The Big Leap

🔫 Abstract

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks delves into the psychological obstacles that hinder success and fulfillment. He argues that a self-imposed limit, referred to as a "happiness threshold," often holds back even high-achieving individuals. This threshold triggers self-sabotaging behaviors as one attains higher levels of success.

Our happiness is shaped by early-life beliefs. This document provides useful advice for identifying and overcoming these false beliefs. Apply this knowledge to enhance your life and relationships. Take the "big leap" towards living your best life.

This summary compares Hendricks's ideas on happiness, limiting beliefs, and self-sabotage with those of other authors and experts. Additionally, it explores the scientific research behind key concepts.

🎢 Success Propels You Toward Your Happiness Threshold

People are plagued internally by placing ‘Upper Limits’ on themselves leading to frustration and disappointment. This invisible glass ceiling is an internal threshold or maximum level of success and happiness you allow ourself to experience. It prefecns you from reaching your

Levels of Success

First, Hendricks defines four distinct levels of success people occupy. As we accomplish more in life, we move through subsequently higher levels. These levels can be described as:

Level 1: Stagnancy

You have not discovered what it is you excel at, thus you spend time on things you are not good at. Not being able to develop skills akin to your personality results in frustration and spinning in a hamster wheel. You might be better of on a different path.

Level 2: Adequacy

You’ve achieved some success and are on par with peers but not exceeding them. However you feel you are falling short of your own potential. here you must re-focus and prioritise, think outside the boy ow you could aim higher.

Level 3: High Achievement

You have reached accomplishments others admire and you feel comfortable on the surface, however:

1. You still have a nagging sense that something is missing in your life. Deep down you feel there's more, but you can't quite pinpoint it. This is your inner calling towards true fulfilment.
2. This is where you may encounter your happiness threshold, which can prevent you from reaching fulfilment.

At this level, your desire for fulfilment and your happiness threshold clash, causing conflicting forces, where you are likely to begin self-sabotage to ensure you dont surpass your upper limit - due to deep seated Feelings of unworthiness.

Level 4: State of Fulfilment

Reaching this level is you true life’s purpose. transcending the limitations of your happiness threshold means you reach your highest potential without boundaries to the amount of love, wealth and joy you can experience. You are achieving and thriving - breaking out of all the boxes and living in limitless expansion.

How the Happiness Threshold Affects Your Life

Overcoming the ‘Upper-Limit Problem’ or ‘ Happiness Threshold’ is “the only problem we have to solve” as this applies to all realms of life, not just wealth and material success (however, most examples in the book are of wealthy and successful people).

On a subconscious level were meant to live in a state of fulfilment, when we dont heed this call we become depresses, ill and injured. However, as we coming closer towards fulfilment triggers fear in us. We feel undeserving and start self-sabotaging to reduce ourselves to the known and comfortable level of Happiness. As we get older we become more immune to this inner tension and learn to ignore this call towards our fulfilment.

Self-sabotaging constitutes making decisions that we know, if perhaps unconsciously, have the capacity to reduce our happiness and success. These might include making poor financial choices, creating conflicts that ruin our relationships, and engaging in risky behaviour that might result in scandal or even legal trouble.

The False Beliefs That Hold Us Back

The ‘Upper limit’ is set early in our lives by having false beliefs ingrained in us that cause feelings of fear, unworthiness , or guilt when we achieve success. Everyone holds at least one false belief and to overcome these requires self-examination to recognise and identify its origin. 4 common false beliefs are listed below:

False Belief #1: "I am flawed at my core, so I can't also be successful.”

Early experiences of rejection you felt you were blamed for or from being criticised often cause you to believe you are flawed (perceived failings) as an inherent part of your identity.

Achieving success whilst simultaneously believing to be fundamentally flawed creates a conflict in beliefs, a cognitive dissonance.

False Belief #2: "My success would be a betrayal of my roots."

Formed by a mismatch between the type or level of your success and the expectations of you. When you achieve success in a way that diverges from the expectations of others you can feel uncomfortable. Feelings of betrayal, guilt, or leaving your family behind can cause self-sabotage to soothe the extent of the negative feelings.

False Belief #3: "My success would hurt someone else."

You believe that your success has a negative impact on others. You feel guilty when you achieve and self-sabotage to protect those you believe are being harmed by your success.

Variant 1: You believe you were a burden on your parents, and you believe your success will burden others, as anything you produce is an extension of you.

Variant 2: Your success is casting a shadow on others (a sibling), often from gifted children who were made to feel bad about it by parents, teachers, and resentful peers.

