378: A Powerful Mindset Tool To Achieve Your Goals Faster

In episode 378 of the Real Life Runners podcast, we introduce 'The Gap and the Gain,' a powerful concept derived from the book of the same name by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. This episode delves into how focusing on the gains rather than the gaps can dramatically improve not only your running performance but also your overall satisfaction in life. We discuss the mental shifts required to appreciate how far you've come rather than how far you have to go. We offer insights from personal experiences, relating this framework to various aspects of life, including relationships and personal goals. The episode emphasizes the importance of gratitude, positive thinking, and mental resilience in achieving long-term success and happiness.

00:41 Discovering the Gap and the Gain

03:21 Understanding the Gap

07:35 Living in the Gap

11:22 Shifting Focus to the Gain

18:16 Applying the Gain in Life and Running

20:41 Personal Reflections on Gap and Gain

27:50 Mindset and Practical Applications

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

Welcome to the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 378. Today, we're exploring a very powerful concept that can completely transform not only your running, but the rest of your life. So stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the show today. We are so glad that you have decided to spend this time with us. And today we're talking about a very powerful concept that I learned in a recent book that I read. I had heard about this concept before, and I'd heard about this book and it had been. recommended to me a couple different times. And so I finally listened to the audio book about a month or so ago, and It's a very simple concept, but a very powerful concept that we can apply to our running and to the rest of our lives. And it's something that I've heard about in different ways before. But the way that this one book just breaks it all down and simplifies it into these two concepts. Things makes it very actionable. And so what am I talking about? I'm talking about the gap and the gain. So that is the name of the book. The book is called The Gap and the Gain. It's written by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, And this book is something that, was really probably designed for life, like the personal development industry, business coaching. Dan Sullivan is a very well known, respected executive coach. He's been in, in the coaching arena for over 30 years and he developed this concept like 30 years ago and then Dr. Benjamin Hardy co authored this book with him. And so today we want to talk about. How the gap and the gain can apply to our running and can really transform our running and also the rest of our lives Because so many of us often focus on the wrong things in our running or in our life and it ends up leading to a lot of dissatisfaction and always reaching for more to feel like we're doing enough or that we are enough or that we're good enough or Whatever it might be and so just By understanding this concept and breaking it down into the gap and the gain and asking yourself this question on a daily basis to determine whether or not you are thinking more in the gap or thinking more in the gain when you're approaching different situations, it can really transform the way you look at running and lots of different situations in your life.

Kevin: 2:34

Yeah I've heard this concept before, but you brought it to our cross country team practice the other day and we're explaining it to them. And it's a very easy to understand concept once it's laid out in front of you, but I'd heard this before you'd had this, the book recommended to you by a few different people. There's a rule, right? If you have a recommended by three different people, you have to read it.

Angie: 2:50

There's the rule of threes always, right? There's lots of things that abide by the rule of threes.

Kevin: 2:55

But I'm pretty sure that is a, Hardcore one that if three independent people recommend the same book that it's now required reading

Angie: 3:01

required

Kevin: 3:02

Yeah, so but I think you probably have several things on your list of required reading at this point in time

Angie: 3:06

There's my list of books that I want to read it just is never ending like I just oh, yeah I just cuz it just keeps getting added to so that's always fun. But hey, I'm a lifelong learner. So what are you gonna do? All right, let's play Break into this. Okay. So first we want to understand the two separate concepts We want to understand what is the gap and what is the gain because that is really the foundation of all of it And then we'll tie it all together. So the gap is really Focusing on how far away from our goals or from some ideal that we are, right? So anytime we are striving for something in life or trying to achieve a goal or trying to achieve a certain ideal because this can apply to a lot of different things it can just apply to you know ideas of what you think is the right way to be training or the right way to be living your life or the things that you expect people in your lives to be doing so it can be a specific goal that you have, or it can just be more of like a nebulous ideal that is out in the future. It's something that you haven't achieved yet. And so the gap is measuring your success and measuring yourself against this goal or this ideal that you haven't achieved yet. And so you see the gap between where you are and where you want to be or where you think you should be.

