Ep #63: How Shifting to a Gain Mindset Can Boost Your Success

episode summary

Are you tired of feeling like you never do enough, or achieve enough?

In this episode, you’ll discover how shifting from a "gap" mindset to a "gain" mindset can transform you from feeling beat down to feeling motivated and successful.

In this episode, you'll learn:

A powerful technique to boost your motivation and sense of accomplishment.
Six practical ways to create a more positive mindset, starting today.
How to become more resilient, successful, and happy by focusing on your gains.

Listen to this episode now to start embracing a gain mindset and see how it can change your life today!

Featured on the podcast:
Ep #29| Better Self-Talk
The Good Life group coaching waitlist

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For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.

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Want to learn more about me or my work? Head to my website at www.michellegauthier.com

Discover practical strategies to overcome imposter syndrome, manage time effectively, and cultivate a calm and positive mindset while setting boundaries and combating negative self-talk in high-stress jobs, all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the 'Overwhelmed Working Woman' podcast.

Music Used: Pop Guitar Intro 01 by TaigaSoundProd, Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licen

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CHAPTERS:

2:15 - Gap vs. Gain Mindset

5:13 - Measuring Backwards

12:30 - Building a Positive Mindset

17:07 - Do Less for More Success Tip

Hello, thanks for joining today. If you are watching this on YouTube, you are seeing the uncut, unedited version of episode 63 of the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. So welcome, and thanks for joining. The tool that I'm going to be teaching you about today is so simple and so powerful. It's something that I use literally every day, either with a client, for myself, or with my kids. So learning to use this gain thinking versus gap thinking can literally change your life, and I'm going to give you all of the details today. W elcome back. Thanks for joining. Today we're going to talk about the gap versus gain mindset, what that is, and why being in the gap can keep you stuck and small. You're going to learn a tool called measuring backwards to improve your motivation and your success, and then I'm going to give you tips for creating and keeping a positive mindset, which basically just helps everything in your life. Now, the concept gap versus gain is taken from a book called T he Gap a nd the Gain: the High Achiever's Guide to Happiness, C onfidence and Success, by Dan Sullivan and Dr Benjamin Hardy. I totally recommend this book. I recommend it all the time. I think I've recommended it before on this podcast. It's great in audio format as well. So if you like what I'm talking about here, you could definitely check out that book. It's very good. Okay, now let's dig into what the gap versus gain mindset is. Essentially, the gap mindset means focusing on what you don't have or what you haven't achieved yet, where the gain mindset means looking for how much progress you've already made and appreciating your achievements. So let me give you an example. Recently, I went on a trip with my kids. We had a really great time, and there were so many things that went right, so there was so much gain, if we're talking about this in terms of gap versus gain. But one of my children could not stop focusing on the fact that they I won't say their gender so you'll know which one it is but that they didn't get to sit in their right seat on the plane. They wanted to sit in the aisle and they I'm sorry, they wanted to sit in the window and they didn't get to do that. So, despite the fact that we had an awesome and amazing trip, the focus was on the one thing that didn't work out, and I feel like this is really common, both for kids and adults, for us to just zoom in and focus in on the one or two things that didn't work out versus all of the things that went wonderfully. Another example would be I personally have a goal for myself to work out three times a week lifting weights. So that means over the course of a three month period, I should be at around 36 workouts - weightlifting workouts - and when I go back and count them and I see that I have 33, I have two options. Gain thinking would be to say, oh my gosh, I did 33. That is amazing. Hopefully in the next three months I'll get to 36. So it's okay to still have that big goal. But gap thinking would be, I cannot believe that I didn't do those three. Seriously, why didn't I do those three? Why didn't I just get out of bed and do those three, and then I would have hit my goal? And now I feel like I'm not in shape and like I didn't do a good job, etc, e tc. So focusing on what I did not do instead of what I did do, which honestly was pretty amazing, and that really helped my strength, and I felt a lot better after doing that, could just take the wind out of my sails, essentially. If you think about how this applies to your life, th ink about the last time that you had a goal, whether that be at work, or personal, or at home, and you didn't get to that final number. Did you still feel like you did a good job, or were you really hard on yourself and did you have negative self-talk? I feel like human nature is to do the latter. So what I want to teach you in this podcast today: A) what is gain versus gap thinking, which we just covered, and, B) now I'm going to tell you how to use this tool or this concept of measuring backwards. So measuring backwards essentially means look backwards to see the progress that you have made. So instead of always looking at what you still need to do - for example, maybe yesterday your to- do list had 20 things on it and you did 14 of them, a re you going to focus on those six that you didn't do, or will you focus on the 14 that you did do? I promise you, this book is full of studies and information about how focusing on those 14 will help you feel better about how far you've come, keep you motivated, and makes you more successful overall, because it makes you want to keep going. I talk to people all the time, I have clients all the time who say I can never get to the bottom of my to-do list. And not getting to the bottom of your to-do list is only a problem if you make it a problem. So you can do 14 of 20 things and you can carry those extra things over to