The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 448: Dr. Benjamin Hardy - How To Go From The Gap To The Gain, Choosing Your Who, & Setting Big Goals

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Order my new book: The Pursuit Of Excellence https://bit.ly/excellencehawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and the author of Willpower Doesn't Work and Personality Isn't Permanent. He also co-authored Who Not How with Dan Sullivan, which sold over 120,000 copies in the first 4 months of publication. Their most recent book is called, The Gap and The Gain. His blogs have been read by over 100 million people and are featured on Harvard Business Review, the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, and many others. For several years, he was the #1 most-read writer on Medium.com. Notes: The broaden and build theory — Dr. Barbara Fredeickson — shows that positive emotions are the starting point of learning, growth, and high performance "Competing against someone else puts you in the gap. Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against." More specifically you measure your own gains, rather than worrying about other people. 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." "This one simple concept is a masterclass on positive psychology, healthy relationships, mental well-being, and high-performance. Everything that psychologists know about how to create a high-functioning and successful person can be achieved using The GAP and the GAIN." Who Not How -- Life is about surrounding yourself with the right WHO's. Who are the WHO's in your life to help you achieve what you want? "Surround yourself with people who remind you more of your future than your past. —Dan Sullivan" Commitment creates freedom -- Once the decision is made, then you can focus on the work. I like thinking of it that way and in a way it frees your mind when the decision, the commitment has been made. "Your behavior doesn't come from your personality. Rather, your personality is shaped by your behavior. When you act a certain way, you then judge yourself based on your actions. Hence, you can quickly alter your identity simply by altering your behavior." "The belief that you cannot change leads to a victim mentality. If you are determined by nature to be what you are, then there is nothing you can do about your lot in life. Conversely, the belief that you can change leads you to take responsibility for your life. You may have been born with certain constraints, but you can change those constraints, allowing yourself to improve and grow." "Don't join an easy crowd; you won't grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform are high. —Jim Rohn" "You are never pre-qualified to live your dreams. You qualify yourself by doing the work. By committing—even overcommitting—to what you believe you should do." "You shape the garden of your mind by planting specific things from your environment, such as the books you read, experiences you have, and people you surround yourself with." "True learning is a permanent change in cognition and/or behavior. In other words, learning involves a permanent change in how you see and act in the world. The accumulation of information isn't learning. Lots of people have heads full of information they don't know what to do with. If you want to learn something quickly, you need to immerse yourself in that thing and immediately implement what you're learning." "You need to deepen the quality and intimacy of your relationships with other people. Our culture is being shaped to isolate us more and more from each other. Addiction is becoming an epidemic. When you have deep and meaningful relationships, your chances of unhealthy addiction are far less. The following are four principles for overcoming harmful defaults in your environment."

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but also because I love partnering with excellent companies and creating cool opportunities for my listeners, which we did. They are giving my listeners of the Learning Leaders Show 20% off if you go to Viori.com slash hawk. That's V-U-O-R-I-com slash hawk. Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk.

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Now on tonight's featured leader, he's back. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, organizational psychologist, bestselling author of multiple books, including Willpower Doesn't Work. Who, not How, and most recently, the gap and the gain. During this conversation we discuss two different ways to set goals and what's best for you. And then why commitment creates freedom,

pulled up by what it means to live in the gap versus living in the gain. Ladies and gentlemen, this one will make you think it's Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Ben, it's good to see you again, man. And last time you were working on your PhD, now you've got it. So Dr. Benjamin Hardy, man, welcome back to the Learning Leaders Show. Yeah, it's been, it must have been at least two years ago, if that's the case. Three years, man, three years.

So it's good to see you. I've been following closely because your work has impacted me in a great way. But to get us started, man, I want to start a little bit more personal because one of the things I'm apt to do when I get a new book is turn all the way to the back and look at the acknowledgement section. And there are two people that you think that I want to start with because I'm curious about it. And that is your mom and your dad. And they're actually separated in the acknowledgement section. And your mom sounds like she's sitting on Zoom, reading sections of your book to you. And I know that's a painful process. As I just recorded my next book this week on audio, and that's a wild process to like, oh, no, I got to change

that and then your dad who you talked about is has taken some hardships and turned them into gains. So can you talk to me a little bit more about your upbringing and your and your mom and your dad? Yeah, absolutely. And just again, glad to be with you and really, really cool, unique place to start. So it is true that when I'm writing my books, you know, I and I'll probably end up improving my process, you know, and going, you know, having, I'll probably end up actually moving forward because I'm going about two books a year now, pace, probably hiring a ghostwriter and more like spitting out verbally to someone and then like going back and forth on Zoom. But up to this point, I've been writing, writing my books.

And then I do the first, first time through going on Zoom and literally going word by word by word with my mom because my first drafts are just literally incoherent. Like they're just like they're, they're so messed up. And but it's nice to have her because she's so patient. I love how she thinks. And we just go back and forth. And by going back and forth, not only does it jog my thoughts on like, oh, actually, that needs to come here, but it also allows me to explain it because she's like,

you're just not explaining this. Right. It doesn't make sense. And so it forces me. And then once I explain, she's like, okay, then write that. You know, it's like, okay. And so it really, really helps. helps me. And we're in the middle of doing that right now for the book I'm writing right now,

which is called Be Your Future Self Now, which comes out next May, but like, or probably June, but, you know, we're going through that process right now. But yeah, my mom's just someone who's been awesome. She's, she actually got me into self-development and stuff like that when I was a teenager and stuff. So she's been awesome. What did she do? What'd your mom do? She was, she actually for a long time ran a health club with her sister. So like they owned a like a gym honestly and like she was really into that and she's always been in sales um so she's now you know she's been in sales and she uh she often sold honestly coaching programs um but she's she's just kind of been in that world for a long time very cool and then your dad it sounds like there's a different part

of the story of when it comes to hardship i don't know what those hardships are but but in turning them into gains and that will lead us a little bit into the gap and the gain but what what about your dad yeah so my dad's awesome um my parents actually got divorced when i was a lot of and my dad, the divorce really threw him off. Like it was not expected. And it was very painful and traumatic and ultimately led him down into a path of extreme drug addiction. So like when I was 12, 13, 14, like all through my years, like my dad was going down

