---
title: Mind the Gap
description: Explore the power of emotional governance and the importance of the gap between action and reaction in shaping our responses and experiences in life.
---

[CEO blog(en)](https://blog.assentia-hd.com/en-us/ceoblog)

# [Mind the Gap](https://blog.assentia-hd.com/en-us/ceoblog/mind-the-gap)

 Written by [Akira Tsuchiya(en)](https://blog.assentia-hd.com/en-us/ceoblog/author/akira-en) | Oct 24, 2026, 7:31:51 AM

Between an action you receive — whether words or attitude — and the emotion and behavior that arise in you, there is a gap.  
That gap can absorb the response in any way you choose.

Insulted → gap → anger  
Struck → gap → anger

How well you can govern your emotions inside that gap is what separates a human being from an animal.

To react reflexively is to be a lower animal, not a human being.

And yet — how many people in this world live below even that.

Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, said this:

No Nazi guard could ever control my own emotions.  
They could apply physical pressure and violence, but in the realm of the spirit, no one could control me. Because the master of my will, my emotions, my soul, is myself.  
No one but me can govern my joy, my anger, my sorrow, my delight.  
How I feel, and how I receive what happens to me, is up to me alone.

To react reflexively is to surrender the authority I hold as master of my own soul.  
It is to abandon what makes a human being human.

If someone hurls abuse at you in a language you don't understand, and does it with a smile, you feel nothing at all.

It's the same thing.

You react because you understand.  
You don't react because you don't.

Reflex is a sin.

The gap in between truly matters.

Mind the gap — then switch it on. 😊

"Life is entirely a matter of where you set your heart." 😊  
— Tempu Nakamura

It depends on how you feel, how you think, how you receive.

What life requires is never material.  
It is hope for tomorrow, and connection with people — trust, and love.  
(Even if the anxiety never quite goes away.)  
With those alone, a person can live.

That's what I found myself thinking about, on the island of Timor 😊

Assentia Holdings, Inc.  
Assentia Holdings Pte. Ltd.  
CEO Akira Tsuchiya

  

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