the next day, or maybe you just cross those off the list, but it's still worth celebrating those 14 things that you did do and it really helps you stay positive and move forward. When I first started my business about six years ago, I had quit a corporate job in order to start my business and I had a goal to make what I made in my corporate job while owning my own business. So the goal itself is not necessarily a problem, but what I noticed was it took me years to get back up to my corporate salary. So every time that I would finish a year and I would look and I wouldn't have hit that number - which, by the way, was a ridiculous goal to have for the first year in business. Now that I've started my own business, I would not let anybody go that route of thinking that that would be a good thing to do. If you make that, that's great, but it's not a motivating goal to have something that's way beyond the actual reach of what you can do in year one of a brand new business. So when I first started my business and I had this goal and then I didn't make that, what I would focus on was the gap between what I made and what I wanted to make and tell myself well, I made that before, so why can't I make it now? What am I doing wrong? Why isn't this happening faster? And instead, I wish I had known about these tools where I could look backwards and see all of the things that I did do. I had the nerve to quit my job. I had the nerve to start a business because I really cared about something. I figured out how to coach people. I made some money. Maybe it wasn't the same amount that I had been making at my corporate job that I'd had for 20 years. I helped people. I enjoyed it. I had a balanced life. I had all these things that were gains compared to my prior life, and I was just looking at this one metric, this one number, and deciding that I wasn't successful because of that. So what I would suggest that you do is do the same thing and look backwards and write down everything that you have accomplished, instead of just focusing on the parts that you haven't. Every month I take the time to do a monthly review. So on, like the first day of June, for example, I'll look back at May and I'll do a monthly review. I actually have it on my list to do a podcast about that. The first thing I do is I write a list of what I accomplished and what was memorable, and to do that, I get out my calendar on my phone and I look back at all of the meetings and different things that I was doing on weekends, etc. And that helps jog my memory about what I have done. And then I flip through my photos to remember, oh yeah, that was really fun, I'm so glad I took the time to, like, take my kids out for ice cream that night, or whatever it is, and after I write that down and read back through it, I am automatically in a good mood. I'm so motivated to do that monthly review because I always end feeling really good about what I did. Then, o nce I've written all that down, I look back at the goals I set for myself. So on June 1st, I look back at my May goals and I say, okay, how did I do on these? Which ones did I finish? Which ones are in progress, which ones haven't I started. So when I looked back at May, for example, I finished seven. I started on five and then there was one that I just didn't even start on in that month. So if I looked at the gap, instead of starting with writing down everything that I did do, I would just look at those goals and then I would focus in specifically on those five that I started but haven't finished yet, and the one that I didn't start on, and say, that's pretty bad odds. I really was at like barely 50% of all of the goals that I set for myself in that month. But now, because of looking at what I did accomplish, when I look at those goals, I'm like, yeah, that's pretty darn impressive, because not only did I finish seven of my business goals, but I also had a really fun month. I got to have lunch with my college friends, I got to hang around with my handsome man friend, I did lots of great stuff with my kids. So I focus on the gain instead. And then I look at those five that I started and say, are those worthy goals? Do I still want to complete those? In this case, yes, I did. I just scooted them over to June. I looked at the one that I hadn't started yet and said, yep, I still do want to do that one. So I added that onto my list for June and I just don't make that a problem. I focus on everything that I did do. I feel good about it. Now, why do we focus on that gap? What is our motivation in doing that? Because really, all I'm suggesting is a mindset shift and you might say, but like, why do I want to feel good about it when I didn't finish all of my goals? That's a great question. I'm glad you asked. T the reason why is when you focus on that gap, it's much more likely to make you feel unmotivated to keep going, and it's just going to put you into a - I don't know, bad mood, unmotivated, unhappy, negative attitude towards yourself, where looking at it from the gain side will do the opposite. I felt very motivated after I looked at that, even seeing that there were six goals that still needed attention in June. So it's really useful to do that and to focus on that, because you always have a choice about how you think about something, and really the number of goals that I accomplished is just a neutral circumstance, and so I'm choosing to think about it from a positive mindset, which makes me really motivated to keep going. So now you know what gap versus gain thinking is, you know how to measure backwards, and you know that building a positive mindset - it just makes you a more successful, more motivated, I would argue, probably happier person. So let's talk about building a positive mindset as one of the practices in your life. Staying in the gain is a great way to do that, but there are some other things that you can do that are fairly easy to build a super positive mindset. I think about a positive mindset as becoming immune to negativity. So, just like you take vitamins and eat healthy and work out so that you have good health, if you do these things to build your positive mindset, you will have good, better resilience and mental health. So here's what I suggest. Yo u don't have to do all these. You know I always like to give you just something small that you can take away. So my suggestion would be work on the gain thinking and then choose one of these things for building a positive mindset. So the first thing you can do is a daily