a deep kind of chasm of extreme drug addiction. And it did get to the point where like that environment was so bad that we had to go and just live with my mom full time. Because while I was a teenager, we'd like, my parents lived pretty. close. So we'd spend a week at my mom's, a week of my dad's. We'd go back and forth. I'm the oldest of three. But eventually my dad's environment and he's just his, his space and his energy got so rough that me and my younger brothers just fully separate ourselves. And for a long time, my dad would actually come and like, try to like talk to talk to us. And we'd just be like,

go away. You know, it was a tough, tough space for a while. But he did turn it around, actually, while I was serving a church mission. He really did kind of get out of that space. he eventually got to the point where he was helping other people, like being a part of like, you know, like group addiction circles where like almost like an AA style experience where he would help lead those out and help other people. And so he's, he's definitely come a long way. You know, I think it's really important to help other people see their gains and to measure people based on, you know, on where they're at, not where they were, you know, and also to give

compassion to people's former selves, including myself, you know, like I'm not the same person I was five, 10 years ago. And so it would be wrong of me. me to continue to judge my dad's current self on who he was 10, 20 years ago, right? And it's, you know, and so I'm big in the gain on my dad. I'm massively proud of him. And he's an amazing man. I mean, he's, he's, he actually has always been one of my best friends and he still is. And we have a very close relationship. I love the story because it, it, it, it's not perfect. You know, there's a, there's a, it's a roller coaster like. And to see where you're at now, I think flows well

with the gap and the gain. And one other part is the last part from the acknowledgments, but you open it by saying, I've been in love with the gap and the gain concept from the first time I heard it. So, Ben, this is the first time some people are hearing it. What is the gap and the gain concept? Yeah.

So, and by the way, I did hear it the first time reading Dan Sullivan's little books. He writes little books for his internal clients. And so I read the gap and the gain back in 2018 when I was still like top blogger on Medium.com and was just like, this is such a different way and a much more healthy way from my standpoint of looking at achievement. And so basically what it is is this. It's a really simple model, but within the model, I think that there are so many applications. At the most basic level of the model is you are in your life, especially your happiness,

but how you feel about yourself is dependent upon what you're measuring yourself against. And as a society, we're often trained to measure ourselves against either other people. So that happens in public education where we're taking tests in school and then being measured against how we did against other people. But also social media and things like that. Like we are taught to measure ourselves against other people or against just the ideals of society or even against the ideals in our own head.

And where the idea originally came from was, know, everyone in Dan Sullivan's, like his, sorry, everyone in his coaching program are high, high level elite entrepreneurs who are very successful and their businesses are very successful. And one of the things that frustrated Dan was recognizing that these people were continuously becoming more externally successful, but progressively they were unhappy with their progress. They just, and like it didn't matter how much they achieved. It didn't matter that they were having their best year. They were still unsatisfied with that progress.

us. And so that led Dan to realizing, well, they were measuring themselves against their ideal. And so when you're measuring yourself against an ideal, then you're never, you're, you're, you're essentially devaluing your current position. You know, and I, I've done that. Like when I, when I launched my first book, Willpower Doesn't work. I felt like an absolute failure because it didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list, you know, it didn't matter that for the last eight years I had been building up to that, like learning how to write, eventually blogging, growing an email list, getting a six-figure. It's getting a six-figure. your book deal, eventually writing my first book and publishing it and it hit, you know, selling tens of thousands of copies. I devalued all of that progress because I was measuring it against what I ideally thought it should have been. And so the gap is just whenever you're measuring yourself against an ideal. And your ideals move all the time. You know, in the book we talk about it, like a horizon in the desert. It doesn't matter how many steps forward you take. The horizon's going to keep advancing beyond you. You can't get to the horizon. And so if you're always measuring yourself against the horizon, then you don't feel like you're in a great spot right now. And that's,

that, that's the gap. Can that, I, I, you know, I'm all in on this stuff. Can that though, some people say like, well, you don't want to rest on your laurels or you achieve something and then you're going to just kind of chill and relax. And the reason that the people who change the world or the people that impact a lot of people, the people that help others, the reason that they are that way is because they're just not able to stand still. They're not. able to relax. They're not able to. They just have to keep going. And I, I identify with that some. Like, I feel like, so do I. So do I. So, so how can we live in the game and still have that mentality of wanting to help people, wanting to make a difference, wanting to impact the world?

Like, that's the part of this juxtaposition that I think is hard. So, so, and I think a lot of people who listen are kind of that way too, right? Their growth. Everyone who listens to your podcast is probably this way. Right. Yeah. Just knowing your audience. Yeah. So I'll explain the gain and then let's take some time to go back and forth to to, to kind of drill down the nuances of this because I believe it's certainly possible. I don't believe that having ideals is a bad thing.

Okay. You know, you have to have ideas. We are having ideals is important. The only thing that we're talking about is measuring your current situation against those ideals. Gotcha. Actually, as you progress, you will, your ideals will progress. You know, like it's good to see where. you can make changes in the world and sometimes even going in the gap where you're frustrated

with something is what illuminates where you can then start making gains. But staying in the gap where you know, you're wishing it was different. A big thing about, you know, the gap is, is that you're taking your current self and you're saying it could have been different. I could have been further along. I should have been further along rather than saying, here's where I am. So the gain is actually when you're comparing yourself with where you were before. The gain is when you're only measuring yourself against your former self. So rather than me measuring myself in the case of my first book against the ideal, which was the ideal in my own head.

No one else had that ideal for me. It was just some, but I will say I was probably influenced by other people in having that ideal. But if I'm in the gain, I'm measuring Benjamin Hardy as he publishes that book against Benjamin Hardy a year before where I had no book written, you know, or five years before. And so certainly I'm further than my former self, even though maybe I'm not where I would ideally

like to be. I'm not measuring myself against my ideals. I'm measuring myself against my former self. And I'm seeing that I've made progress. Now, that doesn't mean I'm resting on my laurels. It doesn't mean that I don't have ambitions. It doesn't mean I don't have big goals. It just means I'm no longer measuring myself in my current situation in a way that makes me feel like a failure. I'm measuring myself in a way that enables me to actually feel my progress and see it. And then it kind of goes to that idea of you train yourself on what you see. You train your perspective. You train your selective attention, as we would call in psychology.

