Gap And The Gain Quotes

If we want to understand its imprint, we must put silence in context. This allows us to retreat, reflect, rejuvenate, and gain redeeming strength. We escape then triviality and find depth and meaning. ("A gap of silence")

Seth Godin said: “The rule is simple: the person who fails the most will win. If I fail more than you do, I will win. Because in order to keep failing, you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.”12,13

Propose a theory to explain one of there eternal mysteries: Mona Lisa's smile, crop circles, or Velveeta. Here is a theory of love: you find a sister, you gain a brother; you lose a sister, you lose a brother; you lose a cat, you find a girl, you kiss a girl, you find the cat, you hope that there is nothing left to lose, and all there is, is there to find.

If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack.”6

The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.” —Dan Sullivan

Happiness is not something you pursue. Happiness is not somewhere in the future. Decades of scientific research is clear on this point: happiness is where you start, not where you finish.

BRIDGES. The Rule is that, when being pursued by the forces of Darkness, you are going to need to cross a Bridge, and there will be no Bridge. While the Tour is waiting to find a way across, the forces of the Dark have time to catch up. Even if there is supposed to be a Bridge on the route, you are likely to arrive to find it broken — whereupon the forces of the Dark gain steadily again. The only Bridges sure to be still in place are ANCIENT ENGINEERING PROJECTS, and they will be huge, with, as soon as you get to the middle, a tendency to develop a small but impassible gap right at the apex.

According to neuroscientists, when we stir up a long-term memory, it floats in our consciousness, unstable, for a window of approximately three hours. During this time, the memory is malleable. The present infiltrates the past. We add details to fill in the gaps. Then the brain re-encodes the memory as if it were new, writing over the old one. As it sinks back down into the depths of our minds, we are not even aware of what we have gained or lost, or why.

whatever you have to do to gain self-knowledge, do it. Find out who you are and what you want. Then you can stop wasting your life energy and your money on stuff that doesn’t matter to you—and start making financial decisions that will get you to your true goals.

Given the changing realities of class in our nation, widening gaps between the rich and poor, and the continued feminization of poverty, we desperately need a mass-based radical feminist movement that can build on the strength of the past, including the positive gains generated by reforms, while offering meaningful interrogation of existing feminist theory that was simply wrongminded while offering us new strategies.

At long last, somebody believes in her. Tonight in this exchange she has gained the tools with which she will build her self esteem: She has been chosen and she has security. Maybe this is all that a person ever needs to succeed. Pearl has been picked, and that has begun to define her.

A small businesses ability to gain an edge for a profitable niche is not by just focusing on the dynamic market gap, but by identifying a market within the gap.

Everything in life happens FOR you, not TO you.

If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack.

What preoccupies us is the way we define success.” —Arianna Huffington

To Be the Famous..." To be the famous isn’t attractive, Not this could ever elevate, You needn’t to make your archive active, You needn’t your scripts to be all saved. Self-offering’s aimed by creation, But ballyhoo or cheap success, It is a shame, if worthless persons Are talks of towns’ populace. But you’ve to live without phony, To live such life that, after all, To gain love of the space symphony, And answer to the future’s call, And oft to leave gaps in your traces In fate, but in the papers, crooked, To mark the chapters and main places On margins of your being’s book, To fully sink in the unknown, And hide in it your own steps Like hide itself, if mist is grown, The whole landscape of the place. The others, by the living traces, Will pass your way through, bit by bit, But wins and losses of your battles You have not to discern on it. You’ve never – not by fate or folly – To lose an atom of your face, But – be alive, alive and only, Alive and only, till your last.

Books, be they physical objects or electronic pulses, are way cool. They are idea houses. So let those who want to read from machines. Those who love the feel, the smell, the gilt edging and the pretty covers and the soft paper, and the kinetic memories will enjoy the physical objects. Either form can be artifact. So long as we're all reading, and gaining joy from it, does it really matter so much?

Being in the GAIN means you measure yourself backward, against where you were before. You measure your own progress. You don’t compare yourself to something external. You don’t measure yourself against your ideals.

Speakers from the Mediterranean region, for instance, like to put their faces very close, relatively speaking, to those they are addressing. A common scene when people from southern Europe and northern Europe are conversing, as at a cocktail party, is for the latter to spend the entire conversation stealthily retreating, to try to gain some space, and for the former to keep advancing to close the gap. Neither speaker may even be aware of it.

