6 Steps Out Of The Gap Trap

Good morning friends and welcome back to the 10 minute mind shift podcast. 

Today, as I a recording this, it’s a rainy Saturday morning, hubby just left for his long run and so I am sitting in our closet with one of our doggies, Bella,  recording this for you.

When you think about where you are now and where you want to be in any area of your life whether it’s making more money or losing weight or living in the house of your dreams, have that degree, landing that dream job… it’s easy to start to feel like your goal is out of reach. 

You may even have thoughts like, “people like me don’t make that kind of money, or people like me could never lose the weight or get that kind of job or have that kind of relationship.” 

You name it, we all have that “things like that don’t happen to people like me” sentence in our head.

The larger the gap between where we are now and where we want to be, the more we begin to doubt and question whether it’s possible at all. 

• “Who am I to think I could ever…?”
• “What made me think I could…?”
• “I’ve never stuck with anything before, why did I think this would be different…?”

When the journey feels like it takes longer than expected, and we feel like we have too far to go, we end up feeling disappointed, we beat ourselves up for even having the idea of the goal, and if you are like me you jump right into the self-pity pool…

Why does this have to be so hard for me?  Why can’t I be one of the lucky ones?

and that my friends is what I  call the gap trap!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record,  there are two reasons for the gap trap…

1. You are human
2. You have a brain

Yep, your brain is going to take every opportunity to try and get you to hit that easy button, go back to drinking beer, eating Cheetos and watching Entertainment Tonight.  Is that even on any more?  Now you know my history.

How many times have you started to learn a new thing like playing an instrument, or riding a horse or how to lose weight?  It didn’t happen fast enough and so you gave up. 

Think about that thing…what is that thing that seems like it is meant for someone else but you really, really, really want it too? 

At one point in my life, I wondered why maintaining a normal weight had to be so hard.  I just wanted to be one of the girls who could eat whatever they wanted and still be skinny.  I mean, isn’t that every woman’s secret desire.  I had all this food chatter in my head.  That gap felt deep.

Another one for me had to do with horses.

When I turned 50, Steve and I sold our midtown Tulsa home and moved to the country so I could get my horse experience on.  I had a pony a couple of times in my life when I was younger but I would not put me in the category of growing up with horses at all. In fact, I forgot more than I ever knew. 

So, I remember when I first got my girls, I would be down in my pasture with them  and I would see girls driving up to the arena barn and unload and tack up and ride around in the arena where we were boarding

They had so much confidence.

I would envy the girls with horses that could carry themselves with elegance, had amazing gaits, perfect posture, they could gracefully lope off from a walk. 

I would watch other riders who seemed to know exactly what to do and when to do it. They seemed to be at one with their partner. 

I saw in them all of their elegance, and then I saw where I was at that time, it was a huge gap.  It felt like a cavern.

I didn’t recognize what it was then, but that was a gap and I was sitting in it full of self- pity, and compare  and despair.

I don’t know if I have shared this will you but the first lesson that I took, I fell off of the mounting block and under the horse.  Not once, not twice, not three times…four times people.  God bless that horse! 

More evidence of the gap.

I didn’t have a pedigree horses.  I had a backyard pasture accident that I bought from a sale barn. 

Now, I couldn’t even get on a horse using a mounting block!

I had every reason to think that I was not meant to be a horse woman.  I had every reason to NOT go back the next week. 

I was embarrassed, I felt humiliated and I was sore! 

Gap felt like it was growing.  All I wanted was to be a good horsewoman, a good rider and be able to do all the things I was watching the others girls do.

Maybe you are feeling like that now. 

All that gap is, is the journey, it’s your path to your destination. 

I remember being in such a hurry to learn all the things and become a better rider. 

It seemed like the faster I tried to go the more frustrated I got and at one point my dream life of owning and showing horses was leaving me feeling miserable and overwhelmed. 

I was constantly looking at how far I still had to go and the gap kept feeling bigger and bigger and further away.