Having experienced this can give an underlying fear of resentment from others, so you feel guilty and need to 'tone it down' to avoid being in the spotlight. This results in limiting success through self-sabotage or not being able to enjoy any achieved success.

False Belief #4: "Great success ends in great ruin."

This stems from stories we've been told about someone who was destroyed by their own success (an ancestor who experienced a tragic fall from grace). Remind yourself that it's not your story, and intentionally create a new story for yourself. This will involves envisioning your state of fulfilment.

Spotting Your Limiting Beliefs and Behaviours

It is vital to identify your own limiting beliefs- telltale behaviours that can crop up in any area of your life.

Once you've identified some of the behaviours that may be reinforcing your limiting beliefs, you'll need to begin confronting those in your day-to-day life. Keep in mind that these behaviours have been conditioned over a long period of time, so it will take diligent effort to overcome them. Therefore, the first step will be to make a firm commitment to keeping an open and positive attitude toward this.

When you're fully committed, begin by making a list of all the behaviors you recognize in yourself, and then consciously start watching for them to crop up. When they do, think about how they might be connected to limiting yourself. It's also important to approach this non-judgmentally. As you become aware of these beliefs and behaviours in yourself, don't be too self-critical; try to have an attitude of amusement toward yourself, and refrain from making negative judgments

Because the dynamic works a bit differently, we'll look at individual everyday behaviors separately from relationship behaviors.

Limiting Behaviors in Your Everyday Life

Many common behaviors that we tend to think of as natural and normal can actually be red flags that we might be self-sabotaging in order to undermine our success and happiness. Take some time to reflect on whether any of these rings true for you.

You Worry Habitually

Worrying can be useful or utterly useless. If you can do something about the situation then take action. However, if solving your present concern is not realistic and/or the issue isn't something you can do anything about, then worrying about it is useless.

Useless worry is just inventing negative scenarios, which can hinder progress and undermine confidence and stop you from focusing on positive solutions.

To break this you must learn to redirect your thoughts. when you catch yourself worrying :

• Stop and ask yourself: Is it useful or not?
• If not acknowledge and redirect your thoughts towards something useful
• Determine what positive energy or success you may be trying to block by engaging in habitual worry
• Thus, take time to look at what triggered the worry.

Worry and Anxiety are fear based. When faced with the unknown, humans experience either fear (a negative reaction) or excitement (a positive reaction). These two emotions are just different ways of reacting to fear -

You can thus learn to transform your fear into excitement by breathing through the fear - Consciously breathing deeply during fearful moments can release the negativity, and thus change the feeling into a more pleasant sensation of excitement or wonder.

(Note: Hendricks borrows this concept from psychiatrist Fritz Peris, who suggests that fear and excitement have similar physiological reactions. Breath work can help calm these reactions and promote a positive experience.)

You Tend to Be Critical of Others

Being hyper-critical is another way we limit ourselves, because it creates unnecessary negativity in our interactions with people. Criticism of others is usually as much, or more, about you as it is about the other person. It puts the blame for failures or problems onto others instead of taking responsibility for those yourself. taking action:

1. Start to observe any critical statements you make about others, and make note of whether those are productive or not. For example, if your co-worker isn't meeting their obligations and it's keeping you from accomplishing tasks, notice how you react to it: Are you addressing it in a productive way, or just hurling criticism? Are you placing all of the blame on them without examining your role in the dynamic?
2. Once you take notice of your tendency toward criticism, try to refrain entirely from making any critical statements for one day—this should make you aware of how habitual the behavior is. Then, notice whether your criticisms are things you can do something about, and if so, just do what it takes to resolve it. However, you'll notice that most of your criticisms are not productive, and when you realize this, you'll become aware of how unnecessary they are and eventually stop the habit.

You Can't Accept Compliments

Pay attention to your reactions when receiving compliments. If you tend to deflect or downplay them, it could indicate a limiting belief about yourself that might hinder your progress. Observe your responses to compliments to identify the specific limiting belief. To address this behavior:

• simply pause any time someone compliments or praises you, take a moment to feel the positivity they're giving you, and say "thank you."
• Use this positive energy to combat the negative beliefs about yourself.
• internalising positive beliefs about ourselves is key to allowing ourselves to feel happiness, and thus helps combat the happiness threshold problem.

You Tend to Get Sick or Injured Following Positive Experiences

Our psychological state can affect our physical well-being and make us more accident-prone. According to Hendricks, there might be a pattern of becoming ill or injured after positive or pleasurable experiences. This suggests that our mind could be influencing our body as a form of self-sabotage or self-punishment.

Illness and injury can be self-punishment for pursuing unfulfilling pleasures. These activities, although enjoyable, may compromise your principles and hinder true fulfillment. In this way, you punish yourself for neglecting your pursuit of fulfillment.

