If You Still Yourself: The Poetics of Pausing in a Performance World
There are seasons when leadership becomes choreography — a series of practiced movements, seamless transitions, and perfectly timed responses that look like control but feel like collapse. You show up, you speak up, you deliver, you inspire. And yet beneath the applause, your pulse whispers a truth you’ve ignored: You are performing your peace instead of living it.
Stillness is hard for those of us conditioned to prove our value through movement. It feels unproductive, almost dangerous. The quiet brings the questions — and the questions bring the truth.
But what if stillness isn’t the absence of progress? What if it’s the soil from which every sustainable form of progress grows?
I. The Moment You Stop Running
My journey with stillness wasn’t voluntary — it was surgical. My body made the decision long before my mind would. The stress I’d learned to normalize became a language my organs could no longer translate. IBS wasn’t just a diagnosis; it was a divine interruption.
Each urgent care visit, each hospital trip, each sleepless night was God saying, If you won’t stop for peace, I’ll stop you for protection.
Leadership will often celebrate your endurance but rarely your empathy for yourself. I didn’t yet know that survival is not the same as stewardship. You can manage a system and still mismanage your soul.
That revelation changed everything.
Poetic Interlude: “If You Still Yourself”
If you still yourself long enough
You’ll hear the hum beneath the hurry —
A voice that doesn’t compete with noise,
Only waits for silence to prove it’s still there.
If you still yourself long enough
Your hands will remember softness,
Your lungs will remember rhythm,
And your spirit will remember home.
If you still yourself long enough
You’ll see that every collapse was really a calling —
Every delay, divine choreography.
The quiet is not punishment.
It’s permission.
II. When Your Calendar Becomes Your Cage
Most modern leaders are applauded for overextension. The fuller your schedule, the greater your significance — or so we’re told. But overextension creates emotional erosion. You can’t hear God clearly when your life is overbooked.
Our calendars were meant to hold commitments, not identities. Yet too many of us treat busyness as proof of purpose. We say yes to maintain relevance. We over-function to sustain reputation. And in the process, we start outsourcing our peace to other people’s expectations.
Leadership is not about motion; it’s about meaning. And meaning can only be measured in still moments.
This is why many leaders can build empires but not rest in them. They’ve mastered the system but lost the sanctuary.
Targeted Leadership Intervention #1 — The Schedule Audit
Purpose: Reclaim authority over your time and emotional bandwidth.
Step 1: Open your calendar for the next 14 days. Highlight everything that depletes you, drains joy, or repeats without renewal.
Step 2: For each item, ask: “Does this sustain my calling or merely sustain my image?”
Step 3: Remove one obligation this week that reflects fear of disappointing others more than faith in your discernment.
Step 4: Replace it with a Sabbath activity — solitude, prayer walk, deep rest, or unhurried reflection.
Remember: subtraction is also a strategy.
III. The Emotional Physics of Overdoing
Every act of over-functioning is emotional data. It reveals the stories we still believe about being needed. Somewhere deep inside, many of us carry the lie that love must be earned through usefulness.
So we overextend to stay wanted. We over-deliver to stay safe. We over-perform to stay seen.
But your value doesn’t increase with volume. It increases with vision.
Your worth isn’t in your yes; it’s in your yield.
And the physics of burnout is simple: what you refuse to release will eventually rupture.
That’s not weakness. That’s wiring.
Poetic Interlude: “The Science of Silence”
Silence has its own gravity.
It pulls back what noise has stolen.
When I stopped chasing relevance,
I found revelation.
When I stopped performing competence,
I found connection.
Silence rearranges the furniture of your faith.
It turns chaos into clarity,
And busy into becoming.
Stillness is science and spirit —
A recalibration of both nervous system and soul.
IV. When Doing Becomes a Distraction
The truth about “doing” is that it’s often our most socially acceptable form of avoidance. We overwork to avoid confronting emptiness. We stay busy to escape boundaries. We manage everyone else’s emotions because we don’t trust our own.
God, however, is less interested in your performance and more invested in your presence. He’s not impressed by the hours you log; He’s after the heart you hide.
If you still yourself, you’ll see that half your exhaustion isn’t from what you’re carrying — it’s from what you refuse to put down.
