Closing the Gap

I’m kicking off today’s blog post with a little challenge/quiz for you…

1. On a scale of 1-5 rate your level of “motivation/drive” (whatever that means to you today).

1: I’m just going with the flow. ——>

5: I’m teeming with it! Watch out world!

2. On a scale of 1-5 rate your level of “discipline” (whatever that means to you today).

1: I struggle to follow through ——>

5: I do everything I say I’m going to at my very best.

3. How well do your numbers to the two questions above match?

4. How do you feel about your answers above?

a. I feel great. My motivation aligns with my discipline in a way I feel proud of.

b. Ehh…I wish I could honestly rate myself higher on either scale. 

c. I wish my discipline matched my motivation better.

d. I rated very high…but maybe  I can afford to cool it a little.

No matter your answer…you’re not alone. 

I’ve rated myself everywhere on both scales, and have felt all kinds of ways about it. 

Historically, I rate myself high in ‘motivation,’ but low in ‘discipline’ and I often feel not great about it. 

I’ll set the goals while I’m riding high, but conveniently don’t get around to taking the action… 

This experience is extremely common.
Psychologists talk about the gap between the way we want to behave….and the actions we actually take. 

Like so many phenomena, I think an important first step is to acknowledge that this gap is real, and the feeling is more common than we might think. So maybe we can take some of the  “shame” out of the equation. 

The next step is to decide what to do about it: 

I feel like the default “solve”  is to try and “amp up the discipline”…but life happens and we once again fall short. There are other paths available! 

So let’s take a closer look and decide: 

1. Do I really need to close the gap, or am I actually doing fine and can afford to cut myself slack and/or adjust my expectations?

2. If I do want to close the gap, what is a tiny daily action I can take? 
OR what’s the next step I could take?

For example:

“I want to become a better singer,------ but I don’t practice as much as I need to get where I want to be.” 

I can either adjust my expectations and say: 
”I actually can’t realistically practice the way I want right now…”

• So I can put my patience pants on and get okay with moving slowly. 

Or

•  But I can sing at least sing for 5-10 min each day after I get home from work. 

Or I can implement a plan to bring the goal to the forefront. 
”I really care about improving my singing…”

• So I am taking _____ off the docket so I can focus on this progress right now.

Or

•  I can totally commit right now, and my daily practice plan looks like_____.

And the key is….there’s no wrong answer.

The goal is to get both of your present selves more in agreement and alignment with each other:

-The “you” that has a million obligations to tend to right now, 
-AND the “you” that has meaningful goals and dreams for the future.

Closing the gap between what we do and what we want to do can be difficult.

Or maybe it doesn’t have to be….Maybe we just close it a tiny bit at a time. 

The choice is yours.

But sometimes it helps just knowing that there is a choice to be made.