Episode 73
Here's the Gap – and why it matters!
Ever said something you regretted about three seconds later? There is a gap between what happens and how you answer it, and it is bigger than it feels.
It feels like you have no choice but to react. You do. The gap is small but it is there, and meditation is what widens it. Here is the proof that it exists. Are you aware of your foot? You had to go there to answer that. That going there is the gap, and you can use it on somebody angry in exactly the same way.
One thing to try: Next time something lands, ask yourself one question before you answer. Are you aware? That question alone is the pause.
In this episode
- (0:02) Have you ever regretted something you said
- (4:28) Something happens, and you are already reacting
- (5:47) The gap is tiny, but it is definitely there
- (6:50) Ringing a friend to complain about the driver who cut you up
- (8:11) It does not matter who they are, only who you are
- (9:49) Watching your own body react, in real time
- (13:35) Are you aware of your foot? And what you just did to answer
- (17:33) Bringing it into the conscious mind on purpose
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
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Transcript
Have you ever
Steven Webb:regretted something you've done?
Steven Webb:Or regretted something you said?
Steven Webb:If so, this podcast is for you.
Steven Webb:I'm Steven Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms. The podcast that gives you a little calmness and peace
Steven Webb:when you need it most. And probably when you have it least. It helps you through those difficult times.
Steven Webb:And I did a podcast and said enough is enough. I've had enough and I need your help.
Steven Webb:And the reason I did that podcast a couple of weeks ago is because I'm doing much of the things
Steven Webb:I don't want to do, but I'm doing them because I'm just giving into my habitable subconscious mind, watching Netflix,
Steven Webb:just procrastinating all the time. So I want to give you a bit of an update. And now I'm going
Steven Webb:to talk about The Gap.
Steven Webb:And it's a kind of mind the gap or Enjoy the gap. Recognise the gap. But it really will. It's
Steven Webb:one of those things, you hear it all the time about changing your life. And I just want to, you
Steven Webb:know, emphasize that there's so many things that will change your life, but this will change your life really because
Steven Webb:you won't have to regret things. And you can feel a little more calmness. You'll feel a little more happier.
Steven Webb:And things like that. And you'll be totally more in control of your life. But I'll go on to that
Steven Webb:in a minute. I want to go back to mainly um just for a moment, I want to go back
Steven Webb:to watching Netflix and all those things. So I've deleted all the games off my ipad. I've deleted the games
Steven Webb:off my phone. I've deleted several things. I've totally unfollowed quite a few people
Steven Webb:I've I'm just I've turned off notifications. I'm doing all these things. I'm slowly trying to move away from social
Steven Webb:media, although it's a large part of my life because I have a page and I have this podcast and
Steven Webb:I have Twitter and it's the way I communicate a lot of the time with people in true because my
Steven Webb:job the mayor I'm the mayor of trua at the moment. I'm doing my second year there's one way in
Steven Webb:which I can communicate what I'm doing so I am I am doing what I said. Not
Steven Webb:quite as well as what I could have been doing. Have I took a Tv out the bedroom? No, not
Steven Webb:yet. But I don't have it on nowhere near so much um So yeah, I'm reading a lot more and
Steven Webb:I'm reading a wonderful book at the moment called The Salt Path. It's um a lady and her husband went
Steven Webb:on a tour after losing their house. They went on a walking tour around Cornwall. It's just incredible. The coastal
Steven Webb:path. Really great story. Really entertaining. Really open-hearted, lovely couple. And
Steven Webb:I'm about three quarters of the way through and it's just a wonderful book to It's a real page turner.
Steven Webb:But
Steven Webb:yeah, let's get back on with today's podcast. So that's a little bit of an update. Let's get back onto
Steven Webb:today's podcast and that is about The Gap. And what is The Gap? What am I talking about? So, The
Steven Webb:Gap. The Gap is that little, very small, Minute little time
Steven Webb:between when things arise and what you do with it. So let me explain what I mean by when things
Steven Webb:arise. So if someone says something, it first of all creates a feeling. It creates a thought.
