Push or Pause?

How to know when to take action and when to slow down and go inward

A peek ahead:

• When taking action can actually keep us stuck

• The moment I realized doing more wasn’t working

• Five invitations for knowing when it’s time to pause and go inward

For most of my life, I’ve been someone who gets shit done.

Start a company? Done. Ship a newsletter? Done. Quit my job and move across the country with a toddler and pregnant wife? Done and done.

So when I felt stuck, my default response was ACTION. Push harder. Try a new strategy. Take the next step. Don’t just sit there, MOVE.

If I didn’t have the answer, I thought someone out there might. I’d ask mentors for advice, read lots of articles, and try to find the one piece of information that would get me unblocked.

But, often, the more I leaned on action as the answer, the more I noticed that I wasn’t actually making progress. In fact, I would just feel more stuck. I was moving but going nowhere. I was solving problems, but only with great force. Each day would end and I’d be absolutely exhausted.

Something was off. And I couldn’t fix it by doing more.

When doing doesn’t work?

This question came up recently when a coaching client asked me something beautiful and honest:

“How do I know when I should orient toward taking action to move through a situation and when I should pause and do the inner work?”

I didn’t have a perfect answer. But I recognized the question. Deeply.

When I was leading CMX, I was in perpetual motion. The team and community needed direction. There was always another project, another fire, another deadline. As a bootstrapped company, our bank account was a constant reminder that if I stopped moving, everything might fall apart.

So I kept going. But I wasn’t listening to what was happening inside me.

Back then, I didn’t have much awareness of my inner world, but I can see now the parts of me that were screaming for attention. Unexamined beliefs, old stories, protective patterns, all working overtime beneath the surface.

I had parts of me that were terrified of letting people down, others that believed I had to prove my worth through performance. And because I wasn’t in relationship with those parts of me, I was often at odds with myself. Some parts of me were hitting the gas, while others were hitting the brakes.

Sometimes what we need isn’t more muscle. It’s less resistance.

Removing friction vs adding force

There’s an analogy I come back to when I think about action vs introspection:

Imagine a car stuck in the mud. You can press the gas pedal harder, add force.
Or you can step out, clear the mud from the tires, and create traction.

Both are forms of action. But one gets you more stuck. The other sets you free.

We often treat inner work like it’s passive, even indulgent. But in my experience, it’s anything but. It’s a kind of action that requires presence, honesty, and courage. It’s just as hard, if not harder, as the discomfort of taking external action.

There are moments in life, every day, where we need to downshift. Not to come to a stop, but so that we can slow down enough to reorient, then hit the gas in the right direction.

Five invitations for deciding between action and introspection:

Here are a few invitations I’ve found helpful for discerning whether it’s time to do something… or to pause and listen more deeply.

1. Reframe stillness as a form of progress.

Clarity isn’t always loud. Sometimes the most important movement happens when we’re quiet enough to hear what’s true. Notice the stories you hold about what is productive (action) and what is a waste of time (slowing down). Remember the car stuck in the mud.

2. Pause before you push.

It’s never a bad time to check in with yourself before taking action. It doesn’t have to be an hour-long self-therapy session. Before taking your next step, you might simply close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and notice what’s happening in your body, heart, and mind. If you find a lot of tension, and a lot of conflicting thoughts, it might be a good moment to extend the pause and explore what’s happening in your inner world.

3. Check for fear.

Where is the impulse to take action coming from? Is there fear here? Fear of failure? Fear of judgment? Fear of being seen, or not being enough? Are you moving because you feel called, or because you’re trying to outrun something?

Fear might be present (that’s human), but is it in the driver’s seat? You’ll know because action from fear often feels urgent, tight, disconnected. You may feel constriction in your body. Action from alignment feels clear, grounded, alive. Your body may feel more open and loose.

4. Watch for urgency.

Urgency is rarely a sign of clarity. It’s usually a signal that something deeper is being avoided or defended. If your action feels like it has to happen right now, slow down and check if the urgency is rooted in reality (there’s a real deadline), or in your mind.

5. Look for patterns of stuckness.

If you’re doing all the “right” things but still chronically stuck, it might be time to look inward. The problem might not be the goal or the actions you’re taking. There’s likely an inner pattern for how you relate to this type of problem.

📖 Journaling Prompts

• What’s driving my urge to act right now? Is it clarity… or fear?

• Am I trying to solve an inner discomfort with an external solution?

• If I did nothing for a moment, what feeling would surface?

• What part of me wants to move forward, and what part wants to pause?

• When I imagine taking this action, does my body feel more open or more tense?

P.S. I’m a founder, exec, and community coach, and I LOVE helping my clients get unstuck. I want you to be the unstuckest. If you find yourself stuck in the mud often, and you’re looking for a coach in your corner, I’ve got a few spots open. Please get in touch!

❤️ The Love Corner

Lovely things people in my community are putting out in the world…

• Lindsey Lerner is offering a one-week “Media Strategy Kit” experience for founders, coaches, and creatives ready to show up like they mean it, where you’ll leave with a one-liner that hits, portraits that feel like you, and a story that actually lands.

• Nadia Asparouhova⁠ announced her (surprise) new book Antimemetics, on ideas that are inherently unspreadable. Fascinating topic.

• Amanda Goetz is kicking off a 35-day crash course in building a revenue-generating newsletter (with zero fluff, daily emails, live workshops, and a hype squad of fellow solopreneurs).

That’s all for today! Thanks for reading and please drop a comment and say hi if any of this resonated with you.

Stay enough,
David