Find the Gap

For those of you who have travelled to London, you'll know the familiar warning of "mind the gap" being played over and over in the tube. The reason this warning comes to mind is that I was thinking of a "gap" this morning but it's not one you want to 'mind' so much but rather one to celebrate, cherish and set up camp in if you can.

I'm talking about the gap between when you receive information and when you react. It is a magic spot where spending a little time there, can turn a negative situation into a learning situation as well as providing a chance to grow. The difference, in my view between reacting and responding is how much time you spend in the gap. Of course when information and situations are upsetting the gap in microscopic, near impossible to find. But you know it when you've spent time there - it's when you're telling the story of what happened to another person and you say something like "I was really good, I didn't react at all, kept calm and said exactly what I needed to". You feel proud of how you handled a situation and you should!

So where's the gap? Well, generally I find it's after someone has said something to me and are waiting for me to say something back. I find if I can remember to do a slow nod (to show that I've heard them) then that can be enough time to let the first reaction pass. I saw this at a mindfulness course I went on. We would discuss our struggles with being mindful in our daily lives with the teachers. After sharing our struggle they would do a slow nod and pause after someone had said something to them. This wasn't even a negative or stressful situation but they had gotten into the habit of pausing before speaking. Some people really struggled with the pause. They would rush in and say more things to fill the gap. In some cases it took a really long time before they gave up, let the gap be and allowed the teacher to respond. It was fascinating stuff to watch as I had never really stopped to think about instilling a practice in how I responded in conversations until I saw someone else doing it.

Sometimes the will to say the reactionary things is REALLY strong, especially if what someone has said is offensive or hurtful. I find it particularly hard if someone is stuck in a "bitching" mode about someone else or a situation. When they are going on and on and you just want them to quit complaining and think about their role in the situation or at least start thinking about a solution. It's in times like those that the gap (if I can find it) allows me to move to a place of empathy. I try acknowledging how they are feeling and how hard the experience they had was. This can help to gently steer the person back to a place where they are feeling heard and accepted. That can be enough to allow them to move off the topic....sometimes.

So how do you find the gap? Well, I find it really depends on where I am in relation to myself when the situation occurs. If I am stressed, unwell, tired, hungry, exhausted or overwhelmed in life in general then the likelihood of finding the gap or remembering to look for it is very low. So before you start on the quest to find the gap, check in with you. How you doing? I'm getting much better these days at recognising when I'm out of balance and for me, it often means rescheduling my calendar to make some room for some self care. This is especially important for parents. Spare time for myself does not fall in my lap - I need to elbow out the time and make it an appointment. Getting out of the house helps keep the call of children and housework at bay.

When I'm feeling good about me and life in general I find myself having these magic winning days. Where I respond calmly to every problematic situation. Those are the days where tantrums from my children are greeted with empathy and big hugs instead of anger and frustration. Those are the days where you feel like you're winning at life and it feels that way because you are. Then are the days where I am in a cycle of reacting to EVERYTHING and sweat the small stuff all day long. On those days, when I finally find 2 minutes of peace, I look back and see how I reacted to situations and how I could have responded differently. It's always so clear later on. The saying "hindsight is 20:20" is a bit dismissive in my view. Like it's not worth anything? Hindsight is very valuable. If you're able to see where you went wrong and how you could do thing differently next time then that's a very important lesson. You're doing one step better than walking around angry at what happened and blaming everyone else.

Finding the gap can be difficult even when you are in a good space in your life. Mostly because rushing in and reacting has become a pattern in our lives. Remembering to pause becomes a practice. A mentor once said to be "the only way to stop doing something is to start doing something else". I think that's a very valuable insight because when you try to stop doing anything (smoking, eating sugar, watching TV) is does create a gap in your life and that IS a gap you want to mind. It's a gap that creates a discomfort much like the people who couldn't handle my mindfulness teacher's pause in conversation - you will rush in to fill it. That's why some people find they start eating more when they stop smoking for example. So I try to see it as choosing to stop reacting and replace that with active reflecting. The gap isn't a vacuum - it's a space where what is being received can be examined a little before you speak. It's about actively allowing what someone has said to land on you and giving yourself space to reflect on it for a few seconds before speaking.

The only way to start doing it is to start doing it. That might sound silly but I'm a huge culprit of reading countless "self help" books that mention many things you can start doing or stop doing in your life and, well, not doing any of them. You might be reading this blog nodding away, it all makes perfect sense on paper or on a screen. The real learning, however, is when you start living it. You can read 20 books on how to build a car but when you go to the workshop to build one with another person who hasn't read any books - the only difference between you is that you've read books and the other person hasn't. Neither one of you has more experience in building a car than the other. I'm not saying you should stop reading self help books but if you find, like me, you read one after the other without much change in your life it's because we forgot that reading about life is not the same as living it. It's another gap that we need to mind. The gap between our heads and our hearts. The gap between our thoughts and our actions. The gap between talking the talk and walking the talk.

So there are gaps to find and there area gaps to mind. Whatever you decide to do, the point is to do it and be gentle on yourself.

Lots of love

Bronwyn Bay (Gap Finder)

P.S. I highly recommend minding the gap in the London Subway.