The Big Leap, by psychologist and personal growth coach Gay Hendricks, aims to help the reader overcome some of the psychological barriers to success and fulfillment. Written in 2009, the book collates advice accumulated over Hendricks’s many years in the coaching business, and it’s geared toward the reader who has achieved some success in life, yet still feels a lack of fulfillment.
Hendricks asserts that, while we all have an innate call toward our most successful and fulfilling life, even highly successful people are often plagued by an inability to achieve beyond a certain self-imposed limit.
This limit is what we’ll call our “happiness threshold,” a maximum amount of goodness we’re comfortable feeling, established by early life experiences. When we achieve high degrees of success in our careers, relationships, and other areas of life, we’ll begin to feel discomfort as we near that threshold, and this triggers self-sabotaging behaviors.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how Hendricks defines levels of life success and how progressing through them moves us closer to our happiness threshold. Then, we’ll explain how our happiness thresholds are established early in life, through the adoption of false beliefs, and you’ll learn how to identify and counter your own false beliefs. Finally, we’ll examine Hendricks’s practical advice for applying this new knowledge to your life and relationships, in order to take the “big leap” into living your best life.
Throughout the guide, we’ll look at how Hendricks’s ideas on happiness, limiting beliefs, and self-sabotage compare with the ideas of other authors, and we’ll explore what the scientific research behind some of his key concepts tells us.
According to Hendricks, many people who appear outwardly to be highly successful are plagued internally by a sense that there’s something missing in their life. Others may be thriving in one area of their life, such as their career, yet experience continual frustration and disappointment in another, perhaps in their relationships. If this sounds like you, you may be unconsciously limiting yourself by what Hendricks calls the “Upper Limit Problem,” an internal threshold for the maximum degree of success and happiness you’ll allow yourself to experience. This happiness threshold works to prevent you from reaching what he calls your “Zone of Genius,” which we’ll refer to as living in a state of fulfillment.
Life Dissatisfaction May Be Caused by Hedonic Adaptation
Hendricks’s happiness threshold is similar to the positive psychology concept of hedonic adaptation, also referred to as a “hedonic treadmill,” described in The Paradox of Choice. This is the theory that we all have a natural “set point” for happiness, and we may have ebbs and flows, but when we have momentary happiness, we’ll always return back to that set point. Either the pleasure is fleeting because of the temporary nature of the experience (for example, a concert or a vacation), or we adjust to the new thing (as in a relationship). This model doesn’t necessarily suggest that we self-sabotage in order to bring ourselves down to this set point, but that it just naturally happens. You’ll stop enjoying things as much because you get used to them, like you would if you ate your favorite meal every day.
Psychologists offer suggestions for combating the effect with strategies such as: rotating pleasurable activities, being mindful of savoring your pleasurable experiences, continuing to explore new activities, and journaling.
First, Hendricks defines four distinct levels of success people occupy. As we accomplish more in life, we move through subsequently higher levels. These levels can be described as:
In this level of life, Hendricks explains, you accomplish little to nothing, because you waste time and energy on doing things you’re not good at, rather than on things you excel at. You’re continually frustrated and spinning your wheels, because you aren’t homing in on your skills and talents, and you stubbornly refuse to admit that there are just some things you aren’t cut out for. For example, you may be stuck in a dead-end job you hate, or unable to hold down jobs, and you feel like a failure. In fact, the problem may be that you’re just not pursuing what you’re good at. You might be achieving much more in a different career path that’s more aligned with your natural abilities.
Discover Your “Sparketype”
If you find yourself at the level of stagnancy, you may need to do some work around discovering what your unique skills and talents are, so you can apply that knowledge to your career path. To help people do this, best-selling author Jonathan Fields has developed The Sparketype Assessment. Through a series of questions about your personal likes, dislikes, interests, ideals, and values, this assessment reveals the “driving force” behind what makes you you, and what gives you a sense of purpose in life—this is your “Sparketype.” Once you’ve identified your Sparketype, you can use that to identify why you may currently be stagnating and how you might better incorporate your passions into your career path.
