Permission to Pause: Letting Go of Fear and Living Gently Intentional with Founder of The Pause Method, Karen Bartholomew
Life does not stop, but we often do, and not in the way our souls need.
In this deeply grounding and perspective shifting episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, Becca Powers sits down with Karen Bartholomew to explore the transformational power of pausing. Together, they unpack how our past stories, fear based beliefs, and overcompensation cycles keep us stuck and how intentional stillness creates space for truth, healing, and freedom.
Karen introduces her powerful Pause Method, a framework designed to help you gently release old narratives and reconnect to what truly honors your peace. Through practical tools and relatable examples, this conversation reminds us that rest is not earned. It is required.
From micro pauses before meetings to truth checks and restoration practices, this episode offers real life strategies to shift from survival mode to sustainable living. Becca and Karen also highlight how even two minutes of intentional stillness can recalibrate your entire nervous system and unlock creativity buried beneath constant doing.
This is your invitation to stop, breathe, and listen because your peace matters more than your performance.
The Power of Pausing:
How intentional stillness creates space for clarity and healing.
Stories We Carry Forward:
Recognizing how past narratives shape present day fear and limitation.
Peace Over Performance:
Choosing thoughts that honor your nervous system instead of exhausting it.
Micro Pauses That Matter:
Simple moments that recalibrate your energy and emotional state.
Releasing What Is Not Yours:
Learning to identify pressure and responsibility that do not belong to you.
Restoration as a Requirement:
Understanding why rest is not earned but essential for sustainable living.
Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:
Karen explaining how past stories create unnecessary havoc
The breakdown of the Pause Method framework
“Peace over performance” and why it changes everything
The three tactical ways to begin pausing daily
Becca’s reflection on how even 2 minutes can shift your entire day
The powerful analogy of dehydration and self-neglect
The call to reclaim vitality, harmony, and inner alignment
Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:
“Give your self permission to pause the noise, hear your truth, realign with who you're meant to be.” – Karen Bartholomew
“We've been taught to earn rest, but you're, you don't earn restoration. You require it.” – Karen Bartholomew
“You wanna shift into a new thought that honors your peace more than your performance.” – Karen Bartholomew
"If you think about the span of the day, 10 minutes is not a lot to ask to Yeah, be connected with yourself." – Becca Powers
"I kind of joke about it, but like lock yourself in the stall. If you work in an office still and just breathe for two minutes, you'll be a whole new person." – Becca Powers
About Karen
Karen Bartholomew, founder of The Pause Method, empowers women and leaders to slow down, engage in intentional reflection, and unlock their full potential. With over 14 years of experience, she guides clients to release false beliefs, uncover empowering truths, and take aligned, decisive action for sustainable success in life and business. Passionate about women’s empowerment and leadership, Karen has inspired countless individuals to break free from old patterns, embrace peace and joy, and confidently step into their next chapter.
Connect with Karen Bartholomew
Step into your power and reclaim your peace. In Radiant Womanhood: Fear, Hustle, and the Pause That Changes Everything, Karen Bartholomew shares how the Pause Method helps women slow down, realign, and take intentional action.
Listen here: Radiant Womanhood with Karen Bartholomew
Power Links
Join Becca in her Facebook Community - The Dragonfly Effect, Where High-Performing Professionals Chase Big Dreams: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1C4z83krsn/
Purchase Becca’s Book - A Return to Radiance, The POWER Method to Ignite Your Soul and Unleash Your Potential: https://www.beccapowers.com/a-return-to-radiance
Invite Becca to Speak: https://www.beccapowers.com/keynotes
Grab Becca’s Free EBook, The High Performer’s Path, The 8 Forces of Potential for Mindset Mastery: https://www.beccapowers.com/
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We Want to Hear From You!
What spoke to you most from Karen’s message?
Was it the Pause Method, the idea of honoring peace over performance, or the invitation to reclaim even just 10 minutes for yourself each day?
Share your biggest takeaway and let us know how you are choosing to pause, breathe, and powerfully reconnect with yourself.
Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, and I am so excited to bring you today's guest. Why? Because we are gonna talk about pausing, something we don't do very often. I have with me an expert in the area of pausing, slowing down, and recognizing the benefits that gives us so that we can do all the things as high performing professionals that we really want to do from a place of joy, fulfillment, and energy.
Karen Bartholomew: That would be lovely. So today's guest is Karen Bartholomew and she is the author of the upcoming book, The Pause Method. She is the founder of The Pause Method and she is a speaker and coach. So Karen, we welcome you to the show.
