The Pause That Brings You Back to Yourself

You open a retailer’s website just to look, and suddenly there’s a countdown clock, a low-stock warning, and a message reminding you that the item in your cart may be gone if you wait. Everything is designed to make this moment feel like the only moment that matters, and before you know it, you’re buying from urgency instead of stopping long enough to think.

This is bigger than sleeping on a purchase before you click buy. Retailers aren’t only encouraging you to shop. They’re encouraging you to disconnect from your reasoning, your values, and your internal compass, because urgency does not leave much room for any of them. I saw that same dynamic play out recently while my husband and I were negotiating on a house, and an unexpected pause brought us back to what we actually wanted for our family.

In this episode of The Visibility Shift, I’m talking about the pause that interrupts the chaos and helps you reconnect with yourself before you make another decision. I’m sharing what a halted house negotiation taught me, why my styling process begins long before shopping, and how some of the most important shifts in my life happened when I stopped pushing for an answer and stepped outside the swirl.

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0:57 - The retail urgency designed to pull you into the chaos and swirl

2:57 - The pause that shuts down urgency and reconnects you with your internal compass

3:42 - How a house negotiation pulled Ellie and her husband into scarcity mode

7:02 - Choosing the pause and finding a home that better aligned with their family’s priorities

8:27 - The missing step Ellie built into her styling process before shopping begins

11:53 - Stepping outside the swirl to see more clearly and reconnect with yourself

13:55 - Embracing the pause instead of making another rushed decision

Mentioned In The Pause That Brings You Back to Yourself

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Full Transcript

Ellie Steinbrink: Welcome to The Visibility Shift, the podcast where style becomes your most powerful strategy for being seen, standing out and leading boldly. I'm Ellie Steinbrink, stylist and personal brand coach. And if you've ever thought, my style just isn't working anymore, take this as your sign. You're ready for your next level. And instead of launching into a panicked shopping spree, what you really need is a strategy. A style strategy that reflects where you're headed, not who you used to be, or who you think you need to be, to fit in. Because when your style aligns with your brand and your vision, everything shifts. You lead with more presence, you attract the right opportunities and clients and you fully step into the woman you're becoming. Because showing up as yourself, that's the most strategic thing you can do. 

Now, let's get visible. Welcome back to another episode of The Visibility Shift. Sometimes with style, I feel like you almost have to do the opposite of what retailers are encouraging you to do, to not get caught up in the chaos and the swirl that they want you to be in. I mean, think about it. They're constantly pumping out new trends. One week this color's in, you know, next week it's out. One season we're wearing skinny jeans, then it's wide leg, then now it's low rise and baggy low rise. And the pace just keeps increasing. When I was growing up, I remember getting those seasonal catalogs from JCPenney and Sears. That dates me. But it was a spring and a fall catalog. And now look at what we've got. I know that I've got weekly drops of new clothes from these retailers. And it's not just the pace of which these clothes are being pumped out and thrown in front of our face. It's the pace in which these retailers want you to respond. Think about all these little cues and notifications that we're getting, the countdown clock, when you add something to cart, the little messages where you add your size and it says there's only one left, or it says there's a low stock alert. And then when you show interest on a website, you're getting emails that's like, hey, did you forget about this? Don't forget about this, add this to cart. And then you've got ads following around just to make you feel like you're going to miss out, if you don't jump on this. It is all designed to make you feel like now is the only moment that matters. 

And it's designed very intelligently that way because urgency doesn't leave much room for thinking, does it? And guess what, it works. It has worked on me more times than I would like to admit. And I'm sure you're thinking, yeah, that's happened to me too. But over the years, I've discovered there's one thing that shuts all of this urgency down. And it's the pause. Now, this episode is not going to be about like sleep on it before you buy something. That's, you know, that's good advice, I think, on a lot of things. But I think something much bigger is happening here. I don't think retailers are just encouraging us to buy. I think they're encouraging us to disconnect. Disconnect from our reasoning, from thinking, from our values, from our internal compass. Because listen, once we're distracted, they win. Urgency wins. 

You know, interestingly enough, I experienced this in real time just this last weekend as my husband and I were, you know, we're in the process of a move to a new town and we were negotiating on an acreage in this new location. And as I sat back and thought about this whole negotiation process, I realized, wow, this whole process is designed to get you moving quickly and honestly into a kind of scarcity mode. For example, you step back to just the open house phase, where you're going to see, especially if there's a lot of people at the open house, you're going to see, oh my gosh, here's how much interest there is in this house. And you find yourself sizing up the other buyers, seeing who you're eventually going to be in a bidding war with. But then once you take the step to… and that creates urgency in itself, it's like, oh my gosh, there's all these people with all this interest, I better jump on this. But once you make an offer, there's usually very quick deadlines, sometimes within hours for that seller to respond and then for the buyer also to respond. There isn't much time to sleep on this. And the longer the negotiations go on, the more invested you become, the more scarce you become, because you're, it's like, you're gripping so hard and you don't want it to, like, come out of your fingertips. And before you know it, you're thousands of dollars away from where you originally said you wanted to be and scratching your head wondering, how did we get so far off track? It is a whirlwind. 