At this level, you appear to be doing fine; you’ve achieved some level of success and are making progress. You may be on par with your peers, but not really excelling beyond them. For example, if your friends and family think you’re “doing well” but you still feel like you’re falling short of your potential, or you find you’ve hit a wall in terms of advancement, you may be stuck at the level of adequacy. To go beyond adequacy, Hendricks advises that you may just need to re-focus and re-prioritize, thinking a bit outside the box to imagine how you could aim a little higher.
Set Extreme Goals
In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone warns against settling for average or mediocre goals for success. One problem with doing this is that often those goals are set by others, rather than by yourself. They tend to be goals that adhere to the societal norm, so by definition they never take you beyond that, and they’re also not strongly motivating, since they’re not uniquely your goals. Cardone claims that by setting simply adequate, you set yourself up for achieving less than that if and when you experience any setbacks. So, he says to achieve great success, you must aim much higher than you otherwise would have. Set your goals 10 times higher, and work 10 times harder to achieve them.
At this level you’ve reached a degree of accomplishment that others admire. You’re good at what you do, and you’re solidly “successful” according to society’s standards. You can get very comfortable in this zone, because on the surface you may look and feel like you’ve reached your highest potential. But Hendricks warns us that there are two potential problems when you reach this level of achievement:
1. You still have a nagging sense that something is missing in your life. Deep down something tells you there must be more, but you can’t put your finger on what it is. This is your inner calling to true fulfillment beckoning you.
2. This is also where you’re in danger of encountering your happiness threshold, which acts as a barrier to reaching that state of fulfillment. These two forces—your call to fulfillment and your happiness threshold—work against each other at this level. When you feel the satisfaction of this much accomplishment, you’re likely to begin to engage in self-sabotage, to ensure you don’t go beyond that. This is due to deep-seated feelings of unworthiness or other limiting beliefs we’ll discuss in the next section.
(Shortform note: In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris explains that humans aren’t hard-wired for happiness, and the pursuit of that often has the opposite result. We’re driven to accumulate as a survival instinct, but in the modern world, this relentless drive to acquire more material wealth keeps us in a vicious cycle because we never know when enough is enough. This is similar to how Hendricks describes the High Achievement level of success, and why such people may still feel like something is missing.)
According to Hendricks, this is the level we’re all meant to reach in life—it’s your true life purpose. When you transcend the limitations of your happiness threshold, you reach your highest potential, and there’s no boundary on the amount of love, wealth, and joy you can experience. In this state you’re not just achieving, but thriving. Hendricks describes this as breaking out of all the “boxes” of the previous levels, and living a life of limitless expansion.
The Fulfilled Life
Psychology researchers created a measure for assessing fulfillment in life called the Fulfilled Life Scale. Using this scale, they found that a fulfilled life was most associated with a high degree of self-actualization and realization, meaning the ability to live as your true authentic self, to pursue goals that are personally meaningful to you, and to make a positive impact on others or society. This research also showed that those who considered finding fulfillment important and spent time consciously pursuing it were more likely to feel fulfilled. These conclusions align with Hendricks’s advice later in the book to envision your state of fulfillment by uncovering what kinds of life work and activity enliven you, and to make this a central focus of your life.
Hendricks claims that overcoming the barrier of the happiness threshold is “the only problem we need to solve.” He explains that this concept applies to success in all realms of life, not just to wealth or material success (Shortform note: Despite this explicit statement, material success does come across as being the primary focus of the book. Most of the examples are of very wealthy and/or famous people).
We all know on a deep subconscious level, Hendricks argues, that we’re meant to live in a state of fulfillment, and when we don’t heed the call toward that, we’re affected by depression, illness, and injury. However, as we experience greater success and joy, and come closer to fulfillment, this triggers fear in us. We feel undeserving and will begin to self-sabotage, to bring ourselves back down to a comfortable level of happiness. Hendricks claims that this creates a constant tension and that as we get older, we’ll learn to gradually tune out the call to fulfillment, in order to reconcile the tension.
Self-sabotaging constitutes making decisions that we know, if perhaps unconsciously, have the capacity to reduce our happiness and success. These might include making poor financial choices, creating conflicts that ruin our relationships, and engaging in risky behavior that might result in scandal or even legal trouble. As one example, Hendricks discusses the prevalence of stories about lottery winners who squander their winnings or otherwise engage in behaviors that result in their financial and social ruin.
