Caught in the Pause
And I moved to Substack
If you are seeing this from Substack instead of my old email provider, surprise—I’ve moved! Why? A lot of reasons, but mostly because Substack feels like the right home for what I’m building: more connection, more community, more space to go deeper. Honestly, I’m kind of obsessed.
I’ll share more details in upcoming posts, but if you’re too curious to wait, you can take a peek here. In the meantime, let’s dive into what you came for - the good stuff I’ve been working on for you…
I used to think of life as a series of sprints, one checkpoint after the next, each accomplishment a shiny badge I could slap on my chest and show off to the world. But the problem with sprinting is that you never learn to breathe. You only learn to chase. And the thing about chasing is that eventually, it catches up with you.
It was late October - a time of year when the air felt different, as if the world had inhaled deeply before exhaling the holiday chaos, and my sobriety anniversary had just passed. Two years. I spent two years sitting with my thoughts, feeling every jagged edge of them, unfiltered and unapologetic. Two years of learning to pause instead of pour. Two years of realizing that what I was running from was never outside of me - it was inside. The marathon, the sprints, the grind - all of it was a carefully constructed illusion of control. And yet here I am, caught in the pause, trying to figure out what control even means.
For someone like me - wired to create, connect, and hustle - pausing isn’t second nature. It’s not even third or fourth. It’s an act of rebellion. The world rewards movement. It worships momentum. Yet, the irony is that all the noise, all the action, all the doing is often what drowns out the voice you need to hear the most—your own.
I’ve spent decades building things - companies, communities, ideas. I stood on hundreds of stages speaking, shaking hands with strangers who weren’t strangers, just people I hadn’t met yet.
I’ve written books that cracked me open, spilling pieces of myself onto the page, hoping that someone would feel less alone somewhere. And yet, in the silence of sobriety, I realized how loud my life had been. The rush to achieve, connect, and produce left no room for me to simply be.
Stopping was its own kind of terror. It’s raw and unrelenting, forcing you to stare straight into the void you’ve been frantically filling with deadlines and dopamine hits. Because when you pause, the ghosts arrive. They don’t wait for an invitation; they kick down the door, dragging with them every unfinished thing, every wrong turn, every time you picked distraction over depth. They don’t whisper; they demand. And yet, this is where the alchemy happens.
In the pause's discomfort, stillness, and brutal honesty. This is where you begin to transform.
My friend Geoff once said to me, during one of those deep conversations that feel like peeling back the layers of your soul, "You know, Bryan, sometimes the universe whispers, but sometimes it screams. It’s not the noise that matters; it’s whether you’re willing to listen." He had this way of leaning into his words like he was handing you a key to a door you hadn’t noticed before. He talked about the spaces between the chaos and the gaps where life’s truest lessons live. "The beauty isn’t in cleaning up the mess," he said, "it’s in realizing the mess is part of it. Part of you."
His words landed like a quiet thunderclap, shaking something loose inside me. Then, I realized that the pause wasn’t about erasing the chaos but about learning to exist within it, to see its beauty, and to let it shape me.
The pause teaches us to trust - a theme I’ve been wrestling with as I write my next book. Trust in leadership, humanity, and myself. Trust isn’t about certainty; it’s about stepping into the unknown and believing that the ground will meet your feet. It’s about recognizing that vulnerability isn’t a weakness but a strength. It’s about letting go of the need to control every outcome and simply showing up, again and again, as your most authentic self.
And the thing about trust is it’s not just something you give to others. It’s something you have to earn from yourself. In the pause, I’ve learned to ask myself hard questions.
What am I afraid of?
What am I running toward?
What am I running from?
The answers aren’t always pretty, but they’re always honest. And in the honesty, I’ve found a kind of peace I never knew I was searching for.
So there I was, caught in the pause. Learning to breathe. Learning to trust. Learning to sit in the stillness and let the world rush by without me for a while. It wasn’t easy. Some days, it felt like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it was necessary.
Because in the pause, I’ve found the space to grow. To heal. To love deeper, laugh harder, and live more fully. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe the pause isn’t a break from life but the very essence of it. A reminder that sometimes, the sweetest moments aren’t the ones you chase but the ones you let come to you.
Now, as I emerge from the pause, I can see the silhouette of my second mountain rising in the distance. This time, it’s not a race. It’s not about planting a flag at the top or chasing the hollow high of achievement. This climb is different. It’s slower, steadier, a journey meant to be felt, not conquered. Each step is intentional, each moment electric with curiosity and quiet joy. I’m moving toward something more decadent that resonates with the person I’ve grown into. There’s nothing to prove, no scoreboard to keep. Not to the world. Not even to myself. This is about living in alignment, about choosing a life that feels honest and whole. A life that is mine.
I’ve learned to pack light for this journey, leaving behind the crushing weight of expectations that were never mine to carry. I’ve let go of the frantic, white-knuckled scramble for achievement and traded it for something quieter, something real, with the simple satisfaction of being fully here now.
I’ve uncovered an unexpected truth: the climb itself can be enough.
The summit isn’t the prize; it never was. The moments along the way matter—the laughter that echoes in your chest, the connections that light you up, the stillness that reminds you to breathe. That’s where the joy lives. That’s the point.
This second mountain isn’t an escape from the pause - it’s proof that I’ve lived through it. I’m carrying its lessons with me, letting them shape the climb. This isn’t about rebuilding despite the stillness; it’s about creating something meaningful because of it.
I’m not climbing out of urgency. This time, it’s different. This time, it’s about delight, about trusting the ground beneath me and embracing the journey for what it is. And when I look up, I know I’m ready. Ready to climb. Ready to savor. Ready, finally, to take in the view.
Stay human
Bryan
I’d love to hear your thoughts - drop a word or two on how this landed for you. -bryan
You are reading BEing Human, a weekly newsletter about an honest exploration of trust, leadership, and mindfulness from the bestselling author of Human-to-Human and Shareology. Written by Bryan Kramer, creator of the Human-to-Human movement and bestselling author. In this space, we dive into what it means to show up - in life, business, and the moments that matter most.
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Thank you for this, I’ve been struggling and thinking a lot about the search for the top of the corporate ladder and whether there’s anything actually up there worth having?
Currently paused. Great piece. 😎