Kevin: 4:28

We often talk about goal setting, we have this the lighthouse goal off in the distance of like your big goal, and if you look at it from this whole gap and game perspective the gap is how far away does that lighthouse feel, and focusing on I know that I'm aiming for a lighthouse, but it looks like a little speck of light, or I'm climbing a mountain and all I can do is look up and I can't even see the peak of the mountain because it's through the clouds. So it's just, it's such a monumental way away from where I'm going. And, having that lighthouse goal out in the distance is a good idea, but to be perpetually focusing, not just that the goal is there, but to see the distance from where you are to where it is, and then it gets even worse, I think, if it's just this weird, nebulous ideal of how you're going to be living your life, because you could Always add more distance between you and that thing. I've checked off these boxes, but that's still not quite ideal for me. And you just literally keep increasing the gap between you and where you want to go because it's not even defined.

Angie: 5:30

And I think that's a very common thing that we do because most people Live most of their lives in the gap is rooted in lack. It is that you don't have what you want yet, or it's that you don't currently have what you think you should have, or, some ideal again, and ideals get really tricky and we can dive into this concept a little. Bit here if you have some good examples of this, but like I feel like having a goal is pretty easy it makes us easier to understand So say for example that your goal is to run a marathon and you're currently able to run a 5k if you're only focused on The fact that you can't run a marathon yet you're focused on essentially the distance if you're currently able to run three miles and you want to run 26, you're focused on that 23 miles and you're like, I don't know how I'm ever going to do that. Like that just seems impossible. And a lot of times when we focus on the gap and when we live in the gap, It stops us from taking action towards those goals because it oftentimes feels impossible. It feels overwhelming. We don't see how we're going to possibly get to that gap. And even I'm sorry, to get to that goal. And even if we are making progress towards that goal, Towards it, like you said, it's becomes that moving goalposts. It's a marathon might not be the best example, but even say it could be because say that it's your goal first to complete that marathon, right? And then you do that thing and you're like, oh, that was good, but now I want to run it in under four hours. And so that again, now you're still seeing that you're, you did this thing, but it's still not good enough yet. And so you're still living in that gap and this is not to say that we shouldn't set goals. We definitely want the goals. We want those big goals. We want those lighthouses. But this is about where we're placing our attention in the process of striving towards those things.

Kevin: 7:24

If you're perpetually looking at what's missing, what else could happen? Sometimes it helps you guide your training of, Oh if I keyed in on these certain aspects. training, I bet I could improve my training. That's great. But to perpetually live in the gap is a frustrating thing where you are always feeling as though you're lacking enough. And then that I can't reach my goal. I'm so far away from my goal. Even as you get closer to the goal. Because it was so far away, it sometimes seems as you get closer and closer to it, it almost gets more difficult. If you're trying to climb a mountain, and suddenly you're, oh, you can see the peak of the mountain, but you're like, did it just get drastically steeper? We've got people that You know, on our cross country team, but other people that we've coached, through real life runners that they want to break 30 minutes at a five K and to go from 38 to 33 was doable. But now, as they're getting closer and closer to 30, it's Whoa, I don't know, because that seemed really far away before. So now, even though it's close, it's It might still feel like this impossible goal that's so far away. It's almost like the closer it gets by focusing on that gap. You can only see the challenge that you can't quite bridge. And we've had a runner that we're working with this year that went out in a race and their opening mile had them on pace in 30 minutes. I think they freaked out because of it. I think it was like, as soon as they were able to be like, Oh wait, Am I actually doing it? Have I made it? Did I reach the finish line? Am I achieving my goal? Nope. Everything exploded and the race went just complete haywire.

Angie: 8:59

Yeah. And that could be because we're so programmed to live in that gap. So all of a sudden, if you're about to bridge that gap, Your sense of identity is threatened in a way, right? Like your sense of what is real in this world is can be threatened. And that's often what happens. Because if you think about it, when you focus on how far away you are from that goal or that ideal, how does that make you feel? Like when you're only focusing on that and it often leads people to feeling like they're not enough. Always needing to do more and that can lead to overtraining. It can lead to trying to seek out like short term hacks and cutting corners because they want to get there faster, quicker, easier because all they can see is the gap. That's all they can really focus on. And so they try to cut corners and oftentimes that's going to lead to. injury. It's going to lead to other problems with training. And then oftentimes when they get there, there's also this lack of satisfaction in a way to which is just this crazy double edged sword that so many people experience.

