Behind The Scenes: Bridging the Gap – One Overlooked Step
When you set out to achieve a goal, the most common approach is to think of your next steps. It is so common in fact, that people often don’t even think about the full equation to bridging the gap from where you are now to the destination. When you are bridging the gap, you want to get clear on your identity. In today’s video, I am sharing a simple and powerful step in bridging the gap that you can use to shift your results.
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Bridging the Gap: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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Let’s talk about the gap the gap between where you are right now and where you want to be as a leader and as a company all of those things that you want to do and create in your life are out there in the future. Maybe you can see that maybe you can visualize them.
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I love to be able to talk about my goals and I love to talk about my clients goals. And it really is exciting to clearly see where we’re going. But you have to identify that there is a gap between where you are right now and where you are going so how do you bridge that gap.
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How do you create the kind of steps toward doing it. Well most people focus on the actions you take or the behaviors of achieving those goals. So if you wanted to lower your cholesterol. This is very fresh on my mind because a doctor just told me that I had a 203 cholesterol out of 200 was kind of the borderline. So I needed to be below 200. And so I’m just right on the edge. And he gave me some suggestions about these things. So it’s all about the actions. But here’s the thing. What he doesn’t know is that doesn’t change behavior as well as what I’m about to share with you today. Today we’re going to talk about something very specific that you can use to bridge the gap in your life and your business. So stay tuned.
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Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow.
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This is behind the scenes we’re going to talk about bridging the gap today which is really about you know creating the kind of momentum that you need to go from where you are now to where you want to be.
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The first step I would ask you is to get really clear about where you want to be what if this is an increase in income if this is increasing impact in your market and you’ll get yourselves to a certain amount maybe it’s crossed another another milestone 10 million 100 million doesn’t matter. You just have to be able to get really clear about where you’re going. Those are the results. Well most people focus on the actions as we’ve already talked about but the actions really aren’t the most important piece.
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The most important piece is to identify your identity the core identity of who you are plays into it in a much bigger way than the actions you take. Because if you don’t shift identity the actions will never be truly aligned to to the next level. And so that’s what you have to do first. All right. So one of the things you want to do is think about the identity of the person who has what you want. You have to think of that identity as clearly as you can identity is how they see themselves at their core level.
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I want to give you an example here of something I shifted in my life that will help you put some context to it. It’s not a business thing and maybe you’ve heard me talk about this before maybe you haven’t but in my speeches I talk about dancing and in fact I resisted dancing for decades maybe maybe a decade and a half. But you know growing up from a young age I didn’t know how to dance and so I was on the sidelines for forever through college on the sidelines. And I really identified as not a dancer.
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And so I didn’t know how to dance. And so I avoided it. It was too uncomfortable. It was too much outside of my room. And so my my identity was that I am not a dancer. Now what happened was I was at a wedding and that one wedding someone asked me to dance. Beautiful lady. And when I say beautiful lady she was my cousin. I say that with a smile now because I know it sounds a little bit odd but she didn’t have a bad dance with I didn’t have a right to dance with.
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And she’s she asked me questions about do I know the jitterbug. Do I know jive and I said no. And she goes What do you know how to do.
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And I was a 26 year old kind of a grown man and all I knew had to do with the sway you know that thing where you go back and forth and you just you know it’s very uncomfortable because it’s just there’s nothing to it. That’s all I knew how to do. So my identity was I was not a dancer. Well I came off that dance floor and I decided that I wanted to learn to dance and that my identity would be I would be a dancer.
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I made a really clear thought about what would it take for someone to be a dancer and to learn how to dance. Well they have to identify as a dancer.
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That is a really big shift for me. Now I didn’t know how to dance but I was I want I knew that I knew I had to lean into that. So as a dancer I went in there I thought about it. What do they do. They dance. So I went to these bars that were having these free lessons for swing dancing. Ms. Nineteen ninety six the movie Swingers was was was really popping off and I shifted my own identity and I learned how to do things and I became a dancer.
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It took me about three or four months and I became a really good dancer. I started getting paid. Dancing took me a while to get that point. But me and my partner with very very good with this acrobatic kind of lifting and twisting and flips and all that stuff. It was really amazing. I share all this with you because I will share with you personally my journey from not being a dancer to being a dancer and the gap that I did in between was the first step was I decided to be a dancer I decided to change my identity.
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If you have a goal that you’re going after what is the identity of that person that has that goal already when you get on clearly understand what that is you’re able to make the shift new actions will start to present themselves. You will approach those new actions with it with a more of commitment more focus because of your identity shift. That’s what I want you to really think about today. A lot of people are looking to to really create something new in their lives. Well it’s internal first not external the internal is your your identity external is kind of the steps you take that the behaviors the actions.
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So I wanted to share this with you today because if you want something different than what you have right now then all you have to do is identify where you want to go and the identity of the person that actually has what you already want and then become that person embody it completely.
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Part of my work that I do with leaders that want to be world-class in what they’re doing and grow their companies is to help them identify these specific things that will help them move forward that are different than they’ve ever thought of before. I push them out of their comfort zone much like I did when I was dancing. But I do this because I want you to grow as a leader so I share this with you today. Thanks for being a part of growth think tank. Thanks for listening in. I love what I’m doing.
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Hopefully you’re loving it too. As always lead with courage. We’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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