Taking on The Big Leap In Your Creative Life & Business

Photo by ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

I love it that I have friends who give me great books just when I need them.

Michelle Farinella is one of those friends. {Do you know her and her work? She’s one to know.}

At Profit Catalyst earlier this Summer, Michelle gave me a book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I’ve spent the past couple weeks savoring it slowly, a few pages a day.

The central proposition of The Big Leap is that we all have what Hendricks calls an Upper Limit Problem. Your upper limit is the highest level of abundance, success, and love that you can tolerate — like an internal thermostat, programmed for you in childhood — before you start messing it up for yourself. ‘Messing it up’ can look like illness, an accident, slacking, procrastination, depression, fear, anxiety, self-doubt, a fight in a relationship, being careless with money, losing things, etc.

Making the big leap to cross the threshold of your Upper Limit Problem is about accepting that you can receive, tolerate, and enjoy more abundance, success, and love than you have known yourself to before.

That’s a wild proposition, huh? Living happier, more prosperous, more open to love?

This, I’m thinking, is really good for business. And so I’m sharing it with you today.

Part of taking on the big leap in your creative life and business is knowing what it looks like to live in what Hendricks calls your Zone of Genius, embracing what I’ve previously described as your strangely powerful talent.

Here are 3 questions Hendricks invites us to answer about ourselves when we’re working in our Zone of Genius:

. . . I recommend that you deconstruct the set of Russian dolls until you uncover the one that contains your unique ability. Begin with a fundamental statement like this:

I’m at my best when I’m _______________________________________________________________________.

Let that statement resonate in your mind a few times; then speak it out loud. Discover what you come up with. Perhaps you come up with “I’m at my best when I’m generating ideas on a yellow legal pad” or “I’m at my best when I’m figuring out how to put a team together.” Just get a good general statement of what you’re doing when you feel you’re at your best.

Once you’ve come up with a simple, clear statement of you at your best, go a little deeper. Use a statement like the following to zoom in for a closer look:

When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is____________________________________________________.

Go for a more detailed description, such as “When I’m generating ideas on a yellow legal pad, the exact thing I’m doing is doodling and enjoying the feeling of creating something out of nothing.”

Go even deeper with a sentence like this one:

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is_________________________________________________.

For example, “When I’m doodling and creating something out of nothing, the thing I love most is not knowing where it’s going to take me. I love the surprise factor, the excitement of seeing what’s going to emerge.”

You’ll be able to know you’re getting closer to your unique ability when you feel an inner glow of wonder and excitement. Even though I’ve been with hundreds of people as they tapped into that feeling, I never feel blasé about it. There’s something intrinsically enlivening about being with people when they’re discovering this depth within themselves. Probably because the process is connected to my own genius, I can engage in it all day long and never get tired. That’s what I want for you.

— Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap*, pp. 140-141

And so, I want to share my own answers to these sacred questions with you. And then, I’d love for you to share your answers with me. Here are mine:

I’m at my best when I’m articulating the dynamics in a situation.

When I’m doing that, the exact thing I’m doing is noticing, naming, and describing the seen, felt, and implied elements of a concept, a relationship, or a dynamic. I do this across multiple realms: in my creative business, in my own personal creative work, and in my relationships.

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is clearing away confusion and distractions, thus creating freedom for myself and others to enter more deeply into an experience and feel its impact.

And that, my amazing readers and friends, is what I mean by calling myself a brand editor. I articulate the dynamics at play in your digital brand — those seen, felt, and implied — so that your right people can behold and experience you and your impact more deeply.

{This Summer, I’d love to share my gift with you in this way.}

In the comments, let’s talk about your zone of genius, or, as I’ve named it before on this blog, your strangely powerful talent. I’d love for you to consider, name, and articulate your own special gift by answering these three questions:

I’m at my best when I’m . . .

When I’m doing that, the exact thing I’m doing is . . .

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is . . .

Can’t wait to hear you articulate this for yourself. I’m standing right here looking forward to joining you in responding to each other.

*This is my Amazon affiliate link.