Kevin: 10:01

That's what I was gonna say. It's then you get to the arrival fallacy of If you do manage to bridge this gap, you're not suddenly a new person because you crossed a marathon finish line because you crossed whatever finish line and the clock had certain numbers on the screen. It does not inherently change who you are as a person. You were the same person. If your goal is to break 30 minutes in 5k, you're the same person in the starting line as you are 29 and a half minutes later. Like you didn't, there was not some magic thing. Thing. No pixie dust, rain down on you over it should, they should have that in certain races. It'd be cool if it did, but it doesn't, you're really the same person. And so sometimes people, they overcome all this stuff. They get through, they bridge the gap and they reach this thing and they're not. And that's why they create another gap. That's, that goes back to your marathon of I crossed the finish line, but now I need to do it faster. And now I need to Boston qualify. Oh, and Boston qualifier times just changed. In fact, the gap literally did get bigger. It's all these things of I don't know. It's, it feels comfortable to live in the gap because we tend to be there so often. So that is our comfort place. Achieving something suddenly feels scary because now what am I supposed to do? I'm no longer, I don't have this gap. I don't, and that's where I've been living. That's where I've been putting all of my attention.

Angie: 11:19

And so we create another gap, right? And so the opposite of the gap is the gain. So the gain is focusing on. How far we've come so far, right? Cause if you think of this, if you're a visual person, what I want you to think of is like a timeline, right? There, there's a line and there's your starting point. And then there's that goal at the very end of where you want to get to. And then you're somewhere in the middle, right? Wherever that X is of where you are on your way to your goal, the gap is the distance between you and that goal. The gain is the distance between you and the starting line, right? So bye. Oftentimes what happens is that we forget where we came from or we have a hard time acknowledging our accomplishments. I think a lot of humans have a hard time really acknowledging themselves and feeling proud of how far they've come to this point, because we live in this culture of FOMO and always it's not good enough. It's not fast enough. There's so much comparison now on social media and just in regular lives. Even, in the fifties and sixties, there was the saying, keeping up with the Joneses right now. That's even, that's just exponentially truer now because we're trying to keep up with all these people on social media in all different, areas of the world, it's like crazy how many people you can compare yourself to now, but. The gain, by focusing on the gain, which is the distance between where you are now and where you used to be, now you can see how far you've come. The gain is rooted in wins. So unlike the gap, which is rooted in scarcity and lack, the gain is rooted in wins. So you can look back and see how many things you've already done, how many things you've already accomplished. If we talk about running, just the fact that you started running, right? Like how long have you been running? Even if you've only been running for a month or a couple of months, like you started that already puts you, and again, not that we should be comparing ourselves to other people in a good way or a bad way, but you're still so far ahead of the game. You're so far ahead of so many, millions of other people in the world that life, right? But so often we're comparing ourselves to the people that are faster than us or that are running more than us when really not that we should be comparing ourselves to other people, but just comparing yourself to yourself a month ago, six months ago, five years ago, whatever it might be, and to really see how far you've already come. And then asking yourself When I focus on that, how does it make you feel? And oftentimes instead of feeling like you're not enough or like you're not doing enough, you feel more like a winner. You feel more accomplished because you're focusing on your wins rather than how far away from your goal you are.

