Episode Details
Back to EpisodesWho’s Really Making Your Choices? with Paula Houlihan | The Journey: Awakening
Description
How many of the choices you make every day are actually conscious?
In the final episode of Week 1: Awakening of The Delay the Binge Journey, Pam Dwyer talks with behavioral change expert, keynote speaker, author, and Power Pause™ creator Paula Houlihan about the brain’s autopilot, and what happens when the patterns designed to help us begin taking us somewhere we no longer want to go.
Paula explains why automatic behavior isn’t evidence that something is wrong with us. Our brains are doing what they were designed to do: conserving energy, recognizing patterns, and automating familiar responses.
But what happens when those responses no longer serve us?
Together, Pam and Paula explore how awareness creates an opportunity to interrupt automatic reactions, why simply knowing better doesn’t always mean we automatically do better, and how Paula’s Power Pause can help bring the thinking part of the brain back online before we respond.
Paula also shares her own experience of recognizing old patterns returning while writing Hijacked, a powerful reminder that growth isn’t perfection. It’s becoming better at noticing, pausing, and choosing again.
This conversation closes Week 1: Awakening and creates the bridge into Week 2: Choosing.
Your Plus One:
When you catch yourself reacting automatically today, pause and ask:
Is this what I want to choose, or simply what I usually do?
You don’t have to change everything.
Just create enough space for one different choice.
Explore all 20 conversations and follow The Journey:
The Delay the Binge Journey
This is Delay the Binge™
Delay the Binge™ explores the patterns behind burnout, Quiet Depletion, reactive coping, and the behaviors we return to even when we know they no longer serve us.
Through emotionally honest conversations and practical insight from experts in neuroscience, psychology, resilience, wellness, leadership, and human behavior, we explore why we do what we do, what happens when stress and depletion take over, and how small intentional choices can begin to change what happens next.
Because lasting change isn’t about getting it right every time. It’s about learning to recognize the pattern, create a pause, and choose your next right move.
Pause. Choose. Build momentum. Finish stronger.
Stay Connected!
By Pam Dwyer on Substack
Speaking, Quiet Depletion, Delay the Binge™, and the work behind the work.
Subscribe to By Pam Dwyer
PJ Hamilton Stories
Personal stories about life, family, loss, resilience, and everything in between.
Subscribe to PJ Hamilton Stories
Delay the Binge™
delaythebinge.com
Pam Dwyer | Speaking, Books & More
pamdwyer.com
Delay the Binge™ is a trademark of TPKK Concepts LLC....