The Big Leap

by Gay Hendricks

  Here’s what to do when you notice yourself deflecting. When someone says the equivalent of “Nice shot” to you, pause for a moment to register the beam of positive energy that’s being aimed at you. Then thank the person who beamed it your way. For example, when I said, “Nice shot, Al,” he could just as easily have let my positive comment register on him. He could have taken a moment to feel pleasure in the shot, and he could have thanked me for the expression of positive energy I beamed in his direction. The dialogue would have gone like this:

  ME: Nice shot, Al.

  AL: Thank you. I wish I’d made better contact with it, but it came out pretty good anyway.

  The art of getting beyond our Upper Limit Problem has a lot to do with creating space within us to feel and appreciate natural good feelings. By natural I mean good feelings that aren’t induced by alcohol, sugar, and other short-term fixes. Letting yourself savor natural good feelings is a direct way to transcend your Upper Limit Problem. By extending your ability to feel positive feelings, you expand your tolerance for things going well in your life.

  In golf, there are plenty of natural good feelings to enjoy. There’s the beauty of the course, the satisfaction of a ball well struck, the fellowship of a good walk with companions. These are ideal conditions for triggering an Upper Limit Problem. There’s another reason golf makes a perfect place to explore the Upper Limit Problem: the ball doesn’t move until you hit it. In other sports you can attribute your lack of success to the skill of your opponent. You struck out because the pitcher had “a wicked curve” or the wide receiver outsprinted you. Golfers have no such luxury. The little ball just sits there until you make it go somewhere else. In that regard, golf is very much like life itself, which awaits your intention and action before revealing the mysteries of the outcome.

  Squabbling

  Arguments are one of the most common ways of bringing yourself down when you’ve hit your Upper Limit. When things are going well, you can crimp the flow of positive energy quickly by starting a conflict. Then, the conflict develops a life of its own, lasting for hours, days, or even years. The net effect: you drop back into your Zone of Competence or your Zone of Excellence. Genius takes a backseat.

  If you can learn to see arguments as Upper Limit symptoms, you can make big breakthroughs in getting beyond them. There is tremendous practical value in making this move. For example, once Kathlyn and I figured out that our arguments were Upper Limit symptoms, we were able to reduce drastically the number of conflicts we had. As of this writing, we haven’t had an argument in more than twelve years. We rechanneled all that wasted argument energy into creative energy, writing four books together and giving several hundred presentations together during those twelve years. (Sometimes when we mention this point in lectures, an audience member will raise a hand and ask, “Isn’t it boring if you don’t argue?” That’s kind of like asking, “Isn’t peace boring? Don’t human beings need wars to spice things up?” We can definitely testify that having a great time creating things together is anything but boring.)

  First, understand why arguments occur. Arguments are caused by two people (or two countries) racing to occupy the victim position in the relationship. Person A claims the victim position (“Why are you doing this to me?”) and then tries to get person B to agree with that assessment. In other words, person B has to agree that he or she is the persecutor. Therein lies the problem. It’s almost impossible to get the other guy to agree that it’s his fault. In nearly five thousand sessions of assisting people in resolving conflicts, I have never, ever witnessed the following kind of interchange:

  PERSON A: Why are you making me so miserable? This problem is entirely your fault.

  PERSON B: Wow, thanks for pointing that out. I agree completely. It’s clear that I’m the perpetrator, you’re the victim, and your misery is entirely my fault.

  However, I have seen about five thousand variations on the following:

  PERSON A: Why are you making me so miserable? This problem is entirely your fault.

  PERSON B: I’m making you miserable? I’m the one who’s the victim here. It’s your fault, not mine. I’ve been putting up with your guff so long I ought to get some sort of martyrdom prize!

  PERSON A: That’s absurd. Let me tell you all the reasons I’m the real victim here.

  PERSON B: Great. Then when you get through, I’ll tell you how all of them are your fault, always have been, and always will be.

  Once the race for the victim position is under way, each person must find some way to out-victim the other. In other words, each person must present an escalating series of “proofs” that he or she is the real victim. In conflicts around the house, violence does not usually ensue, but in conflicts between countries or ethnic or religious groups, violence often erupts during the process. During the Bosnian conflict in the nineties, I was facilitating a seminar in which some Bosnians were taking part. One of them said, “Nobody can really understand the conflict unless you realize it’s been going on since 1389.” Most of the participants laughed, thinking he was making a joke. He wasn’t joking, though, and went on to explain that the two factions have been in conflict for more than six hundred years. Since they all have the same skin color and speak the same languages, the only thing separating the two sides is a difference in beliefs and centuries of claiming victimhood.

  Once two sides start jockeying for the victim position, the race can stretch into generations. Once it gets under way between countries or between religious or ethnic groups, it can go on for centuries.

