The Satisfaction Gap

The gap between life as it is and life as we imagine it could be is what determines our contentment. This gap is also the most important motivator known to humankind, but also the most poorly understood.

As a force for good, the gap drives us to learn, to improve, to risk, to endure, to hope, to imagine, to sacrifice, to collaborate, and to be all that we could be.

As a force for evil, the gap drives us to resent, to hate, to bind, to restrict, to negate, to exclude, to dream of all that we imagine we might have been but for the perfidy of “others”.

The Satisfaction Gap hits us all in our relationships, our marriages, our social networks, and our friendships, but particularly it hits us in our careers. There’s a simple reason for this.

Our careers are central to our lives and our identities. As teachers, as lawyers, as engineers, as nurses, as physiotherapists, we identify ourselves as unique and valuable, because we have to. After all, we have spent five or ten percent of a lifetime, and a galleyslave’s worth of financing, to get here.

Yet here we are in mid-career with obligations and kids and mortgages and employees and leases and an anemic self-funded pension plan, wondering why the heck we ever ended up being an emergency room nurse or a duty counsel lawyer. Or even an award-winning architect who can’t wait until closing time when she can get back to the garden.

For many of us, the Satisfaction Gap can be handled with hobbies, with distraction, with alcohol, with the Dream of the Life After, and with side gigs. But the Satisfaction Gap never goes away.

Unless, that is, you find the Sweet Spot.

Here’s the thing: each of us possesses a specific and unique set of Giftings, and each of us was born to address a specific set of Needs. It’s in that jigsaw-puzzle-fit of Giftings and Needs that we find our satisfaction.

If you are in the place you were meant to be by virtue of your Giftings, you will be content emotionally, financially, and professionally. If not, there will be the Satisfaction Gap.

Simple as that.

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