Kevin: 14:06

Like the safest comparison there is the comparison to self. When you start comparing to other people, you give the time perspective on this one. I remember when I was in high school, if I wanted to figure out how fast I was, I could go to the newspaper and figure out like the local cross country results and then ballpark how fast I would be against other people because the courses were different, during track season, everybody runs the same distances, of course. Yeah. But I would literally, I'd go to the newspaper and I would get the results that were basically in the same county as me. I couldn't go online and compare myself to every single person in the entire US, let alone international. I started to get a little bit, I, there were some different publications that came out that you could do a little bit more internet or US wide competitions, but It was not in your face. And now one of the main websites I go just to register or cross country kids for results, it'll pop up. It'd be like you ran this compared to all division one athletes when they were a freshman, that would put you in this percentile. I don't need to know that result. I really don't need to know that as like a high school freshman. And it's at their fingertips. It's so easily available and it's not comparing themselves to The kids in their school is not comparing themselves to they know how they show up when they get to a race. How do they compare to the people in the city, in the county, in the area around them? But no. It's compared to everybody else in the U. S. We open up our phones and pop on a social media and it's compared not just to the people in your neighborhood. That was a normal, healthy comparison. Now it's compared to every single person in the entire world. So the comparison just becomes madness because It's hard to keep up when the comparison possibility is every single person in the world. So being able to look back just to yourself of where were you before and where are you now? And that can also get a little tricky because progress is not Linear, you know the path from where you are to where you're aiming is not necessarily exactly a straight line It's not even just like an upward ramp There's so much zigzag up and down on this and if you look short term And be like where am I now compared to a couple of weeks ago I got sick and then this big thing came up and then my kids had me doing this and I'm behind where I was a couple of years, a couple of weeks ago. Okay. But now look, three months now, look, six months. You're probably ahead of that. So comparison to self even has some positive or negatives depending on what kind of timeline you're looking for, but being able to focus on how much you've improved over a longer timeline really helps you see the progress that you have made.

Angie: 16:47

Yeah, and I think that when we focus on the gain and then ask ourselves, how do you feel when you focus on that, when you see how far you have come based on the choices that you've made, when you feel that accomplishment, what will that feeling lead to? And oftentimes it's not going to lead to those You know, shortcuts, those hacks that over training that will often lead to smarter choices to playing the longer game to focusing on. How do I continue to make that steady progress when I focus on how far I've come? And so the gain is a much more powerful concept for us to be focusing on. And so it's really just a choice, right? Yeah. In anything that we do in life, we can choose to focus on the gap of how far away from that thing am I, how far away from that ideal am I, or the gain of how far I've come, right? Look at all the good things around me. You can equate this in some sense to like positive or negative or optimism and pessimism. That's why I think that, the gap in the game isn't like a revolutionary concept necessarily. It takes a very universal truth, I think, and just puts it into a very simple framework, which is what I like about it.

Kevin: 17:55

Yeah, no, you love the simple frameworks and it is, it's a very nice. Concept here of it's essentially a timeline and you are in the middle of it and you can focus on what's in front of you or you can focus on what you've already accomplished. And one of them makes you feel a whole heck of a lot better than the other.

Angie: 18:09

Yeah. And so I would love to talk to you about this because this is a, something that I was thinking about with all the. Research that I'm doing with perimenopause and menopause and as we continue to get older into our forties, our fifties and beyond is when we are comparing to self and looking back, there is going to be a point where we do start to slow down, right? We do start to stop having PRs. We start to stop, right? We stop having PRs. At one point, there's going to be a. The fastest race that we ever run, and then there's going to be a time where we get slower and we're not able to beat that time. And so I'd love to know your perspective on that because a lot of your PRs happen very early on in your life, right? So it's like when you focus on the gap and the gain in your running journey, like what does that look like for you?

Kevin: 19:04

The high school kids that I teach ask me the question all the time. So I'm constantly confronted with the comparison of myself because they always ask me, Mr. Brown, how fast can you run a mile? And I'm like, right now, I'm like, ah, not that fat. Usually I, depends on my mood. Sometimes I defer and I'm like, in a pair of dress shoes, probably not that fast, but ultimately they're like no. Like how fast. Could you, can you run a mile? I'm like, when I was your age, I could do it this fast. And so I've accepted that I had different phases of my running existence. And there are things that I have accomplished and that I don't really ever want to train to try to do again. I might. I don't really know. Maybe at some point it will become more interesting to see how fast can I run four laps around a track, but right now, you should

Angie: 19:52

do it once a decade, at least once

Kevin: 19:53

a decade. Yeah,

Angie: 19:54

Check like in my forties. I was able to run it this fast in my fifties this fast. I can just see it. That'd be fun.

Kevin: 20:00

It would be interesting. One of the things that I'm doing right now, obviously I'm training for something a whole heck of a lot longer than running four laps around the track, but I'm trying to make sure that I'm not losing much speed. I want to make sure that my high end speed is still pretty quick, but it is interesting to, To suggest that I'm never going to run a mile as fast as I could when I was 17 and I probably ran it faster after that, but I never trained for the mile when I was in college because I was nowhere. We had a sub four minute miler on the team. So the fact that I was hanging out around At the time in college, I was probably able to run somewhere in the low 420s, but being 20 seconds behind that guy, I was not a miler. That was not my distance.

