Building Discrepancy
A motivational interviewing worksheet for building discrepancy - laying your deepest values beside your current behavior, facing the gap without shame, and letting your own reasons for change do the talking.
The gap that fuels change
Discrepancy is the distance between how you are living and what you most deeply want your life to be about. In motivational interviewing, that gap is not treated as a source of shame - it is treated as fuel. The difference matters. Shame says you are a bad person, and it makes you want to look away. Discrepancy says this behavior is pulling against what you care about, and it makes you want to move. No lecture from anyone else can create that pull; it only appears when you lay your values and your behavior side by side and look honestly.
Ground rules for this page
You are not committing to change anything here. The only job is to measure the gap accurately; what you do about it comes later, and it stays entirely your call. Two things will help. Be specific, because vague answers protect the status quo. And be kind, because you are describing a gap between behavior and values - not delivering a verdict on your worth. If defensiveness rises partway through, treat it as a signal that you are close to something that matters.
Your values snapshot
Check the values that feel most deeply yours - not the ones you think you are supposed to pick. Aim for the handful you would want your life to stand for.
The behavior in question
Name the behavior you keep circling back to - the one that made this worksheet worth opening. Plain words, no spin.
Your behavior snapshot
Describe what this behavior has actually looked like lately, as if a camera crew followed you for two weeks. How often, how much, in what situations, what it gives you in the moment, and what it costs afterward - just footage, no narration.
The honest gap
Set your checked values beside your snapshot. Where does the behavior line up with what you said matters, and where does it pull directly against it? Write about the widest point of the gap - the value taking the biggest hit.
How much does the gap weigh on you?
Rate how heavily this gap sits when you look at it straight on. Then notice whatever number you chose, and ask what put it above zero. That answer is your own case for change - nobody else's.
Let your own reasons speak
Finish whichever of these sentences have something in them: Closing this gap matters to me because... If nothing changes for another year, then... If I moved one step closer to my values this month, it would look like... You are still not committing to anything - you are letting yourself hear yourself.
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