Mind the Gap. Where Do You Want to Be?

I don’t always start the day with spunk and enthusiasm. What can I, or any of us do when we find ourselves sanding in the space between where we are today and where we want to be?

Do you “mind the gap?”

“Mind the gap” originated around 1968 in the London Underground. The signs and recordings warned passengers to look out for the space between the train steps and the platform. The phrase continues to show up in business discussions, but maybe the notion extends to those little gaps that plague an otherwise delightful day.

Do you ever wake up feeling tired and out of sync? Thursday atarted that way. “Mind the gap,” echoed in my thoughts. Could the gap I felt warn me to watch my step, pay attention, take a giant leap toward something I held in my imagination?

I’m not talking about grand goals. The gap might be something as mundane as trying a new bread recipe or walking 30 minutes every other day.

Brené Brown calls minding the gap a daring strategy. She uses the term to describe the gap between aspirational values and what she calls practiced values. What we say versus what we do.

We have to pay attention to the space between where we’re actually standing and where we want to be.

I decided not to overthink my morning malaise. Rather, how could I move beyond the feeling to action, the next step in my day? If you have ever felt stuck, like I found myself this day, you understand how wide and impossible that one first step appears.

It isn’t just a gap; it’s the entire canyon, an abyss. I jumped on the train, anyway. shoveled and planted calendulas. The next day, I wrote a poem and submitted three more to an online children’s journal.