Dr. Benjamin Hardy - How Do You Really Measure Success?

All right, Ben, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. It's been a few years since you were on the show, and, yeah, I feel like a lot has happened. So maybe, maybe rather than starting off with the defining moment like you did last time, which was a couple years ago, tell us a little bit about what has been exciting that's transpired in your life recently.

A lot of great stuff to happen in my life, so getting ready to launch book number four, which is the gap in the gain. Really excited about that and my collaboration with Dan Sullivan. It's been very illuminating. I've learned a lot about just the power of collaboration and working with amazing people versus doing everything myself. And obviously that's who not how as just a mindset. So that I've applied that idea in a lot of different ways. You know, just. Even at our house, we have six kids.

My wife finally, like, allowing. If she does homeschool. She started it right before the pandemic, and we just decided to stick with it. But, you know, having someone come, like, and help her for, you know, 20 hours a week, you know, applying some who not how, so that she can actually focus on what matters. So overall, just life's really good. Um, I think when I talked to you last, it was probably in 2019, I would say I was still recovering from 2018. So 2018 is when I launched Willpower Doesn't Work. And we had. We adopted our three foster kids, and we had twins, and we moved to Florida that one year. And so that year was, like.

It took probably two years just to, like, actually recover and, like, feel like a human being again. And so I feel like we're in a really good spot now and just have good momentum.

Incredible, man. Well, that is a. A lot to take on. I can imagine how just before we dive into some of the stuff that we're going to talk about today, how did you. How would you say you started to recover from that? Like, what did you focus in on? Cause I think a lot of people in life right now have experienced a tremendous amount of transition, turnover and a little bit of turmoil and taking on a lot at once. You know, like, I even. I'm asking maybe from a personal standpoint, because, you know, like, we. We moved out of Manhattan, we're building a home. We just had a baby. So all of this stuff has sort of transpired. And I'm writing a book. My wife is writing a book. And so it's one of those experiences where suddenly, like, everything has come crashing in. So I'm curious To get your perspective as a high achiever, as a high performer. Like, how did you navigate some of that post?

I knew I would recover is one aspect. You know, one of the things that I wrote about. Well, how does work is. Is that, you know, I think one of the core principles of human beings is that we eventually adapt to our circumstances. And so I knew that I would eventually adapt to having, you know, going from not having any kids to having five kids in one year. Like, and so I knew that it would take time to adapt. But I also know that adaptation is very quick, especially if you want to adapt to the new environment. So, like, as a human being, it's very important for us to actually be in the right context. If a human being is out of. Out of context for too long, it just wears them down. Um, and so, like, when you're. When you're making a big change, you're obviously a little bit out of context. Hopefully you're actually now kind of adapting to the context you want. But even still being out of context is exhausting and depleting. And there's really only two options. You can either adapt to the context because you want to, or you can, you know, reject the context and eventually leave it for. Change it to some degree. So I knew that I wanted to be a father. I knew that I wanted to.

You know, continue to grow as an author and an entrepreneur. And so they were changes I wanted. I just was out of context for a while and had to adapt to that context. And so I had to.

Kind of alter some of my goals, kind of look. Look inside and say, what do I actually want? One of my favorite quotes actually comes from Robert Frault. He said, we're kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal. And so I had to kind of look at some of my lesser goals and say, what are the. What are some of the things I'm pursuing that no longer fit my context or no longer are valued to my current self, even though they may have been to my former self? So I let a lot of things go. A lot of priorities of my former self just let slip and just kind of focus my attention on the things that really mattered. My kids, my health, my work. And then a lot of it's just honestly.

Having a future self that's compelling and exciting. And so I'm, you know, I'm always working on projects that are exciting to me. I like waking up, going to the gym, journaling about my goals, and then just like, taking action on Them and then just recovering obviously lots of sleep and eventually you just kind of build momentum with your new situation.

I was going to say lots of sleep with six kids. Sounds like, sounds like Mission impossible in there somewhere.

It's not dude. Like we've always been strict with our kids. Even when they were foster kids like for years they went to bed at like 7, you know, now they're older, now they're 13, 9 and 11. And so we have them go to bed at like 8:30. Yeah, but my wife and I, we're, I mean we're, we don't stay up late. Um, there's no value in that. Most of my, my, my one of my core beliefs is, is that the act, the last hour of the day is actually the most important and it's usually the most wasted. Um, and we actually write about it a lot in the gap in the game. But if you can just shut off the phone. Most of nighttime inputs are just trash, you know, scrolling bad, scrolling bad eating. Like it's very wasteful self destructive behavior right before you go to bed and what you do at the end of your day transitions exactly to what's going to happen End of day habits are the most potent for habit development. Whatever you do at the end of the day are the things that form your most deepest habits. Because it's right before you go to sleep and right before you go to sleep obviously that's what's going to ingrain into your long term memory the most. And so if you just, you know, for me it's just a little journaling process, little meditation, little prayer, just go to bed. My wife and I probably go to bed sometime between 9:30 and 10 every night. I usually wake up between 5 and 6. So I mean I get seven hours of sleep every single night, seven to eight. So I think it's doable. I just think most people have what's called sleep procrastination. Uh, there's a lot of research on sleep procrastination because they're scrolling literally just wasting their time.

