Introduction
You often reach a certain level of success only to sabotage your own progress. This invisible barrier acts like an internal thermostat, keeping you restricted to a familiar comfort zone. Gay Hendricks examines this phenomenon in The Big Leap.
You unconsciously limit your success and happiness because an internal thermostat holds you back, but you can break through these hidden barriers to operate permanently in your unique zone of genius.
The book guides you through the mechanics of self-sabotage and shows how to move past your fears. You learn to recognize hidden upper-limit problems and shift your daily relationship with time and work.
Consider the following questions as you read.
- How do you unconsciously sabotage your own success?
- What false beliefs trap you in mediocrity?
- How do you identify your unique zone of genius?
- Can you shift your perception of time to eliminate stress?
1. The Upper Limit Problem and Four Barriers
You unconsciously sabotage your success when you exceed your internal thermostat setting, held back by four false core beliefs from childhood.
The Upper Limit Problem is your universal tendency to sabotage yourself when you exceed an artificial thermostat setting on your ability to achieve and enjoy success, love, and abundance. This thermostat gets programmed early in life during childhood. When you push past your old setting, you experience guilt or anxiety that forces you back down into your familiar, secure comfort zone.
Powerball lottery winner Jack Whitaker won over three hundred million dollars, but his Upper Limit Problem triggered a litany of disasters. These included divorce, being robbed of $545,000 in a strip club, his granddaughter's fatal drug overdose, and over four hundred lawsuits. In fact, over 60 percent of lottery winners blew the money within two years.
Understanding the Upper Limit Problem
You cannot solve the Upper Limit Problem by gathering more information. You must dissolve it by shining awareness on its underpinnings.
When you feel scared, you tend to hold your breath as a physical tool of denial. This paradoxically makes the fear grow bigger. Fear is simply excitement without the breath. You can transform it into exhilaration by taking big, easy breaths instead of holding them in denial.
- Take big, easy breaths when you feel fear.
- Feel the fear instead of pretending it is not there.
- Celebrate it with a big breath just like blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
The Four Hidden Barriers to Success
Four false core beliefs act as barriers that cause you to sabotage your success and limit your full potential. These unconscious decisions made during childhood include specific self-limiting assumptions.
Carl, the first child of an executive who ran Fortune 500 companies, grew up shuttling between bitterly divorced parents. His father unconsciously convicted him of a nameless crime, leading Carl to feel fundamentally flawed and that his creative genius would never be good enough. This deep-seated feeling creates cognitive dissonance when you achieve greater success or happiness.
Newlyweds Robert and Dee made a snap decision to get married in Reno instead of having a traditional estate wedding. Immediately after celebrating, they rolled into a bed of poison oak. They suffered a severe, painful rash as a physical manifestation of punishing themselves for going against family expectations of disloyalty and abandonment.
You may also believe that achieving more success will make you an even bigger burden to the world than you already feel you are. The author grew up as an unexpected baby whose father died shortly after conception, leaving his mother with three hundred dollars, financial struggle, and depression. This led him to feel like a burden, resulting in his mother and brother completely ignoring his first published book when he proudly presented it to them.
The final barrier is the unconscious belief that you must not expand to full success because it would outshine others and make them look or feel bad. Musician Kenny Loggins and his former partner Jim Messina achieved massive early rock music success. Subsequent solo work was marred by self-sabotage and physical illnesses due to an unaddressed fear of outshining each other. Kenny finally resolved this by pivoting away from pop hits into a deeply personal creative direction, later singing to an audience of five hundred thousand people at an Earth Day celebration in Washington, D.C.
2. Recognizing Upper Limit Behaviors
When positive energy flows and things go well, people unconsciously trigger the Upper Limit Problem using a predictable set of self-sabotaging behaviors.
When positive energy flows and life goes well, you crimp that flow to stay safely within your Zone of Competence or Excellence. There are a limited number of ways you do this. You can recognize these Upper Limit behaviors through specific actions:
- Worrying
- Blame and criticism
- Getting sick or hurt
- Squabbling
- Hiding significant feelings
- Not keeping agreements
- Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people
- Deflecting
Common Upper Limit Behaviors
Most worry is not a useful tool for solving problems. It is an Upper Limit mechanism used to manufacture misery and halt positive energy when life is going well. Almost all worry-thoughts have nothing to do with reality and concern things outside of personal control.