Angie: 20:41

So then how does, how do you use the gap in the game play out in your life? When you look back at how far you've come,

Kevin: 20:48

I can see all of. The things that I've accomplished as building blocks that are still helping me achieve new things. I think that all of the speed that I developed in my teens and early twenties is literally still enhancing my ability to run today. I don't think that I could. accomplish what I'm doing right now without the background of high school track runner. I think the speed that I gained then was phenomenally important to right now, because when I dip into it and I still try and really push down on the gas pedal, something is still there. And I think that if I tried to push that now and didn't have that kind of background to me, I It would not have accomplished. So being able to look at everything that I've done, even thinking, I'm never going to run a two minute half mile again in my life, like that's not happening. I don't want to, that sounds incredibly painful right now, but knowing that I got that knowing that I did that is something that I can say is still enhancing my running up to today. And that's how I do it. I don't know how much of a contribution it is, but that's what I hang on to.

Angie: 21:59

But it's still a gain, right? Like you, it's still appreciating your wins even though they're in the past. Yes. And I think that's where it comes in here. Cause as I'm listening to you talk, cause I've, as I was listening to the book, these are the thoughts that I was, Really contemplating personally, cause I'm like, as we start to get slower, as we start to see our bodies shifting and changing and not being, as strong or as fast or whatever that they used to be. And we start to see these different change changes related to age or to perimenopause or menopause, whatever it might be. How do we reconcile those things? And I think that the answer is. We can still see all of those things, all of those phases, all of those times as gains in our life because they were wins along the way. They were accomplishments and just because we can't do that same exact thing now doesn't make that accomplishment any less. It doesn't lessen that in any way. And I think that, when we look at it on a timeline and we think, okay the gap is ahead of us and the gain is behind us, I think that we can fall into gap thinking, comparing ourselves to you. The past version of ourself as well. So the gap in the game doesn't necessarily mean forward and backward, future or past. It means how we choose to look at a situation. So if you look at a situation of I was able to run a four 30 mile when I was, 18 years old and I know I can't do that now, and you're still comparing to that, you're still in the gap, right? Like it's still a gap, even though you're looking at the future. Towards the past, like if I think now of my half marathon PR and I'm like, I just had this thought the other day, I'm like, right now I could not go out right now and run my half marathon PR because I'm not trained and I haven't trained for a half marathon in a very long time. I've got a different goal. I'm working on building muscle and building strength. I'm working on some speed, like different things like that, but I am not training for a half marathon. So there's no way I could go out in the next month or even in the probably in the next couple of months and run a half marathon PR. But if I was like comparing myself to that and just thinking about how I'm not in that good of shape, like I'm not in shape to run that time, that would still be living in the gap, not in the game. Whereas I can appreciate that I ran that time. I can appreciate all the training that went into accomplishing that and also say, yes, all of those things have gotten me to where I am today, which is very, is much healthier in a lot of ways than I was. When I was running that, even though I was faster at that time.

Kevin: 24:40

Yeah. If you look at the health aspect of it I'm definitely healthier now than I was winning a marathon in 2017. Like I, I train in a much more well rounded overall healthy way. So I'm not, collapsing in seizures throughout the year. Like I, I've got a much,

Angie: 24:57

that's a win.

Kevin: 24:57

That seems like a win. There are like the clear physical adaptations that, that I have gained over running, but there's also these mental things that you have gained over years and years of workouts of long runs of races. Like I am just a much better mental runner. I was thinking this at practice today, I was pacing some of the kids on the team and I was like, if I wanted to beat this kid in a race, one, I could just beat him, but I could just. through the race because I'm watching him run. And I'm like, I know exactly how it would just completely mentally snap him because I've been in so many races that I know how to break people in so many different ways. As long as if we're of similar abilities, I probably have a good way. I probably have a technique that will be able to out race. That particular athlete, not necessarily outrun them, but out race them because they've got so many years of experience. This one, I'm, you're not going to like my reference to this one, but it's a good quarterback. There, there is a reason why Tom Brady won. So many Super Bowls by the end. He was clearly not the most physically gifted quarterback, but he knew what the defense was doing before the ball even snapped and