Yeah, it's good, it's well said. Well you, you talked about values in there and I'm curious to get your perspective. I mean you've, you've studied human psychology and you've studied high performance and willpower and personality and you've kind of gone down so many different rabbit holes that I'm curious to get your definition of high performers and what achievers actually look like. Because I think what I heard you kind of allude to there is that maybe potentially High achievers are people that prioritize their values above things like wasted time and distractions and actually put more time and effort into that. But I'm curious to get your perspective. Like, how would you define the pillars or the character traits of people that we would classify as high achievers or that we look to in society as high achievers?

Yeah, I mean, high achievers are just people who are goal oriented and generally achieve their goals. You know, our definition as we write about the gap in the gains is mostly, you know, that book is written directly to entrepreneurs because those are the people that Dan coaches. He's got the number one coaching program in the world for entrepreneurs. And these are people who make lots of money, they have lots of impact.

They'Re influential. I, I don't, you know, I don't define high achievers purely as entrepreneurs. I think just anyone who's, you know, generally an outlier within their context, you know, so like, you could come from a really bad background, but if you're actually going to school and like actually getting decent grades, like, you'd probably a high achiever in that context, you know. And so I think high achiever is contextual. It's based on just new kind of probably going in, but above and beyond what's typically surrounding you, you know, so most of the people that you know are in Dan's coaching program, even in my own programs, are outliers compared to their family and their friends. You know, they may not be, you know, it's all about what you measure yourself against. And obviously we're actually inviting people to stop measuring themselves against externals in it in general, because that could put you in the gap. But.

Yeah, as far as values, I think that.

How I look at kind of a hierarchy is there's first context. You can't even have values without a context. You develop your values within a context, whether it be because of the culture you grow up in or because the values of your family or because of, you know, what you, you catch on social media. But your values are really just based on what you've given importance and meaning to, what you've placed value on. And your values then create your goals, whatever those goals may be. And your goals then inform your identity, and your identity then shapes your behavior, and your behavior shapes your outcomes. So values and meanings are pretty much the same. It's whatever you place meaning and importance on. And so I would say everyone has values. And you can know what your values are based on what your goals are. And you can know what your goals are based on what your identity is, just how you identify yourself. We all have an identity and it's literally based on our goals. Whether it's to be a good dad or be a, you know, make lots of money. Whatever you're actually wanting is what you value. And that's how you identify yourself. And that's the thing driving your behavior. So we all have values. And so if you're, if someone's just, you know, you can see your values every day just by watching your behavior.

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good way of putting that. Thank you. What, what would you say for the people that are, are listening and you know, they've heard you talk about the gap, you know, just recently, the last couple minutes, this idea that there's a, there's a space between who we are now and who we perceive ourselves as capable of being or becoming. What we, what we are achieving right now versus what we would like to be achieving or believe that we're capable of achieving. Is that loosely how you would define the gap or what pieces would you fill into that?

I think that's awesome. So just to give a little bit of context to the idea, if any of you, if you don't, if any listener does not know who Dan Sullivan is. Dan Sullivan is a 77 year old man. He's a entrepreneurial coach. He's been coaching entrepreneurs for like 45 years. He runs a company called Strategic Coach. It's a very tight high tier entrepreneurial coaching program. You have to have a personal income of at least $500,000 to be a part of the low tier version of this program. And there's multiple tiers. It's been around for a long time. Dan's kind of a legend. The only reason I bring him up is he is the one who actually formulated this idea in the first place. He came up with this idea like back in like the early 1990s. I came across Dan's work when I was in the first year of my PhD program and my aunt Jane, who was a part of multiple entrepreneurial and mastermind groups and stuff like that, she started sending me little books by Dan Sullivan. Little. And I'd never heard of the guy. I was a PhD student. I studied a lot of personal development, I studied business. But I'd never heard of Dan. He's kind of a niche character. A lot of people don't really know who he is. Cause he's really niche. Um, but I just started reading his quotes and fell in love with his Thinking and it informed a lot of my blog posts, which ended up doing really well on Medium. And then eventually I got to know him and loved his thinking so much that after I wrote Willpower Doesn't Work, I asked Dan if he ever wanted to do a collaboration, if we could do that. We ended up doing a first book together called who Not How. Um, and I've just been a, a deep student of his work for the, like the last five years. And he's got so many crazy ideas. But the Gap and the Gain is one of his ideas that I read about. And anyone can Google this, you know, you can Google the gap in the gain and you can honestly Download his little 50 page ebook version of the concept. And when the first time I read it, it was just such a counterintuitive idea that I was just like, this is really unique. This is a different way of looking at achievement, this is a different way of looking at measurement. This is a different way of looking at progress. And I just thought it was a really interesting idea that I knew that if I were ever able to have the opportunity, I would want to make a mainstream version of that. And so that's, that's what it is. And I just wanted to give that context. It's a dance, all of an idea. But I think that there's so much really interesting psychology that goes behind it. So I'll just kind of give like the basis of, of kind of to now. Now to answer your question, it's really about how you measure yourself. So like, all of us, of course have an idealized version of ourselves that we see in our mind. And usually that's who we're measuring ourselves against. Um, or we're measuring ourselves against someone else that we kind of idealize, you know, so if I'm an author, I may be, I, I might be comparing myself to really famous authors or people I want to be like, um, and whenever I'm measuring myself against my ideal, I'm in the gap. Um, and, and it's not just about where I want to be because we all want to be places. But if you're always measuring yourself against where you want to be, you're never actually going to get there because your ideals are always changing. It doesn't matter if you make $500,000, you know, your ideal is now to make 5 million. Then once you make 5 million, it doesn't matter. You know, you're going to always want to be making more and more and more and you're never actually going to arrive because you're always in the gap, but you can also be in the gap situationally. So like as an example, my wife makes an amazing meal for my kids. They get down to the table and they're like, oh, it's not the meal we wanted. You know, like this, this isn't our favorite dish. And so they're actually comparing what is right there to what they wish it was. They're comparing it to an ideal. And so therefore they just devalued what's actually in front of them and there's zero pleasure in that. And so that's what high achievers often do, is that they devalue all of their progress because no matter what occurred, even if it was great stuff, they're measuring it against what it should have been or could have been. They're measuring it against an ideal, which completely devalues their progress, devalues their past, and it makes them feel miserable. And so they're always on the chase for happiness, never actually experiencing it.

