Benjamin Hardy

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,

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.

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.

So ideals are very ephemeral.

Like they're not actually tangible.