The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

A 3-Minute Quote Summary Of:

I really like this photo by Charelle Griffith

If you are already successful yet sense there is a quantum jump in your success that awaits you, you can take that quantum jump with the tools in this book.

The Important Difference Between Excellence and Genius:

Your Zone of Excellence is a space in which you know how to function so well that you can attain great results without stretching yourself very much. It’s a box, though, because ultimately you find yourself stymied and unsatisfied within it. You’re doing the same thing over and over, and while it feeds the people around you, it doesn’t feed you. It has an upper limit.

Your Zone of Genius is a continuous spiral. You go higher and higher every day as you expand your capacity for more love, abundance, and success. It’s an upward journey with no upper limit.

4 Questions to Identify Your Genius (aka Unique Ability):

What is my genius?
How can I bring forth my genius in ways that serve others and myself at the same time?
What is my unique ability? (There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organization I serve.)
What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work?

Liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction. Your Zone of Genius is the set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw upon your special gifts and strengths. Your Zone of Genius beckons you with increasingly strong calls as you go through your life. (The Call to Genius is the name I’ve given to these inner promptings.)

We Often Have An Upper Limit Problem Standing In The Way:

By age forty, many of us have tuned out the Call to Genius and are getting loud, repeated alarms hidden in the form of depression, illness, injuries, and relationship conflict. These alarms are reminding us to spend more time feeding our natural genius.

Common Upper Limit Behaviors:

Worrying
Blame and criticism
Getting sick or hurt
Squabbling
Hiding significant feelings
Not keeping agreements
Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people.

These Upper Limit Behaviors are signals you need to expand instead of contract. They’re telling you that it’s time to open up and embrace a new high-water mark of positive energy that’s trying to establish itself in you. Underneath a headache might be an insight that a powerfully positive as the pain is negative. The surface pain is often caused by resisting the underlying message.

Almost all of us have a story about why we don’t access our genius. When we are within that story, it is very difficult to know that it’s just a story. What makes those stories seem so real (hard to recognize as “just stories”) is that they were being told before we were born. We’re born into stories that keep us from accessing our genius. We grow up among those stories and become like fish that aren’t aware of the water they’re swimming in. For example, in one family the story might be that genius leads to irresponsibility.

We Can Break Through Our Upper Limit and Access Our Genius:

Asking questions like these can lift you out of the limiting story that you’ve been living in:

Where do I feel out of integrity with myself?
What is keeping me from feeling complete and whole?
What important feelings am I not letting into my awareness?
Where in my life am I not telling the full truth?
Where in my life have I not kept my promises?
In my relationship with ______, what do I need to say or do to feel complete and whole?
Did I break the family’s spoken or unspoken rules to get where I am?
Even though I am successful, did I fail to meet the expectations my parents had of me?
How much love and abundance am I willing to allow?
How am I getting in my own way?

Shine the light of awareness on a thought like “I am fundamentally flawed” and label it as what it is: an Upper Limit bug. I use bug in two senses here. It’s like a computer bug, because it’s a false line in your code that causes a breakdown in your operating efficiency. It’s like a bug in the mosquito sense, too, because it bites you when you are going to higher levels of love, abundance, and creativity. You start slapping at the bug and bring yourself back down to your previous level. The other way to stop the cognitive dissonance is to pull back from your success and not challenge the false belief. This move brings you back down into a zone you’re familiar with. The bug wins, and you lose.

Dr. Hendrick’s process for beating the Upper Limit Bug:

I notice myself worrying about something.
I let go of the worry-thoughts, shifting my focus away from them.
I wonder: what positive new thing is trying to come into being?
I usually get a body feeling (not a thought or idea) of where that positive new thing is trying to come through.
I open my focus to feel that body feeling deeply.
I let myself feel it deeply for as long as I possibly can.
Later, I often get an idea of the positive thing that was trying to come through.

The Benefits:

Inspiring others is often touted as a moral imperative, a “should” and a duty, but very few ever speak to the sensual delights of inspiration. One of the most delicious feelings in the world comes from seeing people actually becoming inspired by your commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Not only is inspiring others good for the others; it feels wonderful to you, too.

Great book! Thanks Jake Ballentine for the recommendation.