Yeah. So, so good. I appreciate you breaking down the concept because I think it, it is kind of counterintuitive in a way where I think in our culture, in our society, we've oft, we're often taught to look at who we could be and to measure ourselves against that and then to start to move towards that.

Right.

To start to step, try and build ourselves into that person or dream ourselves into that person or whatever the case may be. From an evolutionary standpoint, I can imagine that there might be some.

Basis of, of that being like, to our advantage. Right. To try and create and imagine who we could be. But from a.

There's nothing wrong with imagining who you want to be. I'm talking about who you're measuring yourself against.

Right. Okay.

So, so we all have ideals. Ideals are very important. Having a vision of your future self is very important. It guides you, it directs you. I'm just saying don't measure yourself against that. Uh huh.

Yeah. Because how come, what's the detriment to us as individuals, psychologically, emotionally? What starts to manifest within our lives?

Uh, yeah. So if you're always measuring yourself against your ideal, you're always measuring yourself against a moving target. Um, it, it, it, it's. If your ideals are going to constantly be changing, first off, ideals are your definition of perfection. So measuring yourself against perfect is a really great recipe for making yourself feel terrible. Um, why would, like my, the. My ideal right now is radically different from my ideals five years ago or even five months ago. So if I'm always measuring Myself against my current imagination of perfect. I'm making my current self feel pretty trash. I'm also devaluing everything that's come before.

Ideals are immeasurable, so it's kind of, you know, goals themselves are actually measurable. And so ideals themselves are not a measurable target from which you can actually go and chase something you would actually need to turn it into a measurable goal, which you can then take steps towards. Ideals are also.

Yeah, they're just. They're constantly in flux. And so if you're always measuring yourself against something that's constantly changing, then you're kind of all over the place. From. From a. Like a mental health standpoint, it's much better to measure yourself against just one thing, and that's your. That's your current self against where you were before. That's actually when you're. That's being in the game. So, like, if I'm measuring myself against you.

Then that's gonna lead me on a weird track towards goals that may or may not be mine. Cause I have no clue why your goals are what they are. I don't know what your background is. I don't know what led you to being where you're at. So if I all of a sudden just want to say, I want to beat Connor at podcasting, I just want a better podcast than Connor. You know, like, that may or may not be my goal at the end of the day. And so often you gotta ask yourself, where did the ideals come from in the first place? Often they came from culture, from society, from social media, from other places. Um, and so a lot of people don't have intrinsic motivation in the first place because they. They didn't develop what would be considered an internal reference point.

Hmm.

So being in the game helps you do that, because no longer am I competing against anyone. I don't really care about your results, Connor. I don't care what you're doing. I think it's awesome. I love what you're doing, and I value what you're doing, but it has nothing to do with me. And my assessment of what you're doing should have no bearing on what you do. Like, you shouldn't care what. What Benjamin Hardy thinks about your stuff, and Benjamin Hardy shouldn't care what you think about my stuff. And so once you get to the point where you're no longer worried about other people's judgment of your progress, and you just start measuring yourself against where you were before, I'm measuring my own progress. Where am I now versus where I was three weeks ago. Or when I started writing the Gap in the game, or when I started writing my writing career, or then you actually have a starting point from which to measure yourself against. Um, and so you can actually measure tangible progress because you're measuring against a starting point, whereas if you're constantly measuring yourself against ideals, there is no starting point. And so you're not actually. There's nothing to actually measure.

Feel like I, like, I almost just want to, like, leave a pause in there so that people can just digest the, like, wisdom that you just imparted. I think one of the most powerful things that stood out to me about that was the idea that most people don't have an internal reference.

Reference point.

Yeah. I was like, oh.

Like, that's.

That gave me goosebumps. I was like, yeah, that's. That's so true. Because what we are. What we are often caught doing. Like, I remember when I first started Man Talks, how often I caught myself in the trap of trying to have an externalized reference point, right? Tony Robbins or whoever else. It was Brendan Burchard, yada, yada, people in the. In the business, in the. In this personal development space. And I was like, oh, I really respect what they're doing, what they've built. And because I was sort of like, well, no one's really created a space for men. I didn't really have much of a reference point for it. So I was trying to grasp onto externalized versions of that, and it floundered for a little while until I started to create that internalized reference point and gave less of a shit about what other people thought and started to really define internally of what is it that I actually want to create. And so I just want to pause there because it lit up a whole bunch of things for me. Can you speak more to this idea of creating this internalized reference point?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll start by saying, as a society, human beings are trained to have external reference points. We go to school, generally, most of us go to public school. And the measurements of success. A reference point is a measurement of success or a definition of success. And so the reference point is how you're measured. And in school, you're measured on how well you do on tests against other people. And there's percentile ranks. And you're measured against your peers. And so you're taught to measure yourself against other children. And you were not the one who decided the reference point. The education system was. They said that these are the things that matter. These are the things that Success is. And so your, your reference points were given to you, they were not created by you. And immediately you're now being assessed and measured against other people. And so you are taught to measure yourself against other people based on standards that were not created by yourself. And then you grow up and you're now on social media and you are being given all sorts of definitions of success or reference points for what success is or what value is or what you know. And there's nothing really wrong with being in a society and there being metrics of success.