Why Do We Self-Sabotage?
Self-sabotage is a well-documented behavior that psychologists say stems from negative mindsets. The underlying causes may include low self-esteem and the resulting lack of confidence and feeling of unworthiness; fear of failure, and by extension, of success; and self-protection from uncomfortable feelings. Positive psychology research indicates that people may self-sabotage when they get close to achieving something they want, due to the fear of failure that triggers.
However, self-destruction may not be as common in lottery winners as we tend to think. It’s more a cultural myth, sometimes referred to as the “curse of the lottery.” A study of 576 lottery winners in the US found that overall they were “well-adjusted, secure, and generally happy.” A larger study in Sweden had similar findings: “Large-prize winners experience sustained increases in overall life satisfaction that persist for over a decade and show no evidence of dissipating over time.”
To learn how we can work toward our state of fulfillment, we need to understand why we have a happiness threshold limiting us in the first place. Hendricks says this threshold is set early in our lives by having false beliefs ingrained in us that cause feelings of fear, unworthiness, or guilt when we achieve success. He identifies some common false beliefs, and gives examples of how we might end up internalizing those. He says everyone holds at least one of these false beliefs, and some more than one. The first step toward transcending your happiness threshold will be doing some self-examination to identify which of these you hold and where it came from.
(Shortform note: Limitless by Jim Kwik discusses another kind of false belief that could negatively affect your success: self-limiting beliefs about learning. He argues that we impose limitations on ourselves through false beliefs about our intelligence that we likely learned when we were young.)
According to Hendricks, this belief likely originates in some experience of rejection that you felt you were to blame for, or from being criticized often. Perhaps you came to believe you were at fault for your parents’ divorce, or you had a parent who was relentlessly hyper-critical of you. You may have come to accept these perceived failings or flaws as an innate part of your identity.
When you believe you’re fundamentally flawed, and you start to achieve success in life, this creates a situation where you’re trying to hold conflicting beliefs. This puts you in a state of cognitive dissonance, which psychology tells us is uncomfortable to maintain, so you’ll feel compelled to resolve that discomfort. To resolve it, you may engage subconsciously in this line of reasoning:
Confronting Imposter Syndrome
In addition to creating cognitive dissonance, this kind of false belief could also manifest in imposter syndrome (also called imposter phenomenon), which can be a difficult barrier to success. Therapist Abby Rawlinson, who specializes in imposter syndrome, identifies five specific ways that it manifests. These include: a belief that you have to work extra hard because you’re naturally less competent than others, inability to feel proud of your successes because you feel undeserving, a belief that you’re a fraud and the fear that you’ll be discovered, and refusal to ask for help for fear that it will reveal your incompetence. We can see how these may result from the false belief that you’re fundamentally flawed and therefore can’t be successful.
If you think you suffer from imposter syndrome, the American Psychological Association offers some advice for confronting this limiting belief, including:
Monitor your internal dialogue about yourself, and when you have critical or negative thoughts about yourself, ask yourself what you would say to a friend if they said those things about themselves.
Discuss your imposter feelings with others that you trust, in a supportive environment, preferably outside of your professional circle. Individuals with marginalized identities may feel more comfortable talking with others who share that identity.
Recognize your achievements by acknowledging compliments and accolades from others. If you receive written praise or awards, place those physical reminders where you can see them daily.
Acknowledge and discuss your failures with others. Chances are when you discuss these openly you’ll find that others have had similar experiences, and this will remind you that everyone experiences both success and failures in life and reinforce that that’s normal.
This belief is formed by a mismatch between your type or degree of success and what has been expected of you. Many parents have preconceived ideas about a career path for their children. If your parents were both highly educated professionals, for example, they may have pushed you to excel in academics, in hopes that you’d follow in their footsteps. If you were drawn to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, no matter how successful you are in that field, you may feel like you’ve let your parents down. Hendricks explains that when you achieve success in a way that diverges from the expectations of others, it can feel uncomfortable, as if you’re betraying your loved ones. You may feel like you’re leaving your family behind or crushing their hopes. The guilt that results may cause you to self-sabotage to ensure that doesn’t happen.