Soon the air of the high place was blowing in through the gaps in the masonry, the open bays, where the wind flowed like water round the arches of a bridge. Borluut felt refreshed fanned by this sea-breeze coming from the beaches of the sky: It seemed to be sweeping up dead leaves inside him. New paths, leading elsewhere, appeared in his soul; fresh clearings were revealed. Finally he found himself. Total oblivion as a prelude to taking possession of one's self! He was like the first man on the first day to whom nothing has yet happened. The delights of metamorphosis. He owed them to the tall tower, to the summit he had gained where the battlemented platform was ready for him, a refuge in the infinite. From that height he could no longer see the world, he no longer understood it. Yes, each time he was seized with vertigo, with a desire to lose his footing, to throw himself off, but not towards the ground, into the abyss with its spirals of belfries and roofs over the depths of the town below. It was the abyss above of which he felt the pull. He was more and more bewildered. Everything was becoming blurred - before his eyes, inside his head - because of the fierce wind, the boundless space with nothing to hold on to, the clouds he had come too close to, which long continued to journey on inside him. The delights of sojourning among the summits have their price.

Live with Areté: Express your highest self in every moment. If we want to be on good terms with our highest self, we need to close the gap between what we’re capable of and what we’re actually doing. This is really about being your best version in the here and now. It’s about using reason in our actions and living in harmony with deep values. This is obviously easier said than done, what supports this ambitious goal is to separate good from bad and focus on what we control.

In other words, the VMPFC, in healthy people, integrates many pieces of information gained from experience (e.g., many samples from the different decks) and translates that information into an emotional signal that gives the decision maker good advice about what to do. And once again, this advice, this gut feeling, may precede any conscious awareness of what’s good or bad and why. This explains why people with VMPFC damage make disastrous real-life decisions, despite their good performance on standard laboratory reasoning tests. They “know,” but they don’t “feel,” and feelings are very helpful.

Harmonious passion is related to having high levels of grit, whereas obsessive passion is not.23 If you’re obsessively passionate, you’re thinking short-term. You’re trying to force things to go your way. But you don’t truly want whatever it is you’re seeking. You just think you need it because you’re unresolved internally. Whether you get what you want or not, sooner or later you’ll shift that unhealthy need onto something else—the hedonic treadmill will continue. Similar to harmonious passion, intrinsic motivation is also related to having high levels of grit, whereas extrinsic motivation is not.24

Bookshops are oceans and sections are like tides, they grow and they shrink, they grow and the shrink. It depends on the season and what's selling and what new trends are emerging. Scandi Noir, Dystopian YA, Adult Coloring In, Hygge. It only takes one bestseller to start a tsunami of copycats. Just as you think the swell is here to stay, sales start to taper off and the bookshop breathes and contracts and swallows whatever stock didn't sell, reabsorbs it back into the master section, back into crime or YA or crafts and we rearrange everything to fill the gap until the next trend gains momentum. A good bookseller can sense when the tides are turning, when sales are starting to wane. A bad bookseller doesn't adapt to change, will cling to those declining sales instead of embracing the next big thing. A really bad bookseller will favor their personal taste over customer interest.

Instead of focusing on getting more resources, tipping point leaders concentrate on multiplying the value of the resources they have. When it comes to scarce resources, there are three factors of disproportionate influence that executives can leverage to dramatically free resources, on the one hand, and multiply the value of resources, on the other. These are hot spots, cold spots, and horse trading. Hot spots are activities that have low resource input but high potential performance gains. In contrast, cold spots are activities that have high resource input but low performance impact. In every organization, hot spots and cold spots typically abound. Horse trading involves trading your unit’s excess resources in one area for another unit’s excess resources to fill remaining resource gaps. By learning to use their current resources right, companies often find they can tip the resource hurdle outright. What

Throughout history, white women have chosen racial solidarity with white men over gender solidarity with women of color in an attempt to gain access to the fruits of capitalist triumph. An alternative to that erroneous path is to choose solidarity with other women, other mothers in particular: to seek the resonances between our lives so that we may begin to repair the gaps. Erich Fromm wrote 'Important and radical changes are necessary if love is to become a social and not highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.' I asked Erin Spahr of the Perinatal Mood Disorders clinic at Johns Hopkins what her strategies were for low-income women of color versus upper-middle-class white women. She responded that in all cases, she tried to validate the woman's experience. She tried to provide a sense of safety, to help the woman discover her own fears o that she could be present emotionally for her child. She listened. This is a form of love- a space between people, for confessions and hopes and flaws, and for the seed of solidarity to germinate.

Michael Freeman was thirty-five years old – a former Special Forces soldier turned policeman. He was a tall and slim black man, with grey-flecked hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. His smile was tight-lipped – half knowing and half strategic. It hid a mouthful of craggy teeth. A childhood in Detroit's East Side with an aggressive, alcoholic father had taught him to play things close to his chest, to look and listen. His colleagues knew him as a patient thinker, sedulous, missing nothing given time. Intellectually savvy and emotionally guarded, he exuded certitude. In Afghanistan, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he spent several weeks as a mounted outlier with the Northern Alliance in the Alma Tak Mountains, beyond the range of reinforcement or rescue – drinking filtered ditchwater and eating nuts scavenged from corpses – and calling down massive airstrikes on Taliban positions. He gained a certain reputation. Word spread the length of the Darya Suf River valley, through the Tiangi Gap to the stronghold at Mazar-i-Sharif that there was a monster loose in the mountains and the Taliban called him ‘bor-buka', which seemed to mean black or devil or whirlwind, and, at times, all of these things.

