The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success

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When we chase happiness outside of ourselves, we become disconnected inside. And when we are disconnected inside, we try to fill the GAP. Full Book Name: The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers’ Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success If you frame an experience as a gap, you lose power and ownership over that experience. On the other hand, gain puts you in the driver’s seat of your own life. You chose to decide what the experience means to you. You can take it this way: you’re either winning or learning. Make plans for the future. Hardy and Sullivan suggest doing this in the hour leading up to bedtime. Many people believe this is the most crucial part of the day, since it determines how well you sleep and how you'll be able to handle the challenges of the next day. Put this time to good use by keeping a diary. You can begin with the three accomplishments you accomplished that day, as recommended above, and then add the three more you want to accomplish the following day. This will set the stage for your subconscious day-of preparations to begin as you sleep. Perhaps you think happiness will come with that promotion, or that increased wage, or, perhaps, when you have your perfect family. But your goalposts keep moving, and those achievements never really bring you what you seek.

Use this rule if you’re often over-committed or too scattered. If you’re not saying ‘HELL YEAH!’ about something, say ‘no.’ When deciding whether to do something, if you feel anything less than ‘Wow! That would be amazing! Absolutely! Hell yeah!’ - then say ‘no.’ Derek Sivers What’s a simple filter you can create to assess every decision you make (e.g., “Will it make the boat go faster?”)?What is your long game? When you’re playing the long game, you’re doing what you love. You’re not doing something just to get somewhere else.

The gap and the gain is the most powerful concept that can empower you to live a more fulfilling life. This book will change how you think about success and how you think about happiness. For everyone, who wants to be a successful person or who is already successful. this book is a must-read. Do you feel productive and confident, or do you feel pressure from not being good enough and having to do a “better” job next time? An immediate impact the book has on me is the awareness that I have at times spend way too much time in the GAP, but that also I’m not alone in feeling this way because Dr. Hardy himself succumbs too. However, the key is we now have that awareness and can be mindful in working our way through and out of it. The concept is all about how you measure your progress. Most people focus on the gap between their current reality and their ideal future. This can lead to feelings of anxiety, frustration, and inadequacy. You've established your own reference point when you leave the GAP and enter the GAIN. Your life is controlled by someone or something outside of you, according to the GAP. You lead a self-determined life if you have GAIN.

The way people described their lives in their 20s had an enormous effect on the rest of their lives. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, he decreed that all Americans have the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” But what is this standard? If you don’t have an immediate answer, you’re not alone. Here’s an educated guess: When you were in school, parents or teachers probably never asked you what you valued. Nobody wanted to know how you, personally, judged success. The interviews with Dan Sullivan in the audio version were just so-so - they were better in Who Not How (which is overall a better book). The basic concept behind this book is that when you focus on the progress you’ve made, instead of the progress you haven’t made, you are actually way more likely to feel successful.