The Big Leap – Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Your Life to the Next Level
As mentioned last week, my summer has been busy working on my creative project. Alongside that I have been completing extra yoga study and also focussing on study related to my business. It was recommended through my business study to read “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks PhD.
I was familiar with Gay’s work and background in psychology, personal growth, abundance and consciousness so I jumped at the chance to read this book. In fact it was so engaging, I couldn’t put the book down and ended up reading it in two days!
The book is a comprehensive and simple guide to overcoming our barriers to achieving our full potential and to live more fully. This potential is not just financial but also in love and life.
“The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.”
The book can lead to some major “A-Ha” moments in terms of understanding our gifts and how we may be subconsciously sabotaging ourselves so that we don’t move forward to be the best we can be.
We have a limit to how much success, love, joy we may experience in life and generally this can be set early in our childhood. This limit comes into play when we are doing well and we subconsciously do things to sabotage our achievements such as making bad decisions, engaging in negative thoughts, physically injuring ourselves, creating personal dramas.
“Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves , causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.”
Hitting this ceiling is referred to our “Upper Limit Problem”, when we push through our upper limit a voice in our head may say “You can’t possibly feel this good” or “be this happy in love”. Unconsciously you do something to bring you back to your safe zone, a place where you feel most comfortable.
Gay talks about our “Zone of Genuis”, a set of activities that are uniquely suited to you and serve your highest purpose in life. The key thing here is that they are unique to you drawing on your talents and strengths. This is what we truly LOVE to do, what makes our heart sing.
“The fear of being fundamentally flawed brings with it a related fear. It’s the fear that if you did make a full commitment to living in your Zone of Genius, you might fail. It’s the belief that even your genius is flawed.”
Gay expertly guides us through the hidden barriers giving advice on how to bust through them. The four barriers identified are:
- Feeling Fundamentally Flawed – A feeling that you are fundamentally flawed in some way.
- Disloyalty and Abandonment – Believing that if you achieve success you will end up alone, be disloyal to your roots and leave behind people from your past.
- Believing That More Success Brings a Bigger Burden – Believing that reaching your highest potential will make you an even bigger burden.
- The Crime of Outshining – Feeling that having full success will make you outshine others which will make them look or feel bad.
I really loved this book and found new ways to look at how I deal with situations. It gave me the opportunity to really look at how I respond to situations and where I may be sabotaging my life. I firmly believe that you can change your life from the inside out so this book is a useful tool to examine ourselves and develop ways to change.
I’m sure I will get more out of the book upon further reading. I’d highly recommend this book if you wish to take a different look at your inner life and would like to make positive change.
I love the mantra Gay quotes “I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same”. We can each be the change.
