The Big Leap

by Gay Hendricks

  Give yourself and your partner plenty of nonsexual touch. Sexual touch is great, but humans need nonsexual touch in large quantities. A loving hand squeeze or a touch on the shoulder communicates love and caring in ways no words can.

  After soaring to a new height of intense intimacy, bring yourself back to ground in a positive way. Many people, when they enjoy a time of deep closeness, unconsciously create an argument or accident to get their feet back on the ground. It’s not necessary to use a painful method of grounding yourself. It works much better, and is much more fun, to come back to earth by doing some earthy dancing, taking a walk on the surface of the earth, or cleaning out a closet full of your earthly possessions.

  Cultivate at least three friends with whom you can form a No-Upper-Limits conspiracy. The word conspiracy comes from two Latin roots that together mean “to breathe together.” That’s the kind of conspiracy I want you to create. I want you to feel the power of two or more people in harmony, working toward a benign goal that’s good for all. You and the other members of your conspiracy will educate each other on the Upper Limit Problem. You will spot each other running Upper Limit behaviors such as worrying, getting sick, having accidents, and so forth. You and your conspiracy will gently remind each other that you create the quality of your life experience out of your beliefs. You’ll remind each other to examine those beliefs to make sure they’re giving you room for ultimate success in love and life. When you trip and fall, as we all tend to do from time to time, you and your co-conspirators will remind each other to take a deep breath, center yourselves, and open up again to feeling more love, abundance, and success than you’ve ever before enjoyed.

  If you’re a successful person in relationship with another successful person, you’ve embarked on one of the great quests in all human endeavor. For me, it’s the ultimate thrill ride, a journey in which every moment is packed with learning potential and the opportunity to experience true joy.

  With the ideas and tools we’ve explored in this book, you have everything you need to set sail and navigate the tricky swirls and currents of intimate relationships. The rest is practice. No matter how brilliant we might be at making money or making music or making soup, we are all amateurs when it comes to feeling and expressing love. I like it that way, because it gives every moment of life an exhilarating learning edge. It keeps me cheerfully humble to think of myself as a beginner in a field in which I’m acclaimed as an expert. I also know, from painful experience, that the moment my attitude of cheerful humility slips into self-righteousness or arrogance, the universe will just as cheerfully step in with an unexpected way to make me humble again. The universe will teach us our lessons with the tickle of a feather or the whomp of a sledgehammer, depending on how open we are to learning the particular lesson. Getting stubborn and defensive invites the sledgehammer; getting open and curious invites the feather. It took me a long time to figure out who was in charge of the painfulness of my lessons.

  To prevent humiliating collisions with the universe, I suggest we all adopt an attitude of being open to learning in every moment of our relationships. Every interaction contains within it the possibility of deep connection with our beloved, with ourselves, and with the cosmos. Relationship is the ultimate spiritual path, because it constantly presents us with the challenge to love and embrace in the very situations in which we’re most prone to shun and reject. For that reason above all, relationship is the place where our spirituality most visibly comes to light. You can tell more about a person’s true spirituality from the way he or she treats his or her partner than you ever could from tallying that person’s church attendance.

  The key to spiritual development through relationship is being open to learning from every moment of interaction. By doing so, we welcome the ups and downs of relationship instead of resisting them. We approach each moment with an open mind and a willing heart. This attitude cuts down on friction, enhances the possibility of deep connection, and keeps us from being battered when turbulence occurs.

  In that spirit, let me close our discussion of successful people and relationships with a translation I made of a poem by the fourteenth-century mystic Hafiz.

  YOUR DIVINE INVITATION

  You’re invited to meet the Divine.

  Nobody can resist an invitation like that!

  Now, your choices narrow to two:

  You can come to the Divine ready to dance.

  Or

  Be carried on a stretcher to the Divine Emergency Room.

  Conclusion

  As you move toward greater success, love, abundance, and creativity in your life, you will encounter the Upper Limit Problem. I say it is the only problem you really need to solve. The problem, though challenging, brings a priceless gift hidden within it. The gift reveals itself as you explore and solve the problem. The gift is a special kind of relationship: a living connection with the source of genius within you.

  The Upper Limit Problem is our universal human tendency to sabotage ourselves when we have exceeded the artificial upper limit we have placed on ourselves. The Upper Limit Problem is caused by a too-low thermostat setting on our ability to achieve and enjoy our ultimate success. The thermostat gets set low early in our lives, at a time when we could not think for ourselves. Later, as we dream about big goals and move up into realms of love, abundance, and creativity that are above our old thermostat setting, we bump up against the artificial lid that was placed on our success through unconscious childhood decisions. Unless we solve the Upper Limit Problem, we will keep finding ways to bring ourselves back down when we’ve blown past our old setting.

