3 Degrees of Freedom

In-Between Episode: Getting Your Mind Right with the Gap and the Gain with Derek Clifford

• Derek Clifford • Season 3 • Episode 164

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In this enlightening podcast episode, Derek explores the transformative concept of "gap and gain," shedding light on its profound implications for personal growth and fulfillment. He begins by dissecting this mindset shift, highlighting that the gap mindset fixates on future goals as unfulfilled desires, while the gain mindset thrives on recognizing past accomplishments and progress. Derek advocates for embracing gain thinking, emphasizing the importance of focusing on one's achievements and current position.

Listeners are treated to invaluable advice, including the wisdom of setting realistic goals based on prior progress, steering clear of idealistic comparisons, and understanding that genuine happiness and success stem from the journey, not just the destination. Derek shares practical strategies for seamlessly integrating gap and gain thinking into daily life, from automated progress tracking to the profound impact of cultivating gratitude. He underscores the compounding effect of positive changes, encouraging individuals to prioritize their mindset as the catalyst for a successful life.

This episode is proudly sponsored by "Live Whole Wellness," offering a holistic approach to well-being. Derek extends a warm invitation to the audience to explore wellness opportunities through this platform. As the episode concludes, Derek invites feedback, engagement, and advocacy, urging listeners to like, subscribe, and share the podcast to extend the transformative influence of gap in the gain thinking to a wider audience. Tune in to discover the keys to a more abundant and fulfilling life through "Getting Your Mind Right with the Gap and the Gain."

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Derek:

