Now you know what the Three Gaps are: the Beliefs Gap, the Values Gap, and the Time Gap. You’ve read three compelling stories about people who have closed their own gaps, and you have been given a simple methodology for how to close these gaps in your own life. The question now is, Are you going to do anything about this?
Let me share my definition of character with you. This is not a dictionary definition, but my definition.
Character is the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the emotion of making that decision has passed.
Many years ago, at work, I had a ritual every morning at 9:30 a.m.: I would go into our company lunchroom and pay homage to a shrine. The shrine was a candy bar vending machine. I would put a quarter into that little slot and retrieve a Heath Bar. To say I was addicted to Heath Bars would not have been much of an exaggeration.
On one occasion, as I was about to get my daily fix of chocolate, two people sitting across the room, obviously thinking that I couldn’t hear them, said to each other, “Hyrum is getting porky, isn’t he?”
My hand froze in midair; I put the quarter back in my pocket and stormed out of the lunchroom. At that point in my life, I weighed 230 pounds, which was forty pounds too many for me. My wife had been at me for two years to lose the weight; I picked up the phone, called her, and said this time I was going to lose the weight. I was emotionally involved. How long do you think that commitment lasted? Four hours.
What happens in four hours when you’ve made a commitment like that? You get hungry, that’s what happens. And you find yourself leaning on the third shelf of your refrigerator, eating everything you can get your hands on.
Character, simply stated, is doing what you say you’re going to do.
I learned long ago that an excellent definition of the term wisdom is “knowledge rightly applied.” You have gained some knowledge inside the pages of this book—knowledge that comes from many wonderful places. The question now becomes, Do you have the character to do anything about it?
There are three things that I would ask you to seriously consider that will stimulate your commitment to start closing the Three Gaps:
1. Write down the things that connected with you.
2. Think about those things for thirty-six hours.
3. Teach those things to somebody else within forty-eight hours after that.
Now start your journey. Close the gaps. Begin your quest for inner peace.
Make a difference.