  The childhood decisions all were made unconsciously as we navigated through difficult family crosscurrents. Those unconscious decisions become barriers we must overcome in order to express and enjoy our full measure of success. There are four of these barriers:

  The first barrier is the false belief that we are fundamentally flawed in some way. If we carry this feeling within us, we sabotage our success because we think we’re essentially bad. If something good happens, we must mess up to offset it, because good things can’t happen to bad people.

  The second barrier is the false belief that by succeeding, we are being disloyal to and leaving behind people in our past. If we harbor this feeling within us, we sabotage our success because we think it’s disloyal to our roots to soar too far into the stratosphere.

  The third barrier is the false belief that we are a burden in the world. If we carry this feeling inside us, we sabotage our success so that we won’t be a bigger burden.

  The fourth barrier is the false belief that we must dim the bright lights of our brilliance so that we won’t outshine someone in our past. If we hold this feeling inside us, we tend to hold ourselves back from expressing the full potential of our innate genius.

  Understanding why we’ve limited ourselves liberates a new energy in us, which we can draw on to propel us to new heights of abundance, love, and creativity. As we spiral upward in our quest to express our unique genius, we will likely soar past ghosts and shadows of those old barriers. For this reason, it’s best to think of our quest as a continuing journey of transcending upper limits. The payoff for the work is a gift of enduring value: we get to live in the full rainbow of our potential, in our Zone of Genius. In that exalted space, we enjoy the love, abundance, and success we create, and our very presence inspires people wherever we go in the world.

  We transcend our Upper Limit Problem each time we make more room inside us to feel more love, abundance, and success. It’s done moment by moment, and the moment goes like this: We catch ourselves worrying or starting an argument. Suddenly we realize we’re Upper-Limiting. We let go of the train of worry-thoughts or the huffy point of view, taking a deep breath or two for relaxation. Perhaps we wiggle our toes or stretch our shoulders in a gesture of opening up space to feel more love, success, and abundance. A moment later we break free of the Upper Limit and feel a flow of good feeling again. In wink-of-an-eye mome
nts such as these, we expand our capacity to enjoy more love, abundance, and success.

  These moments are the springboards of our Big Leap. It may not happen in our first moment or our hundred-and-first, but if we practice with diligence and zeal, one magic day we will look up and realize we have created our beautiful life in the Zone of Genius. On that day we will look around us and see other friendly faces in their Zone of Genius. We’ll look at each other and say, “Welcome, friend.” On that day we’ll know that heaven and earth are truly one.

  As you and I come to the end of our time together in this book, I want to tell you how grateful I am to be sharing these ideas and processes with you. They are sacred treasures to me, and I feel blessed to have been entrusted with them. I feel doubly blessed for a lifetime of teaching them to others. The experience of learning what is in these pages has gifted me with a life of more magnificence than I ever knew existed; passing them along to you has allowed me to fulfill my life’s grandest purpose. For that great privilege, I thank you from the top, middle, and bottom of my heart.

  As my work on this book was drawing to a close, I went out into the backyard to stretch my legs and get some fresh air. It was approaching dusk, and the blossoms of evening were just beginning to breathe their fragrance into the air. I sat for a few minutes in our swing, enjoying the soft breezes, the sweet air, and the sounds of my neighborhood. I could see Kathlyn in the living room, deep in communion with a novel by one of her favorite mystery writers. I could feel a warm, glad-to-be-home sensation within me, and as I expanded my attention to let myself enjoy it thoroughly, waves of bliss spread through me. Suddenly my mind chimed in with a philosophical observation: “This won’t last forever, but it’s wonderful while it’s happening.” I realized with a chuckle that this commentary, whether wise or trite, was a subtle Upper Limit behavior. I had obviously exceeded my tolerance for backyard bliss. My Old Philosopher persona had shuffled in from the shadows to bring me back to earth. I gave the old fellow a loving pat on the back and sent him back to his quiet corner. Then I turned my attention back to where it belongs: feeling the blissful richness of this fine moment.

  Here is my wish for you: a life journey blessed with many such moments of discovery. Going forward on your path, may your every day be filled with much practical magic and many everyday miracles. May you transcend each and every one of your upper limits, and long may you glide the high currents of love, abundance, and creative contribution.

  APPENDIX

  Baby Steps and Big Leaps

  My Early Adventures As an Entrepreneur

  When I give talks to business audiences such as the Young Presidents Organization, I notice that the entrepreneurs in the audience often show the most enthusiasm for my ideas. I feel a natural resonance with entrepreneurs, partly because I’ve been having entrepreneurial adventures since I was a kid. I’ve also found that entrepreneurs are often most receptive to one of my core beliefs: that business is ultimately a spiritual path.

  I’ve found that business and every other aspect of life goes much better if I stay in touch with the spiritual aspect of myself. There’s a good reason for this: if I make a split between money and spirituality, as I did for part of my life, I cannot harness the most awesome power we have, our spiritual essence. If we can heal that split and realize that money is simply spiritual energy in motion, we can put the power of spirit to work for us in creating wealth with ease and flow.