1. Connect with Your Why Start by identifying your key motivations. Why do you want to reach your goal in the first place? Why is it important personally? Get a notebook or pad of paper and list all the key motivations. But don’t just list them, prioritize them. You want the best reasons at the top of your list. Finally, connect with these motivations both intellectually and emotionally. 2. Master Your Motivation There are four key ways to stay motivated as you reach for your goals: Identify your reward and begin to anticipate it. Eventually, the task itself can become its own reward this way. Recognize that installing a new habit will probably take longer than a few weeks. It might even take five or six months. Set your expectations accordingly. Gamify the process with a habit app or calendar chain. As Dan Sullivan taught me, measure the gains, not the gap. Recognize the value of incremental wins. 3. Build Your Team It’s almost always easier to reach a goal if you have friends on the journey. Intentional relationships provide four ingredients essential for success: learning, encouragement, accountability, and competition. There are at least seven kinds of intentional relationships that can help you grow and reach your goals: ​‣ ​Online communities ​‣ ​Running and exercise groups ​‣ ​Masterminds ​‣ ​Coaching and mentoring circles ​‣ ​Reading and study groups ​‣ ​Accountability groups ​‣ ​Close friendships If you can’t find a group you need, don’t wait. Start your own.

Fresh Prints We're inundated with the news That all is at unrest. We've not a clue What this world's coming to, Just thank the Lord we're blessed. Beloved, this very day You thought you'd never live to see Is just the one God preordained And chose for you and me. We're not called to shake our heads And utter “what a pity.” We're called as candles on a hill And towers in the city. We can draw far more to Christ than tracts Or fancy steeples We are proof in breathing flesh— God moves among His people! Please understand, this race you run Is not just for your prize. Grab young hands, courageous band, Run for their very lives! For us, we must live for today, For them, live for tomorrow. Redeem the time for many blind For there is none to borrow! The prints of history's heroes Will soon fade into the dust, If there will be fresh prints, my friend, It is up to us. Footprints that walk the talk that says, “I'll go where You will lead!” Kneeprints that bridge the gap And make the hedge to intercede. God, kick us off our cushioned seats Don't let us turn our heads! Let's cease to hide behind the cross And carry it instead! You beckon us, “My warriors, The time has come, ARISE! Draw your swords, fight the fight, Sound the battle cry.” “Where are My few who dare to say, ‘Come follow Him with me?’ Would you lay down your own dear life So that My Son they'll see?” “Consider, Child, carefully— Am I quite worth the cost? To surrender hearts to holiness And count all gains but loss?” “I call you from your comfort zone, Dare you be one of few? If you'll not leave fresh prints, My child, Then I must ask you, who?” If you'll not lead the way, My child, Then look around you, Who?

The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off? Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground. "What are you doing?" Luce asked. Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned. And then- Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward. Shouts rang out around the cenote: "What is he?" "The boy is winged!" "He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!" Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until- Until she couldn't move anymore. Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun. Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening. Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed. She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin. Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out. Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke. Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame. All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce. "Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her. His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious." "Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-" "I'm still here," Luce insisted. "You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?" "I can see you." And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before. Hadn't she? As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her. "No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.

There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre heads, because they are most appropriate for them; there are truths which have charm and seductive power only for mediocre minds: — at this very point we are pushed back onto this perhaps unpleasant proposition, since the time the spirit of respectable but mediocre Englishmen — I cite Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer — is successfully gaining pre-eminence in the middle regions of European taste. In fact, who could doubt how useful it is that such spirits rule from time to time? It would be a mistake to think that highly cultivated spirits who fly off to great distances would be particularly skilful at establishing many small, common facts, collecting them, and pushing to a conclusion: — they are, by contrast, as exceptional men, from the very start in no advantageous position vis-à-vis the “rules.” In the final analysis, they have more to do than merely have knowledge — for they have to be something new, to mean something new, to present new values! The gap between knowing something and being able to do something is perhaps greater as well as more mysterious than people think. It’s possible that the man who can act in the grand style, the creating man, will have to be a person who does not know; whereas, on the other hand, for scientific discoveries of the sort Darwin made a certain narrowness, aridity, and conscientious diligence, in short, something English, may not be an unsuitable arrangement. Finally we should not forget that the English with their profoundly average quality have already once brought about a collective depression of the European spirit. What people call “modern ideas” or “the ideas of the eighteenth century” or even “French ideas” — in other words, what the German spirit has risen against with a deep disgust — were English in origin. There’s no doubt of that. The French have been only apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, as well, and at the same time unfortunately their first and most complete victims. For with the damnable Anglomania of “modern ideas” the âme française [French soul] has finally become so thin and emaciated that nowadays we remember almost with disbelief its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profoundly passionate power, its resourceful nobility. But with our teeth we must hang on to the following principle of historical fairness and defend it against the appearance of the moment: European noblesse [nobility] — in feeling, in taste, in customs, in short, the word taken in every higher sense — is the work and invention of France; European nastiness, the plebeian quality of modern ideas, the work of England.