But at some point or another, if you don't actually start to ask yourself, who do I want to be and what do I care about, what do I define as success?

And then if you don't, and then if you're constantly still measuring yourself against other people, then you're never going to actually know who you actually are. And so at some point or another, you've got to define success for yourself. What matters to you? How do you define success? And then once you start measuring your progress against that success, you, the only person you can actually measure yourself against is you, because it's your definition of success. And so then rather than measuring yourself, rather than measuring yourself against how other people are doing according to your measure of success, you just measure yourself against how you were doing in the past, your former self. That's the thing you now measure yourself against. That's how you develop an internal reference system. You define success for yourself and then you measure yourself against how you were doing on that measurement before. So I mean, I can do this with anything. Like I, I, being in the gain is a simple practice.

And you, and you can apply it in different ways. There's multiple different ways of looking at the gain. But when it comes to just measuring progress, I can just say, and I can use any timeframe I want. I can even just say, how am I doing compared to how I was yesterday? What were some of the progress I made on my goals or on what I'm trying to accomplish? I can measure some gains from where Benjamin Hardy is right now versus where I was 24 hours ago. And I could just write down what's the progress I made. It could be that I'm a little clear on my book that I'm writing, or it could be that I had an amazing experience with my wife last night because last night was our nine year anniversary. And so like, you know, I could track progress and it's, it's my own progress, it's no one else's progress and no One else's assessment of my progress matters because it's my. My assessment is what matters most. But I can also do that same thing on. On bigger time frames. You know, what have been my gains over the last six months? You know, how have I made progress towards my goals? Well, I've made, like, you know, like, 70 YouTube videos that I'm, you know, and, like, I've actually finished this book. I'm now working on the next. You know, like, I can see the progress towards the goals that I value. Um, and you. So it's. It's really about just tracking your own progress, playing your own game, running your own race according to your own values, and not caring what other people say or think about it. And, And. And what's nice is, is that you can also then start being in the game about other people. You can actually start, like, you know, validating their progress rather than being in the gap about them. You know, as a parent and as a coach, this is fundamental because if you're in the gap about someone else, then what you're doing is you're measuring them against your ideals. So, like, literally, if I'm in the gap about my son, I'm watching him play tennis. He's been playing tennis for over a year, and he's in a tournament. And, like, if I'm in the gap, the only thing I'm seeing is where he's not actually, like, succeeding. Like, I see his mistakes, and yes, it's good to, like, as a coach, help people overcome their mistakes, but if that's the only thing I see, and if that's the only thing I tell him, oh, why didn't you make that shot? You know, then, like, he's not seeing his own progress. But if I help him be in the game where I'm like, dude, like, how do you think you're doing right now versus how you were doing three months ago? Like, it's. It's crazy. Like, he's made. He's, like, winning so many more tournaments than he was three months ago. He's fundamentally different at tennis than he was. But if he doesn't see his own progress and if he doesn't know how to measure his own progress, but he's measuring himself against my ideals, which are constantly changing for him.

Then he's never going to feel good enough. And then I'm basically training him to never. To never know how to measure himself and to never even know how to, like, value himself.

Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, there's. There's again, There's a few different pieces that really stood out to me. But I love this idea of being able to create some form of knowing how to measure ourselves without the externalized perspective, you know, without having to externally do that. And I think the tendency is that we, this is, I imagine that for most people, they haven't had the opportunity to have this skill developed within them. And so we fall into the natural byproduct of that, which is comparing ourselves socially or externally. Because when, you know, our brain is a pattern recognition machine, it loves to find patterns that it can adhere to and keep us safe and keep us within a certain parameter. And so when we have externalized vantage points that we can sort of compare ourselves to, we can create a reference point. And then to try and build this, I would imagine in the beginning is a little bit confronting because you're, you're having to measure yourself in a way that you've never done before. So tell me a little bit about the resistance that you see people naturally experiencing when they are moving from the gap to the gain when they're moving from that space of comparing themselves to maybe a future version or, or to an externalized standpoint and they're, they're starting the process of building that reference point. Or is there not a ton of resistance? And it's more like, this is, this is great. This is like I can compare myself against my, my past version.

Uh, well, I would say it's the default to go into the gap to measure yourself and, you know, to measure yourself or an experience by what you thought it could have been or should have been. Um, or even if you've achieved something, you know, to, to immediately like, start to devalue it and want the next thing. In psychology, we call it the hedonic treadmill, where you're just, you know, we quickly adapt to. We've got. It's like, all right, I married my dream girl I like, you know, I'm now living my dream, but now it's just new normal to me. And like, you know, now I want the next thing. And now I completely take for granted what I've got. And in fact, I don't even know if I want it anymore, even though it was like my dream. And so it's, it's very natural for human beings to radically adapt. Um, there is a concept in psychology called.

