Benjamin Hardy
Appearances
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010. And going on that experience was very transformational for me. I grew up in a really intense environment. But ever since I came home from that experience, in 2010, I wanted to be a professional author. From 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously as a blogger and was able to get a book deal and be able to start providing for my family.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So essentially, I got a multi-six-figure book deal to write a book. I'm living my dreams. It all happens way faster than I thought.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
into early 2018 honestly it was March of 2018 the book comes out and I did have way in my head like I'd built everything up in my head that it needed to be a certain level it needed to be a New York Times bestseller and I admittedly as well threw so much money at it and so yeah it didn't hit the goal and for probably four or five months I was in a very deep depression very deep slump um
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And kind of back to the idea of the gap and the gain now, I guess I've learned to measure my own self differently. So the gap and the gain is something I learned from Dan Sullivan. I read his little book on the subject. Maybe actually it was in 2018. I read his little book and I was still blogging back then. And it was just an idea I loved.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And I thought if I ever get a chance to write books with Dan Sullivan, I'm going to make this a major book. And the idea is very simple. I mean, it's basically the idea that as a person, we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves and how we measure our experiences. The reason I went into a deep depression after I had made a monumental achievement, I mean, I'd never done that before.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
It was totally new. And yet I felt like a loser because I was in the gap. I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be, which is an ideal. When you're in the gap, you're measuring yourself against your ideals, which are always changing, always moving. Whereas the gain is the opposite. You measure yourself backward against where you were before.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Truth was, is I was way further than I'd ever been. And if I was just measuring myself backward against my past self, competing only against my past self, I was radically further than I ever was. And I just did something huge. And so I'm learning and I've learned over the years to be more in the game. And it's a far more enjoyable, far happier experience.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So ideals are very, they're very ephemeral. Like they're not actually tangible. Like, and so like how I learned it from Dan is ideals are like the horizon in the desert. Like you can see them out there and like, but every time you take a few steps forward, the horizon keeps going. And in America, we're actually trained to always be pursuing happiness.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
That's even in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And so we're very big on ideals in America, which is good. Like, it's good to have ideals. It's good to be idealistic. There's nothing wrong with ideals. The problem is, is that they're immaterial. Like, I think a definition of ideal is whatever you believe is perfection.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So when you're in the gap, you're literally measuring yourself against your view of perfection. But back to the idea of the horizon, that view is never-endingly changing. My former self would have felt like it was perfection just to get a book deal. But then once I got there, the ideal changed. The horizon moved.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so if you're always measuring yourself against a moving target, and also a moving target that by definition is unreachable, You can't actually reach an ideal. It's an ideal. But if you're always measuring yourself against it, then you never feel like you've moved anywhere.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And that's actually why we wrote the book is because high achievers by nature have huge ideals, but they also usually measure themselves against them. And our culture is trained that way. Social media trains us to have ideals and to always be comparing ourselves externally. And sometimes ideals are other people. Yeah.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
But if you're always measuring yourself against something that's way up ahead and also something that you can never actually reach, then what that does for you internally is it feels like you've never made any progress at all. It also devalues everything you've done to that point. And so whenever you're in the gap, It does not matter how much you've achieved.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
It doesn't matter if you're living way, way, way beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would do. You actually feel like you've made no progress at all. And you feel like a loser and you've devalued not only your current self, you've devalued everything that got you here. And so ideals are beautiful. They're just not useful as a measurement tool. They're useful as a direction tool.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Goals are far more concrete. Obviously, you can have goals that you set that move you toward your ideals. And so goals are specific. They're concrete. They're mile markers on a journey. And then the useful thing to do with your goals is to obviously become increasingly intrinsically motivated towards the goals you set and even the standards you set for yourself, that they're less about...
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
what anyone else thinks, what anyone else wants. And you actually get better at doing that when you just start measuring your progress backwards. So like I'll set a goal for myself. I've got huge goals for 2023. But in terms of where I'm measuring myself and in terms of my benchmark, like my benchmark for 2023 is what I accomplished in 2022. Like I accomplished some cool things, but I'm using that
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Since it's tangible, ideals are not tangible. Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022. And I can use that not only to propel me forward, but I can also use that to say, what do I want to do? That's even gonna be bigger and more exciting. So you can just measure yourself backwards and use that as the baseline for what you can do.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You broke it down beautifully. I think that this is one of the main problems with the narratives. There's a lot of narratives about how you shouldn't have goals. Obviously, I think it's impossible to not have goals. I think human beings, we can't not have a goal. That's part of being intentional. But the problem is the measurement. I mean, even if I had hit my goal, I would have gone into the gap.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
I would have moved the target. So even if I had hit the New York Times bestseller list from a gap perspective, I still would have felt terrible about myself because I would have moved the target. The target would have been, well, why wasn't I on it for four weeks?
