The Power of the Pause: Why I Turned Down the Easy Yes

The summer of 2021, I spent a lot of evenings at the fire pit in my backyard.

It overlooks the golf course. I usually had one pour of bourbon and a cigar in my hand. And I spent those nights in conversation with God.

"Why did this happen to me?"

"Wasn't I serving my purpose in life?"

"How do I move forward from here?"

A few weeks earlier, on June 16, 2021, I had been removed as Managing Partner of the firm I had given seventeen years of my life to building.

My phone was already ringing.

Competitors wanted me. Recruiters wanted me. Offers were coming in.

And every instinct I had as a driven, Type-A competitor was screaming the same thing . . . MOVE.

Sign somewhere. Start something. Get back in the game. Prove them wrong.

Instead, I made one important decision very quickly.

I decided not to make any quick decisions.

I want to walk you through why that pause turned out to be one of the most important leadership moves I have ever made, and how you can use the same pause in your own life, long before anyone hands you a termination letter.

Speed is a gift until it becomes the thing you hide behind

I have always been fast.

Fast to decide. Fast to act. Fast to chase the next big goal.

That speed built a lot of good things in my career. It also hid a lot of things I didn't want to look at.

When you are moving, you never have to feel anything. You never have to ask the hard questions. You never have to sit still long enough to hear what God might be trying to tell you.

How do I know? Because I've been guilty of this very thing for most of my adult life.

In the days after my termination, I could feel the pull. I knew I'd be a hot commodity in the financial services world. The easy path was right in front of me.

But my mind and emotions weren't there yet.

I was angry. I felt betrayed. I was grieving.

And I knew that if I made a decision in that state, I would be making it out of spite.

I didn't want my next chapter written by revenge. I wanted it rooted in love and in what was best for my family.

So I took the summer off.

When else would I ever get an entire summer with my kids while they were growing up? We made memories that will last a lifetime. And yes, I have never played more golf in my life.

But something much more important was happening underneath all of it.

Never let an inflection point pass without an inspection point

I need to be honest with you. That summer was a dark place for me.

I was physically present with my family, but my mind was often somewhere else.

So I used the pause on purpose.

I wasn't drinking my sorrows away at that fire pit. I rarely had more than one pour. I was processing. Anger. Betrayal. Sadness. Sorrow. I let myself feel every bit of it.

I wanted to.

Because I didn't want this inflection point in my life to slip by without it becoming an inspection point.

Here is what that inspection uncovered.

My identity was wrapped up in my career and my title.

When that title was ripped away, I couldn't answer a very simple question.

"Who am I?"

If your job is how you identify yourself, a sudden loss or change can send you into a very deep hole. I know, because I was in it.

The soul-searching that summer taught me something I now teach every leader I work with.

I am not what I do.

None of us is. What we do is only one piece of who we are.

So I made a list.

I am a child of God.

I am a husband.

I am a father.

I am a loving son, an older brother, a caring friend, an athlete, a leader, and a visionary.

We are all a puzzle made of smaller pieces. Your title is one piece. It was never the whole picture.

Who are you, when the title is gone?

The gut feeling is information, so pay attention to it

By the fall, the kids were back in school, and I had a lot more time alone.

My exit negotiations were still dragging on. When lawyers are involved, everything takes longer.

And now I was getting antsy on top of being fragile.

So I started taking interviews. I had conversations with other firms and people I had known in the industry for years. Those meetings should have felt like business as usual.

They didn't.

I walked out of every single one feeling more unsettled than when I walked in. I had this weird feeling in my gut every time.

It took a lot of prayer and reflection to figure out why.

What God was telling me in those quiet moments was clear. I had already accomplished everything I set out to accomplish in that industry. It was time to blaze a new trail.

That was a mighty tough pill to swallow. And if it was true, I had no idea what came next.

Here is the part I want you to hear.

If I had not paused, I never would have noticed that feeling. It would have been buried under the noise of the next deal, the next offer, the next goal.

The pause is where the gut feeling gets loud enough to hear.

Get clear on what you love before you say yes to anything

I was working with my coach, Jason Teteak, every other week at the time.

Right after my termination, I tried to push him away. My thinking was simple. He was my business coach, and I no longer had a business to talk about.

He had a very wise response.

"Josh, I have a feeling you're going to need me more now than ever."

He was right.

Together, we built a really simple tool. A T-chart.

We drew a line down the middle of a sheet of paper.

At the top left: "What did you love about your previous role?"

At the top right: "What did you dislike about your previous role?"

On the left side, I wrote things like training and developing people, mentoring, helping others see a vision for themselves and make it real, working toward BIG goals with a team, recruiting, and solving big issues.

On the right side, I wrote things like the restraints of compliance, the politics of corporate executives, and the problems other people created that landed on my desk.

Then I asked myself a very important question.

What if I could design a world where I only did the things I loved, and mitigated or eliminated everything I disliked?

I was onto something. I still had zero clue how I was going to do it.

And right around then, the BIG offers showed up. One was a multi-million-dollar offer to do almost exactly what I had been doing before.

I have a family to support. I am very competitive. Taking that offer would have been the easy yes.

But I could feel the desire for revenge sitting right underneath it.

Vengeance is dark-side energy. It is powerful, and it can lead you to do things outside of your character. If I let that, along with my competitive spirit, make the decision, I knew I might hurt someone I cared about in the process.

So I pushed that company off and kept healing.

That pause, that T-chart, and that "no" are a big part of why Kairos exists today.

The moment that matters often arrives in the waiting

In The Kairos Code, I talk about the difference between Chronos and Kairos.

Chronos is clock time. Kairos is the opportune, appointed moment.

Chronos was telling me I was losing time. Every week without a title felt like a week falling behind.

Kairos was telling me something different. This season was the appointed moment. The waiting WAS the work.

You don't have to lose your job to need a pause. You might need one right now if . . .

You are about to make a big decision while you are angry.

You are about to say yes because the money is good and the feeling in your gut is not.

You are about to rush into the next thing so you never have to feel the last thing.

A pause gives your values, your faith, and your family time to catch up to your speed before you commit your next season to something.

Lesson: The inflection points in your life deserve a deep inspection before you take your next step.

So let me ask you. What decision are you rushing right now that deserves one more week of prayer, reflection, and honest conversation?

## Action Items From Today 1. Write down one decision you are facing right now, and name the emotion you are carrying into it. 2. Make your own "I am" list with at least eight lines, and put your job title no higher than the fifth line. 3. Draw a T-chart for your current role, with what you love on the left and what you dislike on the right. 4. Schedule thirty minutes of quiet this week, with no phone, to pray or reflect on what you wrote. 5. Call your coach, mentor, or one trusted friend and talk through the decision before you commit.

## Five Bridges Challenges Spiritual Bridge: Spend three evenings this week in honest conversation with God about the decision you are facing, and write down what you hear.

Internal Bridge: Notice the next time you feel the pull to rush, and ask yourself whether the decision is coming from love or from spite.

Relationships Bridge: Share your T-chart with your spouse or closest friend and ask what they see that you are missing.

If you want a guide to walk with you through a season like this, learn about coaching with Kairos. To see where each of your bridges stands today, take the LQ Assessment. And for the full story of that summer, the fire pit, and how the Five Bridges were born, read The Kairos Code.

Inspire & Impact,

Josh