Mental subtraction, which is kind of the opposite. Um, and it's, it teaches you how to unadapt to what you've, what you've developed. And basically you just Constantly think about, what if the amazing things in your life didn't exist? You know, if you thought about what if this podcast no longer existed? Like, literally you're the same person and today is September 2nd. Now all of a sudden, this podcast no longer exists, and everything that comes with it, or your child no longer exists, your wife no longer exists, like just literally actually feeling the weight of that. Um, but as far as kind of. Now back to your question.

What'S the resistance to the gain? I think from a high achiever standpoint, it goes back to your question about evolution and the idea that maybe we need this, this, this feeling of insuperiority constantly, this feeling of never being satisfied to keep pushing me to excel. And that it's really, it's really that thing that's the reason why I'm so successful in the first place is because I've always been in the gap and I'm always going to be in the gap, and I always see this bigger, better thing that leads me to seeking more and, you know, never being satisfied. And so, yes, maybe I'm not happy and maybe I'll never be happy, but maybe that's not my values. Maybe it's just achievement and growth that are what matters. And that's kind of, I think, a resistance to the idea, a resistance to the experience doesn't happen if someone actually just takes the time to measure their gains. Like, take some time. Any, anyone in the Strategic Coach program is successful as anyone else in the world. You know, there's literally people with billion dollar companies in that program. So once they actually experience it and practice it, they realize experientially, it feels a lot better than being in the gap. Uh, it feels a lot better to measure your own gains, to appreciate your own progress. And the irony is, is that it doesn't actually deflate ambition. Um, it actually does the opposite. Like, if you actually look back at your progress, why would you not want more? Um, if I look back on the four books I've written, does that now all of a sudden make me say, okay, I don't need to write anymore, I think I'm good? Or does that make me say, no, I actually want to feel this more, I want more gain, so I want to go create more gains. And so it actually just creates intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation, and it actually shifts you to a growth mindset. I think often.

The gap is based on trying to prove yourself. Whether you're trying to prove your value, you're trying to prove your worth, like you're still, you're you. The reason the gap exists in the first place, if you really think about it, is because you believe something is missing inside of you. Like if you feel like you need something beyond where you're currently at, then you're still trying to bridge the gap, but you're trying to do it through external achievement or proving yourself. And the gap is actually internal. The gap. If you feel like you need something above and beyond your current self, you need it, then what that implies about your current self is that you are not enough yet. And because you need that thing and once you then eventually get it, maybe then the gap will be gone, but it never will be because the gap's inside of you. And so needing anything externally just proves to yourself that how you feel about yourself is that you're not yet worthy or whole or capable. And the gain enables you to alleviate that purely and realize, I don't need anything. I'm good, I'm fully good. I don't need to write the next book or the next book, this book doesn't need to be a bestseller. I don't need anything beyond where I'm at. I can want things, I can commit to goals and things like that, but I don't need anything. There is no gap. I'm in the game, my life's great. I am completely, you know, I am full and capable and happy where I'm at. I can expand that and grow that, but I don't need anything else.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I normally talk about is shame based motivation. You know, that many of us have experienced some sort of adverse event or events that growing up that has caused us to, like you were talking about, want to prove ourselves. And so we have this very sort of like dark form or shame, shame based form of motivation that is incredibly potent. And I see a lot of people gain a tremendous amount of success and all of a sudden it starts to teeter, you know, or they're, they realize how unfulfilled they are with it. And it's because the, the, that motivation isn't giving them the, the byproduct or the sort of emotional result that they were hoping that it would, right? The experiential satiation, the emotional satiation that they thought would be on the other side of like proving them wrong, whoever it is, right? Mom, dad, stepparent, the bullies at school, et cetera. And so I, what I kind of hear you talking about here is that within the gap, when we're operating within this gap, there's some form of shame that we are often experiencing that we're trying to propel ourselves past. Is that accurate or how would you define that?

I don't know if I'd say shame. Although shame could certainly put you in the gap a hundred percent. I just think that there's something that you feel like you need above and beyond who you are now in order to. Whatever it may be, whatever you feel like you need something, it could be that relationship, it could be that, it could be making millions, it could be, you know, hitting the New York Times bestseller list. It could be anything. But you feel like you do need something outside of you. And from a like a Buddhist standpoint that that would be called like an unhealthy attachment, you know what I mean? Which is fundamentally not going to lead to happiness. And so yeah, if you're always chasing that next need or perceived need.

Then you're actually not operating from an intrinsic motivation standpoint, but you're actually being driven by impulse. And that kind of thinking fuels unhealthy passion and addiction. And yeah, it's certainly not a healthy development. It's not a healthy emotional development. It's not a true core form of happiness or self respect or self confidence. It actually can deflate confidence. Even though you could have kind of a false form of confidence because you do have an enormous amount of achievement racked up, you are still kind of a shell of a person.

Yeah, so that's where like the imposter syndrome comes in, I would imagine. I'm curious. You know, one of the things that we kind of touched on before was that the idea of trauma, and trauma being a force that creates or puts us into the gap. And I was hoping that you could speak a little bit more about that because I think in, in many ways when we have experienced something like trauma, it, you know, the byproduct of that from a, a nervous system perspective is that we are constantly on edge. Right. We're constantly in this fear based space neurologically, emotionally, physically. And we're constantly, we're constantly scanning our environment to see if we are safe or if something's going to happen in some capacity that's, that's going to throw us off. And so yeah, I would love for you to just, to just pick that, that torch up and, and run with it a little bit around trauma and the gap and, and you know what happens there.

