A Better Way to Measure Success Starts Here

What if I told you the way you measure success is flawed?

Hear me out.

This recent personal story will help you understand what I mean.

During a meeting with my coach, I ran down a long list of challenges I’d had over the past week. “The tech gremlins would not let me be great”, I thought.

I’d combined Facebook with Zoom, then switched to Streamyard, then switched back to Facebook Live. It was a hard week of lessons learned from hosting my ‘Be Present in the Moment’ challenge in my private community. I knew I’d heard right when they said this was what they needed, but in spite of the glowing reviews, I felt like I had let them down.

My coach, Jonathan Milligan, nodded empathetically. Sitting across the screen, he listened patiently but his wheels were turning.

I didn’t know my mind was about to be blown.

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By the time I wrapped up my review, you would think the whole experience was a failure.

Instead of the wins, all I saw were the things I would have done differently. 😩

That’s when he shared this concept with me.

“Most people, especially highly ambitious people are unhappy because of how they measure their progress. We all have an ‘ideal’, a moving target that is always out of reach. When we measure ourselves against that ideal, we’re in ‘the gap’. However, when we measure ourselves against our previous selves, we’re in ‘the gain’.”

– From The Gap and the Gain (aff) by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy

Say what?!!

There I was thinking I was recapping my recent accomplishments, but really, all I was doing was whining about the things that had gone wrong.

I was in the gap!

I was measuring my success not by how much I had gained but by how far I thought I still needed to go.

Maybe you do this too: you measure success by looking at the gap, not at the gain.

I totally understand.

You see from a very young age we were conditioned to measure ourselves against an external standard. Entire education systems were built around the notion of an external reference point as a standard for evaluation and comparison.

As we grow and develop, we regularly assess our performance against something or someone else. (Yes, the comparison game starts pretty early.)

For high achievers like us, this is a two-edged sword because not only do we measure ourselves against others, we also measure ourselves against our own ideals. So, even when we’re winning we can’t see it!

This, my friend, is not the way to measure success.

If you want to be happy, confident and successful, you need to focus on the gain.

Are you measuring success by how far you still have to go? Get out of the gap and do this instead! #thegapandthegain Share on X

A Better Way

Of course, after the mind-blown conversation, I promptly went in search of the book, The Gap and the Gain (affiliate link). I devoured the audiobook and realized Jonathan was right. The way I measured progress before was twisted at best.

In The Gap and the Gain, I found a better way to measure success.

I highly recommend you take a listen (or read it) for yourself.

You’ll be called upon to make a choice.

Will you focus on the gap or the gain? There’s no middle ground!

To get you started, here are 3 simple things you can do today to put you in the gain.

A better way to measure success starts here: focus on the gain, not on the gap! Share on X

3 Ways to Measure Success and Stay in the Gain

1. Measure success backwards

Recognize that ideals are like the horizon. The horizon is meant to guide you, but you will never get there. It’s a moving target, just like your ideals.

When you measure forward (toward your ideals) you’ll always fall short. You will be in the gap.

But if you measure success backwards (where you are now compared to where you started) you’ll see how far you’ve come. You’ve made progress. That’s the gain!

2. Count 3 wins

How you measure success counts! End your day by recapping your wins from that day. Use the magic hour before going to bed to reflect on three wins. They don’t have to be big, fancy or earth-shattering, just three things you count as progress.

“A win is anything you can measure as being better today than it was yesterday.”

Dan Sullivan – Strategic Coach

3. Forecast 3 More wins

After counting your three wins for the day, take some time to consider what your three wins will be tomorrow. Resist the temptation to rush too far into the future. Focus instead on the next 24 hours.

Imagine, when you look back on your day tomorrow, what wins will you have accomplished? Choose no more than three, write them down, then go to bed. Allow your brain to do the rest of the work while you sleep. You’ll wake up in the morning energized and ready to go after those three wins.

Find Your Winning streak

Knowing what I know now, I can look back and see all the progress I made during my Be Present in the Moment challenge. Sure, there were some tech issues, but in the big scheme of things, I was actually winning. I was simply measuring success all wrong.

I was focused on the gap instead of the gain.

Soon the way you measure success will improve too.

Measuring backwards and counting your wins, will give you the confidence to keep moving forward. Your circumstances might not change but the way you look at them certainly will and before you know it, you’ll be winning all the time.

If you’ve been measuring success like I was, let’s turn this around.

Instead of measuring success by how far you still have to go, measure success by how far you’ve come.

No more obsessing about where you fell short or didn’t measure up.

Measure backwards, account for the lessons learned, and keep moving forward with your eyes on the prize.

How about you?

Are you in? Are you ready to measure success in a way that leaves you energized, confident and focused? Alright, let’s do this!

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Additional Resources

Here are some resources related to this post:

• Thrive Assessment – get started with a clear picture of where you are right now.
• Read The Gap and the Gain book by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy (Amazon affiliate link)