“If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack” ― Benjamin Hardy
Imagine someone that never enjoys their current situation – no matter the level of success. These folks reserve all joy and happiness for the moment when they achieve their goal…or worse yet, their ideal. Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy would say that these individuals live in the gap: the space between what they want and what they have. For many, this may not sound so bad…I mean, who doesn’t want to strive for goals and achievement? The reality is that this approach tends to lead to depression and frustration as it becomes impossible to ever enjoy the moment. In this book, the authors highlight the fact that some of the most successful people struggle the most with depression – not because of success but because they are never able to enjoy it.
“The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal” ― Dan Sullivan
While the gap comes down to a view of how far is left to go…the gain is all about the progress so made. Sullivan and Hardy describe the gain as measuring progress by how far we’ve come. We may not have achieved our goals, but we have made progress. We’re not yet who we want to be and we’ve not traveled as far as we had hoped, but we are so much further than when we started this journey. Living in the gain develops self-confidence. We are able to live with success, satisfaction, and real enjoyment of the journey.
We are only one month into the new year, but so many will already be living in self-doubt and defeat. It may not be as simple as it sounds, but it comes down to choosing the philosophy that we will choose to embrace. We may need to have accountability partners that will challenge us and remind us of why we chose to live in the gain. We will probably need to choose to extend grace and forgiveness into our own lives. Sullivan and Hardy offer many practical ideas and tools for living the life we’ve always wanted. Isn’t it time to start living life…in the gain?