  Understanding the physics of arguments will reveal how conflicts—whether between a couple, board members, countries, or religious groups—can be resolved. In fact, it’s the only way I’ve ever found that will resolve conflicts permanently. The key insight: each entity in a situation represents 100 percent. Each entity in a conflict has 100 percent of the responsibility for resolving the conflict. In other words, person A is a whole and complete 100 percent, and person B is a whole and complete 100 percent. If two people are involved, there is 200 percent responsibility to be divided up. The fatal mistake is thinking that there is 100 percent of responsibility to be divided up; this approach requires each person to take some portion of the 100 percent. It’s a massive thinking error that causes massive problems, because it leads to endless jockeying for the victim position.

  If you don’t realize that each person is a 100 percent entity, you’re left with the impossible task of apportioning 100 percent among the participants in the conflict. This can take on absurd qualities, as was evidenced by a malpractice suit in Denver some years ago in which the jury found the doctor 82 percent responsible and the patient 18 percent responsible. How they came up with this number remains a mystery, but even the judge marveled at the absurdity of it. Once you start trying to apportion 100 percent among two or more people, you enter a surreal tunnel from which there is only one escape. The only way out is to assign each party 100 percent, and to invite each party to take it.

  If both people will claim 100 percent responsibility, there’s a possibility of ending the conflict. Nothing less than 100 percent will work. Since there’s 200 percent responsibility to be shared, jockeying for the victim position means that you’re demanding that the other person take more than 100 percent while you take less than 100 percent. Nobody in his right mind would agree to a deal like that, and it’s pretty clear that trying to negotiate these kinds of deals has been a total flop over the past few thousand years.

  How would this approach play out in a real-life conflict such as that in the Middle East? It boils down to something very simple:

  Muslims: No matter what’s happened in the past, we now take 100 percent responsibility for creating this conflict and 100 percent responsibility for resolving it.

  Jews: No matter what’s happened in the past, we now take 100 percent responsibility for creating this conflict and 100 percent responsibility for resolving it.

  Many people will look at that simple soluti
on and say, “That’s impossible!” However, if you told a visitor from another planet that some earthlings had been squabbling about the same thing for several thousand years, the visitor would probably say, “That’s impossible!” It’s no more impossible, then, to create a new way of dealing with conflicts, through both sides in every conflict taking 100 percent responsibility.

  Let’s start at home, though—in our bedrooms and board-rooms. From the experience of hundreds of sessions, I can tell you that this method of problem resolution works wonders. When people step out of the victim position and take 100 percent responsibility, their marriages and their businesses flourish. The moment is always exquisite to behold. If you would like to behold some of these exquisite moments yourself, please watch the video examples at the Big Leap Web site.

  Let’s do it a new way for the next few thousand years.

  Getting Sick, Getting Hurt

  When things are going well, some of us have a pattern that is pure Upper Limit Problem: we get sick or get hurt. To find out whether some of your ills or accidents are due to the Upper Limit Problem, take a moment to think back over times when you’ve gotten sick or gotten hurt in an accident. You probably won’t be able to remember very many of them in detail; mercifully, our minds filter out the excruciating details of many of life’s unpleasant incidents. If you can pull up memories of some of your illnesses and accidents, ask yourself if they came during or just after a big win in business or a period of good times in a relationship.

  Not all illnesses or accidents are Upper Limit symptoms, of course. A skeptic might ask, “Hey, can’t I just get sick because I get sneezed on? Can’t I just fall off my bike sometimes? Does it always have to be an Upper Limit Problem?” The answer: people get sick for all sorts of reasons. However, if you are keenly interested in taking your Big Leap, you will want to examine everything that brings you pain and suffering as a potential Upper Limit symptom. You may find that you can be a lot healthier than you ever imagined.

  So many of us simply never look at the effect of our minds and emotions on our physical health. But the payoff for doing so is well worth it. Once I caught on to how my Upper Limit Problem was affecting me, I began to examine every aspect of my life. For example, if I felt the sniffles and scratchy throat of a cold coming on, I would pause to wonder whether I was Upper-Limiting myself. I soon discovered that I could ward off colds if I regarded them as Upper Limit symptoms. It made a huge difference in my health. As of this writing I haven’t had a cold or flu in thirteen years. A lot of the credit for that long-running streak of health must go to my thinking of getting sick and getting hurt as Upper Limit symptoms. Let me explain in more detail about exactly how to do this for yourself.

  THE THREE PS

  Your exploration will go easier if you have a map. The map I use is what I call the Three Ps: punishment, prevention, and protection. The Three Ps can help you understand the real driving force behind many illnesses and accidents. I’ve probably got a few hundred examples of each of these in my files; let me use a few vivid ones to illustrate the Three Ps.

  Punishment. Ryan, a successful middle-aged stockbroker, married and a pillar of the community, starts to suffer from what he calls “killer migraines.” When I explore it with him, I discover that he often gets them in the midafternoon. When I explore it further, he lets his hair down and confesses: on the occasions he gets the midafternoon migraines, he has usually spent his lunch hour having irrational, exuberant sex with his young secretary. Ryan has not mentioned these wild romps to his wife.