He watched her pace toward him. She stopped just short of his chair and looked down at him. Her loose hair slipped over her shoulder. “I remember something. I’m not sure if it happened or not. Will you tell me?” “Yes,” he whispered. “I remember lying with you on the lawn of the imperial palace’s spring garden.” He shifted. Lamplight pulsed over his face. He shook his head. “I remember finding you in your suite.” This memory was coming to her now. It had a similar flavor as the last one. “I promised to tell you my secrets. You held a book. Or kindling? You were making a fire.” “That didn’t happen.” “I kissed you.” She touched the hollow at the base of his neck. His pulse was wild. “Not then,” he said finally. “But I have before.” There was a rush of images. It was as if the melody she’d imagined while lying in the dark had been dunked in the green liquor. All the cold stops gained heat and ran together. It was easy to remember Arin, especially now. Her hand slid to his chest. The cotton of his shirt was hot. “Your kitchens. A table. Honey and flour.” His heart slammed against her palm. “Yes.” “A carriage.” “Yes.” “A balcony.” Breath escaped him like a laugh. “Almost.” “I remember falling asleep in your bed when you weren’t here.” He pulled back slightly, searched her face. “That didn’t happen.” “Yes it did.” His mouth parted, but he didn’t speak. The blacks of his eyes were bright. She wondered what it would be like to give her body what it wanted. It knew something she didn’t. Her heart sped, her blood was lush in her veins. “The first day,” she said. “Last summer. Your hair was a mess. I wanted to sweep it back and make you meet my eyes. I wanted to see you.” His chest rose and fell beneath her hand. “I don’t know. I can’t--I don’t know what you wanted.” “I never said?” “No.” She lowered her mouth to his. She tasted him: the raw burn of liquor on his tongue. She felt him swallow, heard the low, dry sound of it. He pulled her down to him, tangled his hands in her hair, sucked the breath from her lips. She became uncertain whose breath was whose. He kissed her back, fingertips fanning across her face, then gone, nowhere. Then: a light touch along the curve of her hip, just barely. A stone skipping the surface of the water. “Strange,” he murmured into her mouth. She wasn’t listening. She was rippling, the sensation spreading wide. Stone on water, dimpled pockets of pressure. The wait for the stone to finally drop down. Suddenly she knew--or thought she knew--what he found strange as he traced where a dagger should have been. To see a part of her missing. She felt her missing pieces, the stark gaps. She was arrested by the thought (it pierced her, sharp and surreal) that she had become transparent, that if he touched her again his hand would go right through her, into air, into the empty spaces of who she was now.

In respect to the employment of troops, ground may be classified as dispersive, frontier, key, communicating, focal, serious, difficult, encircled, and death. When a feudal lord fights in his own territory, he is in dispersive ground. Here officers and men long to return to their nearby homes. When he makes but a shallow penetration into enemy territory he is in frontier ground. Ground equally advantageous for the enemy or me to occupy is key ground. Ground equally accessible to both the enemy and me is communicating. This is level and extensive ground in which one may come and go, sufficient in extent for battle and to erect opposing fortifications. When a state is enclosed by three other states its territory is focal. He who first gets control of it will gain the support of All-under-Heaven. When the army has penetrated deep into hostile territory, leaving far behind many enemy cities and towns, it is in serious ground. When the army traverses mountains, forests, precipitous country, or marches through defiles, marshlands, or swamps, or any place where the going is hard, it is in difficult ground. Ground to which access is constricted, where the way out is tortuous, and where a small enemy force can strike my larger one is called 'encircled.' Ground in which the army survives only if it fights with the courage of desperation is called 'death.' Therefore, do not fight in dispersive ground; do not stop in the frontier borderlands. Do not attack an enemy who occupies key ground; in communicating ground do not allow your formations to become separated. In focal ground, ally with neighboring states; in deep ground, plunder. In difficult ground, press on; in encircled ground, devise stratagems; in death ground, fight. In dispersive ground I would unify the determination of the army. In frontier ground I would keep my forces closely linked. In key ground I would hasten up my rear elements. In communicating ground I would pay strict attention to my defenses. In focal ground I would strengthen my alliances. I reward my prospective allies with valuables and silks and bind them with solemn covenants. I abide firmly by the treaties and then my allies will certainly aid me. In serious ground I would ensure a continuous flow of provisions. In difficult ground I would press on over the roads. In encircled ground I would block the points of access and egress. It is military doctrine that an encircling force must leave a gap to show the surrounded troops there is a way out, so that they will not be determined to fight to the death. Then, taking advantage of this, strike. Now, if I am in encircled ground, and the enemy opens a road in order to tempt my troops to take it, I close this means of escape so that my officers and men will have a mind to fight to the death. In death ground I could make it evident that there is no chance of survival. For it is the nature of soldiers to resist when surrounded; to fight to the death when there is no alternative, and when desperate to follow commands implicitly.

