Benjamin Hardy

It also devalues everything you've done to that point. And so whenever you're in the gap, It does not matter how much you've achieved. It doesn't matter if you're living way, way, way beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would do. You actually feel like you've made no progress at all.

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.

And you feel like a loser and you've devalued not only your current self, you've devalued everything that got you here. And so ideals are beautiful. They're just not useful as a measurement tool. They're useful as a direction tool. Goals are far more concrete. Obviously, you can have goals that you set that move you toward your ideals.

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.

Um, and so goals are specific, they're concrete, they're, they're mile markers on a journey. Uh, and then the useful thing to do with your goals is to obviously become increasingly intrinsically motivated towards the goals you set. And even the standards you set for yourself, that they're less about, um, what anyone else thinks, what anyone else wants.

And so if you're always measuring yourself against a moving target, 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. Social media trains us to have ideals and to always be comparing ourselves externally. And sometimes ideals are other people. Yeah.

And you actually get better at doing that when you just start measuring your progress backwards. So like I'll set a goal for myself. I've got huge goals for 2023. But in terms of where I'm measuring myself and in terms of my benchmark, like my benchmark for 2023 is what I accomplished in 2022. Like I accomplished some cool things, but I'm using that Since it's tangible. Ideals are not tangible.

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. It also devalues everything you've done to that point. And so whenever you're in the gap, It does not matter how much you've achieved.

Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022. And I can use that not only to propel me forward, but I can also use that to say, what do I want to do that's even gonna be bigger and more exciting. So you can just measure yourself backwards and use that as the baseline for what you can do.

It doesn't matter if you're living way, way, way beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would do. You actually feel like you've made no progress at all. And you feel like a loser and you've devalued not only your current self, you've devalued everything that got you here. And so ideals are beautiful. They're just not useful as a measurement tool. They're useful as a direction tool.

Goals are far more concrete. Obviously, you can have goals that you set that move you toward your ideals. And so goals are specific. They're concrete. They're mile markers on a journey. And then the useful thing to do with your goals is to obviously become increasingly intrinsically motivated towards the goals you set and even the standards you set for yourself, that they're less about...

what anyone else thinks, what anyone else wants. And you actually get better at doing that when you just start measuring your progress backwards. So like I'll set a goal for myself. I've got huge goals for 2023. But in terms of where I'm measuring myself and in terms of my benchmark, like my benchmark for 2023 is what I accomplished in 2022. Like I accomplished some cool things, but I'm using that

You broke it down beautifully. I think that this is one of the main problems with the narratives. There's a lot of narratives about how you shouldn't have goals. Obviously, I think it's impossible to not have goals. I think human beings, we can't not have a goal. That's part of being intentional. But the problem is the measurement. I mean, even if I had hit my goal, I would have gone into the gap.

Since it's tangible, ideals are not tangible. Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022. And I can use that not only to propel me forward, but I can also use that to say, what do I want to do? That's even gonna be bigger and more exciting. So you can just measure yourself backwards and use that as the baseline for what you can do.

I would have moved the target. So even if I had hit the New York Times bestseller list from a gap perspective, I still would have felt terrible about myself because I would have moved the target. The target would have been, well, why wasn't I on it for four weeks?

Or why didn't I hit number one? So it doesn't even, whether you hit the goal or not, doesn't even matter. If you're in the gap, it will never have been enough because the target will keep changing and you're measuring yourself against something that's immeasurable and something that's external and always changing.

And so, yeah, whether it's other people that you're measuring yourself against or whether it's just your inflated ideals, that's the point is that you won't be happy hitting or not hitting your goals if you stay in the gap. And that's just the key.

You broke it down beautifully. I think that this is one of the main problems with the narratives. There's a lot of narratives about how you shouldn't have goals. Obviously, I think it's impossible to not have goals. I think human beings, we can't not have a goal. That's part of being intentional. But the problem is the measurement. I mean, even if I had hit my goal, I would have gone into the gap.

So I look at gain thinking two ways. One is it's a way of measuring your progress and measuring your experiences. So for me, for example, I've had a number of experiences already today, even just to this point. And some of them went to plans and some of them didn't go to plans. But if I'm in the gain, I'm measuring what actually did happen. And I'm measuring myself backwards.

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