Want To Be Happier? Change One Thing.
There isn't anything wrong with you or your achievements... there's something wrong
with the way you're thinking about it. - Dan Sullivan
Do you find that even though you have an outwardly successful life you're often not satisfied? The problem may not be with the quantity of your achievements but rather how you're measuring them.
In his book The Gap and the Gain, entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan tells the story of a client who made many successful strides in his life but constantly felt like a failure. While trying to work out why, Sullivan hit upon the idea that maybe his client was measuring his progress all wrong. He realized his client defined his self-worth by measuring his current success against an ideal picture of success he held in his mind. And since an ideal state isn't real and is always changing Sullivan's client was left perpetually chasing something unattainable.
The distance between where you are presently and what you hold in your mind as the ideal is what Sullivan calls "The Gap". Measuring your progress this way only leads to unhappiness.
Sullivan compares our ideals to the earth's horizon line. If you're goal is to jog to the horizon and back, you're bound to be disappointed as it will always move away from you. Although you made progress the fact that you missed your goal supersedes it and you're left feeling like a failure. But if your goal is to run one kilometre more than you did last week, that is a specific and measurable objective. Once you achieve it you'll feel happy. This way of "measuring backwards" is what Sullivan calls "The Gain".
And it gets better. According to Sullivan, measuring "The Gain" not only makes us feel happier, but it also "multiplies our ambition". The more time we spend in "The Gain" the more progress we'll make. And the more progress we make, the more confident we are about our ability for future progress. "You’ll experience an endless strengthening of your vision of what your bigger and better future can be, and all it requires is measuring your progress today."
Want to dig a little deeper including tips to stay out of "The Gap", ways to expand your "Gain" and reasons why our brains are "made for measurement"? Download the free e-book below.