Book Review of The Big Leap- Part 1

Learn what is holding you back from living your best life.

The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks

Reading a GREAT book — The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. It discusses the ONE obstacle that holds you back — The Upper Limit Problem. Maybe now is a good time for you to think about this. You could be having a life changing event right now (divorce, bankruptcy, death of a family member, illness, etc) and it is time to learn from it. It could be that you are trying to start a new business or notch up to the next level. If so this article is for you.

The pattern he illuminates is: enjoy a period of feeling really good; then do something to mess it up.

The biggest concept here is to recognize things for the real reason things are happening to you. We all know that sometimes when we are arguing that the fight is really not about what we are expressing to the other person, but something else… something deeper. This is a deep dive into what that is. What is going on at your subconscious level to keep you from experiencing your full potential or really and truly being happy.

Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we except our inner thermostat setting, we often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure…. if you make a spectacular leap in an area of your life, such as money, your Upper Limit Problem quickly enshrouds you in a we-wool blanket of guild that keeps you from enjoying your new abundance.

The ULP starts in childhood where we start to pick up on the body language or subtle messages of our parents. When we become adults, we still operate in these patters. My Part 1 of the review does not get to this yet. There is more to come on all this in Part 2. However, for a quick tease… we learn certain things in our subconscious that hold us back BIG TIME. So you really have to come back for Part 2 and see some of the examples. You will INSTANTLY recognize them in yourself.

The author discusses how guilt often shows up when we are happy. Kind of out of nowhere… something is holding us back from truly feeling joy in the moment or shortly thereafter something else happens to bring us down.

When the old belief clashes with the positive feelings you’re enjoying, one of them has to win. If the old belief wins, you turn down the volume on the positive feeling (or lose some money or start an intimacy-destroying argument with your partner). If the good feeling wins, congratulations!

If you focus on the moment, you can always find some place in you that feels good right now. Your task is to give the expanding positive feeling your full attention.

o You don’t have to wait until you have all the money you want… start now and appreciate the money you have. Find satisfaction in that status right now.

o You don’t have to wait until you have to focus on loneliness or stagnation in a relationship, find a place in yourself where you can feel good about the love you have in your life. Give your full attention to that place of joy or satisfaction.

The ULP is not something to “solve” but to “di-solve”. We need to shine a light on our false foundations and hold us back. Once we see it, then it is much easier to combat and change the behavior when it comes up.

All of our activities operate in Zones.

1. Zone of Incompetence

2. Zone of Competence

3. Zone of Excellence

4. Zone of Genius

Obviously, you want to operate in your Zone of Genius. For me, that brings to mind my first ULP… I am not good enough or smart enough to operate in my Zone of Genius. Are you thinking that as well? Read on because you already identified one of your limiting behaviors. If not, keep looking because there is much more to come.

Remember, you don’t need to operate in your Zone of Incompetence. The perfect example is that most people cannot deal with higher level technology problems. They would have to spend hours Googling it to figure it out and, in the end, have to ask for help anyway. So AVOID THESE ACTIVITIES and don’t let me steal your time. He talked about how his grandfather used the phrase “stuck on stupid” meaning that you keep doing the same dumb things over and over without learning from them.

In the Zone of Competence, you can find that you are spending way too much time and energy in this zone. One example he gave here is that often there is a “disease of unfulfillment”. Where you are not reaching your potential and you often have illness that have vague, hard-to-diagnose symptoms. Your soul is not being filled although you are doing things you are good at. So your body finds ways to bring to the surface what your subconscious is feeling. Ask yourself these questions.

• If money or your job description were not an issue, what would you really like to be doing?
• If you could stop doing something and delegate it to someone else, what would that be?
• If you could stop doing those things to free up your time, what would you do?

CAUTION: only time will tell if you can stake out a life in your Zone of Genius, but you won’t be stuck in unfulfillment.

Most successful people who are good at things operate in the Zone of Excellence. This zone is actually not a good place as it may trap you here and you never move to your Zone of Genius. The success keeps you from making the jump to the level where you truly excel.

The temptation is strong to remain in the Zone of Excellence; it’s where your own addiction to comfort wants you to stay. It’s where your family, friends, and organization want you to stay. You’re reliable there, and you provide a steady supply of all the things that family, friends, and organizations thrive on. The problem is that a deep, sacred part of you will wither and die if you stay inside your Zone of Excellence.

The real goal is to live in your Zone of Genius. The author defines it as “a set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw upon your special gifts and strengths.” By the time we are 40, we start tuning out this call, but our subconscious starts turning up the warning bells- illness; depression; injuries; relationship conflict; etc.

If we don’t heed the call and make a gentle, graceful move into our Zone of Genius, we often get painful life whacks that tell us with blatant clarity that we’re not paying attention to the call…

Given the right tools and a little wisdom, we can learn to heed our Call to Genius, sparing ourselves the unpleasant consequences of plugging our ears to keep from hearing it.

So it all sounds kind of out there and BSuntil you start seeing the examples he gives. So come back for part 2 of the book review to learn how about MAKING THE LEAP. I will start putting in some of the examples so you can start understanding the concepts more.