And so if you start actually regularly measuring the gain, I actually like the quote from Seth Godin. He says you see whatever you measure. If I start seeing my gains and measuring them more effectively, I'll start wanting more gains and I'll start being able to make more gains. So it actually doesn't, it doesn't stop you from success. What it does is it actually just taps into higher levels of confidence. confidence, perspective, and it takes your current position and elevates it rather than diminishes

it because of how you're measuring it. And then you can then continue to get more and better gains. How do you, how does this relate to goal setting? I've had a weird relationship with goal setting where at times where I've written them down and they were big and audacious and large and hard to get and you'd only hit a few of them. And then I've had other moments where I'm like, I'm not setting any goals. I'm just going to focus on putting my head down on doing the work. And then the output will be the output. And then whatever happens happens. And in a way, like I feel like I'm more happy with the latter.

So I'm curious, how do you take the gap and the gain and set goals both for yourself? And from a leadership perspective, how you'd set goals, maybe for a team or a company or like a revenue target, you know, things like that. Like, how do you take this towards goal setting? Absolutely. So as a high level perspective, very high level perspective, every human behavior is goal driven, literally. So in philosophy, they call that teleology, that every behavior or action is done for a reason. It's done for an end. So as an example, anyone who's listening to this podcast, they may be doing it habitually,

but they're still doing it for a reason. And that reason is because they perceive that listening to your podcast is going to help them in some way with their goals. And so even me walking from where I'm sitting to my fridge is me doing something to achieve a goal. It may be to get something out of my fridge. And so like from a philosophical perspective, every behavior is to achieve a goal, even if that's just to go to the bathroom or to, you know, go pick up your kids from school.

And so every behavior is goal driven. And also like one level, one level other, like in psychology, they call the concept prospection. And prospection is the idea that whatever view you hold of your future, that's the thing driving your present. Actually, that's a big shift for psychology. For over a hundred years, psychologists thought that human beings were actually, you know, products of their past. But the more accurate, the more accurate picture is that human beings are more a product of whatever future that they see for themselves. And actually, Victor Frankel explains that very clearly. That like when people in, in the book,

Man Search for Meaning, he talks about once people lost hope and connection to their bigger picture future, the present lost context and the present also lost meaning and actually in that case, those people died. And so certainly ideals future is really important. And so I'm not a believer in the statement that like you shouldn't have goals because I think everything that we do actually is a goal. And so like when it comes to the gap and the gain, I certainly think you should have goals from my standpoint. And this is just my unbelief. I don't think you should have more than three priorities in life. That's just me. I like that Jim Collins said, if you have more than three priorities, you have none.

There's also a lot of research that shows that people who are disconnected from their future self, they have a really hard time navigating the present because your present is if you don't have a connection to your future self, you're probably not investing in that future self, whether that be in terms of relationships, how you spend your time is where you're investing yourself. And so the more connected you get to your future self, the more you can start making proper investments in the present so that you can start compounding that future self. It could be financially. It could be in terms of leadership or skills or whatnot. So from my standpoint, getting connected to your future self, clarifying three core priorities of your life.

So for me, my three priorities in my life, the top bucket is my family and my faith. The second one is books and the third one is money. Those are the three core priorities in my life that I want to invest in because I want those to compound and grow and become my future self. And then from there, it's just setting goals, you know, whatever it may be like. So my 20, 22 goals, I may have 22 goals that are relevant to my big three priorities. But when it comes to the gap and the gain, as I make progress towards measurable goals, I'm measuring my progress backwards. So as an example, I have a goal of, you know, let's just set one of my 2020.

goals is to 10x my my subscribers on YouTube. So have around 40,000. So I'd like somewhere around 400,000 by the end of 2022. In order to do that, you know, from a process standpoint, I'm going to make 250 videos. But let's just say somewhere halfway along the way, I'm only at 100,000, right? And being in the gain, I would measure the fact that at 100,000, I'm much further along than I was at 40,000 where I'm at right now. I'm measuring myself backwards, but I'm measuring my, but I'm still marching towards measurable goals that are within the realm of my desired future self, but I'm not measuring myself against my

moving ideals. I'm measuring myself backwards, experiencing the progress along the way. That doesn't stop me from wanting more progress. It doesn't stop me from learning, how can I do this better so that I can get where I want to go faster, but I'm only measuring myself backwards, not forward. How will you feel at the end of the year if you two-xed your YouTube subscribers versus 10xing them. You missed your goal, but you certainly made progress. You've gained. How do you how will you feel if that happens? So this is a really important question. What the question to ask is what way should I feel that would be best and most advantageous for current me and future me? Now, I can't change the fact that I've only two X'd, right? That's my current

position. I can be angry at myself. I can beat myself up and I can devalue my past. I can say 2022 was a failure. Let's flush it down the toilet. We got some progress, but it wasn't what it could have been, wasn't what it should have been, right? All of those things are, by the way, me measuring it against an ideal because I'm saying, oh, it wasn't good enough, wasn't what I could have been, instead of just acknowledging that that's what occurred. Right. And so I, so from my standpoint and from all the research and psychology I've done. My belief is it would be better for my psychology and better for my future if I found a way to to look at and measure the past in a way that made my past positive, not negative. In fact, in order to have a healthy present, you need two things. You need a positive

past and an exciting and compelling future. And so if I'm constantly making my past negative by framing it against ideals, then I'm, then I've not only devalued it. I've now contextualized it as a failure, as a loss, and therefore I'm not learning from it. You know,

and that's really how trauma is made, is because something occurs and you're measuring it against what could have or should have happened. You're saying, why did this happen to me? I'm worse off because this happens to me. And I'm not blaming people

for going into a traumatic, state, I've been through deep trauma, but I'm just saying the reason it is a trauma is because you're in the gap about it. You're still, you're still measuring what occurred against what you thought should have happened or wishing it didn't happen. And post-traumatic growth happens when you actually, rather than being in the gap about it, you actually start seeing the gains in it. My father being a drug addict. Like how can, how can I start seeing the gains in that and start seeing here are the ways I actually, so rather than devaluing an experience or devaluing the past, you actually want to increase the value of it. What are all the reasons why I'm better because of this or that I can

have more meaning or purpose or learning so that my current self is better because of it? What about the VP of Sales who has sold $500 million last year? And her goal is $600 million this year. And she finishes the year at $550 million. So same place, you're saying? Same, same company. They don't set the goals the company does. And this is a very real thing. I've had this myself.

