Let’s Take a Moment: Grace Is in the Space

Today I want to tell you about one of my absolute favorite sayings:

Grace is in the space.

This isn’t just a catchy phrase to me. Grace is in the space is actually part of my operating system. It’s a tool, and it’s one of the mantras I use in my Navigating Challenging Dialogue trainings and events.

The space I’m speaking of is the difference between how I react hastily or respond thoughtfully to things that happen to me. The grace is the gift that comes from resisting the urge to react to an event, a comment, or a behavior just because it stimulates an emotional hot spot in my body. 

This grace has spared me from blaming, attacking, feeling humiliated, or attempting to humiliate others, both in my work life and at home. More times than I can count, the simple act of reminding myself – sometimes over and over and over – that grace is in the space has saved me from damaging my relationships and spared me the cycle of shame, guilt, and regret. I can easily say it’s one of the most effective tools in my toolbox. 

Now I’m going to share a secret with you:

We all have reactionary behaviors that we repeat again and again. Most often they take us totally by surprise. You know the scenario…

Everything is going well. You’re having a nice conversation in a group, or maybe you’re reading posts on social media, and then – BAM! Suddenly, something is said, or read, and before you know it, you have made a comment you wish you could take back.

But you can’t, and things begin to unravel.

Feelings are hurt. Relationships are damaged. Somebody responds to you with a jab and you recognize a familiar nagging feeling in your body. And you wonder, “How can this be happening again? I thought I moved past this.”

For some of us, these unthinking reactionary behaviors are what keep us from moving up in a company. They prohibit us from being promoted or they keep us going from job to job. For others, they’re what keep us from being assigned the high profile project we desire, and for still others, maybe they keep us at odds with family and friends, moving from relationship to relationship. 

You see:

A) Everybody experiences emotional hot spots being activated
B) Grace is in the space
C) You get to manage the amount of space between what happens and your response to what happens.

Failure to recognize that, and whether you thoughtlessly react rather than choosing your response, is where it all goes bad. 

Oh, man, it took me a long time to learn this and to really key into the second mantra that I live by, which is: I only have the power to manage myself.

The power to manage myself lives in that space between the comment somebody makes that activates a hot spot within me and me recognizing that a hot spot is activated in my body.

The thing is, our bodies react to these hot spots with fight or flight behavior. What this means, in a simplified way, is that the chemicals your body sends through your system when you feel vulnerable, unsafe, or attacked actually stop or restrict the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the side of your brain that stimulates helpful and supportive things like assessment of a situation, analysis, critical thinking, and the part of you that seeks collaboration and connection. Instead, all that oxygen-rich blood is sent to the part of your brain that decides whether to flee or attack. 

The key is to remember that not every interaction you have is going to be activate a hotspot. What activates hot spots is unique to each of us. That’s what can make dialogue so challenging and complex! It is the inability to predict what will activate the hot spot that creates the surprise.

That is why I am so committed to helping individuals and teams recognize what their unique and individual hot spots feel like in their body when a hot spot is being activated, and then take some very simple steps to dissipate that energy before there’s a reaction that someone is going to regret. 

The space I’m talking about can be a nanosecond long, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, or even a lifetime – that’s your choice. Activated hot spots can mean a reaction overpowers us, but you can take back that power by simply inhaling through your nose, feeling the ground beneath your feet, and connecting with the beat of your heart.

That’s all that is required to create a space that offsets an emotional reaction you may regret later. 

So go ahead, try it right now. Take a long breath in through your nose and allow your shoulders to loosen and fall as the oxygen travels down into your lungs … and then exhale gently through your mouth, allowing excess energy and stress to simply leave your body with your breath. 

As you continue inhaling and exhaling, listen for the beat of your heart. If you can’t hear it, simply feel it or imagine it, and feel gratitude for that heartbeat. 

There! You just did it. You created space. Do you feel the grace in that space? From this place, you can make decisions or consider a response from a place of balance, with the better parts of your brain fully engaged. I encourage you to play with this, to try it, to notice what feels different.

Let me know how the grace in the space mantra works for you.

-Beth