gratitude journal. In the book Gap vs Gain, the thing that they recommend doing is writing down three gains that you had today and three gains that you'd like to have tomorrow, so that you're forward looking to what good things could happen for you tomorrow. Another thing you could do is take a gratitude walk. S o you can walk around outside intentionally, notice things that you're grateful for. Be grateful that the sun is shining, be grateful that you live in a safe neighborhood, whatever it is for you, that you see friendly neighbors, the ability that you have to get outside and walk, etc. So focus on everything good around you. Celebrating small wins. I really like - I'm a person who likes to share. When I have wins, whether big or small, and I share a lot of them with my kids. I share them with my handsome man friend. If I see my friends or my parents, I will tell them about it, even when they're small things. Like every time I start working with a new client, I always tell my kids, I started working with a new client today, because I want to celebrate that with them and to encourage them to share their small wins with me. And then, . positive self-talk. Now, a lot of us naturally have negative self-talk, like, I'm not good at this, or I just can never get everything done. So reframing those thoughts into I'm learning and improving every day, or I'm doing the best that I can do for today, etc, i s a great way to improve your self-talk. There is a whole episode on this, episode number 29, where there are lots of details about how to change your negative self-talk into positive. If that is something that plagues you and I bet it is because everyone I talk to has negative self-talk - I feel like that's sort of built into us and we can totally learn to overcome that. My last and final suggestion is to spend time with people who uplift you, who have a positive mindset, and who support you. Think about someone in your life who is not that, someone who tends to be more negative and who, when you're around them, you can kind of feel yourself being dragged down, v Versus w hen you spend time with someone who has a more positive attitude, who focuses on the good things going on in their life, in your life, and think about how you feel when you spend time with each of those people. And no hate on person A, the one that I'm describing, who has more of a negative mindset, but if you want to develop a more positive mindset, I would suggest setting up a lunch or going for a walk with that person who gives you that good, positive feeling. Surrounding yourself with positive people always helps. So the three main takeaways that you learn today are: what is the gap versus gain mindset and why being in the gap can keep you stuck and why being in the gain can keep you motivated. You learned how to measure backwards, so look at the success that you've already had and focus on that, and then you've got five or six different suggestions for how you can work on beefing up your positive mindset, starting today. So you have gotten, on this episode, the tools to learn to start thinking more positively. The first thing I would suggest that you do is think about your gains, even for today, even if you're listening to this in the morning, w hat are the gains so far in your day? List those out in your mind and you can start to understand how this works and how it helps you. Okay, and as always, we are going to finish up this episode with my tip for doing less for more success. Here is a tip that saves a ton of time, and the time that it saves is time that your brain wastes thinking about something. So here it is: s pend zero time thinking about what other people are thinking about you. First of all, they're probably not thinking about you at all. They're probably just thinking about themselves, just like you are in that moment. They're probably thinking about what you're thinking about them and, second, you never know what they're actually thinking. They might love you to pieces. They might not love you. You might be driving them crazy. They might think you're amazing. You'll never really know. So why is it useful for you to spend your time thinking about that? So just let it go. A thought like, I just don't spend time thinking about what people are thinking about me, is one that I use when I find myself going down that path. A thought like that can totally do the trick. Or you can say, I'm just going to focus on what I think about me, or I'm going to make sure that I feel like I'm doing the right thing thing, and I'm not worried about what other people are thinking about me. If you can implement this, think about how much time you spend today worrying about what other people might think about you. If you could just eliminate that from your life, think how much free time you'd have. Give it a try. Let me know how it goes. The concept that I taught you today is one of the 12 lessons that are in my group coaching program called the good life. One of the participants from last time - I survey all of them at the end and say what was the absolute most useful thing that you learn and apply to your life - and one of them said this gap versus gain. I can't tell you how much she changed from the start of the program to the end, and it's only 12 weeks long. She went from feeling like she was always overwhelmed and behind, to being in the gain about everything. She enjoys her life so much more now. She likes her job better. She enjoys being with her kids more. She's better at making time for herself to go do things like work out, which was something really important to her. So if you want to learn this concept, and 11 other concepts more in depth - in the program, w e have videos for every concept, you have workbook pages that you fill out, and then you have live coaching with me to make sure that you are understanding and applying the concept to your life. So if this is something that sounds interesting to you, get on the waitlist now. When you get on the waitlist, before group coaching is open for enrollment, which starts in July, you will get $250, that's a lot of money, off the price of the program and you will also be able to register first before it is officially open. And that is important because it is a limited size and I only take so many people. So get on the list. There is a link in the show notes. Get on the list for the waitlist and you will get an email from me when you are able to sign up early and get that discount. Okay, have a great week. See you next week.