Are you going to take The Big Leap?

Like a miner’s attitude of grabbing one piece of gold out of a week of mining, I feel like picking only one nugget after putting in the time and effort to stay still for that long wasn’t really worth it….at a glimpse. 

That was the thought before I started, what I actually felt as the book was explored, was more then just checking off something on a to-do list. It was really spending some time with someone else’s thoughts and getting their viewpoint of the world in a certain topic. You can be inspired, humbled, get perspective understand people more plus at the same time have the internal conversation with yourself to see if you want to adopt the ideas or learn more on their view point.

The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level
by Gay Hendricks
Reader: Will
Method of reading: Hardcopy
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Golden nugget: Our upper-limit behaviours can sabotage our success. To stop our worrying, we need to ask ourselves if there is any action I can take right now to make a positive difference?

It was interesting that the main point I took away this time was something he calls the upper-limit behaviors. It’s a behavior we do when everything is going great in our relationships, career, health, etc. and then we sabotage ourselves and it turns negatively, affecting our lives by spilling into one part or another.

This is how it works. When thing are going well for us, our upper limit mechanism kicks in and we start to worry about things going wrong in someway. We start to justify those worry-thoughts with more worry-thoughts, and soon we are busily manufacturing scenarios of things falling apart, coming unglued, and spiralling down toward imminent doom.

So if you come across this, observe it carefully for a couple of days. You’ll find something that may surprise you, almost none of your negative thoughts have anything to do with reality.

One way Hendricks put it was in a coffee example. You put on the kettle before work and you may have forgotten to turn it off as you drive to work. The thought pops in your head “Crap! Did I turn it off?” This is reality-based worry, it’s worth being worried about and secondly you can do something about it.

Here’s the one lesson I took away and downloaded into my brain after reading this book. A good way to know if a worry-thought is something you should pay attention to is to ask yourself this question, “Is there any action I can take right now to make a positive difference?” In the case of the kettle, the answer would be yes.

So when thing are going particularly well or when you are feeling really good, people tend to still manufacture a stream of worry-thoughts. Then, once in the worry ring, you’ll infect others with your worry-thoughts, like a contagious virus. You may be able to relate to this when you’ve listened to a friend complain about their spouse, possible infidelities, breakups, etc. You could be personally feeling great about your own relationship but listening to your friends worries, you naturally fall into the stream of their negativity and question your own relationship. You are rolling around in one worry or another until you’ve fabricated this false story in your head.

A personal example would be that I am now unemployed and traveling. There’s no money coming in and expenses coming out. I want to start a completely new career when I get back home and I don’t know if I’ll find work without have the require training. If something drastic pops up, can I afford it on my new salary? Will I be any good at what it is I want to do? What will people think? I’m rolling around with thoughts that are out of my control and I’ve acknowledged that. I can be proactive right now with self-education, researching the market I’m interest in, and be happy with the prospective change in career I’ve been waiting to have for a long time. Or I can imagine and create misery of the not-so-real but this would be limiting myself to the upper limit.

The solution is to notice the behaviour and not succumb to it.  Once you catch yourself in the negativity or the worry ring, you have the choice to change so you don’t sabotage your success.

I will keep this book on my shelf for many years and have more time spent with my paper friend Gay Hendricks to fully digest the great insights of The Big Leap. I will revisit and perhaps find another golden nugget that we are ready to take in, in that point of time in our lives. It’s cool to sit down, spend some time learning something new and having that new become part of your life’s toolbelt. ‘Til next time, keep digging and pay attention to your worried brain.