Yeah, I think the trauma can put you in the gap, but it's really the gap that created the trauma because the gap is how you measure the thing, you know, and so the gap is the meaning you gave to it. We all contextualize something. And so if you're measuring an experience against what it should have been, then you've made it a trauma. So, just as an example, so, so the gap and the gain are just a lens. You know, I can look at any experience and look at it as, this wasn't what it could have been or should have been, or I can look at it as I, I've just gained from that, you know? And so one key aspect of this is realizing how you deal with experiences in the first place. You and I are now having the same conversation, but we're having radically different experiences. You can never access my experience, and I can never access your experience. And you're the only person who accesses your own experiences, and you're the only person who decides what you do with your experiences. A trauma, kind of in a simple form, is an experience that occurred which now you feel like has shaped you in a negative way. And because the experience happened, you now feel like you're worse off. You're worse off in some way. You're incapable. It was, you know, a painful event or a hard experience, but you wish that the experience hadn't occurred. And you, you genuinely believe that you are now worse off because the experience occurred. And so that's, that's being in the gap because you're, you're looking at the experience and you're devaluing it. You're saying, this was not a valuable experience for me, this was a bad experience. You've framed it as a negative, and you've framed yourself now as less capable because it happened. So, like, you're worse off because the event occurred. And, and, and so the event is actually happening to you. You know, um, so your, so your experiences can either happen to you or you can happen to your experiences. When you're in the gain, you're proactive. When you're in the gap, you're reactive. You're being reactive to an event, and you're just now defined by the experience. Whereas when you're in the game, you say, I own my experiences. I'm the only person who has access to my experiences. I can do whatever I want to my experiences, and I'm going to actually not devalue my experiences. I'm going to inflate the value of my experiences. I'm going to squeeze as much juice out of this experience as I can because it's my experience and no one else has access to it. And so if you have a negative experience, you can then pull as many gains from that experience as you want. So that because of the event occurring, you're actually grateful it happened, you see enormous value. And now as a result you are better off because the event occurred. You've gained because the experience happened, even if it was painful and hard, you genuinely believe you are better off. You might have lost your leg in a car accident, you know what I mean? Or something even worse. But post traumatic growth means that you value your experience, you're grateful for it, you believe you're better off for it, and you believe you've got higher sense of purpose because of it. And so the gain is also a very antifragile approach to life because it makes you antifragile to anything. If you can turn any experience into gains, then you're going to honestly always get better and take any experience and just keep propelling yourself forward no matter what it was.

Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is so potent and valuable. I'm currently reading the Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and it's so good. I mean he's talking about this exact concept and how, how we almost have eradicated, not eradicated, but we're, we're threatening individual and societal ability to be antifragile. You know, to show up in hard situations and, and recontextualize and recode situations and circumstances that have happened to us that, you know, we're hard, we're challenging, we're traumatic. And to be able to see those things as something that was maybe for us. And I like that idea that you're talking about of this is your experience, it's your experience only. And so you get to ultimately at some point determine what you do with that experience.

I mean it also. So this is why I like the gap and the gain as a model is because I think it's it, it, it's a simpler breakdown of how to be antifragile. You know what I mean? It's like if you can turn an experience into a gain, you're now better off because of it. And you've got now lessons, understanding wisdom experiences that your former self didn't have. So you actually technically are better off than your former self was. That's why I just like it as a simple model. But one thing just to kind of think about with experience and with memory is, is that it's very flexible. You know, an experience like memory is always being integrated with, with, you know, like something that might have happened a year ago. If I now have a current experience and I then can integrate it into my former experience, the experience just got bigger. And so experience isn't just like a one time thing. It's like clay. You can keep like forming it and reforming it, or you can like organize it and reorganize it. And so if you don't actually take the time to look at an experience and actually take ownership over it and create value out of it and learning from it and define it for yourself, and then define why you are now better off because of it, then what you have is a disorganized past or, or a non created past. It's just an experience that you believe is happening to you, which is non thoughtful. But if you can go back and organize your experience, in psychology they call that deliberate rumination. Then you have a past which you've, which you've organized. And so therefore, you know, you have a narrative of it. You've, you know, you can see why you're better off. You can, and therefore it doesn't constantly trigger you and rock you, you know, whereas if you don't do that and if you avoid your past and if you don't actually turn into value and if you have a disorganized, you know, set of experiences, then those experiences will keep happening to you. You'll be triggered, you'll get thrown off and you'll feel like you have no ownership really. You've let your experiences take the driver's seat and you're just the passenger. Whereas the goal is, is that you take the driver's seat and you let your experiences just kind of be something you mold and create for yourself.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Well said. I feel like that should be on a T shirt somewhere.

Maybe that'll, that'll, that'll be next. Tell me a little bit more. Let's just shift. So, so operating from the gain, performing, existing, being in a space of operating from the gain. One of the, you know, markers that you talked about before is creating this internalized reference point. What are some of the other aspects that are essential for us to operate from this place of the game?

Yeah, there's, there's simple basics. One is obviously defining your own metrics of success.

You know, what matters to you is different from what matters to me. What you're going for is different from what matter, you know, what I'm going for and how, what I value and what I appreciate. And so, you know, actually creating your own success criteria. And the more measurable the Better, you know, so it's, it's good to have measurable success criteria for yourselves that you can then measure yourself against. And you know, you just measure yourself against where you were before. So.