Angie: 26:13

he knew how to build a team too. This was a really interesting, I was, I forget what I was listening to recently. And they were talking about Tom Brady and they were talking about how. For a chunk of his career. I think it was towards the end. He was not taking the maximum salary that he could because there's a salary cap on all these teams. So he would forfeit some of his salary so that they could get better offensive linemen in because he knew that as a quarterback, your offensive line and your protection is the most important thing to give him more time to do whatever he needed to do with the ball. So he would give up, however much money. I don't know how much, but so that they could yeah. Pay better offensive lineman because he knew that was going to win him another championship,

Kevin: 26:57

right? Because in the last couple of years, like the rule was no one touches Tom Brady. That was the offensive lineman's job is it's not even a quarterback hurry. If anybody gets their hands on him, there is going to be some problems because he needs that extra half a second in the pocket. He needs to not get hit. He needs to be as safe as possible because he played what until he was like 75 years old.

Angie: 27:17

Yeah. It

Kevin: 27:19

Just keeps on playing but their Understanding of what was happening on the field like there's this balance when you're younger You've got all this physical strength and an ability and endurance and whatnot and then as you do the activity for longer and longer you gain so much knowledge and understanding And at some point, there's a balance. There's a tipping point where your knowledge is what's making you a better athlete and your physical prowess is actually declining. I'd like to think that I'm somewhere near that balance point at this point in time.

Angie: 27:47

Yeah. And I think that again where are we focusing, right? Going back to our concept of the gap and the gain and how this relates to our running and also to the rest of our life, it's where we're choosing to place our attention, right? Like you can at any point in time and in any given situation focus either on the gap or the gain. You could focus on how far away from the thing you are or how far you've come. You could focus on how people in your life are. Making your life more joyful and how they're doing all the things that you want them to do, or you can focus on the fact that they're falling short and that they're in the gap. This is why it applies to every single area of our life because the gap and the gain will always exist. The goal is not to eliminate the gap because that is impossible. Even Dan Sullivan in the book was talking about this, how he still finds himself in thinking in the gap or being in the gap. Sometimes he's just much better at. Recognizing it and then shifting out of it. And that's really where our personal power lies because the goal is not to get rid of it. It's just to recognize it and then get out of it quicker if you so choose, right? If you want to stay in the gap, stay in the gap, right? But again, go back to how is that making you feel? Is that leading to the results that you want? And so this is again, similar to that. Concept of scarcity versus abundance. Do you want to focus on all the things that you don't have? Or do you want to focus on all of the things that you do have? There's plenty of both. There's plenty of evidence for both. So which one do you want to focus on? And I know these things, I do these things like, and I'm really trying to be conscious aware and I still fall into them, right? Especially. And perimenopause where hormones are shifting all over the place. I've got teenage daughters. I was living in the gap today. Big time, what just happened at dinner tonight before we hit record? Like I've been like ever since cross country practice, I've been a little angry just because of the way that the kids were acting and I was definitely in the gap, like thinking about like the way that they were acting wasn't or wasn't. The ideal that I have set for them. It was

Kevin: 29:50

not the ideal that you had set. It's

Angie: 29:52

not the way that I expect them to act or that I want them to act. They weren't doing the things that we needed them to do, or we wanted them to do, or we expected them to do.

Kevin: 30:00

It was weird. There was a large cluster of teenagers as an, as a giant group, they weren't acting ideally and you got really upset over it.

Angie: 30:06

And I, normally I don't, right? Like normally I'm pretty even keel. Like you, usually it's funny, almost at practice you and I have like different roles than we do like in our relationship or at home or like in parenting And I try to be like the even you know More supportive voice in the coaching you tend to get look a little bit more frustrated I think that at practices than I do.

Kevin: 30:29

I definitely do.