Steven Webb:You hear it. I don't want to go the technical aspect of you hear it and it goes into the
Steven Webb:head and all that. And then your brain interprets it and then it looks at your subconscious mind and it
Steven Webb:looks through the habitable nature of your mind and You know, and it reacts. That's what it does. First of
Steven Webb:all, you've got the really quick mind the fight flight or freeze.
Steven Webb:Then if if it's not a life-threatening moment and then it'll move on to the subconscious mind sometimes might go
Steven Webb:how did I deal with this last time look through the big fighting cabinet
Steven Webb:and it may end up at the end of the day saying, well, I don't know what to do with
Steven Webb:that. So it passes on to the human mind. But very often it goes through the fighting cabinet and it
Steven Webb:finds what it done last time. So if someone says something and you're affected by it, you'll be angry. You'll
Steven Webb:be triggered. Or you might be really calm or feel really good. It might be a lovely thing that you
Steven Webb:just experienced. But whichever way, you'll have a feeling arise. Something will happen and you'll have
Steven Webb:a feeling arise or a thought or something will happen. Then what normally happens is we jump
Steven Webb:to our habitable response and It's normally so quick we don't even see it it's so
Steven Webb:um It's almost spontaneous. It's like as if there's no gap there. And this is why we use meditation or
Steven Webb:mindfulness to help to see that gap. Have you ever noticed when you get angry? Someone says something, you get
Steven Webb:angry and you immediately react. It's almost like as if there was no time between what happens and the reaction.
Steven Webb:There's always a little time, but it's so minute and small, especially before you meditate or before you do any
Steven Webb:kind of mindfulness and all. And it's it's almost well it's reactionary you know
Steven Webb:um It's almost like that, you know, you push against the wall and the wall pushes back instantly. Even then
Steven Webb:there is that... Little Gap. But it's almost like as if you have no choice but to react. But you
Steven Webb:do. There's a small, minute amount of time. And this is why when we meditate or when we practice mindfulness
Steven Webb:you ever notice when you're really calm, that guy at the end of the bar in the movies, we've all
Steven Webb:seen it, and there's a big fight happening. And the guy at the end of the bar has got his
Steven Webb:whiskey in his little tumbler. Everybody else is there falling down fighting and he's just relaxed. Really calm.
Steven Webb:That's because he walked in the bar 10 minutes earlier just really chilled with that swagger walking across. And then
Steven Webb:he stands up at the end and he does that last punch or he just says something and leaves. And
Steven Webb:we all want to be that calm person in that storm when it's happening
Steven Webb:and
Steven Webb:But we often just get wound up in whatever's happening we We end up phoning friends and getting older,
Steven Webb:different people and all that. To a point where it's like phone a friend oh If someone cuts drop on
Steven Webb:the road or something, we've not only got a moan at that point, they probably can't hear us because the
Steven Webb:windows that we do a gesture outside the window or something like that. And we immediately react to it and
Steven Webb:then we then we tell people about it later and then we... Phone people. And we don't leave it go.
Steven Webb:We keep repeating it um Even if you dealt with it at a time, you might have flipped them the
Steven Webb:bird or something like that. You know, if you don't know what that is, that's sticking up your middle finger
Steven Webb:or you might even do a ruder gesture. But you're angry. You reacted. You're like, how dare they violate us?