I think when it comes to just regular practices, taking time regularly to just track gains. So yesterday, as I said, was, was my nine year anniversary, me and my wife went on a date and it was fun to just think like, you know, what the heck happened over the last nine years? And like you can think back on a nine year scale in this case because it's relevant and just be like, wow, what are the gains that I've had over the last nine years? Like what's the progress I've made in my life or my career and my family? Like, so taking time regularly to measure gains on different timescales. I think it's really good every week to look back and just be like, what was the progress I made towards my goals? Or to what was meaningful to me. But also gains aren't just, you know, accomplishment, they're also experience. So like what, you know, it was a gain for me honestly to go to Disney with my wife yesterday. Like I would rack that as a gain. It was a peak experience. It was amazing.

And so like gains are not just tangible achievements, although those are important to measure, but they could be things you've learned. How has your mindset changed or how has your viewpoints changed and evolved on a certain subject? How do you see things differently than your former self saw them even three months ago? So like Josh Waitzkin, the author of the Art of Learning, really interesting guy, he always asks himself this question every three months. What did I believe three months ago that I no longer believe today? So like that's really gain based thinking. That's thinking like how have I evolved my thinking? And so you can do that regularly when it comes to creating habits, I think doing it on a daily basis. So like as an example rather than. And one of the, one of the key benefits of this, which is really interesting and there's a lot of psychology to back this up, Obviously there's enormous benefits to gratitude. Like that's unquestioned. Gratitude is the, is a very important context from which to view anything. Gratitude creates happiness, it creates better sleep. A lot of research just shows by literally writing down three things you're grateful for at the end of the day, you actually literally sleep better. But there's another component of the gain that's different from gratitude and it's confidence. From a psychology standpoint, confidence is the bi it's the, it's, it's based on evidence. So like, if I can hold this book up and say I've actually written this book, I have evidence, there's hard evidence that I actually did this, that enables me to have more confidence, which confidence is based on past performance. It's based on evidence of what you've done that then creates more imagination towards what I could accomplish in the future. And it's not just based on like inflated ego, it's based on evidence. This is me holding up a game, I'm holding up a book I've written. So like, I'm tracking it, I'm measuring it, and then that actually boosts my, my motivation in the future. And so one last theory I'll just give you is called the broaden and build theory. And it's basically the broaden and build theory in psychology just, basically shows that feeling good is actually essential to learning and high performance. You're gonna perform better if you are in a more positive state of mind. Like learning in a positive state of mind where you're feeling good. It's just a more cultivating environment for learning, for growth, for performance.

And so you know, when you're in a, just as an example they give, they've done like research where like, they'll put people in a really hard situation, like a high stake situation. And like, if you can put yourself into a frame of positiveness, gratitude or whatnot, they call that broaden because it broadens your perspective so you can think more clearly. You can actually like discern your options. Whereas if you're in like a negative mood or like a stress mood, you actually narrow in and you, you think you have less options than you do and you usually default to the wrong option. So broadening your perspective through positive emotions leads then to build like, you know, new capabilities, new skills, new ways of looking at things, new ways to handle situations. So there's a lot there. I would just also say what you know as, as far as building the practice. So like, in simple terms, at the end of the day, what are like, you know, the, the practice Dan invites people to do and I, I, I like this as well is just track three wins for the day. What are three wins that you made? What are three forms of progress? Three gains for the day. And then at the end of the day I'll say, what are the three most important wins you could get tomorrow? What are the three most important, most fundamental gains you could get? Like from an 8020 perspective, like, what are actual gains or results you could get, that would matter, that would move you towards your future self. And then just at the end of each day, just track your wins and then just choose three for the next day. And it just kind of creates a self perpetuating cycle. Last thing I would say is just.

Two last things, you know, one is just constantly help other people see their own gains. You know, not just for the sake of validating them, but literally, like help them see their gains. Like, you know, at like if you're a coach, if you're a friend, if you're a parent, if you're a spouse. Like helping people recognize their own gains because they're usually in the gap about themselves or other people are putting them in the gap, or society's putting them in the gap. Last one would just be the thing we talked about with trauma. Turning every experience into a game. You know, so you have a hard experience or if something's like stressing you out or not going well, it's like, how can I turn this into a game? Um, just literally taking ownership over your experiences and inflating the value of your experiences on a regular basis. Turn, you know, if something's not going well, you're having a conflict with your collaborator or something like that. Like, how can you shift it to a gain? How can you learn from this and get better rather than like let it fall apart? So just turning every experience into gains so you can get better faster.

Yeah, I mean, I think all of those pieces are, are potent insights into how we can begin to shift. And I love that idea of being able to help other people see their own gains. You know, I think there's so much value in that. And it's a, it almost sounds like what you're saying is embed this behavior into your daily life, not just with yourself, but in, you know, how you parent, how you interact with other people. Like, you gave some good examples. One of the questions that I, that I wanted to ask was like, for all the parents out there, what are some real life ways to help your kids be in the game? Because I think you're right, like, social media is really putting a lot of. I mean, it's creating a big fucking gap for a lot of depression and.

Suicide rates are skyrocketing for, for teenagers and stuff like that. I mean, they, it's going to only get worse because social media is becoming increasingly idealized. It's becoming so fake and impossible to measure up to what social media is inviting us to, to try to become. It's not, it's it's only going to get worse. And we can see that in the depression and suicide rates.

Yeah, so. So this is. So what you're saying is with kids, especially, being able to help teach them how to be in the game, like, teach them how to see the gains that they can.

