The Gap

There is a gap between who you are and who you tell yourself you are.

That gap is your level of delusion.

If the gap is wide and you have not done the work, you are not ambitious. You are crazy.

If the gap is negative — if the person in your head is smaller than the person you actually are — you are not humble. You are a different kind of crazy, dragging your reality down to match a story you keep telling yourself.

Both are delusion. Both come at a cost.

Humility that goes below the line is not humility. It is theft of your own future.

The narrative should sit slightly ahead of reality. Not delusionally ahead. Not so far ahead that the line snaps. Just enough that it pulls you forward.

This is ambition. A healthy tension between where you are and where you are walking.

The story you tell yourself about who you are is doing work whether you noticed it or not. It is either pulling you forward or dragging you down. It does not sit still.

The one who says I am becoming a person of unbroken discipline — and then trains, reads, shows up — is using the gap correctly. The narrative is ahead, and his actions are closing the distance.

The person who says I am a fraud, I am behind, I will never get there — and then trains, reads, shows up anyway — is fighting his own story with one hand tied behind his back. He will not last.

Tell yourself a true story that points up. Then walk toward it.

Not lies. Not affirmations. A version of yourself that is honest about where you are and clear about where you are going.

Keep the gap healthy. Keep the line taut. Close the distance.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson