Nathan: Hi, I’m Nathan from the DVCC and today I’m here with Josh Stapleton, the client experience manager at Bedford; Josh, how are you?
Josh: I am good thanks Nathan, how are you?
Nathan: Very well, thank you. Today we’re going to be discussing The Gap and how it can affect people. So, Josh, can you give me an overview of what The Gap is, for someone who is not sure what it is?
Josh: Sure; The Gap is a mindset essentially. To give you a bit of history, it’s human nature; when we are setting goals, we are always chasing the horizon, and we always like to measure our progress forwards, so where we’re going from and - I know because I’m a person who’s gone through this as well - when you achieve a goal, you move the marker forward, so it can lead to this mindset where we’re never satisfied, which is a negative mindset.
The Gap is that area between where you are now and your future self. So what we try to do is get people to measure their progress, not from where they are going but where they have come from; so I know personally with my training, my goals align a lot with getting stronger.
Whereas I’m not where I want to be ultimately just yet, I know that in the past year I’ve increased my squat 20kgs which is great and when looking back on what I was doing a year ago, I feel great because of that and I get that real sense of achievement. So that’s the power of The Gap.
Nathan: So would you say that looking at maybe smaller goals would be more beneficial, rather than having one big massive audacious goal?
Josh: I think it’s important to have one big goal, almost a goal that scares you; you want to really challenge yourself. And have it – the thing with goals is you want them to be measurable, realistic and you want to assign a time frame to them; so maybe you can call that your lifetime goal or something like that, something you want to ultimately achieve – the big payoff, the dream.
And then you want to work back from that, so then it might be worth setting a three year goal, so where you want to be in three years and what has to be true for you to be happy at that time.Then work back at what has to happen in a year’s time, and then six months.
Setting yourself small goals along the way is great and then what you can do there if you want to improve it even more is to set almost little micro goals – consider them behaviours – so if your goal was to lose a stone of body fat in the next six months, it could be that some of your micro goals or behaviours would be to drink two litres of water every single day or to eat a high protein breakfast every single day, or something like that; Or to restrict your indulgences to one meal per week.
Some things that, if you follow, you don’t even need to keep track of the goal, as long as you keep track of these little behaviours and be accountable to them; if you want to make a chart, make a chart, something like that. If you’re ticking those off daily, you will get to the goal without even having to concentrate on the goal, so that is the real powerful thing there.
Nathan: So it’s more focusing on the things that will get you there, rather than the actual goal itself?
Josh: Yes, correct.
Nathan: What kind of advice would you give to somebody who might find themselves in The Gap? Who is maybe looking too far into the future and thinking, for example, I’ve only lost 20bs of fat but my goal was 40lbs. Would it be just to focus on the little things step by step that they’ve done?
Josh: Yes; we all get in The Gap, it’s unavoidable; as I said it’s part of human nature. But once you get more adept at this, you realise how to get yourself out of The Gap efficiently.
And that’s the key, not spending too much time in there, because the longer you spend in The Gap, the more negative frame of mind you have. And I think we can all attest that we never make good decisions when we’re in a negative frame of mind.
So it’s about looking back and just remembering where you’ve come from. I know from doing interviews with a lot of clients from the DVCC; it’s always nice for them to look back and remind themselves; it’s easy to forget where you have come from and the journey you’ve been on, and focus on how you have yet to achieve certain things.
So my advice to anyone is, if you’ve got a goal in mind that you’re trying to achieve, look back at where you started and remember how far you have come, and you’ll feel great.
Nathan: The Gap can happen to anything as well, not just fat loss either; it could be literally anything, couldn’t it?
Josh: Yes, it could be saving for a new house or something like that – it could be absolutely anything. There might be setbacks along the way that could put you in The Gap, or you might have periods where you plateau, it could be progression at work or anything like that.
You can easily get in The Gap, it’s not just a fitness related thing, this is an over reaching principle that can occur in any aspect of your life. But once you’re aware of it, and you can recognise that you’re in The Gap, you can start taking action and doing the things that are going to get you out.
So, like we discussed, remembering where you’ve come from is always a great start, but then looking at all the little goals that you need to help drive your progress forward, just a re-evaluation of where you’re at.
Nathan: I suppose it’s looking at kind of the world through, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and to try and focus on progress, rather than the perfected finished article.
Josh: Yes of course, we always preach that it’s progress, not perfection, that we’re after - and as long as you are maintaining progress and you’re doing those small little behaviours that are going to take you to your goals, then you’re on the right track.
Nathan: Awesome Josh, it’s been a pleasure to speak to you today.
Josh: You too Nathan.
Nathan: If you’ve been listening to this interview, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and you can check out more interviews at www.theDVCC/blogs.
Also, if you would like to speak to Josh about what the DVCC can do to help you, book a Right Fit phone call at www.theDVCC.com/signup; Josh will give you a call and discuss your goals. Have a good day!