Darwin’s argument in miniature is that there are no species as such, yet there are ducks and worms; yet it is next to impossible to specify exactly when a proto-duck evolves into a duck. Evolution pulsates with nothingness, riven from within by uncanny gaps that proliferate everywhere. In the same way, Marxian capital cannot be seen or touched directly, but rather it is a spectral “vampire” eating away at the seemingly solid world: “All that is solid melts into air.”39 In evolution and capitalism, nothingness gains a disturbing actuality. It can be exhilarating, refreshing, erotic, horrifying, strange.

When you’re in the GAIN, you transform your experiences. In the GAP, you compare your experiences to other people’s, and feel worse off as a result. You don’t take ownership of your experiences, but instead, you distance yourself emotionally from them, which ends up creating debilitating trauma of varying degrees.

Transforming” your experiences means you go back to your former experiences again and again and, through your evolving thinking and reasoning, change what those experiences mean to you. You also continually extract new lessons from those experiences

By continuously learning, you’ll be enabled to do what your former self couldn’t do. You’ll be able to create what your former self couldn’t create. You’ll be able to have what your former self couldn’t have.

The past is nothing more than the meaning you ascribe to it. Traumatic experiences can be changed. They are not fixed. Motivation is often broken into one of two categories: approach or avoid.

Wealth is where history shows up in your wallet, where your financial freedom is determined by compounding interest on decisions made long before you were born. That is why the Black-white wealth gap is growing despite gains in Black education and earnings, and why the typical Black household owns only $17,600 in assets. Still, having little to no intergenerational wealth and facing massive systemic barriers, descendants of a stolen people have given America the touch-tone telephone, the carbon filament in the lightbulb, the gas mask, the modern traffic light, blood banks, the gas furnace, open-heart surgery, and the mathematics to enable the moon landing. Just imagine the possibilities if—in addition to rebuilding the pathways for all aspirants to the American Dream—we gave millions more Black Americans the life-changing freedom that a modest amount of wealth affords. A 2020 Citigroup report calculated that “if racial gaps for Blacks had been closed 20 years ago, U.S. GDP could have benefitted by an estimated $16 trillion.

When your happiness is tied to something in the future, then your present is diminished. You don’t feel happy, confident, or successful. But maybe in the future you will be, or so the logic goes.

Staring at your phone right before bed is one of the worst

The reason the hedonic treadmill exists is because people aren’t taught how to be happy.

There was that gap between adults and children that reserved to each secrets that were hidden from the other. When you were old enough, you became privy to the secrets that belonged only to adults and lost in turn those that belonged only to children. You did not ever gain all of one or lose all of the other; of each, some you kept and some you never gained.

Why does all of this matter, though? It matters because without being conscious and intentional, you can easily “forget” or lose sight of your former GAINS. You can forget what you previously struggled with and overcame. You can take for granted how far you’ve come, ignore your progress, and miss out on the confidence of remembering where you were. This is why it is incredibly powerful and important to keep journals, records, or “annual reviews.” Like Jill, you can look back and be reminded of the easily forgotten past. You can be reminded that the “normal life” you’re now living may be the dreams—or even beyond the dreams—of your former self.

Being psychologically flexible means you can move forward through uncertainty. It means you control the meaning of your experiences. When you’re in the GAIN, you become more psychologically flexible. You take every experience life gives you—difficult or easy, scary or exciting, challenging or accelerating—and you become better as a result.

A fundamental aspect of flexibility is what psychologists call pathways thinking, and it’s the ability to find or create many workable paths to a given outcome.10 The more flexible you are as a person, the more willing you’ll be to try multiple approaches to getting where you want to go. The more rigid you are, the more dogmatically you’ll try forcing the same approach even when it proves unsuccessful.

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 Sivers19

research shows that imagining the absence of a positive event in your life has a more powerful effect on you than simply looking back on that positive event. Likewise, imagining the absence of an important person in your life can be more powerful than simply appreciating the fact that they are in your life.

Thankfully, in the real world we don’t literally lose the thing we go into the GAP about. But we do damage it. We damage our own experience. And when it comes to other people, we damage them as well.

We go into the GAP about ourselves, undervaluing and underappreciating ourselves. We go into the GAP about other people, turning them into a problem or an enemy. We go into the GAP about far too many things, and perhaps it’s a good time to stop complaining.

She’s made getting accepted into a great college an obsessive and unhealthy “need” rather than a “want.” If she doesn’t get accepted into what she deems as a “great” school, she’ll consign herself as a failure. In other words: she’s in the GAP.

