The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level [Hardcover]

Gay Hendricks (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 21, 2009

“Gay Hendricks is a great role model for true success. He enjoys abundance and a deep connection with his own spiritual essence, and at the same time has lived for three decades in a thriving marriage. Now, he shows us how to do it for ourselves.”
— Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Cracking the Millionaire Code

In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks, the New York Times bestselling author of Five Wishes, demonstrates how to eliminate the barriers to success by overcoming false fears and beliefs. Fans of Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and The Secret will find useful, effective tips for breaking down the walls to a better life in The Big Leap.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Gay Hendricks is a great role model for true success. He enjoys abundance and a deep connection with his own spiritual essence, and at the same time has lived for three decades in a thriving marriage. Now, he shows us how to do it for ourselves.” (Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Cracking the Millionaire Code)

“Gay has the corner on living life well... he has a glorious love relationship with his wife and he is hugely successful. There is no better person to inspire us all to be the best we can be at every level.” (Mariel Hemingway, author of Mariel's Kitchen and Mariel Hemingway's Healthy Living from the Inside Out)

“Gay Hendricks’ positivity, his love, his genius fill me with hope. And in, The Big Leap, he once again names a pattern that I have always been aware of in myself but never quite brought to consciousness. Now that I have, there’s no going back. “ (Geneen Roth, author of Women Food and God)

“Hendricks provides a clear path for achieving our true potential and attaining not only financial success but also success in love and life.” (OfSpirit.com)

“Hendricks has the answers.” (Elevated Existence)

From the Back Cover

Most of us believe that we will finally feel satisfied and content with our lives when we get the good news we have been waiting for, find a healthy relationship, or achieve one of our personal goals. However, this rarely happens. Good fortune is often followed by negative emotions that overtake us and result in destructive behaviors. "I don't deserve this," "this is too good to be true," or any number of harmful thought patterns prevent us from experiencing the joy and satisfaction we have earned. Sound familiar? This is what New York Times bestselling author Gay Hendricks calls the Upper Limit Problem, a negative emotional reaction that occurs when anything positive enters our lives. The Upper Limit Problem not only prevents happiness, but it actually stops us from achieving our goals. It is the ultimate life roadblock.

In The Big Leap, Hendricks reveals a simple yet comprehensive program for overcoming this barrier to happiness and fulfillment, presented in a way that engages both the mind and heart. Working closely with more than one thousand extraordinary achievers in business and the arts—from rock stars to Fortune 500 executives—whose stories are featured in these pages, the book describes the four hidden fears that are at the root of the Upper Limit Problem.

The Big Leap delivers a proven method for first identifying which of these four fears prevents us from reaching our personal upper limit, and then breaking through that limitation to achieve what Hendricks refers to as our Zone of Genius. Hendricks provides a clear path for achieving our true potential and attaining not only financial success but also success in love and life.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne (April 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061735345
• ISBN-13: 978-0061735349
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (93 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gay Hendricks has served for more than thirty years as one of the major contributors to the fields of relationship transformation and body-mind therapies. Throughout his career, Dr. Hendricks has coached more than eight hundred executives, including the top management at firms such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and KLM. Along with his wife, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks, he has coauthored many books including Conscious Loving, The Corporate Mystic, and his latest, the New York Times bestseller Five Wishes, which has been translated into seventeen languages. Dr. Hendricks received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Stanford University. After a twenty-one-year career as a professor at the University of Colorado, he founded the Hendricks Institute, which offers seminars in North America, Asia, and Europe. He is also a founder of The Spiritual Cinema Circle. In recent years his passion has been writing a new series of mystery novels featuring the Tibetan Buddhist private detective, Tenzing Norbu. Ten's first adventure was The First Rule Of Ten, followed by The Second Rule Of Ten and more to come.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

193 of 198 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Going From Success to Genius... January 8, 2010

By D. Whitney

Format:Hardcover

...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. Read more ›

71 of 73 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting out of your own way- July 21, 2009

By Miriam Knight

Format:Hardcover

THE BIG LEAP revolves around the interesting proposition that while we all like to feel good, most of us have acquired a ceiling for our expectations in the course of growing up. The optimism and exuberance of childhood have given way to a darker view of how the world works and our place in it. We then make our reality conform to our expectations and engineer circumstances to bring us back to the "safe" upper limits our subconscious has imposed on us.

