Measure the GAIN, not the GAP.
— Dan Sullivan
Have you ever had a big goal? One that you really wanted to achieve? Maybe you wanted to gain a new skill or reach some milestone. Maybe you wanted to be a better person. When you had this goal, you probably worked very hard to make your goal a reality.
How did that goal work out for you? Did you achieve the goal you had envisioned, planned and worked hard for?
For most of us, we have had times our goals went well and times they simply did not. Almost everyone has had a goal they worked hard for that did not turn out how they had hoped.
So often in life, we can find ourselves frustrated and disappointed when our goals don’t yield the results we want. We measure our progress against the ideals we have created in our heads. When reality doesn’t match this ideal, we can feel like a failure regardless of any progress we have made towards our goals. When we focus on this discrepancy we are focusing on the gap.
When this happens, it can be much more valuable for us to measure our progress from where we started. We can take time to acknowledge our progress and growth. We can focus on the gain we have seen. When we work hard on a goal, we will always see growth and progress, even if it isn’t the progress we had hoped for.
When we focus on the gains we see in life we can feel motivation and be energized by our goals instead of frustrated and disappointed. When reflecting on your goals, focus on your gains, not on your gaps.
Consider the last time you thought you failed at achieving a goal. How would you have thought about it differently if you had focused on the gains and growth you had seen instead of how you may have fallen short? How can you focus on the gains when evaluating future goals?