I think it's crucial. I think it's so important. One other thing I think, as a parent, is call yourself out when you go in the gap. You know, like, I go in the gap all the time. Like, seriously. I mean, sometimes I'll. I'll get up. You know? One thing that's really important about all of this is, like, I love the quote from Stephen Covey. You don't see the world as it is, but as you are, you never actually see the world. You only see your reaction to it. So, like, if my kid bothers me, I'm only seeing myself. His be. His bothering me has nothing to do with him and only to do with me. You don't see the world. You only see your reaction to it. And so if something has you in the gap, it's because of your interpretation of it. It's not the thing itself. And so, like, if. If you just call yourself out, like, when you go in the gap, I sometimes get upset, you know, as all people do. All of us are human. You're gonna go in the gap every day, by the way. You're never gonna get perfect at this. People like Dan Sullivan, the guy who created this 25 years ago, goes in the gap multiple times a day. It's not. It's not like you're not gonna go in the gap. The goal is just to get back to the game so that you don't traumatize yourself and other people constantly. But, like, I tell plenty of stories in the book about me going into the gap and then catching myself and just calling my son back and being like, dude, I'm so sorry I went in the G. Totally. Like, three under the bus for no reason. I'm sorry. And, like, it's nice to have language for it and just to own. When you go in the gap, call yourself out or let other people call you up. My kids call me out all the time. Dad, you're in the gap. Or, like, my editor, Tucker Tucker Max, called me out so many times on this book. Like, I'd be like, oh, dude, this book's just not good enough. And so he's like, dude, you're in the gap. Like, look at the chapter we just wrote. This is freaking great. Let's keep moving like, just make more gains.

Yeah.

So it's nice to have language and to be flexible with each other and call each other out, you know, and like. Or at least call yourself out and let other people call you out.

Yeah. Well, I think having that culture of people around you and building, bringing that piece into your family, you know, like your family culture, I think is so vital and powerful. So I appreciate that. I think we're gonna have to wrap up for today. I think that's. That's us and our time. What is the drop date for this book? Because I feel like after this conversation, people are like, where do I find this and how can I dig into this? So, uh, so when is this. When is this live?

Um, mid October, I think it's like October 17th or something like that. Please go pre order it if this releases sometime before that. Um, yeah, it'll be, you know, what was that?

I was gonna say it will be live just before. And the drop date is the. It's the 19th of October. Oh, nice. So we'll, We'll. We'll have it out before that. People can go and pre order it and check it out.

Please get this book if you know, whatever circle you're in. Parent addiction, coaching, I mean, it's just such a.

An.

It's such a model that I think it's. It's such a simple model for. For framing, progress and experience. There's so much depth to it. So simple, though. But yeah, also, just as a kind of bonus, one thing that's cool about the audiobook, and this is what we, me and Dan did with who, not how, as well, if you're an audiobook listener. If you're not, just grab the book. The book's gorgeous. It's beautiful. But if you like audiobooks, there's like three extra hours of. Of separate content where I interview Dan. And so in between every chapter, I interview Dan about the ideas and just get his insights. Probably two and a half hours. But that's content that's not actually in the hardcover. I love the hardcover itself. But, you know, if you like audiobooks, there's like three hours of bonus interviews there in between all the chapters where I interviewed Dan and you can just kind of hear in his wisdom on the subjects.

Beauty. Well, I'll definitely be getting the audiobook.

And I'm an audiobook guy myself.

Yeah. And I think I'm going to. I'm just going to say where you were in the game before this call. One of the things that I think was so beautiful to Hear just before we started recording was you saying, this is my favorite book. This is the best book that I've written so far. And I think now that I'm in the process of writing a book, and the, like, intensity of all that I can imagine, the, the like release and the joy that comes out of that, it was so nice for me to hear because I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of authors. I think you're one of the first that's actually said this is my. The favorite book that I've written. And so I just wanted to call that out because I think it's, it's important and you're like, practicing what you preach, and so I appreciate that.

And learning, man.

Yeah.

I will just say, as someone who's learning, you know, and I don't write the books, I'm an expert. I write the books that I want to become better at. You know, I am. I feel like I'm such a novice at the gap in the game. Um, I feel like I've learned so much actually since I finished writing the book. Um, but I will say, just from my own self, there's like my own testimony of the concept. I really do like myself more. And I know that I'm happier and I know that the people around me are happier and I actually like other people more. Like, you know, whereas other people who I may have felt more competitive towards, like, I just value them more, I appreciate them more, I love their progress. I'm no longer competing with people. I. I'm no longer trying to prove myself on this interview. I'm. It probably wasn't before either, but, like, I just feel like I'm having my own experiences. I'm defining my own experiences more. I just feel like writing this book was very healing for me and it's a simple way of just living a much more healthy life, happy life. And it hasn't slowed me down as far as being a high achiever. Like, I'm literally writing two books right now. I've got two coming out next year. But.

I'm a much healthier, happier person. And it's, it's, it's led me to just enjoying my life more. So that's. I hope that it can translate to some degree for that for other people as well.

Amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for being on the show, for your time, for your wisdom, for everyone that's out there. We'll have the links for the book, for the audiobook in the show notes, and the links to Dr. Benjamin Hardy's work. And so if you want to check more out of what he's up to and what he's doing, then you can definitely do. So don't forget to share this episode. Man it forward with somebody that you know will enjoy it, that you know will gain something from this. And don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It goes a long way to getting us into the ears and onto the phones of other people. So thank you. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.