  I had a personal experience early in my life that left an enduring impression on me. It was the first spiritual experience I can clearly remember, and it happened when I was five years old, the summer before I was in elementary school. I was playing by myself in the side yard on a hot summer day in Florida. I had just come home from spending a morning in a children’s program at my family’s church. The program featured stories of Jesus, art projects involving Jesus, and songs of the “Jesus Loves Me” variety. There was great emphasis on Jesus’s role as the Son of God.

  As I played outside, I was thinking about the Son of God part of the story. What did this mean exactly? I had never known a living father, because he had died during my mother’s pregnancy with me. I didn’t have any felt-sense of what it might feel like to have a father. Suddenly I found myself wondering if I, too, was a Son of God. It seemed that if Jesus could be the Son of God, maybe I could be, too.

  This thought sent a thrill through me, a wave of exhilarating feeling I can remember as vividly as if it happened a minute ago. I looked up through the branches of the trees into the blue sky shimmering in the tropical air. Is that where my father lives? Is that where I came from?

  Then a special kind of awareness settled into me, a sure knowledge that seemed so obvious I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before: I am made of the same stuff as everything else. The trees, the sky, the earth beneath me—we’re all made of the same thing and it is all one thing. Everything is connected to everything else. I am the Son of God and everyone else is, too. It has to be that way, because everything is connected and everything is equal.

  I remember lying on my back looking up through the trees for a long time. A feeling of deep peace and contentment settled into me. The feeling continued for hours, even after I tried to describe my experience at dinner (and got a few blank stares of the “What the heck are you talking about?” variety). Somehow it didn’t matter whether people understood, though, because I knew what I felt and I felt what I knew.

  Later in life I came across a stunning passage from The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which spoke directly to me across time from first-century Rome:

  I am part of the whole, all of which is governed by nature…. I am intimately related to all the parts, which are of the same kind as myself. If I remember these two things, I cannot be discontented with anything that arises out of the whole, because I am connected to the whole.

  A Roman emperor would seem to have little in common with a kid in a sleepy southern town. Somehow, though, the same awareness showed up in both of us. Why and how could that be? After wondering about those questions for many years, I’ve now become convinced that we eventually become aware of our unity with the whole because it’s inescapable. The awareness is wired into us, because we’re wired into the universe. We can try with all our might to pretend we’re separate from the rest of the universe, but one way or the other it will catch up to us and welcome us back into its embrace.

  ENTREPRENEURIAL BABY STEPS

  It must have been around that time that I hatched my first entrepreneurial venture. It was an utter failure, at least in the traditional sense, because I didn’t attract a single customer. However, it foretold with uncanny accuracy my ultimate career and also illustrated several of the key spiritual principles I’ve drawn on ever since. [The following is an extended version of one of the stories that appears in the book.]

  You’ve heard of “outside the box” thinking? Well, my first business was literally “inside the box.” With Granddad’s help, I cut a door in the side of a large cardboard box, which I installed in a corner of my grandparents’ living room. This became my office. Above the door was the word Problems, which I hand-lettered in red (assisted in spelling by Granddad). I commuted to work on my tricycle, parked it next to the box, and clambered inside to work with my clients.

  I had a tough time explaining to my family the exact nature of the business I was in. I made it clear to the family that I did not handle medical problems. They could go to a “regular” doctor for that sort of thing. I explained as best I could that I handled problems you didn’t take to a regular doctor, like how to get along better with other people. I was in the people-fixing business, with the stated goal of helping people be happy. To appreciate the unlikelihood of my chosen job, you should know that I grew up in a small town in Florida that had no psychiatrists or psychologists or any other kind of mental health professional. It’s a mystery to me where I might have gotten the idea to be a “Problems” doctor.

  Although my family of lovable lunatics
certainly could have used my services, none of them ever climbed into the box with me. I was forced to work with imaginary patients, whom I cured of everything from general misery to specific ailments. The only specific ailment I can remember at the moment is that I cured one imaginary patient of the tendency to bark like a dog. My family found all this endlessly amusing, and were still telling stories about it well into my adulthood. (By the way, if you’re thinking I’ve got a great memory, I don’t. However, I was blessed with a journalist for a mother. Mom wrote a column every day for the local paper, and my adventures often served as material for her column. Thankfully she clipped and saved hundreds of her columns, which have proven to be worth gold in refreshing my memory of my childhood enthusiasms.)

  THE JOY OF THE ENTREPRENEUR: CREATING

  The ultimate joy of being an entrepreneur is creating something that people find valuable, particularly if it’s something that hasn’t existed before. My cardboard box counseling center was not valued by the customers, but nothing like it had ever existed before, at least in the part of the world I lived in. To this day, few things give me more satisfaction than inventing something that hasn’t existed before. Many of my inventions have been total failures in the financial sense, while others have gone on to make millions of dollars. In the larger sense, all of them have been winners, because they held the fascination of creating something from nothing.