The Gap I've Been Living In

I went down to the studio yesterday. Four full classes. And I realised I'd been measuring everything wrong.

I went down to the Hurstbridge studio yesterday morning. Around 10 am.

Two classes were finishing up. Both full. Two more were starting. Both full.

I stood there watching people walk in and out. I knew about three quarters of them. Some are old friends. But most are people we've gotten to know since we opened. People from our community. People who live down the road, whose kids go to the same schools.

And I realised I'd been measuring everything wrong.

I've been reading a book called "The Gap and the Gain." Simple idea. Most people measure themselves forward, against an ideal they'll never reach. That's the Gap. The alternative is measuring backward, against where you started. That's the Gain.

I live in the Gap. More than I'd like to admit.

I've written before about stoicism. Focusing on what you can control, letting go of what you can't. I talk a good game. But honestly, I'm constantly failing at it, catching myself, and trying again. It's a philosophy, not a switch you flip. And sometimes a different angle is what actually makes something click. This book did that for me.

I run the behind-the-scenes side of HPY. Tech, systems, marketing, numbers. It's very easy in that seat to always be looking at what's next. What's not done. What's not working. The target we haven't hit.

I can have a week where three studios are running full classes, members are happy, the business is profitable, and by Thursday I'm stressed about something that hasn't even gone wrong yet.

That's the Gap. It feels productive. It feels responsible. But it's a treadmill.

Five minutes in that doorway changed my whole day.

Why nuns make the best research subjects

"The Gap and the Gain" references a study. 180 Catholic nuns.

In the 1930s, each wrote a short autobiography when they joined the order. Around 22 years old. Just a page, handwritten.

Here's what one nun wrote: "I was born on September 26, 1909, the eldest of seven children, five girls and two boys. My candidate year was spent in the Motherhouse, teaching chemistry. With God's grace, I intend to do my best for our order, for the spread of religion and for my personal sanctification."

Here's what another nun wrote: "God started my life off well by bestowing on me a grace of inestimable value. The past year has been a very happy one. Now I look forward with eager joy to receiving the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of union with Love Divine."

Same age. Same convent. Same life ahead of them. But one is full of eagerness, gratitude, and joy. The other is factual and dutiful. That difference, written at 22, predicted who was still alive at 90.

Six decades later, a researcher found those autobiographies and scored them for emotional content. Then tracked who was still alive. (The full study is here if you're into that sort of thing.)

The brilliant thing about studying nuns is nearly every variable is controlled. They don't smoke. They don't drink. Same diet. Same job. Same living conditions. Same healthcare. Same everything. Researchers dream about this. You'd never get it with the general public. Too many moving parts. But chuck 180 nuns in a convent and you've basically got a clean experiment.

The nuns who'd expressed the most positive emotion lived nearly seven years longer. By variety of positive emotions, the gap was over ten years.

The only variable was outlook.

And it wasn't the absence of negative emotion that mattered. It was specifically the presence of positive emotion. Your outlook isn't a mood. It's a physical health input. As real as what you eat or how you sleep.

"The Gap and the Gain" argues that measuring backward produces positive emotion. Measuring forward produces sustained stress. I'd been doing the second one on autopilot for months.

I read through our Google reviews this morning. 202 reviews across Hurstbridge, Diamond Creek, and Eltham. Ninety-eight percent five stars.

Ngoc wrote about her 100th class. Called it "wellbeing time." Nikki said she set one intention on her 47th birthday: to get stronger. Session 54, she can touch her toes again. Cara wrote: "How did I live without HPY before? Not as well." Maddie said she always leaves feeling a bit more like a functioning human than when she walked in.

Read those through the lens of the nun study. These aren't just nice reviews. These are women describing the exact emotional pattern that predicts a longer, healthier life. Capability. Progress. Belonging. Looking forward to something.

And I'd been so focused on the numbers that I'd stopped seeing it.

I do the same thing with the business that people do with their bodies. We open a third studio and within a week I'm wondering where the fourth one should go. I'm a bloody nightmare.

You lose weight and immediately think about what's left to lose. You nail an exercise and within a minute you're watching the person next to you do the advanced version. Your back stops hurting and you start worrying about your hip.

That's the Gap. It's so normal you don't notice it.

Now flip it. What couldn't you do a year ago?

Get up off the floor without using your hands. Sleep on your side. Reach the top shelf without wincing. Hold Warrior 3 without wobbling. Put your shoes on standing up.

Or the one Mel hears all the time. Someone was too anxious to walk into a Pilates studio. Now they walk in excited and it's the best part of their week.

That's the Gain. Not because anything changed. Because you changed what you're measuring.

Less than three years ago, we opened one small studio in Hurstbridge. No members. No reviews. No idea if anyone would show up.

Last month, people walked through our doors across three studios over 5,000 times. Five thousand. In less than three years. I still can't get my head around that.

And I'd been measuring the Gap. The things we haven't done. The numbers we haven't hit. The problems not yet solved.

Standing in that doorway, I measured the Gain. Turns out I'm not doing as badly as my brain keeps telling me.

This is really just abundance and gratitude, isn't it. Not the performative kind. Not a gratitude journal you do for five minutes in the morning and then spend the rest of the day measuring yourself forward. The real kind. The kind where your default setting is noticing what you have, not what you lack.

The nuns who lived longest weren't the ones who never struggled. They were the ones whose language was full of what they had.

I'm not claiming I've fixed anything. I'll probably be back in the Gap by Monday. But yesterday, for five minutes, I measured backward.

Start checking yourself. When you catch your mind going straight to what's wrong, what's missing, what you haven't achieved yet, pause. Ask what's actually changed. What can you do now that you couldn't a year ago?

The Gain isn't a mindset hack. It's a different way of relating to your own life. And it might matter more than any single workout you ever do.

See you around the studio,

Reid

P.S. If you were one of the people walking out of the studio around 10 am yesterday and I smiled at you like an idiot, now you know why.