Creating Space
It was a loud crunch. The kind that makes you tighten up at your shoulders and squeeze your hands really tight to the steering wheel. I didn’t want to look. I want to rewind the previous fifteen seconds of life and go at it a bit slower. I want to pull the car back into the garage and take my time backing out.
I open my eyes and look to the left. The driver side rear view mirror has aligned perfectly with the metal of the garage door and the crunch/pop I heard was the casing splitting, glass cracking and so many pieces landing all over the ground.
Frustration and anger fire up like the immediate flame on a gas grill. Immediately my brain begins swimming in all kinds of judgmental and critical thoughts, as if they will help solve the broken mirror or help my emotions turn for the better.
They don’t. And in that very moment I have a teenager who’d been filling up a water bottle hop into the car.
Knowing this internal energy like an old friend, I take a deep breath in, and a longer breath to exhale. And then repeat over and over until the flame in the fire starts to soften. As much as I want to take all that anger and explode with all things that seem to be frustrating in the world, or drive like a crazy person, I simply allow all the thoughts to run their course and I watch. I watch them tumble in and crash in my mind like an overloaded shelf cracking and everything falls to the ground. I take more breaths, make the exhale even longer and close my eyes. There is space in this moment.
Nothing has gone wrong here. I repeat to myself. Of course sometimes things like this happen. It’s okay. All part of being human. Now what?
And without much hesitation I replay the last few moments to our teenager and explain I will be taking some deep breaths until I feel grounded enough to begin driving again. Because I know well that taking all of that energy to the road helps no one.
He chuckles, his patience and perspective much wiser than his age on paper. He naturally drops into compassion and empathy and then says something that makes me laugh. So grateful. I think to myself. And we go.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response, lies our growth and freedom.”
Viktor Frankl
It makes sense that we have immediate thoughts and feelings when something happens in life. But those aren’t always the ones we want to keep around and act from. Creating space between those feelings and actions is a practice. And of course, since we aren’t robots, I have my fair share of not practicing this and simply being reactive with my emotions. That’s part of being human. But like we strengthen our physical muscles, we can strengthen our mental muscles to begin noticing that we do have a choice. And sometimes we may choose to stay right where we are, and sometimes we may want to respond differently. For this one time I did implement breathing and processing, I can think of many other times where I simply didn’t and the hot internal fire burned strong. But it’s okay. I’m still learning. We all are. It’s a process. A journey. Far from any kind of checklist or destination, and learning happens no matter what. This month, I’ll be practicing creating space in three ways and invite you to join me!
First, practice creating space between what you feel and what you do through the power of intentional breath.
- BREATHE ON PURPOSE: Breath is a tool to change the nervous system from fight/flight to rest/digest. Inhale for 4. Exhale for 8.
- ZOOM OUT. What’s most important here?
- RESPOND INTENTIONALLY. Get quiet inside and listen. What do you want to choose?
Second, find opportunities this month to practice breathing on purpose with any emotion you feel in the present moment. Try this mindful exercise out:
- Right now, I feel _______________________.
- Do the breath exercise (4-6 rounds of inhaling for 4 and exhaling for 8).
- After breathing, I feel ________________________________.
- What did you learn from this?
Third, try breathing on purpose as you focus on a strong emotion you feel regularly with this exercise:
- The strong negative emotion I want to practice creating space for is: ____________.
- What do I notice that I typically do when I feel this strong negative emotion?
- What kind of results does this create?
- If I could choose any other emotion, what would it be?
See what space creates!