Steven Webb:How dare they do that to us? They almost like took us out. But the truth is, we don't know
Steven Webb:what they're going through. We don't know why they did. Maybe they didn't see us. Maybe um it was a
Steven Webb:mistake. Maybe they're in a rush. You know, we we don't know that Maybe they're just an a-hole. You you
Steven Webb:know maybe they're just a not a nice person that doesn't ever care about anybody else. Whichever way, we don't
Steven Webb:have to be the same as them. So we don't have to react in the same way. So, you know,
Steven Webb:I always say to my daughter, When she says about when people do things and all that to her, well,
Steven Webb:they say something. And I say, and she gets I want to react. I'm angry. I'm like but be who
Steven Webb:you are, not who they are. Always remember who you are doesn't matter who they are. It just matters
Steven Webb:who you are and how you do it. So when we see the gap, when we meditate and all that,
Steven Webb:what we do is we slow down like the end of the guy at the end of the bar. And
Steven Webb:we take everything in. Because we slow down, we're opening our ears, we're opening our subconscious mind, we're opening
Steven Webb:our conscious mind, and we're just receiving all the information. And we're deciding what to do with it. And sometimes,
Steven Webb:very often, you don't have to do anything with it. You can have a feeling arising go oh, I'm angry
Steven Webb:might be justified. It's fine. Anger is not a problem. It's what you do with it you know Anger
Steven Webb:can really fix things in the world. We should be angry at many things. If we're not angry at children
Steven Webb:starving or abuse and things like that, well, if we're not angry about um some things that
Steven Webb:are going on in politics and other areas and things like that, well, what's going on? We should be
Steven Webb:um So anger is not a problem the The feelings and emotions that come up are not the problem
Steven Webb:it's It's purely down to what do we do with it? And that's what makes all the differences, what we
Steven Webb:do with it. So how do we create this gap? How do we make this gap slightly longer?
Steven Webb:Well, every now and again, just take a one minute out and just sit and what's going on around me?
Steven Webb:And observe your feelings. Observe your thoughts. So when someone's angry, when someone's in your face or
Steven Webb:when you read a headline or you do something like that.
Steven Webb:Just observe how you're reacting to it. Observe what's happening in your body. Now, are you getting agitated?
Steven Webb:Are you um are you sweating a little bit? Are you like
Steven Webb:like I say, angry? Are you fed up are you Does it make you happy and joyous? Because it didn't
Steven Webb:always a negative emotion. You could have a lustful or a desire. You know, you can have desires. You could
Steven Webb:have desires for a complete stranger in the street, but you don't have to do anything with it. This is
Steven Webb:the point. You can have these feelings. It's quite natural to have these feelings.
Steven Webb:You know, you can be in a happy, beautiful relationship and someone could walk past you and you go, do
Steven Webb:you know what? They're good looking. You
Steven Webb:know, you can have that desire to give them a hug or go over and kiss them, but you don't
Steven Webb:have to do anything with it and you shouldn't. We live in a society where you just cannot do that
Steven Webb:anymore and rightly so um You know, animals still don't quite get there yet, you know. If you
Steven Webb:ever walk a dog, very often the dog's like, oh, I like that. I'll give it a go. No, as
Steven Webb:humans, we we have that we have that little gap between
Steven Webb:I've got this feeling, but I'm not going to do anything with it. So that's what I'm talking that gap
Steven Webb:in many, many areas of our life. The gap's there. But the gap's not there when we're
Steven Webb:clouded by this red mist of anger. Or very much in our habit mind when we're on autopilot
Steven Webb:this um These
Steven Webb:feelings come up, these emotions, these thoughts come up and we just go with them no matter what and we
Steven Webb:don't question them.
Steven Webb:That's what I'm talking about. So if you just spend some time today or even this podcast right now, what
Steven Webb:are you feeling? What's going on? Listen to my words. Listen to the gaps between my words. It's the gaps
Steven Webb:that make all the difference um To your life until you react you won't end up in a position where
Steven Webb:you're regretting it later because you very often won't say that thing you shouldn't say um
Steven Webb:You think about it a bit more what you're saying. And I'm working on this. I'm not much good at
Steven Webb:it, but I'm getting better you know um I I hang around sometimes with Zen masters and
Steven Webb:um Buddhist monks and things like that. And they very much, you can tell they're thinking about what they're going
Steven Webb:to say. And you see it with the really calm, wise person. They'll be looking around the room and
Steven Webb:someone will say something and you tell they're just thinking about it. And if you watch Youtube videos, you can
Steven Webb:see all the time. If you watch Youtube videos when you've got some of these um yogis and things like
Steven Webb:that that these wise Zen masters and all that, when they're asked a question on stage.