  It turns out to be a classic example of the first P, punishment. It’s not hard to see why he might be punishing himself with his “killer” migraines. He gets it right away when I explain the Upper Limit Problem to him. He tells me that he is having more fun than he’s had in ages. Intellectually, he knows that cheating and lying are not only endangering his career but also destroying the intimacy in his marriage. However, the ecstatic sex doesn’t just feel good; it’s giving him what feels like a midlife rebirth. He’s once again feeling the reckless passion of his motorcycle-riding youth.

  If his rational, sober, conscious mind were in charge, Ryan might come up with a noble solution such as this:

  These delicious feelings have nothing to do with my secretary. I’m using my affair with her to awaken feelings I’ve been submerging for years under my dutiful life and comfortable marriage. This affair is showing me that I am failing to be my best and settling to live beneath my Zone of Genius. My affair is an Upper Limit Problem. I’m going to make a sincere commitment to living in my Zone of Genius, so I can feel ecstatically alive all the time without lying and cheating to get there!

  That’s how his rational, sober conscious mind might handle it. However, our unconscious minds are not rational and sober; they’re direct and to the point. His unconscious mind’s solution is to punish him with a killer migraine for feeling so much ecstasy. The migraine is a tool of his Upper Limit Problem, and it speaks in a blunt language he cannot ignore. It quickly brings him back to earth after his lunchtime excursions into the stratosphere. The headache is literally a killjoy, saying, “Welcome back to the painful consequences of lying, cheating, and not heeding the call to live in your Zone of Genius.”

  Ryan didn’t get to be a top executive by being a slow learner, so it didn’t take him long to handle the situation. He said a painful good-bye to the lunchtime trysts and had a considerably more painful series of conversations with his wife. Ryan got one immediate reward for these courageous conversations: the migraines stopped. Many physical symptoms such as headache and back pain are warning signs, like the flapping and wobble of a flat tire when you’re driving on the highway. The symptoms are saying, Slow down, stop what you’re doing, and pay attention, because there’s something out of integrity here.

  Fortunately Ryan got the message in time to wake up and handle the situation. He had two big tasks ahead of him: rebuilding his marriage, and building a new home in his Zone of Genius. It took him the better part of the next two years to do both those things. He had to say no to a lot of his former activities and yes to dreams and visions that had been simmering within him for years. For one thing, he and his wife both realized that the enormous home they lived in no longer suited them now that their children were grown. For another, he shifted his focus within his company to mentoring younger executives rather than front-line management. Mentoring was in his Zone of Genius. He thrived on it, and it provided major benefits to the company.

  I link together the other two Ps—prevention and protection—because they almost always occur at the same time. Here’s the bottom line on prevention and protection: when you suffer symptoms of illness or experience an accident, you often do so because you’re unconsciously trying to prevent yourself from having to do something you don’t really want to do and/or protect yourself from something you don’t want to feel. The illness or accident is your unconscious mind’s clunky way of doing you a favor. It’s a costly favor, though, and once you learn how to navigate your Upper Limits, you can move through your barriers in a much more friendly way than making yourself sick or having an accident. Having created a few unnecessary illnesses and accidents myself, I can testify that acting consciously is better.

  Let me give you an example of how prevention and protection work. Years ago when I was a university professor, I shared an office for a while with a brilliant colleague named Dr. Smith. Every month, one of us made a presentation on our work to the other faculty members. In these presentations, we described our current activities and talked about where we were going with our work over the next year. There were about a dozen professors in my department, so the opportunity to make a presentation came around only once a year. On the morning of Dr. Smith’s presentation, he showed up with laryngitis. I got to the office a half hour before his presentation only to find him croaking to the dean that he wouldn’t be able to do it. After the dean departed to cancel the meeting, I expressed my sympathies and remarked that I c
ouldn’t recall his ever missing a lecture due to illness. In fact, he had the reputation of being an “iron man” in the sense of never missing a class. I asked him if he might be willing to explore his laryngitis as an Upper Limit symptom. As you might recall, my breakthrough theory happened at Stanford, and this was one of my first opportunities to test it. Dr. Smith said he would, and in our conversation we uncovered a classic example of prevention and protection.

  He told me that he and his wife had spent a wonderful weekend celebrating a decision he’d finally made. For a long time Dr. Smith had wanted to break out of his university job and work in the private sector. An opportunity had opened up in a neighboring state, and he had gone there for the interview the previous Friday. Over the weekend he had decided to take the job, and “Saturday night we broke out a bottle of great champagne we’d been saving for a special occasion.” As Monday loomed, though, Dr. Smith had to face sober reality again. He didn’t want to tell the university yet, because there were still some key details to work out about the new position. You can probably appreciate the bind he was in. Dr. Smith was happier and more excited than he had been in a long time, but he didn’t want to talk about it yet. Instead, in his presentation he had to appear enthusiastic about research he didn’t want to be doing at a university where he no longer wanted to work. He didn’t relish the idea of lying and faking it, but he couldn’t figure out how to handle the situation any other way. This is the kind of double bind that freezes up the conscious mind’s rational thought processes. It’s in these moments that the unconscious mind goes to work on a solution. The solutions it comes up with are often inelegant and primitive, but they are direct and effective (and usually involve pain of some kind).