The Big Leap
Page 9
Whatever your story is, the first task is to find it. Identify your family story of why you shouldn’t access your genius. Once you’ve identified it, the next task is to lose your fascination with it. Don’t give yourself a hard time for being fascinated with it; you were born into it just like the rest of us. Just become more fascinated with the story of your Big Leap into the Zone of Genius. Gradually this new fascination with genius will replace the unconscious fascination with the old programmed story.
THE ATTITUDE
I hope you’re not feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the task. If so, remember that it comes down to specific things you do, none of which takes long in clock time. For example, it takes only ten seconds to locate and acknowledge a feeling in your body such as sadness or fear. It takes only a few seconds to communicate a specific truth to another person, a truth that can restore wholeness to a relationship that’s felt incomplete for years. As you go about your discoveries, you’ll benefit from adopting an attitude of wonder instead of blame. In other words, being lighthearted about noticing your Upper Limit behaviors will help you make progress faster than if you criticize yourself for every little thing. When I maintain an attitude of cheerful wonder and keen interest toward my faults and flaws, I see them dissolve and transform much more rapidly than when I give myself a hard time about them.
If you’re willing to adopt a playful attitude toward yourself and your shortcomings, you can make extraordinarily rapid progress. It’s easier to chuckle over things than to fret over them, and chuckling is much more fun for the people around you. Here’s an example of lighthearted wonder: In one of my advanced groups for executives, some of the participants began referring to the Upper Limit Problem by its acronym, ULP. They pronounced it as in “Gulp.” One of the group’s members said he remembered comic-book characters saying “ULP!” when they encountered something unexpected. It didn’t take long for “ULP” to catch on. Soon, people were saying things like “I had an ULP today” and “I caught myself in the midst of an ULP this afternoon.”
I encourage you to adopt this kind of playfulness toward all your ULPs. An attitude of playful wonder is characteristic of people when they’re operating in the Zone of Genius. For inspiration, I keep an autographed picture of Albert Einstein on the wall of my office. My wife gave it to me for my birthday some years ago; it’s one of my most treasured possessions. The look of wonder in his eyes reminds me to keep seeking the deepest truths about life, and to do my seeking in the spirit of play, not work.
ACTION STEPS
Here’s what I recommend for daily action steps. These specific actions will keep you on track and on the fast track to living in your Zone of Genius.
Make a commitment to keeping an attitude of wonder and play while learning about your Upper Limit behaviors. Say this sentence in your mind as often as you like. It expresses the attitude I’d like you to embody: I commit to discovering my Upper Limit behaviors, and to having a good time while I’m learning about them. You can learn a lot more with a spirit of wonder and enjoyment than you can with an attitude of criticism.
Make a list of your Upper Limit behaviors. Here are some of the most common ones:
Worrying
Blame and criticism
Getting sick or hurt
Squabbling
Hiding significant feelings
Not keeping agreements
Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people. (If you’re mad at John, he’s the relevant person to talk to. It doesn’t help to tell Fred that you’re mad at John.)
Deflecting. (Brushing off compliments is a good example of deflecting)
When you notice yourself doing one of the things on your Upper Limit list, such as worrying, or failing to communicate some truth, shift your attention to the real issue: expanding your capacity for abundance, love, and success.
Consciously let yourself make more room in your awareness for abundance, love, and success. Use the resources of your whole being, not just your mind. For example, feel more love in your chest and heart area. Savor the body feeling, as well as the mental satisfaction, of success and abundance.
Embrace a new story that tells about your adventures in your Zone of Genius. Find a new mythology, or make up one of your own, that shows you enjoying your life in the full radiance of your expressed potential.
In the next chapter we’ll explore how to live your new story. You’ll see how to get beyond all the fears and spells that cause us to limit our potential. You’ll learn how to build a new foundation for yourself, a strong base from which you can thrive in your Zone of Genius.
FOUR
Building a New Home in Your Zone of Genius
How to Make Every Moment an Expression of Your Genius
In this chapter you’ll discover the answers to two main questions:
What is my genius?
How can I bring forth my genius in ways that serve others and myself at the same time?
Those who have the courage to discover and bring forth their genius break through to unparalleled heights of productivity and life satisfaction.
Discovering your Zone of Genius is your life’s Big Leap. Everything up until now has been about hops, not leaps. Hopping, though it seems safe, is actually hazardous to your health. If you confine yourself to hops, you run the risk of rusting from the inside out. I know. I caught myself, halfway through my life, in the very act of rusting. There I was, hopping along in my Zone of Excellence, when suddenly I became aware of a dull and sluggish feeling deep within me. I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. As I tuned in to it, I realized it had been there for months, maybe years.
I had gotten to a place in my life where I could almost sleepwalk through doing all the things that kept me successful—writing books, giving speeches, coaching executives, teaching seminars. I did them and did them and did them, and the money kept pouring in. Soon there were employees, a big building, three houses, and an army of support personnel that needed to be fed. I remember well the day it all imploded on me.