Leadership maturity means learning to differentiate between divine assignments and emotional addictions.
Not everything urgent is ordained.
Targeted Leadership Intervention #2 — The Alignment Check-In
Purpose: Distinguish between authentic calling and compulsive activity.
Step 1: Identify three major “doing zones” in your current season — work, relationships, service.
Step 2: For each, ask:
• Am I doing this from overflow or obligation?
• Is this rooted in fear of loss or faith in purpose?
• Would God still recognize Himself in the pace I’m keeping?
Step 3: Write down one action that represents release — delegating, delaying, or deleting.
Step 4: Pray: “Lord, replace my motion with meaning. Replace my doing with divine direction.”
V. Healing as a Leadership Discipline
Healing doesn’t mean going back to the version of you that could endure dysfunction. Healing means building a rhythm that doesn’t require self-abandonment.
IBS taught me that your body will always tell on your soul. You can suppress emotion, but you cannot silence embodiment. Your body is the sermon your spirit has been preaching.
Each hospital visit became an altar — a place of confrontation and compassion. I started asking not “What’s wrong with me?” but “What is this trying to teach me?”
The answer was always the same: Slow down. I’ve been trying to reach you.
Poetic Interlude: “The Body’s Benediction”
Your body prays even when your mouth refuses.
Tension is its liturgy,
Pain its plea.
You can ignore the sermon only so long
Before your stomach starts testifying.
Every ache is evidence —
That grace is still pursuing you.
Every spasm is a summons —
That you’ve drifted from alignment.
This body — fragile, divine instrument —
Is not your enemy.
It’s your evangelist.
Listen.
VI. From Overdrive to Overflow
When you start leading from being instead of doing, you’ll notice the subtle miracles: meetings feel lighter, creativity flows easier, peace becomes default instead of reward.
That’s because you’ve shifted from adrenaline to anointing — from effort to embodiment.
True leadership energy isn’t caffeinated; it’s consecrated. It doesn’t rush; it roots.
When you finally still yourself, you discover that productivity is not the proof of purpose — peace is.
And from that peace flows everything worth building.
Targeted Leadership Intervention #3 — The Stillness Protocol
Purpose: Create embodied practices that sustain leadership without sacrificing self.
Step 1: Breathwork Reset (2 minutes)
Close your eyes. Inhale through your nose for 4 seconds. Hold for 4. Exhale for 6. Whisper the phrase: “I am safe in stillness.” Repeat 3 times.
Step 2: Emotional Naming (3 minutes)
Journal one word that describes how you actually feel — not how you think you should feel. Honor it without editing.
Step 3: Soul Anchor (5 minutes)
Read Psalm 23 or Isaiah 43:18–19 aloud. Let every word become a grounding cord between heaven and your humanity.
Step 4: Daily Benediction
Before your day begins, place your hand over your stomach — the place that once held anxiety — and declare:
“Peace is my posture. Presence is my power. Stillness is my strength.”
VII. The New Definition of Strength
In a world obsessed with acceleration, slowing down is a revolutionary act. It’s also a spiritual one.
When you still yourself, you stop competing with chaos. You remember that power is not found in pace, but in peace.
This is where leaders are reborn — not in the boardroom, but in the breath. Not in the applause, but in the awareness.
And so, the invitation of this season is simple:
Still yourself.
Long enough to hear.
Long enough to heal.
Long enough to become.
Final Poem: “If You Still Yourself (Reprise)”
If you still yourself,
You will remember that love was never earned — it was inherited.
That leadership is not conquest, but covenant.
If you still yourself,
The storm will not scare you,
Because you’ll remember who commands the wind.
If you still yourself,
You’ll learn that time bends toward those who trust timing.
That the pause is not punishment —
It’s protection.
It’s preparation.
It’s peace.
If you still yourself,
You will hear the Father whisper —
“I never needed your perfection,
Only your presence.”
ACCESS Reflection Prompt:
Where in your leadership rhythm have you mistaken motion for meaning? What is one practice of stillness that could become your new strategy?
ACCESS Declaration:
I am not the pace I keep or the pressure I carry. I lead from stillness, not striving. My breath is my blessing, my body is my boundary, and my being is my offering to God.