The author coached a billionaire who worried constantly about losing money and criticized his wife over buying expensive toilet paper. The total cost amounted to far less than 1 percent of his net worth and less than a single hour of ordinary stock market fluctuations.
Criticism and blame are addictive Upper Limit behaviors that destroy intimacy. They serve to disrupt the flow of positive energy rather than produce useful results. Criticism functions like a hypnotic trance where you genuinely believe the other person is at fault.
An executive at Dell Computer named John frequently exploded in angry criticism toward his team right after receiving good news or feeling the urge to give a compliment. This pattern was rooted in his relationship with his critical father.
Deflecting compliments also blocks the reception of positive energy and keeps you trapped in lower zones of performance. During a round of golf with a Fortune 500 CEO, the author observed two attorneys from Beverly Hills deflect every single compliment about their golf shots by pointing out flaws or claiming luck.
Physical illnesses and accidents can operate as Upper Limit symptoms governed by the Three Ps. The unconscious mind uses physical pain, migraines, colds, or accidents as a clunky way to punish you for experiencing too much ecstasy, or to prevent and protect you from facing unwanted situations after a success.
A successful stockbroker named Ryan suffered severe afternoon migraines because they punished him for the excitement of an illicit workplace affair that awakened his passion. A university professor named Dr. Smith developed sudden laryngitis on the morning he was scheduled to give a presentation about research he no longer wanted to do after deciding to take a new job.
Worry, Blame, and Integrity Breaches
Arguments are Upper Limit symptoms driven by a race to occupy the victim position, and they can be resolved permanently by each party taking 100 percent responsibility.
Arguments happen when two people try to prove they are the victim and the other is the persecutor. Because each human entity is a whole 100 percent, a conflict actually contains 200 percent total responsibility.
The author and his wife Kathlyn utilized this insight and have not had a single argument in more than twelve years. You can resolve any conflict by following this practice:
- Claim 100 percent responsibility for creating the conflict and 100 percent responsibility for resolving it.
Integrity breaches like lies, broken agreements, and withheld truths act as physical blockages that stop the flow of energy. A breach creates a gap that jams a pebble in the garden hose of communication.
Business owners Sarah and Jonah experienced constant marital arguments following record-breaking quarterly earnings of forty million dollars. The arguments stemmed from projected jealousy and hidden sadness regarding emotional intimacy.
When you notice worry-thoughts that are not based on reality or immediate action, you can use a specific somatic and mental sequence to transform them:
- 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 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.
3. Unlocking Your Zone of Genius
Human activities fall into four distinct zones: Incompetence, Competence, Excellence, and Genius. True fulfillment exists only in the Zone of Genius.
True fulfillment requires moving past your Zone of Excellence into your Zone of Genius by committing to your unique ability.
The Zone of Incompetence involves things others do better. The Zone of Competence includes tasks others can do just as well. The Zone of Excellence holds things you do extremely well but which keep you trapped away from your true potential. The Zone of Genius comprises activities uniquely suited to your special gifts.
Business consultant Thomas spent thirteen hours and twelve thousand dollars worth of billable time trying to install a one-thousand-dollar printer before hiring a college kid to fix it in an hour for one hundred dollars.
The Four Zones of Activity
Successful people function comfortably in their Zone of Excellence where money is steady, but they ultimately feel sluggish and unfulfilled. Deep underneath complaints like unsupportive bureaucracy or heavy workloads lies the fear of failing at their true genius.
At a Stanford Ph.D. reunion, successful professors and therapists complained about bureaucracy and burnout, which Gay Hendricks realized were symptoms of not taking the Big Leap.
Making a formal commitment to live in your Zone of Genius acts as an entry gate that allows the path to appear before you know how to achieve it. Commitment must precede the exact mechanism of how to make it happen, much like stepping out into thin air before a bridge appears, as seen in Indiana Jones.
- Repeat softly to yourself a few times: I commit to living in my Zone of Genius, now and forever.
- Say it out loud a few times, savoring the words.
- Speak the sentence from your heart as a formal contract between you and the universe.
Discovering Your Unique Ability
Four specific wonder-based questions help individuals unearth their innate genius, unique work style, highest payoff activities, and unique ability. Wondering about these questions helps bring hidden treasures from deep inside the mind into the light with amazed admiration rather than critical pressure.
Rhonda and Cynthia, two struggling corporate consultants, rediscovered that their unique spirit of play was missing from their corporate brochures, and updating it revived their business.
