You're Further Along Than You Think
Let me ask you something before you start your day.
When you think about where you are right now — your business, your leadership, your life — what do you measure yourself against?
If you're like most high performers I know, you measure against the horizon. Against the vision. Against what isn't done yet, what hasn't happened yet, what still feels far away. You look at the gap between where you are and where you're going, and that gap has a way of making everything you've already done feel small.
Dan Sullivan calls this living in the Gap. And it's quietly exhausting a lot of good people.
Here's the reframe.
What if you turned around?
Not to quit. Not to lower the bar. Not to stop moving toward the future you're building. But just, for a moment, to actually look back at where you started. That's what Sullivan calls the Gain. And it changes everything.
The Gain isn't a consolation prize for people who didn't make it. It's the honest measure. It's the only measure that's actually true, because the horizon always moves. You hit a goal and the next one appears. That's not failure, that's how vision works. But if you never stop to mark the ground you've covered, you'll spend your whole life feeling like you haven't moved.
I see this with leaders all the time. They're running hard, building something real, growing in ways they couldn't have imagined two years ago...and they're miserable because they're staring at what's still undone.
So today I want to give you permission to look back.
Think about where you were a year ago. Not the sanitized version, the real version. What were you carrying? What did you not know yet? What hadn't been built, hadn't been proven, hadn't been walked through?
Now look at where you are.
That's the Gain. That's what's real.
This doesn't mean you stop dreaming big. The vision still matters. The future still pulls. But hope isn't just something you feel when you're looking forward. It's something you find when you're honest about how far you've already come.
There's a passage in Philippians that's stayed with me: "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion." That's not just theology. That's a reminder that the story isn't over, the work isn't wasted, and you are not behind.
You're further along than you think.
Measure the Gain today.
Jon
Until next week,
Jon
P.S. If you want to go deeper, I highly recommend you pick up the book - The Gap & The Gain