The GAP and the GAIN by Dan Sullivan

I finished this book in April 2026. I recommend this book 8/10.

Why you should read this book:

This is one of the best books I've read on shifting your mindset from victim mode, "How/Why did this happen to me?" And instead measure success against yourself. I learned about the book because a university professor makes his students read it in their first semester. You do need to be willing to journal to get the most out of this book.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. Practical book on shifting your mindset

2. 5 minutes in the GAP and then shift to 20 minutes in the GAIN

3. Journaling is the fruit of this book. Don't read it without doing the exercises

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P11. Journal: Embrace the Freedom of "Wants"

  • What do you feel you "need" in order to be happy?

  • Who or what do you measure yourself against?

  • When is the time in your life when you made something or someone into a "need," and this created an unhealthy GAP in your life?

• P20. It really doesn't matter where they are now and how great their lives are; they continually wish they were "there." And although it's great to have goals and vision and be driven, you're in the GAP if you're "here" but wishing you were "there." Playing a longer game allows you to embrace being "here." Yes, you have goals and vision, but you're completely happy where you're at. You're "here", and you love being "here." You love what your life is like. You're blown away by your GAINS. You appreciate everything and everyone around you. You're genially happy. You also love what you're working on and building. You're committed and focused, but you're not trying to rush to the next place to fill some unresolved need. You're doing what you love. You're confident in where your life is going.

• P25 Journalling questions:

  • Are there any areas in your life where you have obsessive passion? If so, what unresolved internal need are you trying to fill?

  • What about your life and work do you love?

  • What is your long game? When you're playing the long game, you're doing what you love. You're not doing something just to get somewhere else.

  • So you have a long enough timetable to truly slow down and enjoy being here, or are you trying to quickly get "there"?

  • Look at your life right now—what are all the GAINS you can think of?

  • How would your priorities change if you were playing the long game?

• P34. Journaling questions about finding your reference points, we use to measure ourselves:

  • What are the reference points you measure yourself against?

  • Why did you choose those particular reference points?

  • How do you define and measure success for yourself?

• P43. Spend 20 to 30 minutes with no distractions writing down your answer to this question: "I know I'm being successful when..." Be as honest with yourself as you possibly can. No one else can define success for you. Defining your own success criteria is how you become self-determined. This is how you develop an internal reference system. You decide how you will measure yourself. Be flexible with this list. View it like a draft of a book that can be edited and improved. Chances are, you'd define success differently now than you would have 5-10 years ago. That's a good thing!

• P50. Chapter takeaways:

  • External reference points make it impossible to feel successful because no matter what you've done, the success criteria are always moving.

  • Getting out of the GAP and into the GAIN means you've made yourself your own reference point.

  • The GAP means your life is determined by someone or something external. The GAIN means you're living a self-determined life.

  • When your reference point is internal, you make the final call on what "success" means to you, regardless of what other people think.

  • When your reference point is internal, happiness and success are always right here and right now.

• P76. Record the GAINS of your life: Start by mentally subtracting something important to you. Here are the steps:

  • Pull out a piece of paper and a pen.

  • Select one specific thing to mentally subtract: it could be a relationship, an achievement, your health, or a possession.

  • Imagine how your life would be if you never had that one thing, or if it were instantly taken away from you forever.

    • Picture the impact that would have on you right now.

    • Think about how losing that one thing would affect your future.

    • How would it affect others?

  • Write down how your life would be different.

  • Now, refocus on the present moment and this one thing in your life that you've been focusing on. This one thing is a huge GAIN in your life.

    • How can you appreciate this GAIN more than you have up to this point?

    • How can you turn this GAIN into even more GAINS?

    • How have your thoughts and feelings changed about this one thing by doing this exercise?

    • How do you feel about your life in general right now?

  • Repeat: choose another specific thing, event, possession, achievement, health, or person.

• P98. Front cover journaling questions:

  • Where am I right now?

  • What are my wins from the past 90 days?

  • What are my desired wins for the next 90 days?

  • Where will I be in 12 months?

  • Where will I be in 3 years?

• P99. To introduce and teach The GAP and The GAIN to new Strategic Coach members, Chad Johnson, one of the associate coaches, takes them through an exercise. He asks everyone in the group to raise their hands if they consider themselves to be "successful." As Chad explains: Almost always, no hands go up in the air. Despite being obviously externally successful, these entrepreneurs don't feel or consider themselves successful. On the contrary, many of them actually feel like failures. They think they're unsuccessful because they're not yet where they want to be. But the real reason they feel unsuccessful is because of how they measure themselves and their progress. When no hands are raised, Chad then asks: "What are you going to do to solve this problem?" After sitting for a while and reflecting on the group's common responses, the following are:

  • A.M.B. ALWAYS MEASURE BACKWARDS.

• P131. Michael Jordan summed it up well: "Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again."

• P133. Naval Ravikant: "I used to get annoyed about things. Now I always look for the positive side of it. It used to take a rational effort. It used to take a few seconds for me to come up with a positive. Now I can do it sub-second."

• P156. The Experience Transformer journaling exercise:

  • Think about any specific experience—positive or negative.

  • Ask yourself: What about this experience worked?

  • What "usefulness" can you get from this experience to improve your future?

  • What can you learn from this experience about what you don't want?

  • Knowing what you know now, because you've had this experience, how will you approach your future differently?

  • What about this experience are you grateful for?

• P164. Chapter takeaways:

  • Being in the GAIN is not simply about seeing life on the bright side. Being in the GAIN is about taking every experience life throws at you and transforming it to serve you.

  • When you're in the GAP, you ask yourself, "Why did this happen?" and act as a victim.

  • When you're in the GAIN, you control the meaning of your past. You cherish your past and use it as precious feedback for clarifying what you truly want and value.

  • Being in the GAIN is an approach-motivated way of life, and it enables you to turn every valley into a future peak.

  • Being in the GAIN empowers you to take any experience and be better, not bitter.

• P166. By measuring yourself backward, you get the following benefits:

  • You liberate yourself from the GAP

  • You get off the hedonic treadmill of working harder and harder to reach an unreachable target

  • You stop comparing yourself and competing with anyone else

  • You appreciate where you truly are

  • You appreciate your progress

  • You appreciate everything in your life

  • You see every experience as a GAIN

  • You're enabled to transform every experience into a GAIN

  • You never start from scratch again, but always with the momentum of all your GAINS behind you.

  • You start each new day ALREADY HAPPY based on the happiness you've achieved to this point, and you EXPAND that happiness every day because you know happiness is created by measuring your progress backward.