Angie: 30:30

Yeah, and so So anyway, back to today, because I'll just own my, I'm here to own my own stuff, right? Like I was definitely focusing on the gap at practice, which then carried over into our home and dinner and like with my kids, I'm trying to like talk to them and talk about we do a thing at dinner every night called ups and downs. Like everybody has to name a high and a low from their day. And. They just weren't cooperating, right? They were just sitting there quietly and like being very grumpy and only telling me the downs and not coming up with the ups. And I was just focused on how they're not participating and how they're, so I was definitely in the gap. And then when it came to a head. I said to our one teenage daughter, I'm like, and you didn't do this, and you didn't do this, and I started listing all these things that is total gap thinking, right? I was just pointing out all the things that she wasn't doing, or that she did that I didn't like, that were not meeting the expectations that I had. It

Kevin: 31:26

was a list of gap, and I would have loved to have helped pull you out, but I was hanging out in the gap with you? Yeah. So it's really hard to, And the

Angie: 31:33

gap is true. Like all of those things that I listed were true, right? And this is where it gets really tricky because it's like, all of those things, like even an outside observer that was watching the situation could have probably sided with me, right? Probably could have agreed with. Some, a lot of the things that I were saying, because I was trying to be very factual about how you didn't do this, you didn't do this. Then you did this, like trying to point out the facts, but all of those things were supporting my thought of the gap.

Kevin: 32:02

They were facts of the gap and you at the same time could have flipped over and had facts of the game, but you had chosen no. This is where I'm in the gap. Yeah. I'm looking this direction and I'm looking in the Towards gap direction instead and it's difficult because it's literally it's a hundred and eighty flip and inertia Wants us to stay where we are at and we tend to look in the direction of the gap And you have to pull yourself out you can become aware of it But even once you're aware of it, that's only step one. You still have to actually have the mental grit to change your perspective and start looking the other direction and to look towards the gain and sometimes it feels good to wallow. It doesn't, I know, but it doesn't feel good for long.

Angie: 32:47

No,

Kevin: 32:47

like that's the thing is you can wallow briefly and you weren't at our last race. You were out of town and there was another adult who came to the race. I don't think she's ever heard me curse that much because I don't curse very often, but sometimes there are things that happen in a race, whether it's with our team, whether it's just with the team sitting at the tent next to us, there are things that I just have to express so that I can stay positive and cheerleading for our own team in the race. And I was just complaining about various things to her and I seemed probably from her perspective remarkably negative. But I had to vent that some direction so that I could focus on positives towards the kids who are in the race because you're when you're in the middle of a run, you can also look at gap or gain. And if the people around you are bringing a negative mindset, a 5k becomes a negative incredibly long distance to cover. If you got a lot of cheering and support and positivity and you look strong and you've only got, you've already gone two miles. It's funny. You get a lot of coaches at the two mile mark that are saying one to go. One to go is gap. You've run two strong miles is gain. And almost no coach says you look so strong for the first two miles. They all say one to go and one to go sounds painful.

Angie: 34:09

Yeah, it does. And I think that sometimes when you focus on. How much is left that can be helpful. Like I know that for me, when I hit the halfway point of a half marathon, I'm always excited that the numbers are now counting down, but I think that's as I think about it and say it out loud right now, it's really, Yes. I only have five miles left, but that's really also saying I've already run eight, right? Like I've already done more than I have left. So it is saying it's like a countdown, but at the same time it's less than I've already done. So that is a game really. Because I'm focusing on. All the stuff that I already have behind me, that's way more than the stuff that I have left in front of me. Yeah.

Kevin: 34:54

And so then you're still looking at, I have accomplished all of this stuff and I feel good about what I've managed to accomplish.

Angie: 34:59

And I think that, so again, it's really the focus of your attention and whether or not you're seeing that thing as a gap or as a gain. And so again, just to wrap this and. Kind of apply this to other areas. Most people do live in the gap. So we would love to encourage you to ask yourself, where else is this showing up in your life? I just mentioned relationships, right? Focusing on what your partner or your kids aren't doing or all the ways that they're letting you down. Or are you seeing all the amazing things that they do for you? Are you seeing all the things that they did do right? And that they did accomplish that day? Which one do you want to focus on? Or finances? I talk to people about this all the times. Are you focusing on how you don't have the money that you want or that you can't afford that thing? Or are you focusing on how much you already have? Are you in more of that mindset of abundance of, I have the Enough look at all this amazing all these amazing things all these amazing people all these amazing Experiences that I've had there's always enough. I've always had enough I have more than enough to do everything that I want to do in this life