Another pattern to consider is whether illness or injury could be a way of protecting yourself from something you're resistant to or afraid of. It's possible that you're unconsciously trying to avoid stepping out of your comfort zone. For instance, if you become sick on the day of an interview for a new job that would bring you greater success but also makes you feel intimidated, it could be a way of keeping yourself in your comfort zone. To address this tendency:

• take notice of patterns, and begin to think of your illnesses and injuries as something you're doing to yourself rather than something out of your control that's happening to you.
• Once you start to think of them this way, you may notice you have fewer of these kinds of incidents.

(Note: The scientific evidence for a link between accidents, illness, and self-sabotage is unclear. Stress can make people more prone to accidents due to lack of attention. Some individuals engage in self-harm behaviors. It is well-established that emotional states impact physical health. However, this research does not necessarily suggest that people intentionally sabotage their success and happiness through injury or illness.)

Limiting Behaviours in Your Relationships

Psychological research suggests that successful individuals may have lower relationship satisfaction due to their proximity to their happiness threshold. This means that they may not be able to fully experience happiness in relationships because they have already achieved success in other areas of their life. Additionally, couples in intimate relationships may mutually contribute to a shared happiness threshold and reinforce it.

(Note: Research shows a link between higher social class and relationship issues, possibly due to rigid thinking and a lack of wise reasoning in conflicts.)

Hendricks explains that common relationship obstacles include picking fights, poor communication, and power struggles. These behaviors involve both partners and contribute to a cycle of conflict.

Once partners engage in bickering, power struggles, or dysfunctional communication, it becomes difficult to break the cycle. Hendricks highlights the importance of involving your partner in addressing these behaviors. In this case, both partners must commit to working on the problem to strengthen their happiness in the relationship.

To address unhealthy relationship dynamics, Hendriks suggests some strategies:

1. Both partners should regularly take alone time to recharge and reconnect with themselves in a relationship to maintain individuality and independence.

When we lack personal space, we may create conflict to create distance and avoid closeness. By both partners willingly taking time for themselves, they can avoid unhealthy ways of creating distance. Whenever you experience a high level of intimacy or happiness in your relationship, take a moment to do something grounding (connect with nature) to prevent falling into the pattern of bringing yourself and your relationship down in an unhealthy manner.

2. Both partners should commit to improving communication skills. This involves openly and honestly expressing feelings and allowing them to be expressed without suppression or avoidance.
3. Partners should regularly show non-sexual physical affection to each other. It is equally important as sexual affection.

Hendricks suggests creating a support network with friends who can help you solve happiness threshold problems. This way, you can support each other and hold each other accountable.

Envisioning Your State of Fulfilment

To address our happiness threshold issue, we must identify false beliefs and self-limiting behaviors. Equally important is having a clear vision of fulfillment, which starts with discovering your passion.

At all levels of success, including high-achievers, we often feel frustrated and unhappy with certain aspects of our lives and blame external factors. We make excuses for not pursuing what we truly desire. However, our excuses are not the true reason for our inaction; they stem from self-doubt and fear of failure. We should focus on our inner resources to achieve fulfillment.

(note: Common excuses for not pursuing passions: lack of time, resources, knowledge, age, fear of failure. These reflect limiting beliefs and a deficit mindset.)

To find your driving force, or "passion," ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I love doing so much that I never tire of it, and that it doesn't even feel like work to me? Ponder this deeply until you have a clear answer:
2. What aspect of my current work gives me the greatest amount of satisfaction? Find these (sometimes) seemingly insignificant part of your work, like chatting with coworkers, and make it a high priority to do it daily:
1. Think about how you generally prioritize tasks in your life, and whether you can re-prioritize to put these high-satisfaction activities above other lower-satisfaction activities.
3. What special gift or talent do I have? This one may take some deep examination to get to. It may be an ability within another, within another. Hendricks describes it as like a set of Russian dolls, so he says you need to keep digging until you get to the foundational passion or gift. Use this example to follow this line of questioning:

• When in my life do I feel like I'm really shining?
• What specifically am I doing when I feel that way?
• What is it that I love about doing that?

Continue asking yourself questions until you feel excited, and you'll find your gift. For instance, I feel most alive when I create art. I enjoy bringing my vision to life using paint or other materials. What I love about it is using my imagination to create beauty. That's my gift! Now I can consider how to use it in my career and other aspects of my life. This should give you a clear picture of what living in a state of fullfillment would look like to you. Write this new story for yourself.

