A blueprint to patience (that actually works in real life)
You know that moment when something goes wrong – not catastrophically, just enough to wind you up?
Someone cuts in front of you in traffic. The kettle breaks when you really need a cup of tea. Your phone freezes just as you’re about to send a text you spent ten minutes crafting. It’s a little thing, but it’s enough to send a jolt through you – frustration, maybe a muttered swear word, maybe something louder if no one’s around.
And just like that – boom – reaction.
That moment between the thing happening and your response to it… well, for most of my life, there wasn’t one. The two were joined at the hip. Something annoyed me, I reacted. End of. That was the default. Not just for me, I’d guess, but for a lot of people. We’re not taught to pause. We’re taught to push through.
But here’s the idea that changed everything for me – slowly, clumsily, but very much for the better:
What if you didn’t react straight away?
What if, in that tiny blink between action and reaction, you stayed still?
That’s The Action–Reaction Void.
It’s not a breathing technique. It’s not a therapy model. It’s just a name I gave to that split-second pause. That little wedge of time where you don’t have to match the world’s crap with equal crap of your own.
And the mad bit is: it works. It’s hard, but it works. Not every time – I’m still a human with opinions and a fully functioning set of swear words – but more of the time. And when it does work, it feels like a tiny miracle. You walk away from the moment instead of stomping through it. You reply with quiet instead of impulse. You regain about three hours of peace you would’ve otherwise spent stewing.
So that’s what I’ve started writing about.
Not because I’ve got it all figured out – far from it. But because noticing the Void, and learning how to sit in it, has made me calmer, more present, and less of a grumpy old man when things don’t go my way. And that’s a pretty decent start.
At the time of posting this blog I’ve got around 12,500 words down on this, so if you’re reading this I’d love to hear from you if you’d want more. I’m aiming for it to be a book, but right now, who knows?.
This blog’s where I’ll be sharing more of it for the time being – the lessons, the daft examples, the real-life stuff. Nothing polished. No guru nonsense. Just reflections on how to live a little more patiently, even when the Wi-Fi crashes or the bloke in the BMW does something twatty again.
Apologies in advance to BMW drivers as I’m sure there are some nice ones, but in my head it’s always a twat in a BMW.
Because life’s still going to chuck things at you. But you get to decide how you catch them. Or whether you catch them at all.
And that moment of choice? That’s the Void.