Billions of dollars are spent every day to manipulate and change your thoughts, desires, and behaviors. The reference points for your own success are being created for you, not by you. If you’re not paying for the product, then your behavior change is the product.

Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against.

sometimes your hardest experiences can be your most potent peak experiences—which teach you lessons and provide perspectives that truly clarify what you want for yourself.

Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against. The antidote to being in the GAP is to measure yourself by the GAIN. More specifically, you measure your own GAINS, rather than worrying about other people. This is how you become self-determined: You have an internal reference point. You stop measuring yourself against others. You only measure yourself against yourself. You measure the GAIN, not the GAP.

A fundamental aspect of being in the GAIN is to live your life in a self-determined way. You stop living in the GAP and measuring yourself based on ideals, but rather live based on clear measurables that you yourself have chosen.

In psychology, inattentional blindness occurs when you are so fixated on one thing that you fail to see everything else going on around you.7 It’s easy to miss the GAINS happening throughout our lives or businesses because we may have tunnel vision on the problem in front of us.

Don’t let your past be forgotten. Always measure backward.

No one else can define success for you. Defining your own success criteria is how you become self-determined. This is how you develop an internal reference system. You decide how you will measure yourself.

This brings up a highly nuanced and crucial distinction: you can want something and be 100% committed to that thing without needing it. This is the counterintuitive reality: by no longer needing what you want, you are actually far more enabled to get it.

Something Dan Sullivan has noticed in coaching tens of thousands of entrepreneurs since 1974—over 47 years!—is that most of them are mentally “here” but wanting to be “there.” It really doesn’t matter where they are now and how great their lives are, they continually wish they were “there.” Many high achievers have a hard time being “here.” And although it’s great to have goals and vision and be driven, you’re in the GAP if you’re “here” but wishing you were “there.” Playing a longer game allows you to embrace being “here.” Yes, you have goals and vision, but you’re completely happy where you’re at.

The goal of creating an environment of freedom is that as an individual, you actually live your life according to your own choosing rather than compulsion.

The first step to learning new things is the realisation that we don’t know. Some get stuck on this step, and some never arrive to it. Some get to advance to the second step, which is accepting that we don't know. Thereafter, some will further advance into seeking knowledge to fill the gap. Then, some will seek understanding of that knowledge. From that group, which is usually only a few individuals, some will apply that understanding to obtain results. But the process doesn't end there. Because some will analyse those results. Then after that, some will report the results for others to gain insight. Then the cycle starts again. In the end, the question is: where are you in this process of learning?

Practice mental subtraction to remind yourself of the GAINS in your life. Create a GAIN Tiny Habit Recipe for getting out of the GAP, such as the five-minute rule the women’s soccer coach used.

Phase 1: Discovery 1. Define the problem statement What is the challenge that will be solved? The problem statement is defined at this step and becomes the foundation of the project. Here is a sample problem statement: The company has more than one hundred thousand email addresses and has sent more than one million emails in the last twelve months, but open rates remain low at 8 percent, and sales attributed to email have remained flat since 2018. Based on current averages, a 2 percentage-point lift in email open rates could produce a $50,000 increase in sales over the next twelve months. It’s important to note that a strong and valid problem statement should include the value of solving the problem. This helps ensure that the project is worth the investment of resources and keeps everyone focused on the goal. 2. Build and prioritize the issues list What are the primary issues causing the problem? The issues are categorized into three to five primary groups and built into an issues tree. Sample issues could be: •​Low open rates •​Low click rates •​Low sales conversion rates 3. Identify and prioritize the key drivers. What factors are driving the issues and problem? Sample key drivers could include: •​List fatigue •​Email creatives •​Highly manual, human-driven processes •​Underutilized or missing marketing technology solutions •​Lack of list segmentation •​Lack of reporting and performance management •​Lack of personalization 4. Develop an initial hypothesis What is the preliminary road map to solving the problem? Here is a sample initial hypothesis: AI-powered technologies can be integrated to intelligently automate priority use cases that will drive email efficiency and performance. 5. Conduct discovery research What information can we gain about the problem, and potential solutions, from primary and secondary research? •​How are talent, technology, and strategy gaps impacting performance? •​What can be learned from interviews with stakeholders and secondary research related to the problem? Ask questions such as the following: •​What is the current understanding of AI within the organization? •​Does the executive team understand and support the goal of AI pilot projects?

We can be motivated out the wazoo by gaining an understanding of all these power packed psychological truths yet somehow lack the basic engine needed to turn all that positive advice into the outcomes we desire. The science of quality management needs a seat at that table. Without it, a perplexing gap can be created when we set out to apply all that psychologically proven information to produce the specific type of life or career we want. Understanding how quality is defined, built, and managed was the missing link for me.

The GAP is a habit. It’s a habit we can fall into literally hundreds of times per day. We can spend hours each day in the GAP—unhappy, resentful, regretful.