But something really interesting happened as we were in the middle of this particular negotiation for the acreage we were interested in. We were already a few steps in on the offers. We had adjusted our offer a few times and we had lobbed our offer back over to the seller. And in the meantime, like a day later, a realtor realized there was a mistake in the paperwork. And that mistake meant that the offer that we sent to the seller was incorrect. And this kind of halted everything. That's essentially what it did. And in the process of saying, OK, when I represent this in the correct way, I just want to make sure, do you still want to present this offer as we discussed? Well, in this unexpected pause, in that short, you know, probably 12 hours, maybe even less, we saw a new house come on the market. And it caught both of our attention enough that we wanted to go see it before moving forward. It was just one of those things where it's not often when my husband and I are on the same page, in terms of houses and location and details of the house, finishings of the house, but both of us… Our interest was peaked and we had a choice. 

We were getting, you know, from the realtor, do you want to continue the negotiations and stay the course? Or should we pause long enough to explore something that had clearly grabbed our attention? And I think both of us realized if we don't go explore this, I think we're going to be kicking ourselves that we didn't. So we chose the pause. And boy, thank goodness we did, because the very next day we drove to the new city, we checked out the house and it spoke to us in a way that this acreage never did. And in that short pause, it brought us back to what really mattered. It re-centered us on our values, what we wanted for a house, but more importantly, for our family. And it happened to be at a lower price point, which allowed us to stay more aligned with what we had originally said we wanted to do and it would allow us more freedom to experience things with our family, instead of all of our money going towards a much bigger purchase.

What struck me afterwards wasn't just that we found a house that we liked better. It was this pause. I couldn't stop thinking about this pause. What that pause gave us, it gave us that space to reconnect, to reconnect with what mattered, with our values, with what was important for our family and how we wanted our family to experience this new town. And honestly, this idea of pause is not new in my life. There have been multiple instances, where pauses produced results for me. And when I stop and think about it, it's actually why I decided to build my styling process the way I do. Because traditionally, I think when you talk with a stylist, it's like, well, we're going to meet for a little bit and then we're just going to go shopping right away. And so many people assume that when you work with a stylist, that's the experience you will get. But for me, I learned pretty quickly, after I started my business that there was a giant missing piece that needed to happen before we started shopping. And there was a pause that was needed, a pause for that client of mine, that woman, to set a strong foundation before making decisions, to get clear on a vision that wasn't defined by others, but truly defined by ourselves. We learn to trust our inner knowing. We peel back layers that are holding us back and preventing us from making a real change this time, a change that is not going to happen on a weekend of shopping. 

Because shopping before you've reconnected with yourself is just going to lead to a more reactive state, which is probably how you got to where you are today with your overstuffed closet and nothing feeling connected. And that's exactly why when I built my standout style Kickstarter program, it wasn't built around moving quickly, about taking you shopping on day one, we actually spend a good solid month getting grounded in who you are, what really matters to you, what beliefs you've been reacting to, what beliefs built the closet that you have now. And in that magical time, when you're reconnecting with yourself, that is actually the golden time. It is not the shopping. The shopping is a result of investing in that pause. This house example I was sharing, you know, was a fairly short pause, but I've also experienced much longer pauses, as I mentioned before. And one of those came right after I left the advertising agency. At that point, I knew I didn't want to do marketing anymore, but instead of immediately trying to force that next chapter, I ended up taking another part-time role in marketing. Yes. But looking back now, I didn't realize the incredible gift that that season in my life gave me. It gave me space. 

It gave me time to think, to reconnect with myself and time. You know, just not having a jam-packed schedule. And it's funny, that season of rest and pause is actually when I discovered styling. Ironically, I was in the middle of meditating, when it came to me. I just think it's worth noting that it didn't come, this realization about my business, didn't come during a time when I was hustling harder and pushing and forcing answers. It wasn't while I was actively trying to figure something out because, ironically, you know, I knew I didn't want to stay in marketing. I didn't know what the next chapter was, but I wasn't actively trying to figure it out. It happened when I slowed down, when I spent time in the quiet, when I had a calmer, roomier schedule. And I don't think this revelation to pursue style would have happened if I had stayed in the chaos and the swirl. And I really like this imagery of the swirl, because isn't that how it feels? That place where everything feels urgent, it's fast, it's like you can't even get your head on straight, you're disoriented. The swirl convinces you that you have to decide right now. 

And the pause lets you step outside of it to get some perspective. Once you step outside of that swirl, you can see more clearly and your nervous system can relax. So I'm here today to say, don't reject the pause, or the opportunity to pause. Now I say this knowing that I'm someone who has rejected the pause. I am someone who has hated the pause. It's uncomfortable for me. And whether that's something as simple as walking away from buying something, you know, an amazing clothing piece or an accessory or shoe that I really wanted, because I was worried if I didn't get it today, it might be gone tomorrow. Or it could be something as big as sitting in a season where I didn't know what my next career move was. Or wondering what God was doing in my life and where He was calling me to next. But there is definitely a red thread through my life where I've learned that almost every important decision in my life happened after I slowed down enough to reconnect. 

Those big life-changing moments weren't happening when I was in the swirl. They were in that decision to step outside of it. And sometimes it wasn't a decision to step outside of the pause, sometimes it was like I got pushed into it. Kind of like this house negotiation, it was like there was a mistake in the way the offer was presented and it forced a pause. Maybe that's what you need today. Not another decision that's quick. Not another purchase because you feel rushed or urgent. Not another plan, but just a pause. Consider embracing it, even if it's in a small way and see what it can do for you. You really don't know till you try. It is a different way of thinking, but I always think if you want different results, you have to approach things differently, right? So embrace the pause. And with that, I'll see you in the next episode. 

Thanks for joining me on The Visibility Shift. If something in today's episode made you pause, rethink, or gave you permission to stop playing small, it would mean so much to me if you'd leave a review at ratethispodcast.com/visibilityshift.  Let's make it visible.