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom podcast, where we explore lifestyle engineering with our expert guests to bring you in alignment with your own three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial independence. What's going on guys? This is Derek again. Hey, hope you're having a fantastic day. Today I want to talk about the gap in the gain. It's a super I've already covered before. So a lot of you are wondering, wait a minute. I thought you've already covered this before. Isn't this a little bit cheating? Well, I would say that... Yes, it might be a little bit cheating, but honestly, this deserves to be covered again. This is so important to me. It has been a life changer as well. And I really think that if you don't know what the gap in the game is, it's time for you to get a little bit more of a deeper understanding because you'll be doing yourself a favor if you do understand what it's all about. I think in terms of importance, it's right up there with The One Thing and with Who Not How, which is written by amazing authors, Gary Keller and, I think Ben Hardy. As far as for who, not how, and then, Dan Sullivan as well. So amazing books, you need to go out there and go get them. And especially if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably an audio person. So go out there and grab the audio book. Those are also very amazing, both the one thing and who, not how there's also a gap in the game book. So go out there and do it, but I'm going to give you a rundown of what the gap in the game is, and how you can start to incorporate into your life, in a quick bite sized fashion for you in this in between episode. So first let's start out. What is the gap and what's the gain? So, a gap is essentially, if you take where you are right now, and you look to the goals that you're going to accomplish in the future, or the things that you want to do, right? It's the fact that you are looking at that as a missing piece of who you are. Because you're looking out into the future and you're saying, oh my gosh, I don't have that, it's gonna take forever, it's gonna take me five years to get there, or, you know, I don't I'm, I don't know how I'm gonna ever achieve that. And then the gain is taking where you are right now. And taking stock and gratitude of all the things you've accomplished and looking backwards, looking back to the past. How much have you actually achieved in the last year, two years, three years, four years, right? And by looking at the gain and making goals from where you've been to where you are now, and basically goal setting based on that approach versus what you're lacking. You will be more in abundance, you'll be looking at all of the things that you've been able to accomplish and all the gratitude and the positivity and all the things that you've been able to really accomplish and get done in those past four, five, or even six years. So again, I guess if you look at it, looking from where you are now in the present, if you're looking at what you're missing from the future, that is gap thinking, and if you're looking from all that you've gained, Or all the abundance that you've gotten from the past, that is, that's abundant thinking that is gain thinking. So once again, gap is scarcity thinking gain is abundant thinking. And believe it or not, you can actually bring this into your day to day life because bullet point number two is living in the gain and not in the gap every single day. I think that if you understand that measuring against your ideals will lead you in the wrong path. Because ideals are just unreachable. They're just an ideal state that you can never, ever achieve. That is not serving you at all. And that will help feed your gap thinking. And you don't want to do that, right? What you've got to do is you've got to measure your progress towards your goals and do it often, because what is measured is accomplished. And that measurement of where you were. To where you are now is measurable. You can look back and say, how long did it take me to get to X, Y, Z. So if you invert that and bring it out to the future for you, right. Using that same line of progress and also adjusting a little bit more because you're learning, right. So, you know, if you said that you bought. If you bought six houses in the last year and you want to or the last two years and you want to, get another six houses, you may be able to do that in a year and a half instead of two years because you've got experience, right? And you've got more resources at this point in time. So you've got to adjust for that, right? But make sure that whenever you set your goals, you're doing it based from a place of where the gain was, where you were, right? I'm not saying don't set lofty goals, but just don't set an unrealistic ideal, right? Something that can't be achieved in the future because that will. affect your mind and put you in a gap thinking day to day and understand that happiness and success is actually about the pursuit, not the accomplishment of the goals. Because I can tell you right now when I left my job, right? Like I was super happy because I accomplished my goal. I left the W2 work, but then I realized that now there's got to be a next goal. Like it just doesn't end here. Right? So when does it end? It's all relative, right? So happiness is in the pursuit of the goals, right? So. Your success and happiness comes from the pursuit, not from the accomplishment of the goals. Accomplishment of the goal is great. And you have to reward yourself for that for sure, but really understand that it's a process. And as long as you're following the process, you will stay in the game thinking because you know that from the past, you started from. Way before like, you know, a much lower you to now the you where you are and you know that's where you're heading. And then all of this progress that you're making is going to be more game thinking for a future state of you in the future. Okay. So anyway, I hope that I didn't confuse you on this, but just understand that's really, really important to start thinking about goals in terms of where you've been and measuring them, right? Measuring them each day and being really intentional about it. Also, one other tip that I, that I saw. And read about was that if you do mental subtraction, that will add to your happiness. So if you imagine that someone or something positive is gone from your life, instead of them just being there and providing things to you, that will have a much more powerful impact on your reflection, right? Looking back on it, right? And how important it was to you, in your gain process from your past you to your present you, okay? The other thing is, is that gratitude is a fantastic daily practice. I'm guilty of not doing this every single day like I said that I'm going to do, but it's one of those things I'm giving myself grace for, right? But anyway, gratitude is a daily practice that you can do, that allows you to feel like, oh my gosh, all of these blessings that we have puts you in a gain think. In the game thinking because, um, all the things that have happened to you to lead to where you are now is most likely in a good place. And so all of those things, you know, you should be grateful for because you're right now in such a wonderful place, where you are, right? If that's not necessarily the case, there's tons of things to be grateful for like your health, your relationships, anything that's going well for you in life. There's always a situation where you can say, Oh my gosh, you know, I got to be grateful for it. Even the fact that there's electricity around you, right? And the internet and the fact that you're able to