Steven Webb:They'll really think about the question. They'll close their eyes and they'll consider the question. They'll mull it over and
Steven Webb:they'll look through their fighting cabinet and they'll look at it from different angles and they'll understand it. And Rupert
Steven Webb:Sabir is really good at this. If you look him up online, especially on Youtube, he's really good at finding
Steven Webb:that little gap. And he asked the brilliant question. He says, are you aware?
Steven Webb:I could ask you this question now. So let's do it now. Just shake your body out a little bit.
Steven Webb:Just allow your legs and arms to be a little um I don't know, loose. Relax your face I'll
Steven Webb:do this very, very quickly. And if I ask you, are you aware of your foot?
Steven Webb:Well, yeah. But what did you do to become aware of your foot? You went to your foot. You brought
Steven Webb:your awareness to your foot. If I said, are you aware of your left thigh well
Steven Webb:You probably wouldn't have been unless there's a problem with your left thigh or you know someone's standing on it
Steven Webb:or something something crazy. You never know what you guys are doing listening to my podcast. But in general
Steven Webb:you're not this you're not aware of every part of your body. So if I said to you, are you
Steven Webb:aware of your left baby finger?
Steven Webb:You've got to become aware of it. You've got a um My screen's just gone off um You've got to
Steven Webb:become aware of it. And don't forget, I'm not editing these podcasts like mad because I don't have time to
Steven Webb:any of that stuff. My podcasts are very much unpolished. You get them the way you are. Get them the
Steven Webb:way they are with the ums and arms and everything. With the tangents and everything. Anyway, going back. So
Steven Webb:if I asked you to become aware of your baby finger on your left hand,
Steven Webb:you're going to become aware. Now then, if I asked you, are you aware?
Steven Webb:Are you aware? So what do you do in order to answer that question then you'll
Steven Webb:either jump to two conclusions initially with no gap. So the first one is like, yeah, or maybe you just
Steven Webb:go, no. And the mind might jump in here and go, well, I know this anyway. I'm more
Steven Webb:intelligent This is a silly question. I can do this. But
Steven Webb:what I want you to do is really step back and consider what happens in that moment between when I
Steven Webb:ask you the question and when you answer. Are
Steven Webb:you aware?
Steven Webb:Now then, the answer is probably yes, but you have to do something to
Steven Webb:become aware.
Steven Webb:Just like if I say, are you aware of the back of your neck or are you aware of
Steven Webb:a picture on the wall behind you? You have to bring your attention to it in order to answer that
Steven Webb:question. Now,
Steven Webb:you might be one of the ones that say, well, I was already aware. Well, you can't be aware of
Steven Webb:everything. The point is, I'm asking you to be aware of something you're not already aware of.
Steven Webb:And we know there's a picture behind you. We know we got, unless you're missing your baby finger on your
Steven Webb:left hand, but you you're not aware of everything. You're genuinely aware of very little at any one given time.
Steven Webb:Especially the human side. And this is what we're talking about, the human side here not the subconscious mind. Your
Steven Webb:subconscious mind's listening to everything. It can hear everything. It's feeling everything. Otherwise it cannot make these habitable
Steven Webb:responses they cannot stay up straight in the chair or walking. It's got to be aware of how your muscles
Steven Webb:are doing, how the feeling's going, how your feet are, where the position the sound and everything. It's not until
Steven Webb:it becomes unusual that the subconscious mind goes, I don't know what to do with this. And they pass it
Steven Webb:to the human. Just like when you drive through 10 villages and you go, I can't remember driving through that
Steven Webb:village. Well, if you drove through the village and something was different, like roadblocks or there was an accident, you'd
Steven Webb:remember because the subconscious mind goes, this is different. This wasn't what I was expecting. Over to the human. Over
Steven Webb:to the human. I don't know what to do with it. So this is what we're asking to do. Bring
Steven Webb:it over to the human. Bring the current situation or whatever is arising into the conscious mind or the conscious
Steven Webb:human. So when you ask the question, when I ask you the question, are you aware?
Steven Webb:I want you to suddenly become aware of as much as possible. Inside, outside, the world, the air around you.
Steven Webb:Just, are you aware?
