Do you have some gaps between what you intend to do and what you ultimately do?
How about some challenging gaps between what you actually feel and what you say?
Are you deeply aware of the gaping gaps between what you experience and what you genuinely understand?
Those gaps are the distance between where we are and where we want to go. They are the very impetus of personal growth and pivotal change.
We will spend a lifetime filling in the gaps – and that’s the good news! If we are wise and intentional about it, we will invest in a dynamic lifetime of growing forward.
A little reframing will help us look at gaps in a whole new light. We will feel much like curious and exploratory kids deciding how to cross a babbling brook. Standing on one side of that flowing stream, pondering with delight how to get to the other!
An eager kid will view the gap across the stream with endless possibilities. There might be some big rocks that create stepping stones, some shallow water that would be easy to wade through, maybe the gap is small enough to jump across, or so wide and treacherous that the log upstream is a better way to bridge the gap.
Can you use this playful reframe to help you bridge the gaps in your life?
Do you have a gap in your knowledge or education? What do you need to learn and how do you best integrate what you are learning? Are you a visual learner, a voracious note taker, a listener vs. a reader?
Fill in the knowledge and education gap by getting clear on what you want and need to learn – and customizing the learning process by doing what works best for you.
I took an art class to learn how to make pop-up cards and books. While I loved the experience of being in that class, listening and trying to follow the instructions, it was a little too much for me to absorb all at once. I supplemented what I was learning by watching YouTube videos at home on my own; pausing them to allow myself some time to practice at my own pace. This was what worked for me to fill in the gap.
Do you have a gap in how you are showing up with better skills and tools instead of emotional reactivity? Instead of chastising yourself for falling short of your goal, start small — use that pause between stimulus and response as your first stepping stone.
Too often we think we need to launch ourselves across a big gap in how we are showing up and how we wish we were showing up. Nobody gets to be a calm and sturdy leader by jumping without a parachute. Start small. Build your self awareness first, then move on to tools. Practicing pausing before you act or over-react.
Use that mental image of a babbling brook and stepping stones. Start with one component that gets you where you want to go. The pause between stimulus and response is the foundational stepping stone to real change.
Do you have that common tug of war between your good intentions and the habits you wish you could break? Close that gap by making a value calculation BEFORE you default to your old ways. In her book, What We Value, Dr. Emily Falk tells us that if we use that wiggle room in the pause we take, we can practice doing some math.
To help you bridge the gap between eating that bag of chips out of boredom or frustration, use that pause to put a little extra weight on your long term goal to eat healthier and with greater awareness. (See how often you get to use that first stepping stone etched with the word “pause”?) Dr. Falk tells us that our biggest stumbling block when it comes to breaking bad habits is we put too much weight on instant gratification. This is your own personal “marshmallow test”. You are building a longer term reward system by opting for the value you will attain by delaying gratification. Pause, ask yourself why you want to eat those chips? Are you really hungry – or are you bored, frustrated and overwhelmed? In the aftermath, will you regret consuming those empty calories and have to work even harder to get back on an eating healthy track?
You can have a lot of fun and make many discoveries if you reframe the small obstacles that are getting in your way as gaps.
Spend a little time today making a list of 2-3 areas in your daily life where you do have gap you wish to bridge. How will you get to the other side – and how will you feel when you accomplish that? (Hint: you will feel amazing!)
Bridge the gaps. Get creative and work your way across the divides in where you are and where you really want to go!
