BRX Pro Tip: Dan Sullivan Gap and Gain Thinking
Stone Payton : Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you’ve been at it again. You’ve been reading, and most recently, about this idea of gap thinking and game thinking.
Lee Kantor: Yeah, this was a book by Dan Sullivan, or at least the thoughts of Dan Sullivan. And he talks about gap thinking versus gain, G-A-I-N, thinking. And what that means is gap thinking is always looking at the distance or the future between where you are today and where you want to be. It’s what you aspire to be, whatever your goal is. So, you hit your revenue goal, and you immediately think about what’s the next revenue goal. So, you never really get to the finish line. It’s never-ending, and it’s really exhausting.
Lee Kantor: Gain thinking, on the other hand, is pretty much the complete opposite. So instead of measuring progress of where you want to go, you measure progress by how far you’ve come. So you look back at last year and see that you’ve actually achieved quite a bit.
Lee Kantor: And this is what’s strange and interesting. Both people can be looking at the same results, but a gap thinker feels he’s a failure and the gain thinker feels he’s successful because the gap thinker is never hitting that aspirational goal. So, they’re never get there. Wherever there is, they never make it; where the gain thinker is winning every day, because every inch they move forward is farther than where they started. So, the difference is what they’re measuring.
Lee Kantor: So, here’s the action step. This week, write down five things you’ve actually accomplished in your business in the last year. That’s gain thinking. You need more – you need both things to move forward. But most high-achieving people only live in the gap, so it’s frustrating and stressful. If you start recognizing your gains, you’re going to be a lot less – feel a lot better about yourself, and you’re going to have that much more energy to get to where you want to go.