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Yeah. Or why didn't I hit number one? So it doesn't even, whether you hit the goal or not, doesn't even matter. If you're in the gap, it will never have been enough because the target will keep changing and you're measuring yourself against something that's and something that's external and always changing.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so, yeah, whether it's other people that you're measuring yourself against or whether it's just your inflated ideals, that's the point is that you won't be happy hitting or not hitting your goals if you stay in the gap. And that's just the key.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
So I look at gain thinking two ways. One is it's a way of measuring your progress and measuring your experiences. So for me, for example, I've had a number of experiences already today, even just to this point. And some of them went to plans and some of them didn't go to plans. But if I'm in the gain, I'm measuring what actually did happen. And I'm measuring myself backwards.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
I'm only measuring myself against where I was before. And the truth is I'm always ahead of my past self. Even if... things go backwards seemingly. Like even if I lose my leg in a car accident, right? Like a lot of bad things can seemingly happen, but if you're in the gain, you are finding the gains and you're creating gains from your experiences.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so I consider it you're squeezing as much juice out of your experiences as possible. You're also always choosing to become better as a result, no matter what happens to you. you're in the gain. So everything ultimately happens for you. So I guess it's really two big ideas.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
One is, is it's measuring yourself backward against where you were before and always realizing that you're further than you were before. And that the only thing I'm actually measuring myself against is myself, which is where I was before. So that's number one is just measuring yourself backwards.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
The second one is literally turning everything that happens to you into something that happens for you. So anything, no matter what it was, you can actually gain and grow from it. And if you do, then you're always getting better. You're always learning from every experience. Whereas if you're in the gap, then your past becomes a problem.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Like that's from like a psychology standpoint, what you need to be happy in the present is you need a happy past and an exciting future. And the past is literally a meaning. And so the gain is just a lens of using your, or of transforming your past into more gains, more learning.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Even from your most extreme traumas, you can learn to turn those into gains so that you're constantly better and even grateful for them, which is what psychologists would call post-traumatic growth. So it's really just those two things. I'm only measuring myself against myself backward, and I'm literally turning every experience into my gain.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
This is a really interesting concept in psychology. Typically, the way we look at time is we look at it as past, present, and future. And we kind of look at it sequentially. And we also look at it chronologically, like my past is behind me. There's no way I can get back there. My present is now and the future's up ahead of me. I can never, I'll never actually be able to go into the future.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
All there is, is really now from a psychology standpoint, that's not how psychologists view time. Psychologists don't view time sequentially. We actually view it holistically. So what I mean by that is, is that the past is currently existing in my life. Like, who I'm being right now is a complete amalgamation of my views of my past, my experiences of my past.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
We even today, we're talking about us having a conversation four years ago, right? And so like my past is, of course, influencing me right now. And my narration of the past, my story of the past, the feelings I have toward my past, the anchors I may have in my past that are unresolved, call it trauma or whatever. But also my goals are heavily influencing me. I mean...
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Anyone who's listening to this is listening to it for a reason. They're listening to it because they feel like this is going to help them contribute to their goals or help them move forward in their lives. And so everything about my life right now is a combination of my feelings and my perspectives of my past and also my excitements or my feelings towards the future. And so...
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And they're certainly not mutually exclusive in terms of being in the gain, but also having a future-oriented mindset. Most people who read The Gap and The Gain are very future-oriented people. The gain doesn't stop you, I guess, from having a future. Actually, in my perspective, whenever I'm living in the gain, it actually helps me to be more
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
it helps me to have a future that's more genuinely coming from my own self rather than something that's coming from the outside. Usually people's goals and they're called their standards or their ideals actually were fed to them by culture, by society. They don't even, you know, the future that they want actually isn't genuinely intrinsically motivated.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so for me, tapping into the gain just helps me to stop worrying about the outside world as much, stop competing with other people. And so in terms of future self, Um, I guess I would say in simple terms, we all have a future self. What the research shows is, is that most people, especially the older they get, they stop thinking about their future self very much.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Um, most people probably 30 and above assume that even their future self 10, 20 or 30 years from now is mostly going to be the same person they are today. So most people don't have huge imagination towards their future self. Right. What the research does show is that your future self is gonna be a wildly different person than you think. Even in five or 10 years from now,
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
It's going to be hard to fully predict who your future self will be. But if you start imagining it, start thinking about it, and importantly, getting really connected to your future self, who you want to be in the future, you can then start using, obviously, your vision of your future self to guide and direct who you're going to be today. And you can be extremely intentional about it.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so from my standpoint, the best thing to do is get really clear and connected to your future self, who you want to be, get very specific about that, and then use that as... I guess you could say the North Star for directing everything you're doing here and now. And each and every day as you're moving forward, you're measuring yourself against where you were before.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You're measuring yourself backwards and you're always seeing that by increasingly living intentionally as your future self, you're always outgrowing your past self. And I do this daily. I mean, if I even look at where I was... A week ago. I am not the same person I was last week. I've changed a lot. I've grown a lot. I know a ton of things my past self didn't know.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so I'm never my past self and I'm always growing into my future self. That's kind of how I see it.