normal become normal. Very strange to think about that – that we are used to… and I can speak confidently from my personal perspective… that we’re pretty comfortable being at home all the time. No traveling, aside from going outside to go for a walk or grocery shopping or picking up medicine but beyond that, it’s become a normal that we don’t even think about it anymore. That it’s actually hard to remember or hard to realize that we used to be able to go out freely. Used to be able to jump on a plane or jump in the car and just go and meet people and hug people. Oh the good old days.

Anyways, that was pretty cheery, wasn’t it?

So I wanted to touch really briefly on the stats for the podcast, which I’ve never done before. So we are officially 1-year-old as of yesterday. I’ve been doing this podcast for 1 year now and I can’t get over that it’s already 1 year.

So let me, if you’ll indulge me for a few seconds, spotlight on the highlights of my little podcast. So as of now, all time podcast downloads – 347. Compared to what, I don’t know. I don’t compare myself to any other podcast so I can’t even tell you if that’s a lot. Woo hoo!  Or if that’s a little. Woo hoo! Either way, good going Sally!

Number of episodes published – 28 and I’m on 7 directories. Meaning my podcast is available on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Pandora, TuneIn and Alexa, and Amazon music, recently.

Amazon…I’m of the firm opinion that Amazon is trying to conquer the world and now that they’re segwaying into the podcasting world, I went ahead and submitted my podcast to Amazon. Just for the heck of it and it’s free. Why not? And let’s see how that goes. 

That’s all pretty interesting. The life of a podcaster – very interesting. So thank you for putting up with me as I go through my highlights. Yeah, yeah. Keep going, Sally. Woo hoo! Yay! Yay! Okay enough of that.

So before we go on to today’s topic or today’s episode, let me put on my normal disclaimer, and say that today’s episode is my opinion, my opinions alone. I’m not sponsored by anyone or given money or paid by anyone to say what I’m going to say. So that we’re very clear.

Let me set up the premise for today’s episode. So a couple weeks ago, I was on Pinterest.com. Pinterest – p.i.n.t.e.r.e.s.t.com –  and I love it. If you are unfamiliar with Pinterest.com, I welcome you to surf around because it is a plethora of ideas, jokes, books, clothes, whatever. It’s just a really cool collection of whatever you want to find.  And I’m usually there surfing around for ideas for future episodes because I’m of the firm belief that ideas always are literally staring you in the face. And you just need to be aware and your eyes open to see them, and to grab a hold of them when they resonate with you.

So I happen to be on Pinterest this one day, a couple weeks ago and a pin caught my eye and that pin is the premise for today’s episode. The pin is called Practice to pause. Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you’re about to react harshly and you’ll avoid doing and saying things you’ll later regret. 

Now this pin, this quote is from Lori Deschene – d.e.s.c.h.e.n.e. And I’ll include her pin in the show notes for your reference but that gave me, literally, pause. It’s like when I first read it and I’m sitting back in my seat thinking about it, chewing on it…practice the pause. Practice pausing. Practice your reaction or practice holding back your initial reaction to a situation to a person to a thing, and think about it before you react. It’s all very intriguing. All very interesting and made me go hmmm.  

It’s like a Jedi mind trick. This could be incorporated into a Zen mind trick.  Oooohhh, what kind of ideas that…ooohhh, ingenious!  Which actually prompted today’s episode. Because it turns out this quote from this woman actually seeped into the back of my head. I think quite honestly it sunk into my subconscious because it actually lingered there during the last week of August 2020. 

So if you are interested, let’s get started. 

Now I’m not sure if practicing the pause means the same thing as mindful meditation. Now let me explain. To me, mindful meditation is being acutely aware of every moment, every breath, every feeling that’s in your body when you’re meditating, right? So if you’re sitting there meditating in the dark, like I do, I’m on the floor cross-legged and just in the zone of the quiet, I can hear my breath. I can feel my breath. I can feel my blood pressure going down. I can feel my heartbeat slowing down. To me all of that is mindful moments, mindful meditation. That’s how I see that – you’re acutely aware of every single thing that’s happening within you, and around you. 

