The 1994 Winter Olympics. Lillehammer, Norway. Dan Jensen, a man regarded by many as the best speed skater alive, was about to compete in his final event: the 1,000-meter.
In the event prior, Dan finished eighth in the 500-meter after slipping, costing him his chance of Olympic Gold in what he considered his strongest event. He was devastated, to put it mildly.
Now, moments before competing in the final 1,000-meter event, which was his weakest by his estimation, Dan needed to get his head in the game. And to do that, he adopted a mindset he hadn’t tried before.
Rather than thinking about how he could have performed better in previous competitions, he started thinking about everyone and everything that led to him competing at the Olympics.
He decided at that moment that the outcome no longer mattered. What mattered, instead, was how he felt looking back: what he had achieved between this moment and the beginning of his career.
Dan ended up winning the Olympic Gold medal and racing in what many consider the best race of his life. He retired from competitions shortly after, safe in the knowledge he had achieved everything he wanted in his career and more.
GAP Thinking
We all have goals we want to achieve. We want to exercise regularly and eat healthily. We want to feel more productive. On the other side of our goals, we rationalize, is a better, more ideal version of ourselves.
Moreover, we believe that that version of ourselves is free from the problems our current self is experiencing. And that might be true—if you’re sedentary from sitting all day, exercising will undoubtedly alleviate any discomfort you’re experiencing.
Goals provide direction, motivation, and meaning in our lives. After all, progress makes us feel like we’re growing. But when we measure ourselves or our situations against these ideals, we fall into what Dr. Benjamin Hardy calls the GAP. [1]
“When you’re in the GAP, you have an unhealthy attachment to something external,” writes Hardy in his book, The Gap and The Gain.” “You feel you need something outside of yourself in order to be whole and happy.”
Hardy explains that when we’re in the GAP, we’re not in the “here” and “now.” Instead, we’re trying to get “there,” a destination where the success criteria are constantly moving and are never attainable.
Fortunately, there is a better, more empowering alternative to attaching to ideals and situations outside ourselves. And it begins with what Hardy calls GAIN thinking.
GAIN Thinking
GAIN thinking involves measuring our progress by comparing ourselves against all that we’ve already accomplished. You make yourself your reference point. You make the final call on what “success” means to you.
One way to regularly adopt GAIN thinking is by defining the game you want to play. To illustrate, consider the following examples from online entrepreneur Justin Welsh.
In a recent tweet, Welsh explained that he often receives emails from people telling him, “you could scale 10x if you just…” without realizing that he’s not interested in scaling his business 10x. [2]
Welsh explains that their advice is well-meaning, but for him, a great lifestyle business is based on balancing quality time and revenue. His advice to his followers is to ignore other people’s purpose. In other words, avoid those using different criteria for a successful lifestyle business.
Morgan Housel echos Welsh’s sentiment in his book, The Psychology of Wealth, writing few things matter more with money than not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are.
Defining an internal scorecard can be as simple as journaling on questions like, “What are the reference points you measure yourself against?” and “Are my success criteria focused on the outcomes I currently want?”
GAIN thinking is challenging to adopt, especially when our memories are always reconstructed in the present, based on our current perspectives. (Our memories are never accurate when we’re in a negative frame of mind.)
However, by defining the game we’re playing, keeping score on what matters, and regularly checking in on our progress, we can commit 100 percent to our goals and pursue what we want without unhealthy attachments.
Footnotes
[1] I wrote an in-depth summary of The Gap and The Gain by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, which you can read here.
[2] I paraphrased Justin’s story from this tweet.
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