- Ask Question 1: What do I most love to do?
- Ask Question 2: What work do I do that doesn't seem like work?
- Ask Question 3: In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to amount of time spent?
- Ask Question 4: What is my unique ability?
A person's unique ability is camouflaged inside a larger skill, much like a Russian doll containing smaller dolls within. By peeling back layers from a broad skill down to the exact feeling and love of the process, you uncover your core superpower or unique ability.
Anne, a Silicon Valley CEO, realized her outermost skill was running meetings, but her unique ability was feeling an energy shift in the room and knowing when to transition.
- Complete the statement: I'm at my best when I'm...
- Complete the statement: When I'm at my best, the exact thing I'm doing is...
- Complete the statement: When I'm doing that, the thing I love most about it is...
4. Einstein Time and Successful Relationships
You can eliminate stress by shifting to Einstein Time and resolving relationship power struggles through total responsibility.
Living in Einstein Time
Most people suffer from a Newtonian paradigm that views time as a finite, external entity that pressures them, leading to time urgency and stress. By embracing the truth that you are where time comes from, you take total ownership and can generate as much of it as you need.
A Manhattan stockbroker running late for a meeting remembered the concept of Einstein Time on a crowded subway, relaxed his body, and arrived to find his meeting had not even started yet.
Your experience of time pressure is directly linked to how much physical space you are willing to occupy with your awareness. A single father spent six agonizing hours watching the clock while waiting for his college daughter to arrive home, but once she shared her emotional distress and they connected, his time perception shifted and he finished a writing project in a fraction of the expected time.
Stress and friction in your daily life disappear the moment you stop disowning your problems and take complete ownership of them.
- Put any traditional time-management systems in a drawer.
- Take full ownership of time and acknowledge that you are where it comes from.
- Put yourself on a radical diet of complete abstinence from complaining about time.
- Eliminate the phrase I don't have time to do that right now and replace it with the honest truth about your desires.
Solving the Relationship Problem
The vast majority of successful people experience unsatisfying long-term relationships due to unaddressed Upper Limit Problems and power struggles. In-depth research of 437 successful people revealed that 80 percent had unsatisfying marriages divided into devitalized, passive-congenial, or conflict-habituated styles, while only 20 percent had vital relationships. Success amplifies the Upper Limit Problem, triggering self-sabotage when intimacy gets too high.
A famous couple referred to as Jim and Jane experienced five successful years before an upsurge of success triggered their Upper Limit switch, plunging them into nearly two years of constant bickering and arguing. Power struggles in relationships are fueled by projection, and transforming an entanglement into a true relationship requires both partners to take 100 percent responsibility.
- Make sure you take plenty of time for yourself, in a space apart from your partner.
- Put a priority on speaking the microscopic truth, especially about what is going on in your emotions.
- Encourage each other to go through complete cycles of emotions without trying to talk each other out of them.
- Give yourself and your partner plenty of nonsexual touch.
- Bring yourself back to ground after deep intimacy by doing earthy dancing, taking a walk, or cleaning out a closet.
- Cultivate at least three friends with whom you can form a No-Upper-Limits conspiracy.
10 Key Ideas
- You unconsciously limit your success and happiness because an internal thermostat holds you back, but you can break through these hidden barriers to operate permanently in your unique zone of genius.
- The Upper Limit Problem is your universal tendency to sabotage yourself when you exceed an artificial thermostat setting on your ability to achieve and enjoy success, love, and abundance.
- Four false core beliefs act as barriers that cause you to sabotage your success and limit your full potential.
- When positive energy flows and life goes well, you crimp that flow to stay safely within your Zone of Competence or Excellence using a predictable set of self-sabotaging behaviors.
- Arguments are Upper Limit symptoms driven by a race to occupy the victim position, and they can be resolved permanently by each party taking 100 percent responsibility.
- True fulfillment requires moving past your Zone of Excellence into your Zone of Genius by committing to your unique ability.
- A person's unique ability is camouflaged inside a larger skill, much like a Russian doll containing smaller dolls within.
- By committing to live in your Zone of Genius, you unlock a state where work feels effortless and yields the highest ratio of satisfaction and abundance.
- You can eliminate stress by shifting to Einstein Time and acknowledging that you are where time comes from.
- The vast majority of successful people experience unsatisfying long-term relationships due to unaddressed Upper Limit Problems and power struggles that require both partners to take 100 percent responsibility.