So I wondered if practicing the pause was almost the same as that concept – where if you’re mindful of every moment and every word that comes out of your mouth, every thought that pops into your head, and I have said this in a couple of episodes ago, these are things that we should be paying attention to, that you are fully present in the moment of where you are, how you’re feeling, what’s happening around you. To me, I think practicing the pause is a part of the present moment. Because if you’re not paying attention to what you’re saying and you’re reacting to a situation, that’s not really practicing the pause of being mindful, of being present in the moment, of controlling your emotions, controlling your reactions. 

Okay, let’s put all of this talk into a specific case study that happened to us. 

So during the last week of August, it was essentially the hell week of 2020 for us, especially. First thing on Monday morning 8:00 AM, we had a leaky AC vent. That AC vent is in the ceiling of our hallway and it just started peeing. That’s how bad it was, and I apologize for the visual but you get what I’m talking about. The leak was pretty persistent. And I had just mopped up the water and put a bucket under that leak and as I was doing that, Zen Master, my 78-year-old father, was wigging out on me.He was having a little meltdown, and let’s caveat this, though.

Ever since his stroke in 2016, things that impact him is like a shock to his system where he just can’t control himself or can’t bounce back quickly from. Meaning if something disturbs his equilibrium he just falls off the wagon, and just that was it. Then I have a whole bundle of nervousness that I need to deal with on top of the actual issues.

So as I was in the hallway mopping up the leak that was on the floor, and hunting around for the bucket to put under the leak, Zen Master was in my way, every which way I turned, and he was trying to see where the leak came from. And it’s kind of funny. He’s standing the middle of the hallway, looking up at the vent and seeing the drip and trying to figure out where it’s coming from. Keep in mind he has no background on fixing an AC, has no mechanical background on trying to figure it out. 

He wanted me to grab the ladder that’s in the garage and go up to the ceiling to find that leak. No. This is where the practicing the pause just came out from the back of my head. And I looked at him – I said no. We’re not going to… essentially pop the hood of a car to see what the problem is because I don’t know what the problem is, and I have zero interest in finding out what it is, when I can very easily call a repair person.

And that’s the first pause that I actually was acutely aware of that I took that, while he was in my face, I felt that pause come on, hold back my initial reaction, which was to snap at him and start another snark fest with him but I didn’t. And I didn’t even lose my temper. There was nothing to get mad about. We just needed to get it fixed.

So after I mopped it up, the bucket is under the leak, I shooed him back to the living room so he can sit in his comfortable chair and continue to just snark at the TV, at the news. Also I had place the call to our contractor and usually they will respond back within the same day or at least give them a day – 24 hours – for them respond back and schedule an appointment for them to come out.  All that was done and just play out. 

So going towards, Tuesday, not a peep from the contractor. But my back starts bothering me because over the weekend prior, I had kind of pulled a muscle and it was acting up. I was lifting up a five gallon container and I lifted wrong and there you go. So that was coming to bother me, as well as my father’s toothache.

For the last few weeks also, he’s been dealing with the pain of a particular tooth. And he has a high threshold for pain but it got beyond that threshold and he was feeling it consistently for the last week or so. The snark fest between he and I – where I believe very firmly you take care of your teeth, your teeth will take care of you – and I believe in the dentist. Believe in getting my two cleanings a year and anything else in between, get it. Get it done because I am absolutely determined to die with my own teeth in my head.

So on the opposite end of that spectrum is Zen Master, where he hates dentists. Despises them because they hurt him. But keep in mind they’re supposed to help you so that you don’t hurt. There’s no trying to explain the logic behind that but you know… everybody knows… toothache is a rare kind of pain that will sink a person to his knees, her knees. And I was waiting for that to happen with him, where he would finally cave and let me take him to the dentist, because that’s the last couple of fights that he and I had – was exactly that. I was going to take him to the dentist and they will look at it and he refused. Refused. Refused to even consider going to the dentist.

So finally during this week – hell week – it got so bad for him, he finally consented to come. I was able to get an appointment with my doctor and even if he didn’t consent to come, I was going to drag his ass into the car, to take him over there. And turns out he needed to have two teeth pulled. Turns out also that my dentist is out of network for his Medicaid insurance, and that was $500 – poof – out of my pocket.

