The Big Leap – A Book Review

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks was a timely read for me. I read the abstract version on Twitter months ago, and decided I liked what I read enough to read the book. I’m glad I did! This book is about helping you realize and control your issues, called Upper Limiting, to break through to your Zone of Genius, so keep that in mind.

First, I have a confession. Once I became a mother four years ago (geez, it’s going fast) I have turned in to a big time worrier. I mean like annoying type worrying. It’s so bad even I find it annoying. These scary thoughts pop in my head about my boys and I literally have to force myself to think of something positive and change my mindset. I know they are going to do silly things. I know they will eventually get hurt while doing something (hopefully not hurt badly) and I know that you have to allow your kids to grow up and be successful on their own. Trust me, I’m good at helping my kids learn independence! Somehow, though, I just simply worry about them. So when I happened upon an entire chapter of worrying via this book, well, you cannot even imagine how I embraced the idea to learn how or why I do this to myself.

Here is how Hendricks says this works:

When things are going well for us, our Upper Limit mechanism kicks in and we suddenly start worrying about things going wrong in some way. We start to justify those worry-thoughts with more worry-thoughts, and soon we’re manufacturing scenarios of things falling apart, coming unglued… Worry is an addiction.

You must let go of this worrying as it’s really leading you to a greater, positive thing that’s trying to come through. I can even remember as a kid thinking wow, life is great, now I hope something bad doesn’t happen. How did I get programmed that way? I’m glad I’m able to realize this about myself and work on this habit.

Worry is just one element Hendricks tackles that we tend to create to limit ourselves from going to the greater, bigger, better level we know we can create for ourselves. I not only learned a few things to help me with some of those addictive elements, but got even more motivated to keep myself positive and pushing forward to work on the positive, which reminds me of a fable about two wolves…

TWO  WOLVES 

One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.  

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.”

“One is Evil — It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

“The other is Good — It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, ”The one you feed.”