(Shortform note: Class consciousness can also contribute to a strong sense of betraying our roots. Karl Marx described the working class identity as being defined specifically in opposition to the wealthy elite. While we’re undoubtedly familiar with envy and admiration of the wealthy by the poorer classes, there’s also a long history of hatred of the rich. Many working class people are raised with negative views of wealth and wealthy people, along with a pride in their working-class identity. This could also create a situation where, for people from such backgrounds, any degree of material wealth could feel like a betrayal of your “roots.”)
Hendricks identifies a few ways in which we could imagine that our success would have a negative impact on others. If you hold this type of false belief, you may feel guilty when you have great achievements, and your self-sabotage will be a means of protecting those you believe are being harmed by your success. One variant of this is a belief that you were a burden, likely on your parents. If you fundamentally believe you’ve been a burden in your life, you’ll believe that your own success will only further burden others, because anything you produce is an extension of you.
Another variant of this is a belief that your success is casting a shadow on someone else. Hendricks points out that this one is common among children who were gifted, and thus consistently outperformed others, for example their siblings or classmates. Often such children are made to feel badly about it, by their parents, teachers, or resentful siblings or peers.
If you’ve experienced this, you may have an underlying fear of resentment from others if you outperform them, so your success makes you feel guilty, and you feel like you need to “tone it down” so you’re not in the spotlight. Hendricks points out that this could mean limiting your degree of success through sabotage, or not actually being able to enjoy success if you achieve it.
Why Isn't Everybody Happy for Your Success?
If you feel that you have to downplay your success in order to avoid making someone else feel or look bad, you might want to consider how you talk about it. Research has shown that people tend to have lower opinions of winners, when the winner expresses positive emotions about their victory. Participants were more likely to view a winner positively when they were less expressive and more humble in their victory.
Aside from that, if others react negatively to your success, it’s more likely about them than you. It’s possible your success may be bringing up self-critical thoughts in others, based on their past experiences or false beliefs. It may be triggering their own feelings of inadequacy or highlighting the failures they experienced. Don’t allow this to hold you back, but do practice compassion, and let it inform your reaction to those people. It might help to find something to give them praise for, thus allowing them to feel proud of themselves along with you.
This false belief, Hendricks suggests, may stem from stories we’ve been told about someone who was destroyed by their own success. Think about any family stories you may have heard that associate success with something negative, for example a relative who won the lottery and was ruined by it, or an ancestor who experienced a tragic fall from grace. Consider whether you may be reenacting any such story unconsciously. If this is the case, Hendricks proposes that you remind yourself that it’s not your story, and intentionally create a new story for yourself. This will involve envisioning your state of fulfillment, which we’ll discuss in the next section
(Shortform note: Hendricks mentions family stories here, but it may not be all that common for families to have stories of specific ancestors like this. What is common and pervasive, though, are our cultural stories. The kinds of stories he describes are commonly occurring tropes in movies and television—for example, movies where having or pursuing wealth ruins someone, or those centered on a “rich villain” character.)
Now that you know what kinds of false beliefs people tend to have and where those come from, you must identify your own limiting beliefs by closely observing your own behaviors. Hendricks points out that these telltale behaviors can crop up in any area of your life, including in your relationship dynamics.
Once you’ve identified some of the behaviors that may be reinforcing your limiting beliefs, you’ll need to begin confronting those in your day-to-day life. Keep in mind that these behaviors have been conditioned over a long period of time, so it will take diligent effort to overcome them. Therefore, the first step will be to make a firm commitment to keeping an open and positive attitude toward this.
When you’re fully committed, begin by making a list of all the behaviors you recognize in yourself, and then consciously start watching for them to crop up. When they do, think about how they might be connected to limiting yourself. It’s also important to approach this non-judgmentally. As you become aware of these beliefs and behaviors in yourself, don’t be too self-critical; try to have an attitude of amusement toward yourself, and refrain from making negative judgments
(Shortform note: One strategy offered for conquering limiting beliefs in Limitless is to create a persona for your “inner critic.” Imagine it’s separate from you, and create an unflattering name and voice for it. Then when it speaks up with a negative thought, laugh at it and dismiss it as ridiculous).