I got off the plane, exhausted from a grueling trip during which I’d given many talks and seminars—nineteen cities in twenty-one days. I stopped by the office on the way home, and there I encountered glum looks on the faces of my accountant and administrative director. They announced that taxes were due, and that because of a cash-flow shortfall I needed to borrow $120,000 from myself to pay our taxes. I felt like a hunter-gatherer returning with a wild boar for the campfire, expecting high-fives and a hot dinner, only to be told I also owed a couple of buffalo. I slunk home, dejected and irritated, and there I found that my garage-door opener had died. Leaving my car in the driveway, I trudged out to get the mail. The first thing I pulled out was a big envelope emblazoned with this headline: “Congratulations on Turning 50! Here Is Your Free AARP Card!” I paused to digest the significance of this moment, and that’s when I became aware of the sluggish, dull feeling deep within me.
At first I worried it might be a medical problem, so I started by getting a thorough workup. I discovered that I was in the best of health, except for twenty extra pounds of prosperity-induced padding, the effects of too many well-paid after-dinner speeches. Finding I was in good health meant I had to take a deeper look. When I did, I found the source of my rust, and that discovery changed my life. The source was hidden in plain sight: it was the Upper Limit Problem I knew so well. In spite of knowing a lot about it intellectually, I had gotten comfortably numb in my Zone of Excellence. So comfortably numb, in fact, that the ULP had sneaked up and gotten me. Without realizing it, I’d worn such a comfortable rut in my Zone of Excellence that I had overlooked the beckoning calls of my Zone of Genius. Fortunately, I got the message in time. I want to make sure you do, too.
We all need to be on the lookout for signs of our Upper Limit Problem every day of our lives. It’s a constant quest, because we’re always raising the bar on ourselves. The better we get, the better we want to be. Part of us wants very much to live in
our Zone of Genius. Yet at the same time, we’re tied down by forces around us. The people around us want us to stay in our Zone of Excellence. We’re a lot more reliable there.
I just returned from a meeting that included a man and a woman who were both Harvard MBAs. Getting an MBA is a great achievement: it takes dedication, brilliance, and hard work. However, it’s a hop, not a leap. You and I probably know plenty of brilliant, dedicated, hardworking people who hopped through difficult hoops such as getting a Harvard MBA. You and I also know that most of them never made the Big Leap into their Zone of Genius. If you want to take a close look at this phenomenon, all you need to do is attend a class reunion.
Not long ago I gathered with a number of the people who got their Ph.D.’s at Stanford while I was there doing the same in the 1970s. The Counseling Psychology program was designed to train leaders in the field, so most of us took up careers as university professors or private-practice psychologists. We were gathered to celebrate one of our professors, now retiring after a long and fruitful career. It was a festive occasion fueled by goodwill, fond memories, and a free-flowing bar. After a few glasses of cheer, though, deeper feelings came pouring forth. The evening soured temporarily into a complaint fest.
Out of a roomful of fifty or so people, only a half dozen of us seemed to be genuinely happy with the way our lives were going. The professors in the group complained of sluggish bureaucracies and administrations that didn’t support their research. They complained of pitiful salaries and the dire shortage of faculty parking spaces. The theme was “If it weren’t for _______________, I could be doing what I really want to do.” The private-practice therapists had their own set of complaints: slow payments by insurance companies and the ever-expanding quagmire of paperwork. The therapists made a lot more money than the professors, so the therapists’ complaints were flavored more by financial woes. They spoke bitterly of greedy ex-spouses, high alimony payments, long hours, ungrateful clients, exhaustion, and burnout. The theme was “If it weren’t for _______________, I could be doing what I really want to do.”
What was especially striking to me was that the professors envied the private-practice people, who in turn were envious of the professors. From the professors’ viewpoint, the private-practice people had it made, with their big salaries, plush offices, and absence of faculty meetings. To the private-practice crowd, though, the professors were the ones with the cushy jobs. They got a steady paycheck, free office space, short hours, and plenty of time to write.
As the evening wore on, I listened to one tale of thwarted hopes after another. Finally I was jolted by an insight: none of these complaints were actually caused by pigheaded bureaucrats, lack of parking spaces, ungrateful clients, or anything of the sort. In other words, none of these brilliant, well-meaning people were upset for the reasons they thought they were. Their complaints were all symptoms of not taking the Big Leap! From this perspective, every story took on a different meaning, and I began asking a different question in response to each person’s story.
After listening to a complaint, I would ask, “If outside influences like money or insurance companies or bureaucrats were not a problem, what would you really love to be doing?” I learned a lot from what each person told me. First, almost everyone could tell me clearly what they’d love to be doing. Their answers included things like:
I’d love to have time to write the book I’ve been wanting to write.
I’d love to create videos so more people could get access to the techniques I use.