This has the effect of our putting on the brakes whenever we get out of our zone of comfort - what Hendricks calls our Zone of Competence or even of Excellence. But his mission is to get us to recognize our upper limit problem and break through it to living in our Zone of Genius. This is the sweet spot where we are doing work that nurtures our spirit and offers lasting contentment.

Hendricks has examined the human spirit and psyche for all of his working life. A PhD in Counseling Psychology from Stanford, and then a Professor at the University of Colorado for 21 years, he co-founded the Hendricks Institute with his wife Kathlyn to focus on conscious living and relationships. This book seems to be an exposition and distillation of some of the most important lessons for achieving our true potential. Through a series of questions for contemplation and other tools, he gently guides the reader to an understanding of how and where you have created limits, how to move beyond them to living in your zone of genius and succeeding in love, life and finances.

What I was most taken by was his "Ultimate Success Mantra." It is similar on the surface to many other affirmations you probably have read over the years, but I believe this one is profoundly different....

I would call it the Golden Rule for the Quantum Age, because while affirming that you expand in abundance, success and love every day, you do so by means of inspiring others to do the same. It reinforces the understanding of our interconnectedness and predicates your ultimate success on what you radiate back to others. This is the true Law of Attraction in action. Get the book and let its wisdom inspire your Genius. Read more ›

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book May 1, 2009

By J. Johnston

Format:Hardcover

This really is a fantastic book that helps us take a look at how we sabotage ourselves due to our unconscious belief that we do not deserve to be happy. The author gives great examples of how to overcome these obstacles. I found the book to be very helpful. I was completely unaware of this author until reading this book. Now, I am recommending it to all of my clients.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Big Aha - when the bells finally go off December 31, 2009

By Michele Corey

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Over time I've read plenty of self help books - and I believe there are many because each of us resonate with different words, stories and ideas - because often the underlying ideas are the same.

What stood out for me - my big aha - in the Big Leap is that Gay names the hidden barriers that mostly unconsciously are in the way of each of us stepping up to create passionate work we love and thrive in - our zone of genius. His words help me understand the pieces of the puzzle and how they can be put into place and we can more easily thrive. And this is all stated so simply - that it's almost hard to believe it can work.

The four barriers (which are well explained with examples) are:

Feeling Fundamentally Flawed
Disloyalty and Abandonment
Believing that More Success Brings a Bigger Burden
The Crime of Outshining

Some how having Gay name these brought consciousness to myself (and I'm sure many others)- to be aware when you're no longer comfortable (with your success and achievement) and begin the unconscious pattern of self sabotage (to keep yourself right where you are comfortable).

Another piece that powerfully stands out is the mantra - and trust me I've said quite a few over time. "I expand in abundance, success and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same."

I've been saying this for the past three+ weeks since reading the book.... Amazingly or not for the doubters - I've had 3 newer clients send written testimonials without asking, 3 past clients come back and say they want to work (and it's been more than a year for a couple of them), 1 new one out of the blue, 2 people that I've always wanted to collaborate with but would dismiss the idea out of my own discomfort aka self sabotage so I wouldn't shine too much - contact me and ask to connect.

The aha and realization that I've settled in my zone of comfort and zone of excellence for so long (because I keep bumping into my own upper limit problems but not recognizing it as self sabotage - my thermostat needed to stay at 68) that I've been unconscious to the possibility of daring to ask for and own having more. I'm in the process of setting up the support I need to allow me to step or is it leap into my own zone of genius. It will take asking for help and being vulnerable instead of having all the answers to allow myself to speak my truth - what I really want - so that I can really shine.

As this year closes, I know that I've already expanded and I can hardly wait for all the possibility of 2010. If you're ready to take your own big leap - do read and do take action. It can be magical. Read more ›