Remember in episode 6 when I said the brain lies…well my brain was lying to me too and this was before I knew about managing my own thoughts so there were several times I felt like I wanted to just quit.

Then…because I didn’t quit,  I started to see how it was possible, and that my horse show dreams were closer than I thought…I saw that I had been filing in my gap all along.

You are too.  Whatever you want to create, accomplish or invite into your life is closer than you think as long as you don’t quit.

In fact, as long as you don’t quit…it’s inevitable!

So…how do you keep your eye on the prize while you are on your journey, how do you avoid the gap trap?  I have 6 steps.

1. Take some time to describe what that goal means to you.  If it’s a number on the scale or in your bank account…what is the meaning behind the number.  For example, if you want to weight 130 and that is your number, is it because you want to be more active with our family or maybe it represents no more food drama and food chatter.  If you have a number in your bank account that you are shooting for, what’s the why?  Does it represent the family vacations you can take or the lifestyle you will be able to experience?  Your why has enormous importance and it is deeply tied to the things that you value.  Keeping those values closely tied to your goal IS critical to keeping your eye on the goal and not the gap.  My why is that I want to be able to tell my grand kids about all of the things that their grandma did and accomplished.  I didn’t want to be telling them what I wished I would have done.
2. Focus on getting better every day.  Just think about the day ahead of you.  When all we can see is the gap and not the goal, it’s easy to let that goal slip away and we get frustrated and discourage and then we start thinking…” I might as well” And “Might as well” is never followed by anything that moves the needle in the right direction. It sounds like…might as well blow the whole day since I blew it at lunch and then it’s, might as well start over on Monday and just have fun this weekend.  Instead…ask yourself what can you do today that gets your one step closer to your end result?  What decisions can I make today, in this moment, that moves me toward my goal.  Maybe it’s better food choices of health is our goal.  Maybe it’s working on money beliefs if you want to increase your wealth.  Whatever you want to create, what can you do today?
3. Do a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly debrief.  Showing your brain how far you have come will give your brain evidence that you are making progress.  I still do this to remind myself how far I have come as a horsewoman because my brain wants to remind me on the daily of that one day that I fell off getting on. 
4. Visualize being that person every day and do one thing every day that gets you closer to being that person.  In episode 9, I talked about living into your potential instead of your identity.  Practice stepping into that person every day, that person that does create that result, that person that makes choices that support the outcomes she wants to create.  Visualization is a powerful tool for your brain.  It’s safe to say that all successful people spend time in visualization of the outcome that they want to create.  The more often that you can access your future self, the sooner that you grow and evolve into her. 
5. Make a list of things that you are in the habit of doing.  Challenge those habits.  Does that habit support your goal?  Don’t lose sight of the big thing, but day to day, focus on the habits you can create and the progress that you are making as a result of your habits.  My husband has always had a certain level of fitness that he wanted to maintain.  Both of us are late 50’s and early 60’s so we know that in order to maintain our youth for as long as possible, a healthy eating protocol is important.  There was a point in which he had “an after work going to the pantry and eating crackers” habit that was actually sabotaging his health goal.  A simple inventory of your daily habit might be very revealing.
6. Think the thoughts that serve your GOAL not your GAP.  When you think thoughts like…this is impossible or I can’t…you are right.  When you think possibility thoughts…right again.  I highly recommend a listen to episode 2 where I talk about possibility thoughts how to create them.

My parting thoughts are these…don’t underestimate the power of the example that you are setting for someone else who would love to be on your journey, for someone who shares a similar dream.

Fast forward a few years and as I am showing my beautiful big red mare at my first ever Western Dressage World Show and I am living the dream I have been creating for several years now, up in the stands are several women who are watching me ride my mare and live this dream and  now they have the very same dream and are on the exact same journey. 

We have become friends now and now it is their goal to ride down center line at their First ever Western Dressage World Show. 

It’s been so fun to watch them on their journey and I have been privileged to give them words of encouragement to keep looking at how far they have come and to keep going because my guess is that someone else is watching them too.

I hope this blog has given you a mind shift and now I hope that you have the best day ever!