Closing The Gap between your two lives
Everyone has two lives: the life they have and the life they want. Waiting around for the life we want guarantees it'll never come.
There’s the life you have.
And there’s the life you want.
Between these two lives exists The Gap:
One of the important invitations I'm going to extend to you is to simply acknowledge The Gap between your two lives.
You feel it, right? We’re not quite there yet. That’s normal. And the good news is that we can close The Gap. But not until we've acknowledged it.
Most of us have a vision for the life we want
Who do you want to be? LeBron James? Billie Ellish? Lady Gaga? Notice how I only listed one sports person to grab the attention of the straight men in the audience? Notice how I say that's why I listed one sports person but the reality is I don't know any others? Notice how I'm referring to him as a "sports person"?
Sports people aside, really think about this question: who do you want to be? An athlete? A musician? A filmmaker? A 4-hour workweek entrepreneur who can work remotely anywhere in the world and order Aperol Spritzes by clapping their hands, and Marco knows what the claps mean and he also knows to bring over two Spritzes because you're going to just kinda shoot the first one down your throat like a professional?
Really.
Think about it.
Just put some vision of the life you're aiming for in your mind. And now let’s be curious for a moment: who do we know who’s already living that life?
Someone is already living your ideal life
The things we want to do and the types of people we want to be fall within already-existing categories OR within a remix of already-existing categories. Essentially, someone is already doing what you want to do, which is probably how you found out that you want to do that thing in the first place.
Which is actually great news, because that means that there are recipes for what success looks like. It doesn't mean that you can't ultimately create something truly unique, but in order to break the rules you have to study the the rules.
So let's now ask ourselves the natural follow-up: what do the people who are already living the life I want do every single day?
CEO: Warren Buffet is known for his simple and consistent daily routines, beginning with a morning newspaper session to stay informed of financial and global information, with continued reading throughout the day to expand his knowledge on a variety of topics. Makes sense.
Film Producer: David Heyman (Harry Potter series, Gravity) begins his day by reading scrips, catching up on emails, and planning and refining his weekly schedule, stating publicly how important consistency is for success. Makes sense.
Sports Person: LeBron James practices for hours every day, including on the court, shooting drills, strength training, and conditioning training. He's also spoken about placing an extreme focus on mental training. Makes sense.
Do we think that these people became world class in their fields and THEN started building these extremely specific and highly effective habits and routines?
Do we think that these people wake up at 9am on weekdays and 10am on the weekends?
Yeeh. Nourr.1
What we’re all waiting for
Most of us have it backwards. We feel like we someday finally get to the life we want.
No.
You become the person you want to be by becoming the person you want to be.
You live the life you want by living the life you want.
And our reaction to statements like this is generally, “duh.” But that doesn’t stop us from just sitting around, waiting for a portal to open in our fucking living room and some retired, 65-year-old—yet ruggedly handsome—version of future self to step through and say, "You cracked the code to a successful life and here's a step-by-step eBook on how you did it and good news it’s on sale for $5 and yes we still take Venmo in 2051."
Or for a recruiter to DM us on LinkedIn and say, "Oh. My God. We just saw your profile and we'd like YOU to run our company."
lol.
So what exactly are we waiting for?
We’re waiting for someone else to do the work for us.
Someone else to wake up early for us.
Someone else to work our bodies out for us.
Someone else to notice The Gap between our lives and close it for us.
Do things before you need to do things
What are the habits of the types of people who are living the life you want?
What rituals do they prioritize that you don't?
What skills do they have that you don't?
Identify what lies in The Gap: things that you can do right now to bring yourself closer to your ideal life, but just aren’t doing.
We tend to think of roles models in terms of the final product. Overnight success! Genius! Millions of dollars! Don’t get caught in the hype trap of seeing a final product and thinking people are born that way or they had it easier.
These are actually really helpful excuses because it gets us off the hook of doing hard work.
And hard work is a requirement for success. Even for the Kardashians.