Kevin: 36:06

Yeah, this really goes right to the concept of scarcity versus abundance it goes very much into the same idea of gap and gain of Look at everything that I have. It's a, it's an attitude of gratitude. And this is really, it's a feeling it's where are you going to place your attention? Because the feelings that come from looking at the gain is a much more positive frame of mind and then allows you to open up the possibility of more coming in as opposed to, I am so far away from my goal. If you're, if you feel so far away from your goal, you almost push the goal even farther than it actually is. Yeah.

Angie: 36:44

And there are some people that are pros at this, right? Like they're pros at arguing for their own limitations. They're pros at, Their own excuses, right? Like they only see how far they are. They only see the negative things. And it's like, when I start talking to people like that, I have a pretty good sense of whether or not they're going to be able to achieve their goals. If that's the mindset that they choose to stay in, I think that anyone is capable of achieving anything that they want, because if you have that. That goal, that idea, that dream, if that's been placed on your heart, it's already possible for you. The question is, are you willing to do the work to get there? And part of that work is this work of the gap and the gain. Are you willing to see yourself differently? Are you willing to see your abilities differently? Are you willing to start arts to stop arguing for your own limitations? You're all. You're all. Giving more and more power and evidence to all the reasons that it's not going to work for you or are you going to place your attention on how far you've already come all the amazing things that you've already been able to accomplish all of the good that you're doing in the world and let that momentum drive you forward towards your goal because that's going to be a much more powerful way for you to achieve the thing and you're going to be way more likely to get there if that's the energy that you're coming with.

Kevin: 38:06

And you're going to enjoy the process more, which means then you're not going to expect there to be, giant explosion of confetti when you reach the goal and disappointed that there wasn't, there, you move past this whole arrival fallacy because you're very into the process of striving towards that goal. Like I really fully appreciated when I crossed the finish line of the there was what, like four people at the finish line.

Angie: 38:33

Oh, no, there was more than four, but yes, it was a little sparse at three 30 in the morning, it was

Kevin: 38:41

three 30 in the morning. It's not like there was a post race party of like her said

Angie: 38:45

there was going to be, they had cold cheeseburgers

Kevin: 38:48

and I ate one and I definitely consumed one. But if I had been excited to go to this post race party. That finish line would have been a massive letdown, but it wasn't because I was able to look at what I accomplished rather than I was hoping there was going to be a party at the finish line. I was able to look at the a hundred miles that I had managed to accomplish. That was the party that was the party and there was a lighthouse. Sometimes you do actually reach the lighthouse and that, I think Running absurdly long distances really helps you not live in the gap because if you keep You know it's living for your limitations. It's being able to be like, Oh, here's another excuse. Here's another limit on top of me. If those are at the front of your mind, you're not making it to the finish line because you're out there for too many hours. So it basically forces you to constantly be able to keep flipping towards this positive frame of mind. And. And I don't know if it's a countdown or a count up, and I'm not sure exactly how that goes into gap or gain, but you have to keep flipping yourself into the possibility rather than the limitations and the excuses. And that a hundred percent lines up with gap and gain.

Angie: 39:56

Yeah, absolutely. So all of this. To say, where do you want to start placing more of your attention and more of your focus? It's up to you in any given situation. Do you want to focus on possibility or do you want to focus on limitations? Do you want to focus on the gap? Or focus on the game, so I would recommend checking out this book if this concept is interesting to you and you want to learn more, it's a pretty short book, I listened to the audio book and it was a short audio book and it also had some fun interviews like between Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan just riffing and talking About different topics between each chapter. So that was a fun bonus of the audio book, but the regular book itself is a pretty short book. It's a quick read. And so if you want to learn more, I would recommend checking out the gap and the game. And if you found this podcast helpful, would you take a minute and just leave us a review on Apple podcasts or share it with a friend or on social media so that more people can find the podcast and we can continue to help more runners to get started. To be able to run their life and improve their mental and their physical abilities here in the running world. And as always, thanks for spending this time with us today. This has been the real life runners podcast, episode number 378. Now get out there and run your life.