Navigating Your State of Fulfilment

Learning to overcome limiting beliefs, discovering your passion, and making the "big leap" into fulfillment requires guidance as it differs from your usual life. You'll probably need diligent maintenance to prevent reverting to your old thought and behavior patterns.

1. The first important step to living your fulfilled life is to explicitly and fully commit to doing it. (note: psychological research shows that having a friend act as an accountability partner may help you achieve goals.)
2. Then, there are some practical changes you can make in your life to help you maintain your state of fulfilment:

Set Healthy Boundaries

To live in a state of fulfillment, you need to prioritize activities that enhance that state and say "no" to those that don't. The most common issue people face is the difficulty in saying no. If you assess how you spend your time, you'll find that you invest a lot of energy doing things you don't want to due to feeling obligated to say "yes" to others.

Don't respond to requests immediately. First, check if they align with your life's fulfillment. If it doesn't, feel confident to say "no" for a higher purpose.

→ just be careful you are saying no for the right reasons - not just to avoid responsibility and obligations.

Redefine Your Relationship to Time

Time is a constant source of stress for many people, often resulting from a faulty perspective of it. To experience a greater sense of abundance with time, you need to transform your thinking about it.

Move from Newtonian time to Einstein time:

Newton = time is objective and finite

Einstein= Time is relative and subjective

( a possible interpretation: Focus on the present moment, spend more time doing things rather than thinking about them, and avoid distractions that waste time.)

Time is relative to our experience, it can go faster or slower, depending on where your attention is focused.

Thus, you can control your experience of time - a big step towards eliminating the constant feeling of time pressure from our lives. Begin by changing the way you speak about time:

• Stop saying you „dont have time“ instead of you dont wnat to do it.
• If something is important you will „make time“

Mantra Meditation

A mantra is a word or phrase used to help train the mind to be in the present and redirect it from negative thought patterns.

A mantra can be understood as a seed you plant in your mind, to grow an intention into a realisation (The Chopra Institute).

Hendricks formulated a Universal Success Mantra (USM) - designed to combat self-limiting beliefs and open your mind to accepting abundance:

Repeat this mantra in sequence with your breath in daily meditation. Notice any resistance and return to the mantra. This helps deprogram your mind from a lifetime of embedded false beliefs.

In addition to the Meditation, repeat the Mantra regularly throughout your day and have it written down in places you see regularly throughout the day.

Tony Robbins suggests that incantations are more effective than affirmations. He asserts that affirmations without discipline can lead to delusion, but incantations, which involve speaking with total certainty and actively engaging your nervous system, are different.

Activate your whole body as you speak the incantation an try changing the intensity and emphasis on different words across the sentence.

Recommit Regularly

To maintain a state of fulfillment, you need to commit regularly. Be vigilant about identifying old patterns and false beliefs as they surface. Use these instances as reminders to reaffirm your commitment to living in a state of fulfillment. Whenever you start to feel negativity, dissatisfaction, or unhappiness, consciously reaffirm your commitment and repeat your mantra.

Exercise: Turn False Beliefs Into Positive Affirmations

Create positive affirmations out of your false and negative beliefs about yourself.

Which of the false beliefs Hendricks identifies do you recognize in yourself? Can you think of any other false or negative beliefs you might have about yourself that weren't mentioned here? Write down any false or negative beliefs you can think of.

Type here:

Now, for each false belief you identified, rewrite that statement in a positive way. For example, "I am flawed so I can't be successful" might become "I am resilient, and I can be successful." Reword these in any way you like, appropriate to yourself, as long as you replace any negative words with positive ones.

Type here:

Reflect here on how this feels for you the first time, and then notice how the feeling shifts over time. Do the statements become easier to believe the more you repeat them?

Type here:

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Alex McAdam

Lean Coach

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Table of contents

• 🔫 Abstract
• 🎢 Success Propels You Toward Your Happiness Threshold
• Levels of Success
• 🔗 Set extreme goals (G. Cardone, 10x Rule)
• How the Happiness Threshold Affects Your Life
• The False Beliefs That Hold Us Back
• False Belief #1: "I am flawed at my core, so I can't also be successful.”
• False Belief #2: "My success would be a betrayal of my roots."
• False Belief #3: "My success would hurt someone else."
• False Belief #4: "Great success ends in great ruin."
• Spotting Your Limiting Beliefs and Behaviours
• Limiting Behaviors in Your Everyday Life
• Limiting Behaviours in Your Relationships
• Envisioning Your State of Fulfilment
• Navigating Your State of Fulfilment
• Set Healthy Boundaries
• Redefine Your Relationship to Time
• Mantra Meditation
• Recommit Regularly
• Exercise: Turn False Beliefs Into Positive Affirmations
• Table of contents
• See Also