listen to this podcast is just a miracle because if you were born a thousand years ago, that would not have been the case at all. All right. Number three is Going deeper into goal setting with the gap in the game in mind, making sure that you're monitoring and tracking preferably with a process or some sort of automation so that you don't have to manually go in and start like doing this every single day, right? You have to track things every day. If you can set yourself up to something that's happening, no matter what, right? Like you either check something off or you don't, or you have your wife help you or your husband help you, in monitoring what you're eating, right? Or you're taking a picture. Like you want something to be as automatic and mindless and frictionless as possible. So you're not thinking about the actual measurement. You want the measurement to be happening automatically or as easily as possible. Okay. And just remember that whatever you focus on, it expands and there is nowhere for you to arrive at because you're already there. So speed is irrelevant because it's in relation to something else. And this is, you know, I talked about this on the other point as well, but whenever you start thinking about, Oh, I need to get some more quickly, I need to go there, right to, what are you comparing that to? If you're looking at someone else, right? If you're looking at another person who is a fellow investor or a fellow business person, and they're getting there faster, well, they have a different purpose. Maybe they don't have kids. Maybe, they have more financial resources or maybe they're sacrificing some things that you haven't seen. Maybe they're like letting their health Go, right. And they're just putting all of their effort and energy and not caring what they eat and their balance is gone. You got to be careful with who you're comparing things to speed is irrelevant. It's in relation to something else. And here's the other thing too. What if that other person that you're watching, right? Ends up achieving all the success that you were looking to achieve in your business, but they ended up having a heart attack and passing away five years from now, where you end up getting to that goal two years slower, right? But you're in balance. and you're living for 10 to 20 or even 30 years longer than that other person, right? So it's all relative and it's very much an illusion. And in this social media culture, it's very hard to be able to keep that goal setting perspective in mind. Just make sure that there's nowhere to go to because you're already perfect, right? You already have everything that you need and you're on your way. And when you're on your way, Because you've done it before, from where you were in your past self to where you are now, you've done that, you know that you're going to achieve your goal because you're just on your way. Alright? Now... The last thing I'm going to talk about is how gap in the game thinking it spills into all other aspects of your life. You'll notice that you start becoming more efficient and intentional in your free time because what you're measuring right is actually getting accomplished much quicker and faster and easier. And then. The gratefulness, right, that comes in will make you more positive and easier to be around and your spouse and people will start to notice that there's people around you will start to notice that your coworkers, and then your health outlook and everything may start improving with the disappearance or reduction of stress or the reduction of all of that drag that you've had in your body. And so all of these things will start to compound. And again, you know, I keep mentioning this in almost every in between episode that compounding is super important to me and it's something that. needs to happen automatically. And as you push that lead domino down, which could be this gap in game thinking, you'll notice that You start setting goals, you start becoming more intentional, you become more grateful, you have a positive attitude because you know where you're going and you know that the path that you're on is going to get you to where you want to go eventually. It starts reducing stress, people notice it, and starts drawing you into more opportunities, which is just the ironic piece of how all of this works. So, I want to leave you with this just because the gap in the game thinking is, has been so powerful. It was a huge wake up moment for me when I, right when I needed it about a year ago, when I started experiencing it, or it was two years ago actually, when I started experiencing it when I was leaving my full time job. And I wanted to reiterate this point with you after sitting on it and reflecting with it. For the past couple of years, because it really is a super powerful tool. And I highly recommend that you go out there and go get it. So just as a recap, what we talked about was what the gap in the gain was. Number two is living in the gain and not in the gap day to day, by just being understanding some of these key principles that you can't measure against ideals. Know that what you're doing on the path is happiness and is success. And that's the accomplishment of your goals based on what you've done before practicing mental will add to your happiness and then gratitude as a daily practice. That's the bullet point. Number two bullet point. Number three is goal setting with the gap in the game, in mind, making sure that you're monitoring and tracking preferably with some sort of process or automation and keeping it going on autopilot. So you don't have to have as much friction as possible trying to write something down, right. Or trying to do something, trying to remember, you don't want to want, you don't want to. Have to remember something you want to have a system that automatically goes no matter what and then number four is Having a gap in the game thinking it spills into other aspects of your life automatically So make this your lead domino and put your mindset at the top priority so that way everything else starts to get much easier and Your gratefulness and gratitude will start spreading out and inspiring other people to ask you how and why you've done this, right? And there you go That is gap in the game thinking revisited. I hope that it was useful to you. This podcast has been sponsored by my wife's business live whole wellness. And if you want to find out more about live whole wellness and schedule a call with Dr. Sophie to talk more about this and any other ideas around wellness and how it can be a force multiplier for you, please go to live whole. com. and go click the book of time to meet with Sophie. Let me know. And there you'll get tons of information. She's gonna help you. She's helped me achieve all of these amazing things. Everything that you hear from me has come from that basis. And so I'm so blessed and grateful to have, a doctor that is so knowledgeable as my wife. So please go in there and check it out. And finally, for those who have listened all the way to this point, I want to thank you also for listening to this incredible content, or at least I hope it's incredible content. Please like, subscribe. And thumbs up, whatever, comment on this because I really want to hear about you guys and get some feedback on how this is working for you, whether you're enjoying it or I need to make some tweaks. And I also want to get more people to listen to this content because it's super powerful and it's changed my life and I want others to enjoy it as well. So, thank you guys so much for listening. Really appreciate you and we will see you guys next time. Go out there and get your game thinking on. Talk to you soon. Yeah.