Karen Bartholomew: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to share this message. Just you can tell I'm excited too.
Becca Powers: Oh my. Yeah. Really excited. Yeah. So anyway, ask away, what do you want to know? Let's do this.
Becca Powers: One of my first questions is always kind of getting grounded in the why behind what you're doing. The Pause Method—the title in itself intrigues me because I know how much it's needed. I'm a nervous system nerd. I'm a Kundalini yoga teacher. I teach trauma-informed leadership, so I'm always kind of like the nervous system's always in overdrive. Yep. So I know from my expertise lens that just the name of your framework is powerful in itself. But I really want to understand the why behind creating the framework and putting your energy behind it. How did we get here?
Karen Bartholomew: Wow. Well, it's been a journey, let me tell you. But you know, we live in a world that has forgotten the word permission. And so I think I want to touch on that, but I want to come back to it at some point. Sure. Because everything is about output. What you've done, what you've achieved, what's next? And we're praised for how much we carry and how much we can perform. But most of us are living on this hamster wheel, right, which we didn't even choose.
Karen Bartholomew: Correct. Like who said to themselves when they got out in the corporate world or got into a corporate career, "I choose to do 15, 18 hour days?" Right? I used to work for a big corporation in San Francisco in management consulting, and I didn't choose to work those hours. We wake up already behind, telling ourselves, if I can't just get it through this week, then I'll rest. But the truth is, the wheel never stops on its own.
The Hamster Wheel of Life
Becca Powers: I love that you touched on so many things about working 15, 18 hour days that we didn't necessarily choose, and that a lot of this chose us. We needed a job out of necessity. We ended up being good at it, so we promote or learn to like our profession, but then we're in this hamster wheel. We're working all these hours, dedicating all of our time, all of our energy to something we didn't choose.
Becca Powers: The second part resonates with so much truth. On that hamster wheel, we justify staying on it because we think, "In two months, I can see an end." And then what happens when you reach that marker? Something else comes up. Another project, another responsibility. Life just keeps happening.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah. That's where burnout begins. And I know what burnout is. I have been there literally.
Becca Powers: Tell me a little bit about your burnout story. It's always empowering and educational to hear someone's burnout story because normally, if you're teaching, you've come out of it and learned a lot.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah. My burnout story is that I was burned out until I realized I was super disconnected from myself. Burnout is really a disconnect from our truest self and our alignment with our morals and values. It’s burnout from overperforming and just doing all the time.
Karen Bartholomew: I was in the mortgage industry for 20 years, and I literally got so stuck that I couldn't move. After almost a year and a half, my assistant said, "I've never seen you not be able to fix anything." I was like, "What?" He said, "Yeah, you always go, go, go, right?" And I was really stuck. I needed to say goodbye and take a week with no phone, no nothing. Just go to a cabin on the creek and just be with me. Start figuring out what I really want from family, career, and myself. How do I want to start spending my days? Because we don't know how much time we have, and I just can't keep doing this.
Karen Bartholomew: Am I even doing all this for me or just for someone else? I grew up feeling I wasn't enough. My coping strategy became people pleasing. Saying yes to everything, proving myself. And before you know it, you don't even know who you are anymore, and you're completely exhausted. There’s no time for even five minutes to get a drink of water or nourish yourself.
Karen Bartholomew: I created the Pause Method because I was leading, managing, mothering, performing, but I had lost who I was.
Becca Powers: This message is going to land.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah. I've been on that hamster wheel for so many years. On top of it, I was a single mom for 26 years with three small children. I wasn’t enough. I was people pleasing. I carried childhood beliefs that I wasn’t loved, I didn’t matter. The strategies we use isolate us. I moved to another city with no family and the disconnection persisted.
Karen Bartholomew: Be careful what you think and say, because what you are thinking and saying is coming true. When we were born, we were precious. Somewhere along the line, we decided we were no longer precious because of hurts, programming, and everyone else telling us how to live. When you get into the adult world, you feel lost.
Reconnecting to Joy and Your True Self
Becca Powers: That’s why we get stuck in the hamster wheel. We don’t know who we are, and we’re just trying to survive.
Karen Bartholomew: And then in workplaces, more people tell you what to do. Before you know it, you’ve completely lost yourself. You love your career and your family, but if you take a moment to ask yourself what’s working and not working, there are things we could release and things we should pick back up because they brought us pure joy.
