The Gap

7.3.25

My first day with my new temporary schedule. 8:30 to 6 pm today. Now I have to figure out how to squeeze all my work into that short period of time. I will just have to have my head on straight and grind it out.

I took an impromptu stroll at Bunker yesterday. Gorgeous night. The sun cascading over the meadows was breath taking. All the wildflowers and dragonflies. Pops of orange from the butterfly milkweed. I took a few minutes and recorded my voice on my phone recorder. Thoughts and just really a stream of consciousness. That was actually really fun, and I was surprised what came out of my mouth, just as I am always surprised what comes from my fingertips as I am typing. I need to try and figure out how I could send that file to my podcast.

Earlier in the day after eating my lunch outside I decided to read outside. I am currently reading "The Power of A.W.E". I was reading about a different way to process emotions and express emotions. The chapter talked about how we should recognize that we all have stimuli; That would be the world around us, the people, current events, all the things that may influence our feelings and actions. We have a choice on how we react to said stimuli. But there can be a bigger gap in the response. We can choose a more conscious well thought out reaction to the stimuli. The "gap" between those two things STIMULI and RESPONSE is key.

I agree waiting to respond on something that you feel heated about is a wise decision. Sometimes you need space to process your feelings and try to understand why it bothers you so much. For my regular readers you know I had an event that bothered me to the core. I sat and thought about why it bothered me so much yesterday while I was sitting outside reading this book. I took the books suggestion on how to convey my feelings. But it wasn't the typical way of "I feel...", which we are always taught that is better. It was a different way. It's called the Percept method.

So instead of saying I feel so.... when you do this, you are supposed to take ownership of your feelings as your own and say "I make myself feel so.... when you do this." Different right? We tend to want to blame the stimulus for causing you pain, hurt, anger, and all the things you feel. But this method stresses that you are the owner of your feelings. I really want to resist this methodology because I too want to blame the stimuli. If the stimuli weren't there affecting me, then I would be peachy keen jolly green, right?!

But let's try this method and see how it feels. I will take the event from the other day that I wrote about. I chose the feeling of being "deflated". Here we go.

"I make myself feel so deflated when you take the thing I love so much away".

Honestly when I said it out loud, I felt a peaceful feeling come over me. I didn't feel like a victim or play the blame game. I stated my feelings and owned them, in response to what they did. You take ownership of your feelings but also tell them what they did. It was an interesting experiment.

I am going to try this method for a bit and see if it helps me. I have been reactive to stimuli in the past and just even extending the gap is a new thing for me. Obviously, some things you have to react on right away and don't have the time to wait. But for the things you can wait on, you probably should. It shows emotional intelligence when you can try and calm down and process those emotions. Not letting your mouth run as though you are on some war path and your singular goal is to hurt everyone you see, just because you are hurt. Hurt people do hurt people. That is true in the sense of that person is really not allowing space and time to process their feelings. They don't have to hurt people if they take ownership of their feelings.

My old ways of dealing with conflict were not to necessarily solve a problem. It was to hurt that person like they hurt me. If you want to continue in a relationship, a healthy relationship, that knee jerk response in an argument cannot be throwing daggers. Just because they threw daggers doesn't mean you have to throw them back. But also understand if someone was mean to you, they should be called out for that behavior. You should stand up for yourself and set boundaries in a healthy way. You do need to teach people how to treat you. Absolutely. You are not a door mat, and you deserve to be treated with respect. Sometimes people don't realize the impact they had on you until you teach them. At the time they did the thing to you, perhaps they lacked empathy or seeing things from your side.

As I was reading, I was visited by a few furry creatures. Two little gophers running around eating and playing with each other. Also, a baby bunny. This bunny was chomping away on the foliage. Then I could tell it discovered that I was alive. I could tell because it stopped eating and was very stiff and trying to figure out if it should run away. Poor bunny. I wonder if they can sense things. I was very calm at that point. My heart rate was probably in the 50's and yes that is normal for me, especially if I am calm. Hopefully I can build a relationship with the wildlife in my reading spot. You know be like Cinderella and all her woodland creatures. No, I will not ask them to dress me LOL.

This reading spot I had envisioned creating a couple years ago. This spot is overlooking our pond, in the sunniest spot of our back yard. The reading bench is an old wicker love seat that is lacking cushions at the moment, but it serves its purpose. It sits at the top of the hill, in front of a small garden. I filled this garden with Karl Forester grasses and annuals. The grasses attract so many dragonflies. I have 4 Shephard hooks lining the edges of this small garden and cool chains of light catching crystals hanging of each one. There are steppingstones lining the side of the garden on the northern edge of it that bring you up to my wicker love seat. Behind my wicker love seat, I am growing 2 tomato plants. The sunlight can pass through the holes of the wicker love seat, and they are growing beautifully. On the right side of the wicker seat, I am growing borage and hyssop. It is a peaceful spot with all the little critters and dragonflies, bees, and the birds chirping around me. I am glad I took the time to make such a lovely space. A space I will enjoy for many more years. 12:30 is the perfect time to read there, because the sun goes behind a huge tree and so you get dappled sunlight.

Just writing about that made me feel calm. What makes you calm? What melts all of your concerns? Don't say beer LOL. What natural thing gives you peace? I would love to hear about it.

That is all I have. May you have a thirsty Thursday that leads to quenching. -Alimoon