The ability to mind the gap between reality and ideal is an important tool for being on the pathway to your best self. Are you minding the gap?
I gotta say here at the outset, every time I say “gap” I always think of that pleasant and polite British voice in the London Tube saying “mind the gap” just after the door opens and you jump onto the platform. When I lived in New Jersey I remember a thick Jersey accent saying curtly “watch the platform.” Well, why am I talking about “the gap” today?
In my previous post I discussed my wake up call and realizing I wasn’t living up to my vision for myself. A gap existed between my real self and my ideal self. My ideal physical self was a lean, strong and flexible body able to possess lots of energy for activity, especially playing with future grandchildren (whether grandchildren will be in the picture who knows!). Reality, however, didn’t match that picture. Well, why is this awareness of the gap so important and what can we do?
A Vision of the Ideal Future Starts with Awareness of Reality
My Type 2 diabetes diagnosis hit me with a big dose of reality. Hard. My body was not healthy and was not on a good trajectory. I couldn’t argue with the facts. I already knew I was overweight (that’s been around for years). However, I was so used to those extra pounds and just ignored it. I also knew I was feeling more and more tired. Yet even that didn’t do it. Just give me a little more caffeine, right? For some reason the blood test that revealed my diabetes was THE catalyst to put all the pieces together for me.
On that day I realized I needed to get a baseline awareness of what was really happening. I need to mind the gap between reality and ideal! I also made a lot of quick eating changes like giving up sugar and processed food that really got things going for me in a good direction. More important, I started investigating how my diet created conditions for my poor blood sugar levels and metabolism. By the way, what I learned is that the American diet and lack of exercise is mostly to blame, but that’s another post for later.
Tracking and Writing Down The Facts of Reality
I gained awareness of my reality through research on the foods I ate. Logging everything in my tracking app gave me incredible mindfulness around food and exercise. In fact, at one point I looked at Kristen and said, “I’m going to science the crap out of this thing.” Actually, I used a stronger word! Remember, I’m an enneagram 5, and I like data. I’m using that data to build awareness. Now I track everything. By the way, in my next post I’m going to talk about the apps that really help me create mindfulness of reality so that I can calibrate goals toward my ideal. You don’t have to track everything in an app like I do. But you do need to write stuff down and assess where you really are to build enough awareness to understand your reality and to confront it.
Year ago I did the same thing with our family budget, and it transformed my relationships with money. Now I no longer wonder what happened to our money at the end of the month, but I tell it where to go. What got me there was a lot of mindfulness by tracking and paying attention to where my money was going. Yup, more data. Just paying attention to it built a sense of where we were at financially. Are there areas in your life where you have created mindfulness about your reality, and it helped move toward a better way?
Why Reality Is Not Enough — Start Articulating the Positive Now
I just said knowing reality is important to set meaningful progress toward the ideal. But just knowing reality is not enough, and probably not even the most important. I learned in Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee’s book Resonant Leadership that intentional change means connecting positive emotion to a vision of the ideal. In fact, I based my dissertation on this theoretical construct. The basic idea is that you have to activate positive emotion to get the kind of motivating fuel for lasting change. It’s why performance reviews and goal setting based upon weaknesses and compliance often fail. Instead, when we focus on the positive vision we have for ourselves we tap into greater motivation for change. We always feel more motivated to create lasting change that we create ourselves, and especially when it comes from a vision that evokes positive emotions in us.
I may have known what was really happening with my body, but what positive emotion fueled my desire for change? Well, frankly, being alive to see potential grandkids, and enjoy family, gives me a sense of holistic purpose, peace and joy. All I have to do personally is envision sitting around the campfire with family, or attending a Husky football game with a grandkid, to know that’s worth being healthy and capable of doing many years from now. That’s great motivation and makes me feel hopeful as I strive to be my best self.
If You Want To Change Something in Your Life — Mind the Gap!
I know today’s post was a lot about me, but it’s not about me. I’m hoping that through my mistake and learning you can discover something valuable for yourself. So where are you? Is there something in your life that you envision? Maybe it’s a physical health goal like the one I’m pursuing. Or a goal for business and the kind of work that stirs your passion. Or maybe it’s a quality of relationship. You want to get there, but you need to be mindful of where you are starting. It’s time to “mind the gap” between reality and your ideal, then make a plan to get there. It’ll take some effort, but being mindful of where you are today (reality) will help you know how to apply your positive emotions around where you want to be tomorrow (ideal). You got this!
Question: What area of your life do consider important right now to become aware of the gap between reality and your ideal?
Leave a note in the comments or send me a message if you found this helpful or want to add to the conversation! As always, let me know if I can help you on the path to your best self.
With joy in the journey,
Jeff
I have so many “gaps” in my life that at times I feel like Evel Knievel getting ready to jump the Grand Canyon. Some gaps I am aware of and dealt with my whole life such as my weight, body image or self-esteem associated with those areas. Some gaps have only started to reveal themselves such as my mindset of charging forward like a young man but my body reminding me I am no longer that young man.
I recently read a book called, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” by Chip and Dan Heath. It was a fascinating way of attributing change from micro to macro
Organizational Behaviors but also to basic individual behaviors. It talks about how everyone has a “rider,” your analytical brain and an “elephant,” your emotional brain. The rider can learn to direct the elephant but if the elephant takes over there is very little the rider can do to control it (knowing you should not eat the Twinkie vs the emotional need to eat the Twinkie). It really breaks down the psychology of making decisions, if you have ever seen a “zoom” commercial about losing weight and wondered how they are different, save yourself the money because they talk about the Rider and the Elephant.
I think my biggest gap for me right now is finding the appropriate work/life balance and not burning myself out before I retire.
Sometimes for me I constantly live with the pressure of “the gaps” and it feels like just when you close one gap you find another. My faith tells me that grace stands in that gap, and actually kind of obliterates it in terms of feeling like I have to close the gap to measure up. I can’t, but the grace of God does that. At the same time lifelong posture of growth can say, well, there’s another gap. Let’s work on this one today! In my best moments that’s what I’m able to say, anyway. Thanks Sean! –Jeff P.S. through the Switch book was interesting as well