The truth is that lurking in the shadows of the final product, there’s always a hidden staircase that successful people climbed. Sometimes it’s intentionally kept hidden for some sort of personal marketing campaign to make it all look like magic. Find the staircase and analyze how people tend to climb it.
All of the successful people you admire saw a life they wanted and built systems to get them to that life. Probably going back a decade. Maybe two decades. Closing The Gap means not waiting for your ideal life to come to you, but to simply start living that life—NOW.
CLOSE THE GAP: starting tomorrow, wake up early and plan your day. Not because you have to, but because the people who live the life you want start their day between 5-8am and are intentional in the choices they make.
CLOSE THE GAP: starting tomorrow, read books every day on things that interest you. Not because you have to, but because the people who live the life you want consume high quality, evergreen content.
CLOSE THE GAP: starting tomorrow, schedule a dinner every week with someone you admire. Not because you have to, but because the people who live the life you want regularly cultivate new, high-quality relationships.
We learn to cook by following recipes
NAH—you say. I don't need to model my life off anyone else's. I'm a unique snowflake that needs to carve my own path.
Bullshit.
You know what this reminds me of?
Cooking.
My ex-boyfriend hated following recipes. He'd always say, "cooking isn't science, it's art! Why follow a recipe when we can just have fun and play around!"
His food tasted like shit.
Why are we making our lives harder than they need to be? Why start from zero? Follow the recipe. Follow the template. Once you have a foundation and understand how salt, fat, acid, and heat all interact with each other, then you can go back and add a bit more smoked paprika or whatever the fuck. Recipes give you the foundation to get going. Not someday. Right now. And after we start we can THEN go back and make changes based on what we’ve learned. You know what that process is called?
Life.
That's literally just living. Become a student of life and study what works and start there and THEN tailor it for your specific circumstances as you go.
In order to break the rules, you have to study the rules.
In order to live a successful life, you have to study successful lives.
Remember that the process is the point
I mentioned this theory to my therapist and she made a good point: "yes, and—just remember that the process itself is the point. It can't all just be in service of getting to your ideal life because you'll wake up one day and realize that you were only living for the future.”
She's right. She’s expensive. She’s right.
We have to make the process of getting there the point. We may never get there. We might accidentally get hit by a truck and die and in those moments we may think, "why did I eat so much kale?" But the truth is: we eat so much kale because eating healthy actually DOES make us feel better. It's not JUST to live until we’re 85. It's to live a higher quality life along the way.
Close The Gap just a tiny bit each day
I’m not suggesting that you go from zero to sixty, shooting a NOS-powered harpoon across The Gap and Tokyo Drifting into your ideal life. Chances are you’ll experience burn out like so many of us have or you’ll experience burn up like Han did in Tokyo Drift.2 The point is to just start small—likely way smaller than you think—and work consistently every single day on getting just a tiny bit closer to closing The Gap.
Set your alarm clock 5 minutes earlier.
Read one page in a book every night before bed.
Schedule one dinner with someone.
Instead of waiting for our ideal life to come to us, let's just close The Gap that tiny bit each day ourselves. In some small, intentional way. The Gap has to close from inside the house. And there is always something we can be working on.
Tell me, what's something that exists in The Gap for you, personally? And what's holding you back from closing it? Sit. Close your eyes. Think about it. Deeply. Frequently. Let's discuss below in the comments or just respond to my email and let's talk it through.
Also helpful to mention that in my research I didn’t find any top performing people listing “wake up and doom scroll TikTok for 2 hours” on their daily plan.
Wait, did he actually burn up? I honestly don’t know and I’ve worked on those movies. I think he crawled out of the wreckage when Statham wasn’t looking?
I agree with everything you said, and: I think there's still opportunity to delve deeper on the concept of ideal life. I think that's harder than it looks. And I think it involves trying new things, and preparing yourself for the eventuality of expending a bunch of effort to go out of your comfort zone and then be disappointed by it. A way to think about it is, "If you enjoy every bite of food you eat, perhaps you aren't trying enough new things." (Or you're Jesse's ex-boyfriend and you don't just follow the damn recipe. It's written down right there!!!!)