Rachael O’Meara was a customer support manager at Google when she realized she was burned out and needed to reassess her path. The best way to do this was to take a “pause”—a time-out to create space for her inner voice to be heard and to align her actions to lead a more fulfilled life. Pause: Harnessing the Life-Changing Power of Giving Yourself a Break is her new book, serving as a GPS for others looking to slow down before speeding up again.

So what is a “pause”? Rachael defines a pause as any intentional shift in behavior that allows you the space to experience a mental shift in attitude, thoughts, or emotions that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred.

Pausing can be as simple as a five- minute walk outside, or a day spent unplugged from digital devices. A pause is about taking a time-out to create the space for your inner voice to be heard and to align your actions with that voice in order lead a more meaningful, fulfilled life. Pausing offers you a chance to remember what “lights you up,” and allows you to identify your yearnings, shift your limiting beliefs, recognize and better understand what’s called “amygdala hijacks,” and discover how your relationships with others affect you.

Rachael O’Meara is a transformational leadership coach, assisting others to fulfill their potential. She is a sales executive at Google and also hosts authors who have meaningful messages about mindfulness and emotional intelligence for the TalksAtGoogle YouTube channel.

Weaving in psychology, existentialism, and neuroscience-based research, Rachael explains how pausing can boost your emotional intelligence and ability to act, feel, and communicate authentically and responsibly through her and others’ stories of pausing. She helps you create your own “Pause Plan,” regardless of how much time, money, or resources you have, and explains the different ways you can learn to meaningfully pause—whether for sixty seconds a day, an hour, a week, or over the course of several months—and discover what you value most, to lead the most satisfying and fulfilling life you choose.

Rachael also writes regularly for the Huffington Post and has been featured in the New York Times www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/jobs/c…aves.html?_r=1and on WSJ.com. She leads workshops and speaks on the practice of pausing. She is certified in Transformational Coaching from the Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential (ICF certified), and has an MBA from Fordham University.