How to Close the Gaps Between Where You Are and Where You Want to be
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Self, Productivity, Life Lessons, Goals, Life

I’m slightly obsessed with gaps.

I always want to know exactly where I am so that I can judge where it is I want to be — and the distance between the two. I need two fixed points.

So, I’m constantly evaluating myself. Or my life. Different aspects of my life. What’s my money situation right now? How’s my business? My house? My relationship with my husband? My personal style? When was the last time I talked to my each of my brothers and sisters? How happy am I? How do I feel? How’s my time management? My sleep?

And on and on.

I am drawn like a moth to the flame to self-evaluation tools. I dislike labels in general, but anything that helps me to figure myself out? I’m there.

Because I know where I want to be. I have a very clear vision of what I want. I always have. Where I am now is murkier. It’s harder to judge. Part of that is because treading water is so much work, it sure feels like swimming, even if you don’t make any progress at all.

I’m confident in my ability to close the gaps, though, if I can just figure out what and where they are. I’ve done it before. Even massive gaps.

Like the gap between poverty and not being poor anymore. Or the gap between having a job I hate and owning a business that I absolutely love. The gap between really wanting to be a writer and being a full-time working writer who’s published by major publishers. The gap between sleep apnea and loss of mobility and losing 120 pounds so that those resolved.

The key is remembering that getting anywhere successfully requires two fixed points. In this case — where you are and where you want to be.

Start with an honest evaluation of where you are right now.

The good news is that you already know these answers. The harder news is that it can be difficult to face what you know.

I made some massive, sweeping changes in my life in 2015 and 2016. They started with deep self-evaluation that happened while I was sitting in the hospital for hours and hours, days and weeks on end, with my mother-in-law.

She was hospitalized with severely high blood pressure and delirium that was caused by an infection. She was also in the early stages of dementia. She couldn’t be left alone in the hospital without being restrained to her bed, so I sat with her sixteen hours a day.

Her problems stemmed from a lifetime of heavy smoking. It occurred to me that if she’d just quit when she was in my age, in her forties, she could have had a healthy old age.

And then I caught a marathon of My 600 Pound Life on her little TV one day. At the time my own weight was creeping up on 400 pounds. And all of a sudden I could very, very clearly see the path between 400 and 600 and I knew that I was on it.

And that I could do something then, in my 40s, to disrupt the path I was on so that my own kids were sitting with me in the hospital if I did manage to make it to 70.

By the end of the year I’d lost more than 100 pounds. Once I felt better, the gap between the work I wanted to do and the work became harder to ignore and I had the energy to put toward trying to close it.

Self-evaluation is about figuring out the gaps that are causing you the most problems — that are holding you back the hardest. Once you start to close those, the next steps will be easier to see.

Here are some ideas for finding your gaps.

It might be easy. Is there some part of your life that sucks so bad right now that you know, for sure, it has to change?

Where are you struggling? What keeps you up at night?

Is there something nagging at you? Something, maybe, that just doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe some part of your life is a squeaky wheel or like a rock in your shoe.

Take a look at your book shelf. Do you find yourself picking up books about a certain subject over and over? Sometimes the thing you’re trying to learn about is the gap you’re already trying to close.

Is there something you want in your life that just feels too big or hard or scary to even think about right now? If it feels impossible, it might be a gap.

Is there some aspect of your life that you find yourself constantly having to convince yourself that you’re just fine with?

Imagine you run into a friend five years from now — someone you haven’t seen in a long time — and your life is fabulous. Why is your life fabulous? What’s fabulous about it? The things that make it fabulous that you don’t already have going on are probably gaps.

What’s going on in your life right now that you’ll regret — either because you’re doing it or because you’re not — when you’re 80.

Once you know your gap, make a plan.

Here’s my best advice — just make the plan. Don’t worry right now about how you’re going to make it happen or whether you even can. Just plan with wild abandon for now.

I don’t particularly believe in the Law of Attraction. I don’t believe that the universe is just waiting to give you what you want if you ask properly. But I do believe that if you articulate the things you need and want, it’s far easier to actually get them because you’re far more aware of them.

Once you know, for instance, that you really want to finish your college degree or write a book or get out of debt or get a new job (and you really understand your starting point)— opportunities seem to just pop up because you’re looking for them. And asking for them.

So make your plan. Be audacious. You might as well, right? Go big. What do you really want?

But make sure you really do want it. For instance, when I think about money, I realize there’s a limit to how much I want. I want to have enough. But I don’t have any real desire to be filthy rich. I don’t need millions. I don’t want millions, because I don’t want to do the work that it takes to get that much money.

I want to have enough money to be comfortable and financially independent — but that’s where my desire for money ends.

But don’t limit yourself to what you think you can have. Back to the money thing, ‘financial independence’ for me personally means never having to work for someone else again. It also means being debt free, including a house that I really love, and having enough money to weather any storms that might come. I’d also like to be able to retire when I’m old.

I also want enough money to be able to travel and have nice things. I don’t have particularly expensive tastes — I’m not a luxury travel type person, for example. I’d like to fly first class, though. And I want to not have to always think about money and the cost and buying the cheapest thing when I buy something.

That being said, I also know that I’ll never be someone who wants an $80,000 car or a $300 pair of jeans. I just won’t.

The more you refine your plan, the more you’ll understand yourself and what you really want. And a path will present itself.

All you do, then, is take the first step.

Here’s a secret for you: If you can’t take the first step for some reason — then it’s not the first step. You’ve probably got some work to do to get to that step. And that’s okay. This isn’t a race.

I think you’ll be surprised though by how how quickly things move once you finally start closing those gaps. It’s addictive.

So, to find that first step, keep looking until you find something you actually can do right now. Today. And then just do that thing. And tomorrow, do the next thing. Don’t worry about anything beyond that.

Do the next thing and the next — it’s a little like crossing a bridge. If you keep taking steps forward, it would be impossible not to eventually get to the other side no matter how long it takes.

You’ve already determined the end point. You can stop thinking about it now. And you know where you’re starting. You can stop worrying about that, too. Just focus on your work.

The work will get you where you want to be. (Even, by the way, if that’s not quite where you thought it that might be when you started.)