You big number, got to get a lot bigger. You still grew. Still was good. You're better than you were the year before, but you didn't hit. And you just get obliterated by the people above you at work. That person right now is driving in their car thinking about this. And what do you say to them? I want you to hit me back with this.

don't let me leave this. I just want to give an example real quick of my son. Okay. And then I want you to come back to me on this and I want us to hit this. So my son is 14 and he is getting very deep into competitive tennis. And obviously, we all want him to get better. Like, in fact, he's getting into academies and stuff like that so that he can actually hopefully track up to going and playing college tennis. Let's just say, in the case of last week, he had a tennis tournament.

he won one of his matches and he got destroyed in the second one right um one of the things that is important about the gap in the game and and i don't want to skirt around your question i do want us to hit it directly i'm just trying to lay a little bit more groundwork a key aspect of being in the gain is that me as a human being determines what my own progress means to me so like your view of my progress matters less to me than my own view of my progress, right? And I'm the only one who can determine the meaning and also the value of my own progress. And so the challenge that most people have is that they undermine their own progress, right? And so with my son Caleb, and then we'll go back to your example, which is an extremely good one, it matters less. It should matter less

to Caleb what my opinion of his match was than his opinion of his match, right? But if I'm imposing my value system on why he could have or should have done better in that match, certainly we can do some coaching, certainly we can talk about it. But for him, it's more important that he can actually determine for himself what that match meant. And hopefully if he's getting gains out of it, he can start to analyze, yes, he didn't get the result he wanted. He did lose. But what are the things he learned from that so that he can see it as a valuable experience? If it was just, oh, you didn't win, it was a waste or, you know, then that the experience now is diminished. And so even though it wasn't the result he was looking

for, if he's in the gain, he's learning from it. He's getting better because of it. And it's a valuable experience. It's not one to be diminished. In fact, it's actually, it may be the best thing that could have happened to him if he can really learn from it for his future self. But it's up to him to decide what his experience means more than me. I can hopefully coach him through that. I'm wondering your initial feedback on that. And then as we tie it to your specific example. I just think of Gary Ridgeson on the show.

I don't, and I think he attributed to somebody else. So the quote's been said before. But I never lose. I either win or I learn. I think I expanded and said, I hope you would learn when you, win too, right? Because you're doing the post-mortem. So I never lose either win or I learn. I would say I'd win and learn. And when I lose, I try to try to learn so that we improve. And my backgrounds in athletics, too. So I fully grasp the importance of watching the film of the game and getting corrective coaching and

working on it immediately so you can fix that as well as doubling down on strengths. So this is why we won this particular game. Let's make sure that not only do we maintain this, but get better at this particular part of whatever our game is. I'm with you on the mentality of we've got to learn and have a, I don't know if I call it a formal process, but certainly to make sure you have a process in place to analyze and do post-mortems or as a military would say the after-action reviews after these weeks, months, quarters, years, games, match, whatever it may be, so that we're learning from them all the time. Like, that has to be a regular part of the process.

Because if not, we'll just, the problem I've seen at some companies or some places is that they just don't take any time to analyze why something went well or why something didn't. They'll wait until like a four alarm emergency and then all hands on deck trying to fix something when it's like you should have been doing that a year and a half ago, right? Being more proactive instead of reactive. That's what I kind of gather from what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.

So let's actually, if we if we can go into your example. Okay. So the person last year, I think you said sold what? 500 million. Their team sold 500. And then they go up to 550 with the goal was 600. So the goal by the company for them, which is obviously how it works, set at 600 million, obviously are arbitrary numbers. But and they sold 550.

And so they missed. They missed by 50 million bucks. But they still grew by 50 million. So that's the scenario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. So obviously, number one, that was an external reference point. I'm all for external

reference points. Companies have quotas, et cetera, but in the end, that reference point was set by someone else. And a big, big aspect of being in the gain is about ultimately having an internal referencing system. So for this person, yes, they maybe just got slammed. Maybe they did miss an opportunity because maybe if they would have hit that, they could have gotten a razor or whatnot, right? So it's possible that their leader is in the gap about them, right? Their leader is, you know, not necessarily seeing the progress, but they're only seeing the gap between where they are and where they ideally should have been, right? And I actually think that leaders who are consistently in the gap are not necessarily

the most effective leaders. That's not to say that you don't want to create vision. That's a big aspect of transformational leadership, is having vision, inspiring action, inspiring creativity, but leaders slash parents slash coaches slash teachers who are only in the gap and do not acknowledge or appreciate or help people see their own gains are undermining the very confidence and et cetera of their people. That's why I brought my son up is because when I shifted away from constantly pointing at the gap of what could have happened in that match and asking him what are the what what what did you get out of that how can you be better because

of that why are you know or just where are you at right now as a tennis player versus where you were out a month ago and helping him see the gains and also acknowledging his gains what i have found for my son is is that by being in the game more with my son and helping him see his progress but also then helping him to determine the meaning of his own progress his intrinsic motivation has skyrocketed He's much more apt to setting his own goals, which are much more exciting and compelling than the goals that I would try to force upon him. He just is making more progress and he's less scared of failure or fear because he knows that he's going to get gains out of every experience. And so I would say you can't obviously control the perception of those around you. Most many, probably many, many, many leaders are in the gap.

But it's still up to you to define your own experience, to define your own gains. And part of that is honestly asking, what could I do differently or what is it that led us to 550? I mean, that's part of being in the gain is actually, as you said, analyzing your behavior, being honest about it rather than just ignoring it. I mean, you certainly do learn from your experiences. That's, that's actually a big part of the model. That's why I brought up trauma is because the more you're in the gain about your experiences,

the more you learn from them rather than just devaluing, oh, we didn't get there. Let's just set the next goal. It's like, no, no, no. why didn't you get there? Like let's actually like break this down. Let's learn from this and figure out how to create more and more gains from what did occur. Like let's actually like actually learn from this experience as much as possible. And from there we can decide where we want to go next.

