In this short guided video, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces a daily habit aimed at improving emotional regulation: pausing for 10 seconds before reacting to a trigger. She explains how a brief pause—paired with a few deep breaths—creates space between stimulus and response, which can reduce rumination, lower anxiety, and lead to more thoughtful choices. McColgan offers a simple cue phrase—"pause, breathe, choose"—and suggests practical ways to verbalize the pause in conversations or internal dialogue. For those who find a full ten‑second pause daunting, she recommends starting with five seconds and gradually extending the duration. The video concludes with a reminder that additional research, tracking tools, and further habit lessons are available through the Heal, Nourish, Grow website.
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Hey everyone. I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 20. I call it a practice cuz this one is tough sometimes and it's something that I have been practicing for a long time in my own life. And that is to today, your habit is to pause before reacting for 10 seconds. So a great example of this is usually that a word triggers you or makes you anxious or makes you frustrated, and you may want to just react in that moment. And quite often what you'll find is if you just take a pause, a couple deep breaths are useful here as well, but take a pause, give yourself a moment to think, give yourself a moment to feel where that comment or conflict or whatever it was, where it landed in your body, where you're feeling it, and just take a deep breath and then respond. And so why this is good and it's going to reduce rumination, which is that idea that you just keep playing something over and over in your head. All of this is going to support consistency and create a space between the stimulus and the response. And this usually leads to better choices or better interactions. Another thing, you know, I, I'm talking about reacting with someone else, but it could also be that you're alone. It's a, a personal thing that you're just reacting to in the moment. So that's a, a time to, again, take some time, take a deep breath and just let it settle and figure out what you're really thinking about it rather than just your initial knee-jerk response. Because it could come in the form of an email or something that just happens to you and you're just anxious and caught up in the moment. Just give yourself a beat, pause, breathe, and then choose. That's like a cue phrase. So along with this habit today to take that pause, think of pause, breathe, and choose. What I like to do with a pause, and it's funny that my, my ex actually noticed this about me, which I thought was pretty perceptive. Because if you would say something that was— went heavy sigh, like, and then just breathe a couple times and then I would respond. So maybe you don't wanna make it so audible or so obvious because this person in my life did notice this, but you could even say, you know, your, your thing about pause, breathe, then choose. It could be even a choice to say, I need a moment to think this over, or I may need a moment to process this. Something like that that gives you just the time to go ahead and take that deep breath and to give it some reflection before responding. So if 10 seconds seems too long to you, let's start with 5. As this challenge has gone the whole way, make your work towards up towards bigger habits, bigger goals, you know, everything like that. The small things will just make it seem more simple and less stressful on you. So if 10 seconds is too long, go for 5. As always, the research will be in the email and in the tracker, and you can join at any time by going to healnursegrow.com. Habits. So if you find, whenever you find it in the future, please join and you'll get to take advantage of learning all these fun new things that can help you get to your goals. So I will see you again tomorrow.