Krav Maga pays attention to the need to close the gap quickly when attacking an opponent. The advance, while kicking or punching, is made with a forward leap. Using gravity to initiate the move, push forward with the toes in an attempt to lodge one of your limbs in the opponent’s body as quickly as possible. Krav Maga training calls for a maximum range of the body’s limbs when practicing attacks, and the use of folded limbs to attack in the closer range. The idea is to gain the maximum acceleration possible with the limb used and to keep the speed at its max when in contact with the opponent’s pressure points. Remember that when the motion comes to a complete stop, it must have started to slow down a split second before. Once a strike is executed we need to maintain full speed if we want to incur maximum damage or if we want to stun him. Therefore we cannot afford to lower the speed of our motion a split second before the strike or a split second after. Aim at the pressure point you want to strike, make sure you use maximum speed, and make sure you do not stop when you reach the range where your target is or will be in the next second. Take into account that your opponent might start to move forward or backwards, which means he won’t stay still exactly where you were aiming for. If your arm or leg comes to a complete stop upon contact with the opponent, it indicates you must have slowed down a second before and the speed was not fast enough to create the desired momentum. To maintain maximum speed at the contact point with the targeted pressure point, the striking limb should be immediately retracted back. This helps keep up the speed while accelerating. It is faster to retract the hand without the body. We then let the body continue its motion forward while the hand is retracted backward. This sequence ensures that the body weight supports our punch without letting us lose speed.

Your goal [...] is tp be less a product of the times and to gain the ability to transform your relationship to your generation. A key way of doing this is through active associations with people of different generations. If you are younger, you try to interact more with those of older generations. Some of them, who seem to have a spirit you can identify with, you can try to cultivate as mentors and role models. Others you relate to as you would your peers- not feeling superior or inferior but paying deep attention to their values, ideas, and perspectives, helping to widen your own.

You have an ideal in your mind, and you’re measuring yourself against your ideal, rather than against the actual progress you’ve made. This is why you’re unhappy with what you’ve done, and it’s probably why you’re unhappy with everything in your life.

When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.” —Pearson’s Law

Call it archaic, but I think confession is liberation. It is easy to think that in injustice only the oppressed have their freedom to gain. In truth, the liberation of the oppressor is also at stake. Whether it’s the privilege we’ve inherited or space we’ve stolen, what began as guilt will mutate into shame, which is much more sinister and decidedly heavier on the soul. It doesn’t just weigh on the heart; it slithers into the gap of every joint, making everything swollen and tender. We learn to walk differently in order to carry the shame, but then we become prone to manipulate things like nearness and connection just to relieve our own swelling. When wounders, finally becoming exhausted of their dominion, dismantle their delusion of heroism or victimhood and begin to tell the truth of their offense, a sacred rest becomes available to them. You are no longer fighting to suspend the delusion of self. You can just lie down and be in your own flawed skin. And as you rest, the conscience you were born with slowly begins to regenerate, and your mobility changes. You walk past the shattered porch light without your nose to the ground. You can look your father in the eyes. You realize there are other ways to move in the world. It’s not only relief, it’s freedom. Truth-telling is critical to repair. But confession alone—which tends to serve the confessor more than the oppressed—will never be enough. Reparations are required. To expect repair without some kind of remittance would be injustice doubled. What has been stolen must be returned. This is not vengeance, it’s restoration. Maybe you know the verse that says if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and bare your left cheek to them too. But before all that, Exodus says eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burn for burn. Payment, consequence. Any injustice demands something of us. But the only thing more healing than forcing someone to pay is when a person chooses to pay by their own conviction. I have always wondered why Christ had to die. If we needed saving, if wrath was to be had, couldn’t God just snap his fingers or send a great wind or blink and have everything wrong made right again? Why is it nothing but the blood? Nothing else? This will always be strange to me. But if it’s true, the law is cosmic and eternal. Maybe it’s written into everything, and even God themself is not too bold to undo the way things were meant to be. Maybe they needed to show us what the most tragic and noble reparation could look like, the sacrifice of life itself, so we might learn the courage to choose to make repairs when our moments come. But some will die in their cowardice.