This is why I think it's kind of a lazy goal. I mean work with me here. I want to hear what you thinking. If you disagree, no, no, no, no, please. A lazy goal one of, I play football. Okay, there's a background. So I still like to watch it.

A lazy goal is. by the way. It is Super Bowl or the years of failure. Super Bowl or bust. We win the Super Bowl bust. Right. And I always think like, really? I just, I like high expectations. I like excellence. I like striving for things. But I feel like that's a lazy statement. Like it's not a thoughtful. I'm like I said, I don't want to judge a person. That is not a thoughtful statement to say it's Super Bowl or bust. What? What do you think about that? Well, I guess a big part of it is that people are certainly entitled to their own goals. So like if a team is really, obviously we live in a media world where people project that upon certain teams. It's like, you know, if you've got these super teams, you got the Rams, you got the bucks, like, and now the media is saying it's Super Bowl or bust. That's different from internally them saying, this is our standard. right? This is where we're going to go.

Yeah, I'm not talking about when the head coach says this, not the media head coach. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I love the thought. I love the question. I guess my question is, in the case of we feel like it's super bowl or bust, I do get that if you don't get the result, you've now determined it a waste. That's kind of the idea that essentially we shouldn't have done it because we, you know, like it. And so I like the idea of the goal is the Super Bowl. It's a very specific, it's a measurable goal. But let's just say you get out in the first round.

Like saying it was a failure, which according to your goal, it kind of was, it stops you from, it stopped. I'm certain, I'm really thinking about this because this is a really good. This is a really, really potent example. Mm-hmm. I guess I'm just, can I bring up a friend of mine who just won a state championship, okay,

last year, high school basketball coach, his name is Brooke Cups. Brooke's been on this podcast. I encourage people to listen to that one because I absolutely love the way he views the world. And when it comes to the goals he set, they are always process-oriented goals. He doesn't claim to tell everyone else that they need to do this.

This is what they do. And so their goal was to attack every opportunity with purpose. That was their one, singular goal. And so, and then it was their job, the coaching staff to hold the players accountable, did you attack that opportunity with purpose? Did you attack that opportunity of purpose? It was a process or integral. There was no results-based goals. And this team went and ran the table at the end of the year and won the first state title in the history of Centerville High School for basketball. And we recorded after that and that we went through their entire process of living up to

their values and attacking opportunities with purpose and not setting any goals outside of process related goals. And to me, I don't know, I may be wrong. It just spoke to me as if I put my head down and have process oriented related goals, the outcome will take care of itself. As Bill Walsh wrote a book called The Score Take Care of It Takes Care of Itself, meaning champions behave like champions long before they win a championship. It's the behaviors that lead up.

And then the result takes care of itself. And I think this applies in sales and business with yourself. I feel like it does. Again, though, this is your area of expertise. You're an expert on this too. No, let me, let's see if we can. I'm interested in a conversation on this. I agree that process-oriented goals are important,

but I also agree that the goal determines the process. You know, just as an example. Okay. I think that the players would be lying to themselves if they said that they didn't care about winning. I think that I agree. No, no. And seriously, I think that the process is a byproduct of the goal. And so just as an example, if my goal is to make $10 million a year,

but my process is leading to $300,000 a year, you know, then I'm, you know, like, and I'm doubling. I just think if you actually change the goal, you'll often be required to adjust your process. You know, like, and so I think, you mean setting bigger goals will force the process? Or different goals as an example.

Okay. As an example. Okay. My son playing tennis in the beginning. And this kind of goes back to the idea of, of you see what you measure. Okay. My son,

like in the beginning, I think if we were to ask him, like, you know, if I was actually to think about, what are you measuring when it came to tennis? you know he i think what he was met he wouldn't have said this because he wasn't explicit about it he was playing a lot of tennis he was having a lot of fun with tennis but i think if i was to like

actually see like what is he measuring related tennis i think it was the amount of time he played like i just think he loved playing tennis we had him going um we had him going three or four times a week and uh he was just like enjoying being there and certainly he was focusing on that and like enjoying it um and i'm all for that but you in a lot of ways you do get what you're measuring And so one of the, his, his coach pulled him aside and just said, Caleb, I see it. And by the way, Caleb was losing consistently. Even though he's got a lot of skill, consistently we would take him to a tournament and he would radically underperform to his skill level, pressure and just mindset and stuff like that.

But his coach took him aside and just said, Caleb, I don't know if like, he's like, you're looking really good. There's actually an academy that I think if you got into, it would help you even advance for further and faster, but in order to even get into this academy, you need to have what's called, like, you need a three on what's called the UTR system. Have you ever heard of the UTR system? I haven't, no. It's the universal tennis rating system.

All tennis players are rated on the same system. It's from one to 16 and a half. Like anywhere up to like, and they have, it's basically called a maturity model. In order to be like considered professional, you've got to be like a 14 on this scale. And so like Jokovic, who is like the number one player, he's ranked 16. to five, you know, and so like, and so anyways, when his coach said, you have to, in order to even get into this academy, you got to actually get your UTR up to like a, like a three. And Caleb was, we weren't even really sure what his UTR was, you know,

but it is the tracking and measuring system of tennis. And so we then just logged on and looked at it. We looked at it. We looked up Caleb. He was like a one point two, you know, and it was based on how he was doing in his tournaments. And so once he actually became aware of a better measuring system rather than just how much time he's playing tennis. But it's like, no, how are you doing on your UTR, which is like relative to how you're doing in tournaments? Once he actually had a better tracking system and had a clear goal, he started winning in his tournaments. He had more of a reason to do it. And it really does go back to Frankel, in my opinion. Like, I do think process is really important. But I, but what like literally, this is what Frankel said. Like one of the core things that

they did to help people in the concentration camps to not go crazy was that they had to have a higher sense of purpose and meaning and goal that gave their present context. Actually, when it comes to the psychology like of meaning, present behaviors have no meaning unless they have some connection to some future. So even the most process oriented football player who is just digging into the process and just playing, playing, playing in this practice, it's just this play. It's just a just as practice. If there is zero connection between that to some future, this thing loses meaning. It can't have meaning unless it's connected to some future. And so, I might be biased on this, but I think that devaluing the future, devaluing outcomes or devaluing some sense of purpose

that this is for a purpose. I frankly just don't think that it's, I like your friend and I think he's, I don't think he's lying, but I also just think all of those practices were meaningful in themselves, but they would be meaningless if they weren't connected to something else. Yeah. No, I'm with you. And obviously, when they go out to play, when you watch and play, they have a massive passion to win. And then the results happened.