Becca Powers: I take pride in reminding the audience to pick up things they used to do that brought them joy. This connects to pausing and coming back to the passion-joy piece because we lose connection with that when we don’t pause to remember.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah. Yeah.
Becca Powers: And we don’t pause to give ourselves permission to do that.
Reconnecting with Forgotten Joy
Karen Bartholomew: Well, I'll say that somewhere along the line, I have a student right now that I'm coaching and she used to love to dance, and along the lines, someone told her she was a horrible dancer. So she chose to stop. Through coaching her and going back through her timeline of her life, because she was really stuck and didn't have any joy in her life, I'm like, let's go back. Let's remember some of the things that used to bring you quite joy. And now she's actually dancing, singing, all these things in an 18-month period and loving life again. But she forgot about all that stuff.
Karen Bartholomew: Sometimes it just takes someone asking the right question and pulling that stuff back so you can start redesigning and putting some of the things that you want in there. A little bit of self-care. Like the oxygen mask in the airplane, you gotta put yours on first before you can take care of others. You need to take care of yourself first.
Karen Bartholomew: I want to encourage everybody to actually think about the things that can ground you and set you up for an amazing frequency and vibration through the day. So your days aren't just exhaustion, just the hamster wheel.
Karen Bartholomew: If I take you back to everything I was doing, everybody saw me as having such strength, like this boss babe, so strong. But what they didn't see was the woman who couldn't remember the last time she took a breath that wasn't rush, rush, rush.
Becca Powers: I have goosebumps. I resonate with that so deeply. I have my own burnout story, which is why I always want to hear someone else's. Because there's so much wisdom that comes from it.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah, we just don't know. I needed to give myself permission just to stop and breathe and remember who I was before all the roles that I started playing. That's really how this pause method started. It was about doing less, doing what aligns with my truth, but I had to figure out what my truth was first.
Becca Powers: That makes a lot of sense.
Karen Bartholomew: When you pause, you actually get to pause with true intention. You stop reacting to life and start designing it for yourself.
Becca Powers: Mm-hmm. That makes sense. When you pause, you get connected with yourself and start getting ahas. When you were first starting to pause and breathe again, what do you recall as some of the first ahas that came up for you?
Karen Bartholomew: My first pause was taking a walk to the mailbox a long time ago. I remember it just like it was yesterday because I was in such chaos that I needed the noise to stop. Being in the house wasn’t stopping, so I went for a walk. I lived on a hill, so it was a little walk, and I just realized it was a beautiful day. It wasn’t too hot, it wasn’t cold, it was a fall day. The leaves were beautiful.
Karen Bartholomew: I just slowly walked back because I wanted to be in it. I love being outside. I love nature. I loved seeing that a leaf fell and thinking I might bring that into my house for the Thanksgiving table. It was a tiny thing that started my pause journey.
Becca Powers: I love that because you just said, I love nature. When I went through burnout, I collapsed on the bathroom floor. I didn’t have enough strength to stand up. Similar but different. When I finally thought, “I got it, harness your inner CEO,” that was the thought that got me off the floor: “Becca, you're the CEO of your life. What the hell are you doing?” Crying, powerless, on the floor. Outside, I looked like a powerful woman. Nobody would think I could lay powerless like that.
Karen Bartholomew: You.
Becca Powers: Right. And there I was, unable to stand, but once I stood up and remembered who I was, the next day driving to work, I saw all the purple flowers in the trees.
Karen Bartholomew: Yeah, this is a little foo, probably for some listeners. But it can be anything. It's just a pause. When I went to the cabin, right in front of it, there were butterflies all around. I watched them forever. On the last day, the people who moved in said a snake had been on their porch. If I saw a snake, I wouldn’t like it. But I saw butterflies. It doesn’t matter; it’s how you look at life. If you start taking off the pink or blue lenses of life and take a moment for yourself, you’ll see a different world. You’ll open up different possibilities and opportunities.
Becca Powers: I love that. What’s an aha for you right now?
Karen Bartholomew: My new aha this year is podcasting. My big mission is to get the Pause Method message across the United States. Helping people come back to themselves. Women taking on more of their femininity, men taking on more of their masculinity, stop taking it from each other.
Karen Bartholomew: My next big aha is getting on enough stages and networking to bring this into the open. Even if I feel somewhat fearful, I’m going to do it anyway.
