Benjamin Hardy

So I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010. And like going on that experience was very transformational for me. I grew up in a really intense environment. But ever since I came home from that experience in 2010, I wanted to be a professional author. Over the, from 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously as a blogger and was able to get a book deal and be able to start providing for my family.

So essentially I got a multi six-figure book deal to write a book. I'm living my dreams. It all happens way faster than I thought.

into early 2018 honestly it was March of 2018 the book comes out and I did have way in my head like I'd built everything up in my head that it needed to be a certain level it needed to be a New York Times bestseller and I admittedly as well threw so much money at it and so yeah it didn't hit the goal and for probably four or five months I was in a very deep depression very deep slump um

And kind of back to the idea of the gap and the gain now, I guess I've learned to measure my own self differently. So the gap and the gain is something I learned from Dan Sullivan. I read his little book on the subject. Maybe actually it was in 2018. I read his little book and I was still blogging back then. And it was just an idea I loved.

And I thought if I ever get a chance to write books with Dan Sullivan, I'm going to make this a major book. And the idea is very simple. I mean, it's basically the idea that as a person, we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves and how we measure our experiences. The reason I went into a deep depression after I had made a monumental achievement, I mean, I'd never done that before.

So I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010. And going on that experience was very transformational for me. I grew up in a really intense environment. But ever since I came home from that experience, in 2010, I wanted to be a professional author. From 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously as a blogger and was able to get a book deal and be able to start providing for my family.

It was totally new. And yet I felt like a loser because I was in the gap. I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be, which is an ideal. When you're in the gap, you're measuring yourself against your ideals, which are always changing, always moving. Whereas the gain is the opposite. You measure yourself backward against where you were before.

So essentially, I got a multi-six-figure book deal to write a book. I'm living my dreams. It all happens way faster than I thought.

into early 2018 honestly it was March of 2018 the book comes out and I did have way in my head like I'd built everything up in my head that it needed to be a certain level it needed to be a New York Times bestseller and I admittedly as well threw so much money at it and so yeah it didn't hit the goal and for probably four or five months I was in a very deep depression very deep slump um

Truth was, is I was way further than I'd ever been. And if I was just measuring myself backward against my past self, competing only against my past self, I was radically further than I ever was. And I just did something huge. And so I'm learning and I've learned over the years to be more in the game. And it's a far more enjoyable, far happier experience.

And kind of back to the idea of the gap and the gain now, I guess I've learned to measure my own self differently. So the gap and the gain is something I learned from Dan Sullivan. I read his little book on the subject. Maybe actually it was in 2018. I read his little book and I was still blogging back then. And it was just an idea I loved.

So ideals are very, they're very ephemeral. Like they're not actually tangible. Like, and so like how I learned it from Dan is ideals are like the horizon in the desert. Like you can see them out there and like, but every time you take a few steps forward, the horizon keeps going. And in America, we're actually trained to always be pursuing happiness.

And I thought if I ever get a chance to write books with Dan Sullivan, I'm going to make this a major book. And the idea is very simple. I mean, it's basically the idea that as a person, we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves and how we measure our experiences. The reason I went into a deep depression after I had made a monumental achievement, I mean, I'd never done that before.

That's even in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so we're very big on ideals in America, which is good. Like, it's good to have ideals. It's good to be idealistic. There's nothing wrong with ideals. The problem is, is that they're immaterial. Like, I think a definition of ideal is whatever you believe is perfection.

It was totally new. And yet I felt like a loser because I was in the gap. I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be, which is an ideal. When you're in the gap, you're measuring yourself against your ideals, which are always changing, always moving. Whereas the gain is the opposite. You measure yourself backward against where you were before.

So when you're in the gap, you're literally measuring yourself against your view of perfection. But back to the idea of the horizon, that view is never-endingly changing. My former self would have felt like it was perfection just to get a book deal. But then once I got there, the ideal changed. The horizon moved. And so if you're always measuring yourself against a moving target,

Truth was, is I was way further than I'd ever been. And if I was just measuring myself backward against my past self, competing only against my past self, I was radically further than I ever was. And I just did something huge. And so I'm learning and I've learned over the years to be more in the game. And it's a far more enjoyable, far happier experience.

And also a moving target that by definition is unreachable. You can't actually reach an ideal. It's an ideal. But if you're always measuring yourself against it, then you never feel like you've moved anywhere. And that's actually why we wrote the book is because high achievers by nature have huge ideals, but they also usually measure themselves against them. And our culture is trained that way.

So ideals are very, they're very ephemeral. Like they're not actually tangible. Like, and so like how I learned it from Dan is ideals are like the horizon in the desert. Like you can see them out there and like, but every time you take a few steps forward, the horizon keeps going. And in America, we're actually trained to always be pursuing happiness.

Social media trains us to have ideals and to always be comparing ourselves externally. And sometimes ideals are other people, right? But if you're always measuring yourself against something that's way up ahead and also something that you can never actually reach, then what that does for you internally is it feels like you've never made any progress at all.

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