Because the dynamic works a bit differently, we’ll look at individual everyday behaviors separately from relationship behaviors.
Many common behaviors that we tend to think of as natural and normal can actually be red flags that we might be self-sabotaging in order to undermine our success and happiness. Take some time to reflect on whether any of these rings true for you.
Hendricks says that worry can be useful or not useful. If there’s a real and present issue that you can solve, then solve it, and move on. For example, if you’re worried that you may have forgotten to pay your phone bill this month, check your records to see if it's been paid. If not, take care of it—then that worry is gone. However, if solving your present concern is not realistic and/or the issue isn’t something you can do anything about, then worrying about it is useless. For example if you’re worried that you might not get a promotion you’ve applied for, but you’ve already done everything you can do to put that in motion, then there’s no reason to keep thinking about it.
Useless worry is just inventing negative scenarios. That negative mindset can hinder your progress by undermining your confidence or keeping you from focusing on more productive positive things.
Since worry is a habitual thought pattern, Hendricks advises that addressing this behavior must involve learning to redirect your thoughts to get out of that habitual pattern. When you catch yourself worrying, stop and ask whether it’s useful or not. If it’s not, acknowledge that and redirect your thoughts toward something useful. But ceasing the worry habit isn’t sufficient in itself. Hendricks points out that you must also determine what positive energy or success you may be trying to block by engaging in this negative thought pattern. Therefore, rather than just redirecting your thoughts, also take the time to look for what triggered it.
How to Stop Dwelling on Useless Worry
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living gives some specific advice for analyzing your worries to determine how to resolve those ones you can take action on. The process involves three steps:
Write down what you’re worrying about, describing in detail all of the information related to this worry. This helps you get clear on what the heart of the anxiety is.
Read over all of the information you’ve written down and then think about what you might be able to do to resolve the situation. Write down all the possible solutions you can think of, and then decide which solution seems to be the best one.
Take immediate action to implement that solution. Don’t hesitate or delay as this will only prolong the worry.
For worries that you can’t do anything about, simply “letting them go” may be easier said than done. If you need some extra help with these, there are a number of apps that can help you track and assess your negative habits, reduce habitual worrying, and effectively manage your anxiety. In order to address your chronic worry habit, you may want to try one of the apps here.
Hendricks points out that worry and anxiety are fear-based, and he makes a connection between the feelings of fear and excitement. He points out that when faced with the unknown, humans experience either fear (a negative reaction) or excitement (a positive reaction). Therefore, he argues, these two emotions are just different ways of reacting to fear, and therefore we can learn to transform our fear into excitement by breathing through the fear. Consciously breathing deeply during fearful moments can release the negativity, and thus change the feeling into a more pleasant sensation of excitement or wonder.
(Shortform note: Hendricks takes this idea from the work of psychiatrist Fritz Perls. The idea is that both fear and excitement have similar physiological responses in the body, involving the release of adrenaline and a rapid heartbeat. Breath work can calm this response and make the feeling more positive.)
The Thinking Mind and the Observing Mind
Distinguishing between what Zen Buddhists call the “thinking mind” and the “observing mind” may help you create distance from your thoughts, so you can more objectively evaluate them. Essentially, your thinking mind is the internal dialogue that runs continuously in your head, which you’re sometimes consciously directing and sometimes not controlling at all. Your observing mind is the part of you that notices those thoughts. So, for example if you’re daydreaming about your upcoming vacation when you should be working, and then you catch yourself doing that, and redirect yourself back to work, your observing mind is the part of you that caught yourself daydreaming. If you learn to differentiate these two aspects of your mind, through mindfulness techniques, you can exercise better control over your thoughts.
The Happiness Trap gives advice for separating your thinking mind from your observing mind and provides guidance for practicing a mindfulness technique called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). This technique could be useful for addressing worry and anxiety-related behaviors.
