Newsletter | Edition #1

I want to tell you about a moment that changed how I see almost everything.

I was driving. Katie was in the passenger seat. Someone cut me off — nothing dramatic, just careless enough to trigger that familiar flash of frustration. And before I could think about it, my grip tightened on the wheel, and my voice changed. I do not remember what I said. I remember what I saw.

Katie had gone quiet. She was not looking at the road. She was looking at me. Not with fear. Not with judgment. With something worse. She was bracing. Waiting to see which version of her father was about to show up.

That is the image that has stayed with me. My daughter, sitting beside me, quietly preparing herself for my reaction. Not because the moment was dangerous. Because I was unpredictable.

Something shifted in me that day. I realized there is a space between what happens to me and how I respond. I had been ignoring that space my entire life. Blowing past it. Letting the reaction fire before the choice had a chance to show up. But the space is real. And my children — whether they are sitting beside me in the car or across from me at the dinner table — are watching what I do with it.

Viktor Frankl called it the space between stimulus and response. I call it the gap. And learning to own that gap — to pause, to notice, to choose who I want to be before I react — has become the most important practice of my life as a father.

I still miss it. More often than I would like. But I see it now. And once you start seeing it, you cannot unsee it.

This week, I wrote a longer piece exploring what the gap is, where the idea comes from, and the simple four-step process I use to practice owning it. If this idea resonates with you, I think you will find it valuable.

[Read: What Is Own the Gap? →]

Here is what I want to leave you with this Saturday morning. Sometime today or tomorrow, you will face a moment. Something will provoke you. Something will test your patience. When it comes, try to notice the space. Just notice it. That is where the work begins.

Glad you’re here.

Scott