1: Answer? Not even close.
Roughly 15 years ago, when author and entrepreneur Dr. Benjamin Hardy was 18 years old, he lived at his cousin’s house, slept on the couch, and played World of Warcraft for 15+ hours per day.
“I didn’t have a job. I certainly didn’t have a PhD or the six kids I now have. I wasn’t an entrepreneur, nor was I ever intending to be,” he writes with co-author Dan Sullivan in The Gap and the Gain.
“I could not have predicted back then where I am now. Over time, my preferences, perspectives, and goals have changed. How I measure success has changed.”
The same is true for us. We are not the same person we were ten years ago.
We’ve evolved. We’ve changed. We’ve improved. Our interests and priorities are different.
We literally see things differently than our former selves saw them. We say “No” to things our former self said “Yes” to.
2: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished,” says Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert. “The person we are right now is as transient, as fleeting, and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been.”
Why do we fail to grasp how much we’ve changed—and how much we will change again in the future?
One reason is that, as human beings, we quickly adapt to our “new normal,” even when our new circumstances are radically different from what our life used to be. “Psychologists call this automaticity,” Dan and Ben write.
Why does that matter?
Because we can quickly “forget” our former successes. We “forget what we previously struggled with and overcame,” the authors write. We “can take for granted how far we’ve come, ignore our progress, and miss out on the confidence of remembering where we [once] were.”
Many high achievers feel like failures throughout their lives.
The reason? Because they measure where they are now versus their ideal. Where they want to be.
Every time they achieve something, the goal moves out. It’s like walking in the desert toward the horizon. We never get there.
The problem is how we measure our progress.
Instead of comparing where we are now versus our ideal, we measure our progress from where we began.
3: Which is why journaling is such an important strategy for success.
“In his research, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert found that when people give themselves time to reflect on their former selves, they realize they’re not the exact same person they were 10 years ago,” Dan and Ben note.
Ben writes: “I’ve been journaling for well over a decade. I go through about one journal per month. A few years back, I started answering five questions in the front cover of my journals. These questions allow me to see where I’m at in that moment, what my recent GAINS were, and what I’m trying to accomplish in the short and long term.”
Here are Ben’s five questions:
o Where am I right now?
o What are my wins from the past 90 days?
o What are my desired wins for the next 90 days?
o Where will I be in 12 months?
o Where will I be in 3 years?
Answering these questions takes less than 10 minutes each time he starts a new journal.
Journaling allows us to be intentional about recognizing and recording our gains, our wins, and what we’ve accomplished. “We include all forms of progress and growth—tangible accomplishments, experiences, relationships, lessons learned, etc.,” Dan and Ben note.
One key is to be as specific as possible.
“For example, saying, ‘This recently completed project earned ten times as much money as it did last year’ is very different from saying, ‘This project did pretty well,’ Dan says. “If we work in the world of generalities, it’s easy to get confused about what’s really going on, and our sense of our achievements will be vague and unclear.”
3: We begin by writing down our most significant gains over the last ten years.
We keep it simple. Bullet points. “The main point is to remember that gains aren’t just external accomplishments, but any form of growth or progress,” Dan and Ben write.
Next, we focus on our achievements in the last three years.
Then, we zoom in even more. What have we accomplished in the last 12 months?
What about the last quarter? Because “every 90 days, we can change our life,” Dan and Ben write. “We can upgrade how we think, how we see, and how we live. We can also get regular updates to our mindsets, our perspectives, and how we measure success.”
And finally, what are my three biggest gains in the last 24 hours? As we discussed yesterday, we create a habit to capture our three biggest daily achievements.
The bigger point?
Keeping a journal “or annual review process “is powerful because it allows us to tap back into the context of our former self and see the massive gains,” the authors write. “Being reminded of the easily forgotten past boosts our hope, motivation, confidence, and resilience.
“We’re not the exact same person we were in the past. We’ve evolved and grown a lot, even in the past 90 days. Take time regularly to measure our gains for different time frames.”
Remember: Always measure backward from where we started.
More tomorrow.
_______________________
Reflection: Answer Ben’s five questions: Where am I right now? What are my wins from the past 90 days? What are my desired wins for the next 90 days? Where will I be in 12 months? Where will I be in 3 years?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above. Discuss with a friend, colleague, or family member.
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