Being hyper-critical is another way we limit ourselves, because it creates unnecessary negativity in our interactions with people. Hendricks also points out that criticism of others is usually as much, or more, about you as it is about the other person. It keeps you from being able to work harmoniously with others, and puts the blame for failures or problems onto others instead of taking responsibility for those yourself.
Start to observe any critical statements you make about others, and make note of whether those are productive or not. For example, if your co-worker isn’t meeting their obligations and it’s keeping you from accomplishing tasks, notice how you react to it: Are you addressing it in a productive way, or just hurling criticism? Are you placing all of the blame on them without examining your role in the dynamic?
Once you take notice of your tendency toward criticism, Hendricks suggests trying to refrain entirely from making any critical statements for one day—this should make you aware of how habitual the behavior is. Then, notice whether your criticisms are things you can do something about, and if so, just do what it takes to resolve it. He predicts, however, that you’ll notice that most of your criticisms are not productive, and when you realize this, you’ll become aware of how unnecessary they are and eventually stop the habit.
How to Know if You’re a Compulsive Criticizer
Some psychologists consider hyper-criticism to be the most damaging behavior in relationships, including those with our romantic partners, our friends, our families, and our colleagues. But critical people don’t often tend to recognize that about themselves. It’s believed to be a mechanism for ego-defense, often stemming from being criticized heavily as a child. As the criticized child matures, they'll tend to project that internal criticism outward in order to remove it from themselves. If you tend to have a lot of conflict in your relationships, you might just be “that person.”
Hendricks advises us to take notice of our critical statements, but there are a few specific signs you can look for that may tell you if you’re too critical:
People tell you you’re too critical, negative, or judgmental. If you’ve heard this from multiple people, you should probably believe it.
You have a hard time letting others do things without interfering and correcting them.
Even when others around you are enjoying something, you’ll always find a complaint. You find it difficult to be fully grateful.
Noticing these behaviors in yourself is the most important step toward changing them. Once you can catch yourself being critical, you can learn to pause and replace the negative with something positive or neutral. It will take practice, but this is a behavior you can learn to change.
Notice how you react when people compliment or praise you. If you tend to deflect or downplay compliments, Hendricks says that’s a sure sign that you have some limiting belief about yourself that could be holding you back. Notice what your reactions are when people compliment you, as that can reveal what the specific limiting belief is.
To address this behavior, simply pause any time someone compliments or praises you, take a moment to feel the positivity they’re giving you, and say “thank you.” You can use this positive energy to combat the negative beliefs about yourself. Hendricks reminds us that internalizing positive beliefs about ourselves is key to allowing ourselves to feel happiness, and thus helps combat the happiness threshold problem.
Let People Appreciate You
Research has shown that around 70% of people feel uncomfortable when they receive compliments. One reason is that we naturally feel discomfort with opposing beliefs, and when we have negative self-beliefs, a compliment will contradict that. Another reason may be that we feel praise sets the bar higher for us in the future. We may downplay accomplishments for fear that others will have higher expectations of us, and we’ll ultimately disappoint them.
It’s important to recognize that a compliment is more about the giver than you. When someone compliments you, they want to recognize how something you did, or do, affects them. It may help ease your discomfort if you think of accepting a compliment as doing the giver the courtesy of allowing them to express their appreciation.
Our psychological state affects our body, and it can cause illness and make us accident prone. Hendricks suggests that if you begin to take notice of when you get ill or injured, you may see a pattern emerge, wherein these misfortunes occur just after very positive or pleasurable experiences
in your life. If this is the case, it may be your mind affecting your body as a means of self-sabotage, or self-punishment. For example, if you get sick on your honeymoon, this may be a psychosomatic effect of nearing your happiness threshold.
Hendricks also points out that illness and injury could be a means of punishing yourself for pursuing pleasures that won’t lead you to your state of fulfillment. These activities, while enjoyable, may actually be compromising your principles, and holding you back from true fulfillment. For example, you may indulge in overconsumption of material items, such as expensive jewelry or a flashy car, as a means to boost your ego. But this won’t result in sustainable happiness, so you may have a pattern of becoming ill or injured after you indulge in a shopping spree. In this way, you’re actually punishing yourself for not pursuing your state of fulfillment.