On the background of that – of his toothache – besides waiting for the contractor for the AC, I had called our plan to find a status of the contractor the next day. And still it wasn’t assigned until I just, under drastic measures, found a contractor on my own. Happened to be out of my warranty plan but that guy was same-day service. And I wanted to see what his thoughts were, where he will come into our place…you have to pay him to show up, so it was a flat fee of $79. Geepers. But he showed up, took one look at it, he was just like oh my God. Okay, so it was going to be a big job.

He ended up logging out like, four or five, buckets of water from the attic and dumping it outside in the front lawn. So his assessment was the evaporator coil inside was leaking, was broken and it may take around $2,000 or $3,000 to fix. That’s a lot of money. So that’s also money I didn’t have. But he was happy to finance. He was quick to point that out.

So I ended up calling my maintenance plan to get this status and I had that escalated up, so that the next day, an in network technician came through to look at the leak, essentially get a second opinion. 

So while I was on the phone with them, trying to escalate up my case, the out of network contractor was listening into my conversation. And he was saying, you should tell them that it’s the evaporator coil that’s…this and this and this and if they don’t do it, we’ll be happy to do it. And that’s when…pause…practicing the pause because the person was also in my face while I’m on the phone on hold with my maintenance plan, trying to push me to accept him to fix it on the spot.

$3,000 is enough to give anybody pause. A leaky, pissy air vent is enough to give anybody pause. And I was pausing a-plenty because I had told him… let me go through my plan. I need to go through their contractor. It’s covered under their plan that I need to use their contractors in order for me to only be responsible for $100 deductible.

So that person backed off and when he gave me his bill…his bill was $400 to lug out how many buckets of water and just assess the situation and not fix anything…$400.

So I’m on the phone with my plan, after he leaves. They’re able to get a technician I actually knew from past calls. That technician was going to come out the next day. And when he did, he took a look at it and he assessed – it was just a clog. 

So I’m like, so what about…what that guy said to me yesterday about the evaporator coil leaking and broken? He goes, he’s not a specialist.  I am.

So, that was a case of – thank goodness – I paused to think and not react. Otherwise I would have been at least $3,000 out of pocket to a scammer. 

So as soon as he left, Zen Master and I were talking. We went out to go grocery shopping, taking his car and just going to a local grocery market, and then it happened. Where his muffler just broke and the whole entire car was shaking and noisy as all get out. And I’m just like, thank goodness, we’re local because as I putter in the car, driving it, trying to drive it back home – it was impacting the brakes. It was loud as can be…you can hear us down the road, my God. And I’m just praying, please don’t let us crash.Please don’t let us crash.  And I’m slowly making our way back home and I – thank goodness – was so happy to see home when I parked that damn car. 

And this all happened during the last week of August, which I will deem always in my history as Hell Week 2020.

And here’s a tidbit, because you know, why not end on a morbid note? I was talking to a friend at the end of the week and she was saying, oh I think five planets were aligned during this time, which is the reason why we’re having bad mojo at this time. That’s a little New Age-y, I admit but I knew what she was saying but at the same time I don’t know how that really impacts me aside from that.  

So to end this whole entire week with a cherry on top, here’s a bit of trivia that I thought was pretty interesting, because I equated this week besides Hell Week, instead of Friday 13th – this Friday 13th week, right? According to EarthSky.org, this year, 2020, besides being a really awful year, 2020 has two Friday 13th. So there’s one in March and then there’s one coming up in November. There’s actually two Friday the 13th this year, which was pretty interesting. I did not know there could be more than that but there you go.

So that brings us to the end of our podcast today. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or comments drop by my blog Sally in the Zen.com. Click on the Contact page and send me your thoughts.  Depending on what it is, I’ll feature it in a future episode. We’ll see how that goes.

I hope you and yours stay safe, stay sane, and hopefully you don’t have Friday-13th weeks like I just did. And if you do, practice the pause. It actually works. Practice pausing from reacting and think about it. And think it through and hope it works for you as it did for me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining me in today’s pursuit to find Zen moments in everyday living.  Talk to you again soon.

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