And that’s the whole point of a horizon. If we ever did reach it, it would cease to be the powerful orienting presence it is. The horizon, by definition, recedes before your approach.
Our vision works much the same way. As we update our understanding, as we renew our ambition, our goals recede before our approach. As we chase our targets, we naturally orient ourselves to that spot out in front of us and inevitably become familiar with the space between where we are and where we’d like to be.
This is called living in the gap. We spend most of our time there. Part of that is just the nature of pursuit. And this is fine. We try hard things. We strive. We fail. We learn. We grow. And with persistence, we achieve.
But if we spend ALL of our time in that space, we dry up. Our enthusiasm diminishes. We become cynical. We become obsessed with the indicators and lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing. And we lose the sense of fun and adventure available to us in the journey.
The practice you pictured when you started is a horizon. It sets your direction and it keeps its distance. You raise your rate, the next rate appears. You fill the caseload, then you want the right clients in it.
If the only thing you ever measure is the distance left to the horizon, the number never improves. A capable clinician decides nothing’s working and gives up, usually a quarter or two before it would have turned.
We all have a negativity bias. Our attention is built to track what is missing. Left alone, your mind hands you the gap every time and buries the progress.
So once a quarter, we deliberately pause and reflect on the distance we’ve traveled. We look back and live in the gain. This counteracts the powerful negativity bias in all of us. We harvest the progress and learning from the twelve weeks of pursuit so we can carry it into the next cycle of goal-setting and achievement. This reflection is necessary work, the engine that sustains high performance over the long term.
If you genuinely cannot see it (and plenty of sharp people cannot), borrow the eyes of someone who knew you a year ago.
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