So I'm with you. And I know when any game I played, it was like, I'm going to kill you before you kill me type mentality, like I'm going to win and still feel like that in a lot of things. I'm curious about you now with your writing. Do you care about Lists? Do you care about Wall Street Journal? I know you've hit some of them. Do you care about New York Times?

Like, do you care about those things? I don't. I don't. You truly don't care about those things. No, no, no. How did you feel when you hit them? How did you feel when you started hitting them? Well, that would, it would only matter how I felt when I started hitting them if they were actually my target.

They actually stopped being my target once I started hitting them. But they really weren't my target. it. And so me hitting them, I can be in the gain about it. And I can genuinely say this occurred versus my former self where it wasn't occurring. And I can actually genuinely appreciate the fact that I am further along than my former self. The reason that they weren't exciting for me to hit is because they genuinely stopped being my goal once I started hitting them. Which is your goal. My goal is to write the best books I can and to sell the most books I can. I do want people to read my books. And so rather But that goal's hard to, that goals, you can't really measure that goal, though.

Which one? How do you measure sell the most that I can possibly sell? Well, so that's an infinite number. Yeah, so that's not the goal. My goal and, you know, they are more specific in time bound. As an example. Okay. For 20, for 22, my goal is that collectively my books pass a million copies.

All of them. Okay. Collect. So that's my goal for 2022. Right now I'm probably somewhere in the ballpark of like three or 400,000, that my books have sold. So collectively, in 2022, I'm publishing two new books. My other books are still selling. Collectively, my goal is to break a million copies. Gotcha. And everything else then goes with that. The YouTube converts the book sales, coming on podcast converts the book sales

speaking, I assume. Yeah. So yeah, if it's if it's a, if it's a meaningful process to that end, yeah, I mean, certainly. I mean, that's one of the things that Angela Duckworth actually talks about in grit, which I think is really important. And it relates very deeply to all of the research on motivation and hope. What Duckworth said in her book is that from her perspective, maturity is two things. One is actually deciding what you're committed to long term. So in my case, it could be continuing to publish, you know, better and better books that reach more and more people. Like, I mean, I could quantify that if I want.

But deciding what you're committed to, big picture. And then another aspect of maturity is uncommitting along the way to pathways that are not as effective as other pathways. So like, let me give myself as an example. So a key aspect of hope, by the way, is three things. And motivation, they're the same three things. One, you have to have a clear goal. Two, you've got to have a pathway to getting from A to B. That could be your process.

And then the third is some sense of agency or control that what you do, matters and that you can actually go from A to B, that you can find or create effective pathways. And so- That's for hope? Those three things are for what? That's that, that's hope theory. So one of them is clear goal. One of them is pathways thinking, finding or creating workable paths from where you are to where you want to go. And then the other one is agency thinking that like what you do matters, that your behavior, that you can actually influence what's happening and actually that you can find or create new and better pathways. Those three are very similar, by the way, to what's called expectancy theory, which is the

motivation, one of the core motivation theories, but back to Duckworth, like, so you have this high level goal and then you have means that are leading you to that goal. But so you want to, part of maturity is committing to whatever high level goal that you're seriously committed to, deciding what you're committed to, but then when it comes to the means goals along the way, aggressively uncommitting when it's when you, when you can find some better way. Um, so like me as an example, I've spent years writing on medium.com. Very effective. pathway to my goal. It was not the end. It was a means to an end. I was certainly very committed to my process, writing amazing blog posts, publishing them, getting better at headlines. But it was a means to

an end. My end was that I wanted to write books and I wanted to get book deals. But at some point, I realized that it was no longer the best pathway for where I was ultimately trying to go. And so I was able to abruptly stop that pathway and find hopefully new and better pathways to getting where I wanted to go. It didn't change my big picture commitment, but it was me releasing a path that was effective in the past, but no longer was. But that based on where I'm at now, it wouldn't serve me to stick with that process simply because it was effective in the past. Like there are new and better ways, hopefully for me getting better and for me getting where I want to go as a writer of books. Gotcha. I want to talk a little bit about collaboration. So you've collaborated on who, not how a book with Dan Sullivan as well as the gap and the gain. And I think the deconstructing

the collaborative process can help in a lot of different places, especially from a leadership perspective. I've learned if you can't collaborate and work with other people, it is going to be tough. Probably not going to work. What's your process to class? I mean, your mom also is a big part of this too. It sounds like what's your, what's your overall philosophy on how to collaborate with another person? In this case, in your case, writing books, but just overall in general, I'm curious about collaboration. Yeah, it's an awesome concept. I would say, you know, who not how is a really big core of this philosophy, who not how just being that like who's are the way to getting results more than hows. You know, and so that's, so,

That's just a big, a big aspect that you're not the only who in the equation and that it shouldn't be all about your how, but it should be about like who are the who's that can make this happen. And so in the case of Dan as an example, you know, he's not the kind of person who wants to write these kind of books, but he does want these books written. And so he can force the how upon himself, which is outside his interest and skill level, or he can find a who that does want to engage in the collaboration as well. who does have the interest in the skills and Dan in this case can let the who do the how right um and so i just think that there's so many areas of our life where we can apply collaboration uh as an example you know and this isn't for everyone but like literally if you want your house cleaned like you can clean it or you can apply collaboration to that you can apply who not how i'm not saying you should do that i'm just saying you could apply collaboration to that where you stop placing the hows

upon yourself and you start having more who's handle a lot of the hows. And so like one example certainly could be email, you know. And so when it comes to collaborate, like, you know, as an example, having an assistant, handle a lot of the logistics, you know, handle a lot of things. If you want to be really good at what you do, ideally you have more and more flow and focus time where your superpowers rather than having 50 degrees of split focus because you're so busy in so many directions doing how. The goal would be to get who's in place so that you can actually do the how that you really want.