I’d love to have more of an impact in the world.
What caught my attention, though, was the emotional tone behind those statements. Every time, the person’s face took on an expression of longing tinged with hope or burdened by despair. Longing is a persistent, lingering feeling of wanting something you can’t quite get or something you’ve judged unobtainable. If you think there’s still a possibility of attaining it, your longing is flavored by hope. If you think it’s unobtainable, your longing sinks into a bog of despair. Longing was what I was hearing in every one of those conversations.
Here’s the other thing I learned that night. Most people have a carefully crafted, well-justified story about why they can’t take their Big Leap. For one person it was about the family: “I can’t possibly take the time to write [“make a video,” etc.] because my family needs me.” For another person it was about stress: “I tried getting up at 5 a.m. for a while to work on my book, but I couldn’t do that and do a good job with my 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. therapy clients.” For others it was purely about the money: “I can’t do what I really want to do because I might not make as much money doing it.”
As I listened to these stories, I would sometimes hear the real fears emerge. There is a huge fear underneath every complaint: If I took the Big Leap into my Zone of Genius, I might fail. What if I really opened up to my true genius and found that my genius wasn’t good enough? Better to keep the genie in the bottle and coast along in the Zone of Excellence. That way I don’t have to risk taking a Big Leap and finding it isn’t good enough. That way I don’t have to risk discovering the ugly possibility that I don’t have a Zone of Genius.
Unless you’re very lucky or very enlightened, you’re likely to hear those nattering voices and feel those nagging fears within you. They’re part of the deal. I won’t try to talk you out of them, and you shouldn’t try to talk yourself out of them, either. Just notice the voices and feel the fears. That’s all you need to do with them. You don’t need to rid yourself of them. Where would they go, anyway? All you need to do is acknowledge them, wave to them, let them know you’re aware of them. Then get busy learning to live in your Zone of Genius.
YOUR GENIUS COMMITMENT
Take a new step with me, one that will begin to anchor you in your Zone of Genius. Recall the questions I asked you at the beginning of chapter 1. Now I want to ask you a new question that will turn on the turbojets for your Big Leap.
I want you to make that Big Leap into your Zone of Genius. I’ve found an exhilaration there—a constant sense of purposeful joy—that nothing else can compare to. In your Zone of Genius, you don’t feel like you’re working. Even though the time you spend there produces great financial abundance, you do not feel that you are expending effort to produce it. In your Zone of Genius, work doesn’t feel like work.
In your Zone of Genius, time feels completely different. Time seems to expand to support your activities. You have plenty of time to do what you most want to do. You’ll learn more about this unusual phenomenon in chapter 6, “Living in Einstein Time.” For right now, though, just know that in your Zone of Genius, time doesn’t fly—it flows.
How about it? Will you make a commitment to living in your Zone of Genius all the time? If you do that, I can promise you as much real-life magic as you care to experience.
In coaching people to discover their genius, I’ve found that it’s essential to begin with a commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Your commitment must come before you know how to make good on it. The image that comes to mind is from the third Indiana Jones movie, in which Indy must step out into thin air, in a gesture of commitment, before a bridge magically appears beneath his feet. The power of your commitment brings forth the means necessary for you to live in your Zone of Genius. If you will make a powerful, sincere commitment—a vow that you really want to live your life in the Zone of Genius—your journey will be blessed with uncommon good fortune at all the twists and turns of the road. Commitment has that power.
I invite you to make your commitment right at this moment. Make a private deal between you and the universe, a formal commitment to living in your Zone of Genius.
Here’s the sentence I use when working with people:
I commit to living in my Zone of Genius, now and forever.
Repeat it softly to yourself a few times, noticing how it feels to you. Then say it out loud a few times. Savor the different words and sounds of the sentence. When you are ready to make you
r formal commitment, speak the sentence from your heart, as a formal contract between you and the universe.
THE GENIUS QUESTIONS
Your sincere commitment is the entry gate to the Zone of Genius. Now that you’ve stepped out into the unknown, the bridge can appear under your feet. The bridge to your Zone of Genius is a set of questions to ask yourself. Actually, ask doesn’t quite capture the flavor of how I want you to use the questions. I want you to wonder about them. These questions are designed to bring forth hidden treasures from deep inside you. Wonder is the tool that invites these treasures up into the light. To wonder about something is to explore with an open mind and an open heart. Wonder is defined as “amazed admiration,” so be sure to do your wondering with the attitude that your discoveries will be amazing and admirable.
Genius Question no. 1
Here’s the first Genius Question:
What do I most love to do?
(I love it so much I can do it for long stretches of time without getting tired or bored.)
When I was first figuring out how my own genius worked and how to get established in my Zone of Genius, I spent a lot of time wondering how to distinguish my genius from my excellence. I finally realized a big key to it: my genius is connected to what I most love to do. That’s why I want you to wonder about what you most love to do.