Reframing Failure and Designing Life
Karen Bartholomew: Somebody asked me yesterday, “What’s failure to you?” I said, “It’s not failure. A failure is just a pivot.” To me, failure means I did something that wasn’t quite right. Maybe my hair was out of place, or I tripped on stage. Doesn’t matter. I just bounce back up. We’re human beings. You do something a little different. It’s a lesson. We’re always learning. The most successful people have failed hundreds of thousands of times.
Karen Bartholomew: Just don’t quit, but figure out how you’re going to work this pause. Stop reacting to life and start designing it.
Karen Bartholomew: Another thing I tell people, especially in corporate America, when triggered, give yourself permission to step away for a moment. Ask, is this about me or them? If someone does something, you can just let them be without reaction. That’s real freedom.
Karen Bartholomew: We can be victims or responsible. Yes, lots of things happened in my life that weren’t pretty, but I can stay responsible. Take a little responsibility. Don’t carry forward the chaos. We have a library of our history, but we don’t know what’s going to happen next.
The Pause Method Framework
Becca Powers: Love that. Is there a specific framework within the Pause Method or a helpful tip that you could share with the audience?
Karen Bartholomew: I can take you through the Pause Method at a very high level in about a minute. Okay? So here it is—gently intentional living.
Karen Bartholomew: The first piece is the P: Perceive. Notice what's happening around you and within you, and see the stories that you've accepted as truth. Our stories are made up of words, and we have an amazing imagination. We are really imagining all of it because nothing’s really happened. If we just perceive how we're thinking, really go, what's going on here? If I ask you, When's the first time you remember thinking that? it could take you back to your childhood. We can unravel it and figure out what that is.
Karen Bartholomew: The second piece is A: Acknowledge. Give yourself permission to feel what you've been suppressing. The goal isn’t to fix it, it’s just to face it. Accept it without any judgment or opinion.
Karen Bartholomew: Then you need to loosen the grip on all the beliefs you keep spinning: I can't stop, they need me, rest is lazy. Remember I talked about your language? Lazy. We want to unwind that and shift it into new words, which creates new stories—a new thought that honors your peace more than your performance.
Karen Bartholomew: The next step is Embody. Live that new truth showing up differently. Be freer, not exhausted. That’s where a coach or accountability partner can help, so you can practice it every day. Love that new thought every single day.
Karen Bartholomew: I remember in 2010 I had a contract with the end goal of creating real, authentic relationships moment by moment. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but really stopping to be authentic and vulnerable led to really, really good relationships.
Karen Bartholomew: You can do three tactical takeaways to start giving yourself permission to pause: Micro Pause: Before opening your email or walking into a meeting, take 60 seconds to breathe and ask, What energy do I want to bring into this moment? This small step recalibrates your entire nervous system. Truth Check: Once a day, pause and ask, What’s mine to carry and what’s not? Many of us don’t stop to do this, even if we consider ourselves aware. You’ll be surprised how much pressure you’re holding that doesn’t belong to you. Restore: Don’t reward rest—you require it. Block small windows in your day, even 10 minutes, that feed you instead of depleting you.
Becca Powers: I love all the tips, especially even 10 minutes a day. You’d be surprised what two minutes in the bathroom can do—lock yourself in a stall and just breathe.
Karen Bartholomew: Exactly. Stop, let your creative brain think, and suddenly you may have a great idea that was buried. I want to invite people to give themselves permission to pause the noise, hear their truth, and realign with who they’re meant to be.
Becca Powers: Let’s tie this up into an empowerment bow. What’s a message of empowerment you would like to provide the audience?
Karen Bartholomew: Just take the time for you. Seriously. Find time during the day for yourself. I was dehydrated for 10 years without even realizing it because it was my norm. When I got really sick, I had to drink lots of water, and suddenly I felt really good. We have to stop long enough to know what we need and what we don’t. Vitality, peace, harmony, and unity are so important.
Karen Bartholomew: We want to relieve ourselves of the messages that we’re not enough, we don’t belong, or we’re unsafe so we can live the extraordinary life we were designed to have. We were precious human beings when we came in. Let’s let our light out by taking a little time for ourselves and empower ourselves. That’s where your powerful self comes through.
Karen Bartholomew: You can follow me at karenbartholomew.com and on Instagram at Karen Bartholomew. My Pause Course starts every quarter; it’s a five-week online course with a free hour of coaching at the end. If you can’t make this one, you can join the next one.
Becca Powers: Karen, it was an absolute pleasure to have you. Thank you so much.
Karen Bartholomew: Thank you.