So that's just one principle. And one just thought on who not how is that one reason people don't do it is because they see it as a cost. As an example, me hiring someone to help around my house for 15, 20 hours a week, right? Helps keep the place clean. Helps keep the sanity with six kids. I could see it as that's a cost. You know, I'd rather just do it myself. or you could see it as an investment in you, your family, your time, your space.

And if you're willing to make investments in whose, you're really making an investment yourself and in your future self. And so you don't ever want to look at collaboration or who not how is a cost. It's always an investment, which could hopefully lead to compounding results. One other super important part from my opinion of collaboration is being super clear on the success criteria. So, like, as an example, like if I were to hire an assistant,

and again, I know that this may not sound like collaboration, but I'm framing it as collaboration rather than just hiring and leading. And that we can talk about other forms of collaboration as well, but the clear the leader is on what success looks like. So it's like in the case of like my assistance, like, okay, in order for, like, it's hard for them to measure success and also hard for them to execute if they don't know what success.

looks like. So it's like, what does the completed project look like? All right, well, you know, my schedule is X, Y, and Z, like the team is being led, like laying out what the specific success success criteria is, the clear you can clarify the vision, the easier it is to not only find the right who, who can execute it, but the easier it is for them to know how to execute the how. So those are just some thoughts. I can now go, if you want, in the direction of like actually developing transformational collaborations with someone like a Dan or like, you know, having, you know. Well, I think, I think, yeah, I think, yeah, I think. Yeah. I am just curious selfishly maybe about about your writing process with him.

Yeah, no, 100%. So here's what's cool about it. I've been learning from Dan specifically since 2014 when I first started my PhD in organizational psychology. I didn't even know Dan existed. My aunt Jane was part of like business mastermind groups and she started learning about Dan and she started sending me little books, little quote books. He's big on like little quotes.

And so I started reading them and loving them. And once I started blogging, I started like studying his work a little bit more. And so I just really enjoyed his thinking and his work directly and eventually and implemented a lot of it into my blog posts, honestly that got read many, many times. And so I do like the principal go straight to the master. Like, you know, if you want to learn how to be, you know, like a successful potter, you don't, you know, rather than learning from amateurs like go straight to the master, like, you know, and that's something I learned from a guy named Timothy Paulson.

but Dan was just someone who's thinking I really enjoyed. I ended up, you know, joining groups that were associated with Dan and around Dan. And one, there was a time and this was around when I was, you know, after I'd published, Will Power Doesn't work. I listened to him and give a presentation on who not how.

And this was when it was a really fresh idea for him. And so I just actually literally went up and asked him. I just said, after his presentation, I said, Dan, I'm in love with that idea. and he knew who he knew who I was at that point I was already you know published author big blogger and stuff I just said Dan if you ever want that idea to be published as a major book I'll write it I'll write who not how and so he literally completed his impact filter form which is what what clarifies basically what is this project why is it so important and what must

be true in order for it to be a success he laid out the vision and then he let me do it and we ultimately developed that collaboration but there is one. one more just important part. Because I'm the who, in this case, who writes the books, it was my idea which book to write. Dan didn't come up to me and say, hey, Ben, I've got this great idea. Do you want to write who not how with me? I probably would have said no, but because I'm the writer, it was actually so compelling to me, the idea that I wanted to write the book. And I went to him and I said, I want to write that book. And, you know, again, with he's like this treasure chest of ideas. I'm the one who chooses the books we write. He doesn't choose the books because he doesn't

write these kind of books. He doesn't know this realm. He's like, you're the one who's got a taste of probably which books are good in this space. And also you write the book you want to write. And so he really applies who not how. And we both get what we want. I get to explore new ideas. I get to learn from someone who I want to learn from. He obviously gets tons of clients. I mean, his business is growing a lot because these books are going mainstream. But I choose. the books. The gap and the gain as an example, he didn't tell me to write that book. That was the book I wanted to write next. The next book we're writing right now is called 10x is easier than 2x. That's the book I wanted to write. Is you writing two at once? Are you writing two different books at

once? Well, I'm coming out with two books. I'm not actually going to start 10x is easy than 2x until I'm done with my future self book. But as soon as I'm done with my future self book. So ones by yourself and ones with him? Yeah, every October for the foreseeable future, me and Dan will come out with a book and then I'll probably publish a book in between. Wow, that's a that's a workhorse schedule. What made you choose that? It was just kind of what we established. We actually got a 10 book contract with Hayhouse, the publisher, and we just decided that every October will come out with a new book. If I, again, I'm the who. So I mean, at some point, I can always uncommit to it. But I also love the idea that commitment creates freedom, you know? And so like because we're committed to that,

I get the freedom of the results that come from actually sticking to that commitment. And in publishing rather than continuously pushing off the deadline because it is a workout. It is a workforce schedule. Commitment creates freedom. Say more about that. Well, it's just, you know, like sometimes we want to uncommit, right? Like, you know, as an example, because I'm so deep into writing my future self book, a big part of me is like, well, I kind of want to push off the deadline of the 10x is easier than

2x book because this is just a bit much, you know? And so I presented that to Dan and their team. And I just said, I think we should publish the book in December, not October. And they're like, that doesn't really work for us. Like we're like we've organized everything around an October deadline. You know, and that's just how our system is. And obviously, if push came to shove, I could just say screw it. Like it's, it's not going to come out in October.

But actually listening to the commitment and sticking to it, I'm like, you know what, it's not impossible. Like I actually can do it. Yes, it will be difficult. but I can do it. And if I actually do stick with the commitment, not only does it free me from decision fatigue, but it also enables me to get the results of sticking to the commitment. Like there's a lot of freedom in committing to things and sticking to them. That could be sticking to a diet, right? Like you get the freedom of good health, committing in a long-term

relationship. You get a lot of freedom and benefits from actually sticking to commitments. Commitment is what is like kind of the first step to anything. Once you commit to it, yeah you got to go through the process of actually learning how to fulfill that commitment but when you do there's there's always benefits and freedoms to sticking with a commitment one of the things that i i like about your work um and something that i think i struggle with is so you release uh videos a lot you're looking into the camera you're kind of sharing yes you guys add some post production work but it's but it's primarily about you and sharing ideas and so what i gather is i'm speculating a bit but i would think that you're process

is where you you kind of come up with the seed of an idea. And I'm sure you learn from a variety of sources. You intake all of that. You distill it down and then you share it from your point of view after it's been through your kind of thought process in your mind. And then it comes, though, from you. Whereas my issue, and I've been told this by mentors and others, is sometimes it can feel more like a reference source, meaning I cite this author and that author.

and that video and that research study and that podcast interview. And it was a video that was seven minutes long. And you mentioned like 13 people and it's all their stuff. And the process of like taking it in and synthesizing it and resharing it. And your own voice is the part that I struggle with. I feel like you've got that figured out. Is that accurate? Like what do you like what do you think about that?

