...But first you have to be a success.
The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks, is another personal learning book following an idea of coming to a fundamental realization that will help you better yourself. In this case, the central hidden realization we can come to is that when we begin to enjoy great success in some area of our lives, we tend to create problems in that or another area of our lives. We do this because we hit our "upper limit" of happiness, financial success, joy in a relationship, or any of a number of other things, and this upper limit causes us to unconsciously sabotage ourselves or even make ourselves ill. Dr. Hendricks explains that we may have one or more of four hidden barriers that activate our upper limit self-sabotage. The four hidden barriers are caused by: 1 - feeling fundamentally flawed, 2 - disloyalty and abandonment issues, 3 - believing that more success brings a bigger burden, and 4 - the perceived crime of outshining. When we learn to break through our barrier, we can move into the zone of genius (assuming that we've already been in the zone of excellence).
If you are a "Type A" personality, a perfectionist, or a workaholic, this book may be for you. As he is apparently all three of those, I can visualize all of this whole line of thought and the suggested action steps as being very plain to Dr. Hendricks, and can visualize him blissfully laying this all out in the course of writing this book. It's as if he's saying, "Come on - you can do this! It's easy. Look - I've worked it all out. Here are our issues, here is what we need to understand, and here's what we do about it." But much of it is basically a foreign language to people like me, as I am not a "Type A" personality, not a perfectionist, and definitely not a workaholic.
There's a certain intelligence required to succeed in the way that Dr. Hendricks measures success. It's not just about being bright enough to receive a certain level of education and being able to apply it - it's about having a knack for business and social interaction. Some have it and some just don't. Having that knack for business and social interaction involves knowing what people will go for and what they won't, capitalizing on that, and being well enough connected with the right people to turn it all into some kind of money generator, popular movement, or satisfying relationship. In addition to all of that, what is often required is having the energy and financial resources to fail lots of times and yet keep getting back up to try again. Yet none of these things are really even acknowledged in The Big Leap (except just faintly in the Appendix), nor is there any suggestion of how to succeed in spite of not having that inborn knack for Western greatness. (Or is that just my hidden barrier of feeling fundamentally flawed kicking in?)
This book is quite competently written - it's a fast read, and in the early parts, can be quite a page-turner. Hendricks' language flows and does not get in the way of rapid movement through the text, which I found was often happening as I was moving through looking for a key point to come out of his line of thought. So, The Big Leap is well written in that sense, though I ultimately found it somewhat lacking in substance.
The suggestions for "Building a New Home in Your Zone of Genius" really only scratch the surface, unless you're someone who frequently comes up with million dollar ideas over breakfast, perhaps. The Ultimate Success Mantra might help some to fine tune their already beaming selves... but again, this seems to assume a certain high level of being. I didn't really find that it grabbed me enough that I'd honestly want to make it my mantra, or that I could realistically expect to actually do this meditation regularly. Chapter Six, Living in Einstein Time, kind of assumes that the reader is so busy that "there's no time" for a lot of things. Again, this is "Type A" workaholic material that I found myself unable to relate to. It seems to me that success and having a life that works is more about your level and quality of personal energy, social connectivity, clarity of purpose and understanding, and the sheer will power to hammer it all out, and again, none of those things are really addressed in this book.
So in the end, The Big Leap is interesting for what it is, and it does shed important light on ways that we can unconsciously cause our own hurts, physical and otherwise, but you'll have to see for yourself if what's presented in it are ideas you can realistically apply in your own life.
