📖The Best Book to Uplevel Your Life☀️

Most of us are passionate about fulfilling our potential in every aspects of our lives; love, career, finance, self, health, family, knowledge, relationships. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is is the highest level of psychological development, where personal potential is fully realized after basic bodily and ego needs have been satisfied.

However, how many of us will go to our graves having actually achieved what our natural ability makes possible? I currently feel that I am falling significantly short in that regard and that if I were to meet an “untimely demise” I would not be delighted by my life.

This is where The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks comes in.

I read that book a few years ago and recommended it to plenty of my friends. That is how much I love it. I have the audiobook AND the paper edition. I listen to it every year as a reminder to keep a keen eye on my upper limit and my zone and genius.

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⛔Our Upper Limit Problem

In The Big Leap, the author Gay Hendricks’ premise is the following: We all have an unconscious maximum level of happiness we allow ourselves to feel. Meaning that we all have an internal thermostat for our level of love, success, creativity, and that thermostat stops at some point. Maybe your thermostat’s maximum will be 300 for love, 350 for success and 275 for creativity. Someone else’s might be 550 for love, 150 for success and 375 for creativity. And Musk’s likely success’ thermostat reaches an uberhealthy 1,200! Numbers are for illustrative purpose only 😉

So if one’s thermostat is at a paltry 120 for success. They will struggle to go for any career’s goals that are perceived to be above this upper limit of 120.

If, by sheer willpower (or luck, that happens too!), they are able to reach 150 with a new career high, they will likely feel very uncomfortable. So much so, that they are going to unconsciously sabotage themselves to go back to the level they deem “their” level, 120.

When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will likely self-sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.

I have lived through that loop over and over again in my professional life. Not only through the first step of setting my career’s sight way below my then-ability, but also through the second step of self-sabotaging myself EVERYTIME I had been able to achieve “more” than my perceived value. The worst part is that I could absolutely not see the pattern. I could always find an external reason justifying whether I should set my sights low - I need to have more Canadian experience, my English needs to be better, none is hiring during a recession, promotions are going to the CEO’s protégés, etc…- or whether I should leave / not pursue the opportunities - it is not the right culture for me, I don’t get along with my boss, my coworkers are backstabbing me, and so on. I was totally oblivious to the fact that I had an upper limit problem!

We all have limiting beliefs about ourselves that put an upper limit on how much good we allow ourselves to feel, hence blocking our attempts at more success, love, and creativity.

And if we manage to go above this limit, we will unconsciously sabotage ourselves to go back into the range familiar to us.

The world is full of highly successful people who have had that unconscious urge to sabotage themselves when they reach the next level of success. In The Big Leap, the author mentions Bill Clinton, Boris Becker, Christian Bale. Will Smith’s example is fresh (😉) in everyone’s mind. Winning his first Oscar and banning himself from the Academy in the course of the same event.

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🚀 The Foundational Beliefs behind our Upper Limit

Now that it has been established that the upper limit problem is real, even if unconscious, what can we do about it?

In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks suggests that to raise our upper limit and access what he calls “our zone of genius” (the set of activities that we are uniquely suited to do) we need to dismantle the foundational unconscious beliefs that set this upper limit in the first place.

Four hidden barriers are behind this foundation and need to be dissolved;

1. Feeling fundamentally flawed;

2. Disloyalty and abandonment;

3. Believing that more success brings a bigger burden;

4. The crime of outshining.

To some degrees we all have been prey to these beliefs that have usually been programmed in our childhood. From believing that others won’t love and accept us if we shine too bright, and that we have to follow our kin’s behaviors, to feeling “not good enough”, and that we are both a burden and a celebration.

Usually one or two of these beliefs are more prevalent, but the four of them are present.

🔎How to detect and dismantle these Flawed Beliefs

Awareness is the main tool that will help us to bring to light the flawed beliefs that are at play in our lives.

In his book, the author mentions several behaviors that signal us that we are “upper-limiting” ourselves;

1. Worry;

2. Criticism and Blame;

3. Deflecting (brushing off compliments, for example);

4. Squabbling;

5. Getting Sick, Getting Hurt.

I used to definitely relate very much to the top 3. Thankfully I have been able to release some of that over the years.

Microdosing psilocybin has really helped me in that regard; by not only increasing my awareness related to unhelpful behaviors, but also by increasing and deepening the number of ahah moments relating to limiting beliefes and self sabotaging behaviours.

I used to definitely relate very much to the top three. Thankfully I have been able to release some of that over the years.

Microdosing psilocybin has really helped me in that regard; by not only increasing my awareness related to unhelpful behaviors, but also by increasing and deepening the aha moments linked to limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviors. Allowing me to stop, understand what was really at play, and change my usual reactions for more supportive behaviors.

When it comes to dismantling the limiting beliefs that keep us operating at a lower level than our Zone of Genius, the author uses tools such as journaling and positive affirmations.

I personally like to journal a lot, I find it to be a great way to understand my underlying motivations - the limited beliefs behind my self-sabotage. Combined with psilocybin this is a very powerful tool for me (and I love to write!).

I do find that positive affirmations are a double-edge sword. At least, they are for me. If the statements are too far from my limiting beliefs it seems that my unconscious is fighting back and rooting these beliefs even deeper. So definitely not helping!

I will detail in subsequent editions the tools that have been very useful to me in getting closer to my my Zone of Genius: Tapping meditations, Sedona release, Hypnosis, and Guided meditations. Tapping especially can quickly and easily get me off the ledge when I get worked up, which happens way less now that I microdose but still happens nonetheless 😉.

I have found that the combination of these different modalities with my psilocybin microdosing regimen has really increased the depth and velocity of the results. It has been my own DIY self-transformation program!

I can’t recommend you enough to explore your own upper limit and what limiting beliefs lay behind them…YOLO! The Big Leap is a great place to start.

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😎Key Takeaways:

• Most of us are passionate about fulfilling our potential in every aspects of our lives;

• However, how many of us will actually achieve what our unique abilities could make possible?

• In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks states that we all have an unconscious maximum level of happiness we allow ourselves to feel;

• We all have an internal thermostat for our level of love, success, creativity, and that thermostat stops at some point.

• When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will likely self-sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.

• We need to dismantle the foundational unconscious beliefs that set the upper limit on the thermostat.

• Four hidden beliefs are behind and need to be dissolved; Feeling fundamentally flawed; Disloyalty and abandonment; Believing that more success brings a bigger burden; The crime of outshining;

• Usually one or two of these beliefs are more prevalent, but the four of them are present in any of us.

• Awareness is the main tool that will help us to bring to light the flawed beliefs that are at play in our lives.

• Several behaviors signal us that we are “upper-limiting” ourselves; Worry;

  Criticism and Blame; Deflecting; Squabbling; Getting Sick, Getting Hurt;

• Microdosing psilocybin has really helped me by increasing my awareness related to unhelpful behaviors, and by increasing and deepening the aha moments linked to limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviors.

• The author uses tools such as journaling and positive affirmations to dismantle the limiting beliefs that keep us operating at a lower level than our Zone of Genius;

• Tapping, Sedona release, Hypnosis, and Guided meditations have helped me releasing my limiting beliefs, especially in combination with microdosing psilocybin.

Please share your comments and questions!

If you are interested in knowing more about me, you can visit my website or my YouTube channel.

I wrote a book, “Paris, Mushrooms, and Me”, based on my experience microdosing psilocybin; please reach out if you would like to reserve a copy. The book will be published in 2023.

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