I mean, I certainly draw from many sources. I mean, I've referenced, you know, Frankel many times in this conversation. And I could even be really explicit. about like I mean I referenced transformational leadership I could I could reference a lot of a lot of things um but I do think that um when it comes to thought leadership or even just presenting your ideas that it is important to take ownership over your own thinking and like that the reason you're sharing those 13 references is because you like those 13 references and because you believe something that ties those things together and so what's the thing that you

actually believe. And yeah, you can use references to kind of further clarify and define and also to back up what you're saying. But at the end of the day, what are you saying? Are you just listing a stack of ideas or do you have a specific message and you're using the references to back up or to build upon that message? And I think that it can be scary to actually just say, this is my belief system. This is what I'm saying right now. Maybe my future self will think something a lot better or different. but like this is what I'm presenting to you very directly like here's how you improve leadership and then you you know and so I think that maybe there's a little you know just the thought maybe there's a little fear and actually just owning a perspective and saying this is what I believe or this is what I

want to tell you and this is the message and then actually you know using sites to like expound upon that or to validate you know or to provide evidence of what you're saying but to be very explicit that this is this is what I'm saying to you. This is, this is, you know, just actually owning what the message is. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? With also, and I think part of it is too is like this learning leader mentality is open mind, always willing to change my mind if better evidence presents itself if the next guest

tweaks my mind. And I think at times it's this at moments and I know I'm kind of self coaching here. No, no, no. You have to just say like, this is where I'm at as of today. Like this is what I think as of now may change, may evolve. probably will in fact. But this is where I'm at as of today. This is what I believe. I think that's kind of the area that I, as I'm on the path that I have moments where it's really good, man. Yes, like we're there. And then other moments where it's like 17 sources. Where are you at,

though, on that, you know? Yeah. There's a principle that I literally did learn from Dan, which helps me with my creativity and my output. And I learned it from Dan, but I could give many other sources that back this up. He calls it the 80% rule. And that's 80% gets results while 100% is still thinking about it. 80% gets results, 100% is still thinking about it. So just as an example, any of these books that I'm showing you right here, but we can just literally talk about the gap in the game right now. This is not 100% of what I could have done with this book.

This is maybe, this is probably 80% of what I could have done with that book. And that was actually 80% of what I could have done with it, the person who finished it, which was like six months ago. Current me knows a lot more about this concept and could have furthered. developed it, but this is getting results rather than me still thinking about it. And so I think that that's one important principle is that like you're not, you're not, even though you have past work, who you are right now is not a reflection of that past work. Who I am right now as an example, I'm not exactly the same guy who wrote this book. You know, like there's things I know and apply and

understand and even with this book. Like there may be stuff I disagree with in this book and that's okay. because I'm not my former self. Like, you know, I'm not stuck, but those products are getting results, not only for me, but also for other people. And I find that actually the effort of getting it done and getting it out there enables me to think more clearly about it rather than going in circles and like trying to perfect and polish it when it's like, no, I'm going to get it out the best I can. I'm going to get it.

It's going to start getting results for me and for other people. And then I'm going to be able to, you know, keep evolving my things. rather than kind of damning it up without, you know, without publishing it. I got you. Ben, I, I love the way kind of our conversations make me think. I'd like to publicly hear say I want to do more of this, both on Mike and off, Mike. 100%. This book, Whatcha, I encourage people to get because I think it will change the way you view

the world a bit. It's called The Gap and the Gain, the High Achievers Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and success. and that's because just the sheer principle of running your own race, right, and comparing yourself against your previous self, I'm such a believer in that. And I feel like if there's any strides I've personally made is with this concept of not just not worrying about the races of other people

because I'm running this race and I'm going to run really hard. And I'm going to try to live in the gain of, being, you know, happy and excited with it while still striving for more. And I think you can, that's like living in the game. So that's, I love this concept. I'm really appreciative of you of you were getting it down in print. And certainly because I can tell you don't claim to know everything, you're here thinking about this. And I love, I love people like that, Ben, that are really like, let me think about that a little bit as opposed to claim. I can see counter arguments for everything I've written. Trust me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I love that. So anyway, the gap and the gain, highly, highly encourage people and who not how as well. Another, another great one. The last time we were on, personality isn't permanent we talked about. But I really appreciate you coming on. I'd certainly love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. I love it, man. I love it.

Thanks. I appreciate conversations with Ben because you can tell he is actively thinking and rethinking basically everything. And what I mean by that is he has an open mind, is super well researched, is definitive in his points, and yet,

if you say something that maybe contradicts what he said or isn't completely in line, he's always open to that conversation. And I think the world would be better if we approached people and conversations in this way with an open mind and an interest in trying to learn and grow.

And I feel that way when I talk with Ben. I hope you enjoyed it as well. I hope you found it useful. A few takeaways from my notes. Competing against someone else puts you in the gap. Your happiness as a person is dependent on what you measure yourself against. More specifically, measure yourself against your own gains rather than worrying about other people. This is what the gap and the gain is all about. Instead of making comparisons to

others, make comparisons only to your previous self and measure your gains. And then who, not how. Life is about surrounding yourself with the right who's. Who are the who's in your life to help you achieve what you want. Think about that. And then commitment creates freedom. Once a decision is made, then you can focus on doing the work. And I like thinking of it this way. And it kind of frees your mind that now that the decision is made, it's time to go. You've committed to whatever it is you're doing, whether it's a person or it's a project or it's a job. Okay, I've made the commitment. Now it's time to go. I don't have to have any type of decision fatigue anymore because I've made the decision. I like that statement. Commitment creates freedom.

Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Dr. Benjamin Hardy. It'll make you a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and because you continue to write reviews on Apple Podcast and rate the show, hopefully five stars, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to soon. Can we wait?