Thin Space Activity

Hey there everybody. JC here for your mindset video. This week we are going to be talking about thinspace, the space that exists between everything that has already happened and everything that will happen. As a reminder, these mindset videos are 15 minutes long. They are comprised of a five minute setup to an activity, five minutes to delve into this activity, and then five minutes to unpack how you can practically implement this activity into your regular day to day life to shift your mindset.

So thin space. This concept is one that I picked up studying franciscan monks. The Franciscans would seek to find the thin space in between light and dark, between good and evil, between day and night, beginnings and ends, all of these big things that separate us from exactly where we normally are. Think about it. How many times in life are we truly at a fresh start, new beginning? How often do we live in that end moment? Most of the time we're in between, right? There's some beginnings and some ends, and very rarely do they line up.

Think about the idea of good and bad. Does anyone ever ask you the question, hey, how are you? And you look at the fork in the road and you say, am I good? Am I bad? Or do I speak as honestly as possible and lay out all the things within those two columns. Perhaps you're considering a one year plan, a three year plan, a five year plan, and you look at the future and you go, how do I even begin to lay out practical, rational, predictable steps? Or we get trapped in the spirals of looking at everything that has happened and commentating and unpacking and attempting to learn every morsel from every mistake, every success, every failure, every triumph.

How often do you live within the thin space between what was and what will be, between the perception of perfection and the darkest reality you could ever imagine. It is within that thin space where we are present, where most of our seconds are truly ever lived. There's only one moment that you ever have control of. There's only one moment that you ever live in, and that moment is right now. So our exercise today, this thin space exercise, is going to require you to have a piece of paper. If you're a journaler, and I suggest being a journaler, grab your journal and then I'll start writing utensil as you flip to a clean page in your journal.

And hopefully after a while, it takes you some time to find one. Go ahead and draw the horizontal way of the paper. A thin space. I'm going to get close up to the camera here, a thin space in the middle of your page so you have a wide column. You have a wide column, and you have this thin space in the middle. For our five minute activity, you'll have two minutes to free write. First. In the left hand column of the page, you're going to write down any thoughts, any events that exist in the past. That'll be minute one and minute two, minute three and four.

You'll shift your attention to the right hand side of the page, and you will write down any thoughts, any plans, any dreams, any visions for things that have yet to exist, the things that exist in the future. For your last minute, that fifth minute now, you'll fill that thin space in the middle, and in that thin space, you will write down anything that exists right now, and I'll guide you through this experience in the next five minutes. If you want to go ahead and hit pause and come back to this later, this is a really good time to do so.

If you need to grab your pen and paper again, hit pause, and when you're ready, hit replay, and we'll begin right now. So in the left hand column of your page, begin by writing as close to that first line you drew. Anything that exists in the immediate past. Think about what you were doing right before you hit play on this video. Where were you? What were you thinking? What were you doing? What is the last thing that you ate? What's the big stressor, the big triumph or failure that is on the last page of your story as this two minutes continues, fill this space.

Are you a list maker? Do you like things organized? Awesome. Be organized. Make lists. Are you more imagery focused? Draw pictures. You want to go and connect the past with lines and arrows. Write louder, more important things, larger and smaller, little details that come up smaller. This is your unpacking of the past. Who are the people, the players, the antagonists in your story that have moved you and shifted you and shaped you into who and where you are right now? Just like a faucet that maybe hasn't been turned on for a while.

Maybe you turned the spigot and there was some air and some dust and some crude. But for over a minute now, you've been unpacking the past and filling this space. Is the space already full right over what you've already written? Unpack the past. You have 20 more seconds. Feel the urgency and the anxiety of existing in what has already been. Keep going just as if this was a fitness class, right? Just as if you were doing reps of an exercise. Pump them out. Three, two, one. Take a big breath in, big breath out.

Shift your attention to the right hand column. Again, a big open space. Your two minutes starts right now to write down everything that is yet to happen, yet to exist. What are the things that you, with courage and anticipation, assume are going to happen in the future? Just like we did in the past, we wrote down the last thing that happened before this time. Now we're going to write down the first thing that's going to happen when you finish your mindset work for today. Where are you going to go?

What's the next thing on your to do list? If you got a paper planner, if your Google calendar is going to shoot you an alert saying 15 minutes from now you have something, what is it going to be? What are your obligations? It's a big word. Most of our obligations we think about now, but they exist in the future. We have a meeting coming up tomorrow, yet it envelops our now. Write those things down. Are you a one year? A three year? A five year? A big dream type of person? Sweet. What are they? Write them down.

What's your goal? Where are you going to end up? Where are you going to live? What are the scary realities of being a human being that are in your future? The things you don't like thinking about, but they live in your cells. They show up in your dreams. Write those things down to focus your energy in what is yet to exist. Keep going, keep going. One more minute. This is a focused exercise. Just as if you were going to spend an hour studying algebra. You're going to maximize that time by ensuring that when your brain says, let's go play the saxophone, you say, no, now is algebra time.

Right now. This is future focused time. 30 more seconds. Every day that is yet to be lived. Every year, every chapter, every promotion, every move. What are they? 15 seconds. The spigot is on. The water is pouring everything future here in the right hand column of your page. Three, two, one. Breathe in, breathe out. Now look in the thin space in between the clutter and the static of what has been and what will be. Begin to fill that middle column. It's small. So is the now. The current moment is always going to be shorter than the time that has existed and the time that will exist.

Fill it up. What is happening right now? Maybe I am writing in my journal. I am doing mindset work. I am sitting in a chair. It is raining outside. I am thinking about my sister. What are the things right now? Don't undervalue the now. What are you hungry for? What is calling you and your time and energy into action? Right now write that down. Who do you need to call? What you need to have for dinner to fill you up? Body, mind, spirit, appetite what will make you smile? What song are you craving to listen to?

What do you need to let go of? This moment is your action moment. This moment is the one that you are in. Keep filling up that thin space. Three, two, one. Breathe in and breathe out. Take a moment lay your pen down, lay your paper aside our focus in our mindset work is to create applicable, recyclable tools that you can shift your state through using whenever you feel stuck, very rarely are we stuck in the now. We are stuck in the past and the future. Consider what is one moment in your life where you felt absolutely there?

The time that you are so incredibly in your happiness, in your sadness, in your action, in your capacity, in your feelings, in your thoughts, in your world, in your purpose. Maybe you've never thought of it this way. You were where you were with what you had and you were appreciating it. That is how we define mindfulness. Being where you are with what you have and appreciating it. So if that is something you seek to be as potent as possible, this exercise will train you to go, hey, I'm going to focus and isolate my work and my muscle on the past.

Because I can do that. I can do that skill. We learn a lot from the past. Hey, I'm going to strengthen and focus my muscle and energy on the future. I can do that. We set course. We change and feel and dream irrational but possible things when we focus on the future. Yet where does action happen when we flex the muscle of the now? Y'all, whenever you feel the necessity to be where you are, with what you have and to appreciate, to honor, to move with that, come back to the thin space. Five minute exercise, two minutes to flex the past, two minutes to work the future, and 1 minute to urgently feel and jump into the now.