Steven Webb:And boom. If
Steven Webb:you if you're not jumping in with the ego going, yeah, of course I know this, I understand this. If
Steven Webb:you're really trying to do this, you'll hopefully come to the illusion that there's a little gap between what comes
Steven Webb:up and what you do with it.
Steven Webb:So as you as you practice this more and more and as you sit at traffic lights and just take
Steven Webb:a deep breath. As you become aware of your breath, you become aware of your feet and you become aware
Steven Webb:of everything going on around you. You become aware of the person talking to you or what's on the radio
Steven Webb:rather than just subconsciously going through your day on autopilot. You'll realise that you have this ability
Steven Webb:to be almost one step ahead in a superhuman way. I've
Steven Webb:got this. Okay. Someone's coming in angry. I've got this.
Steven Webb:I've got this feeling of lust or desire or overwhelming emotions. I've got this.
Steven Webb:And it stops you reacting. It stops you doing something you regret later.
Steven Webb:And that's what made that's one of the real benefits of meditation. You become more present with the present moment.
Steven Webb:You become more like the guy at the end of the bar, perhaps not drinking whiskey out of tumblr but
Steven Webb:that coal collected guy. Not always a guy, but very often it is in movies.
Steven Webb:I'm thinking of more Western movies. I grew up with a lot of them. So yeah, hopefully that helps.
Steven Webb:Let me know if that helps at all. And that this is one of the two podcasts. I said on
Steven Webb:my um Tiktok account that I was going to do one of two podcasts. It was either going to be
Steven Webb:um about the gap where it's going to be a really simple form of meditations. Well, I'm going to do
Steven Webb:both podcasts actually um Next week, it's going to be a really simple four-step process of meditation that I do.
Steven Webb:And you can do it in one minute or you can do it in one hour. It totally depends. And
Steven Webb:it will really help you to generate this gap. And the bigger you make the gap, the more you won't
Steven Webb:regret things in your life, the more you won't say these things. The more benefits it will give you. You'll
Steven Webb:make more wiser decisions. You'll be able to make better and faster decisions, ironically. And you'll you'll regret less decisions.
Steven Webb:And those decisions will be more beneficial for you and everybody. So
Steven Webb:hopefully this will help. And look out every Friday for a new podcast.
Steven Webb:I'm really working on that. Feel free to email me and go, where's your podcast?
Steven Webb:Sometimes when a podcast goes really well, I want to run from it and go, oh, I can't do this
Steven Webb:anymore. I have a real big fear and I'm working on it that I'm gonna let people down
Steven Webb:and I realise I let more people down by just not doing rather than just getting on with it. So
Steven Webb:I'm working on it. We're all deeply, beautifully flawed and perfect at the same time, aren't we?
Steven Webb:And I'm no different. I'm no different
Steven Webb:um we just gotta make sure we're working on it um So this is Stillness in the Storms. I'm Steven
Steven Webb:Webb. your host. And you can find out more about me or you can contact me on StevenWebb.uk. I
Steven Webb:don't have any sponsors for this podcast, but if you go to StevenWebb.uk, there is a link there to an
Steven Webb:app with all my meditations. And
Steven Webb:that will that will if you sign up to the app, I will get a little bit of the money,
Steven Webb:which is brilliant. But otherwise, you'll have 30 days completely free with hundreds and hundreds of meditations um There's no
Steven Webb:commitment. There's no thing um But this will help
Steven Webb:um So yeah, there's a link on StevenWebb.uk. It's an awesome app. Not just mine, but it's literally hundreds and
Steven Webb:hundreds and thousands of meditations. And they're all organized in a perfect way. So if you want to get better
Steven Webb:sleep or you want to have a find the gap a little more or you want to have a coach,
Steven Webb:things like that, it's all on this app. It's absolutely brilliant. It's called Aura. It's called Aura. But I really
Steven Webb:want you to go through my link because that would be helpful. And it helps me to get an editor
Steven Webb:that I can edit these because I'm not much good at it. Take care, guys. This is Steven Webb. This
Steven Webb:is Stillness in the Storms. Helping you to get through the toughest times in life with a little more wisdom
Steven Webb:and calmness.
Steven Webb:Love you guys.