After I had finished giving the account of my shame, he spoke, impatiently. ''Listen,' he said, piercing me with his cold, blue gaze. 'You must deal with this. You must get those guys, one by one, and crush them. Especially that guy!' My father named the main protagonist, and continued. ''Not yet; you must wait a couple of days. You must catch him by surprise. A good beating from you is what he needs, and I can assure you – he will never think of crossing you again! You see, if you don't do this now, others will come and push you around. You must show them you're not a doormat!'' My father's whole being was charged with some unseen energy, a power which, since I never felt any real closeness to him, seemed frightening to me. I knew he loved me; I knew he would kill for me – I was sure that he would die for me if he had to; yet, since our relationship was deprived of tenderness, there was no sense of warmth to bridge the gap between my gentle, undeveloped heart and his manly strength. I did not feel protected that night, and I did not feel understood. My heart strained under the weight of the utter loneliness which rushed in, adding to the effect of the assault that had taken place earlier. I did not know it at the time, but I do now: it was not an exhortation that I needed, no call to battle. I hungered for understanding and compassion; I yearned for manly warmth, to be held and loved by the one who was stronger than me – the one who would make all things right in the end, regardless of what I did or didn’t do. Instead, I felt helpless and alone. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to develop a fighter's heart and be a warrior who fights to defend himself and others, unless one has first been so nurtured with masculine love and so immersed in it as a boy, that his confidence and strength he is called to display later in life are not false, but genuine, deep and natural, flowing from within. A boy cannot do that by himself; he first needs to belong in the world of men... And it was that which I doubted – my ability to qualify for belonging in that world; the world of my father. This was the only world I ever desired to enter, and now, finally, just as I had feared it would happen, the gate to that world was shut in my face. Not being good enough to gain the right to enter, I lost the opportunity to possess all that could have been granted to me there: an identity, self-worth, and manly courage.

This simple practice will transform your days – and your nights. Capturing your wins for the day puts you in a GAIN mindset and boosts both your confidence and your sense of well-being. This makes for more peaceful sleep. Clearly articulating your goals for the next day allows your brain to start processing them subconsciously, so you wake up feeling a sense of purpose. Instead of merely reacting to whatever comes your way, you’ll have a clear, actionable plan.

No one can replicate you when you’re in the GAIN, because no one has the same experiences you’re having—and no one can transform your experiences into GAINS the way you do. You’ve already made it this far. Look back at where you were when you started. What are you going to do now? How far are you going to go? You get to decide that.

And with every step you take forward, you get to measure backward and become increasingly humbled at how far you’ve come.

Your future growth and progress are now based in your understanding about the difference between the two ways in which you can measure yourself: against an ideal, which puts you in what I call ‘the GAP,’ and against your starting point, which puts you

in ‘the GAIN,’ appreciating all that you’ve accomplished.” —Dan Sullivan

If we took away everything you went into the GAP about, how much would you have?” “Not much” was their response.

Give Yourself 5 Minutes in the GAP, Then Move Forward

One thing that makes it possible to be an optimist is if you have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose. There are a lot of things I don’t worry about, because I have a plan in place if they do.” —Randy Pausch25

In performance psychology, there is a concept known as implementation intentions, which is a strategy to plan for the worst—so you can perform your best.26

probably why you’re unhappy with everything in your life. “You’re measuring yourself in the GAP.

The day you stop racing is the day you win the race.” —Bob Marley

If you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. If you focus on what you have, you gain what you lack.”6

hedonic adaptation. It’s the tendency of humans to quickly adapt to where they are and what they’ve got. It leads to never being satisfied, and to constantly seeking the next thing. 7

the hedonic treadmill.”9 When you’re on this treadmill, you’re working harder and harder to be happy but staying exactly where you started.

The reason the hedonic treadmill exists is because people aren’t taught how to be happy. Ideals are meant to provide direction, motivation, and meaning to our lives. They are not the measuring stick. Our society has trained us to measure ourselves against our ideals, which by definition are unreachable.

Being in the GAIN means you measure yourself backward, against where you were before.

Winners don’t have a to-do list. They have a ‘done’ list.

The rule is simple: the person who fails the most will win. If I fail more than you do, I will win. Because in order to keep failing, you’ve got to be good enough to keep playing.”12,13

The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.” —Joseph Campbell14

Sometimes the greatest scientific breakthroughs happen because someone ignores the prevailing pessimism.” –Nessa Carey, British biologist1

Comparison makes you unhappy, and there’s no end to comparison in the world, if that’s the path you choose.

You are 100 percent disciplined to your existing set of habits.

Remember, the goal isn’t to never go into the GAP. Instead, the goal is to get yourself out as soon as you can.

The way to measure your progress is backward against where you started, not against your ideal.” —Dan Sullivan

Without this and other related thoughts, I could not entirely exist, except in halftones, a bunch of dots separated by empty space. At a distance, I might appear continuous, but at close range, anyone could see I was built from clusters of bits and gaps. Over the years, as I’ve gained more words, those spaces have become smaller, but they will never disappear. It doesn’t work that way.

Training yourself to be happy is completely internal. There is no external progress, no external validation. You’re competing against yourself—it is a single-player game.”6 Happiness cannot come from something outside of yourself.

We must redefine and come to a consensus on what God (Creator) is and what creation and recreating is. When we do this, we may make the gap between believers and atheists smaller, and we may realize that faith and atheism are compatible. The major incompatibility comes from the preprogrammed thinking and concepts based on religious books. Most of these concepts humanity accepted without real consideration and analysis, betting on the idea of a God that I call the stolen God. A stolen God is not a “real” God and cannot be used against the “real” God if it exists. The idea of a stolen God gains most of its power from the fear of millions or billions of human beings belonging to the major monotheistic religions.