Another pattern Hendricks advises looking for is whether illness or injury might be a means of trying to prevent or protect yourself from experiencing something you’re resistant to, or afraid of. You may be unconsciously attempting to avoid something that would put you out of your comfort level. For example, if you get sick the day of an interview for a new job that would move you toward greater success, but which also intimidates you, it could be your means of keeping yourself in your comfort zone.
To address this tendency, Hendricks advises that you take notice of patterns, and begin to think of your illnesses and injuries as something you’re doing to yourself rather than something out of your control that’s happening to you. Once you start to think of them this way, you may notice you have fewer of these kinds of incidents.
(Shortform note: It’s not clear whether there is any scientific evidence for a connection between accidents and illness, and self-sabotage. It is known that stress can cause people to be more accident prone, likely because they’re not paying attention, and there are people who engage in self-harm behaviors. Also, there is ample evidence that emotional states affect our physical health. However, none of this research necessarily indicates that people are sabotaging their success and happiness by means of injury or illness.)
Psychological research has shown that “successful” people tend to have low relationship satisfaction. According to Hendricks, that’s because those who have already achieved success in other areas of their life are nearer their happiness threshold, so they can’t allow themselves to also experience happy relationships. Not only do we individually self-limit here, but in intimate relationships, couples will work in tandem with each other to create an intertwined happiness threshold, and to reinforce that.
(Shortform note: Studies have found a correlation between higher social class and certain kinds of relationship problems. The research suggests that the problem is linked to more rigid kinds of thinking, and a tendency for higher-status individuals to lack wise reasoning in interpersonal conflicts.)
We’re not evolutionarily built for deep, loving relationships—we’re evolved to meet basic needs and reproduce, Hendricks says. So close, intimate relationships are evolutionarily something new that we’re grappling with. This means that we naturally feel uncomfortable when we experience intensely positive emotions in relationships. So we will engage in sabotaging behaviors to bring the feelings back down to a level we’re familiar and comfortable with.
Romantic Love and Pair-Bonding
Hendricks doesn’t provide evidence to support the claim that we’re not evolutionarily built for deep, loving relationships. Research in evolutionary psychology undercuts this claim. A number of research studies conclude that romantic love has long been a mechanism to support pair-bonding in humans. Due to similarities in the physiological responses observed in our brains and bodies, researchers believe romantic love co-evolved with mother-infant bonding, and it goes back perhaps even to our pre-modern human ancestors.
It may be more likely that we sabotage relationships to protect ourselves from being hurt. Self-protective mechanisms often result in self-sabotage, particularly when they're based in negative beliefs about ourselves, such as the belief that we’re not worthy of love.
Hendricks explains that some of the common ways we tend to limit success and happiness in relationships are by picking fights, communicating poorly, and engaging in power struggles. While each of these behaviors may be instigated by one partner, they all clearly take two people to create a cycle of conflict. Once both partners are engaged in bickering, vying for control, or dysfunctional communication patterns, the cycle gets very difficult to break. Thus, Hendricks emphasizes the importance of getting your partner on board in the process of addressing these telltale behaviors. In this case, two people are working together to reinforce the happiness threshold, so both partners need to commit to working on the problem, or one will continue sabotaging the relationship.
To prevent and fix these unhealthy relationship dynamics, Hendriks recommends a few strategies:
1. Both partners should regularly take alone time to recharge and reconnect with themselves. When we’re in a relationship, we need to maintain our sense of individuality and independence; when we don’t have this, Hendricks says that we will tend to create conflict to force that distance and avoid intimacy. So if both partners voluntarily take time away for themselves, they’ll be less likely to force that distance in unhealthy ways. Hendricks advises that any time you experience a high level of intimacy or happiness in your relationship, take a bit of time to do something “grounding” (connect with the earth in some way), in order to avoid falling into the pattern of bringing yourself and your relationship back down in an unhealthy
2. Both partners should commit to cultivating better communication skills. This involves practicing speaking openly and honestly about your feelings. Both partners need to allow all feelings to be expressed, without trying to suppress or avoid them in themselves or the other person.
3. Partners should remember to regularly show non-sexual physical affection to one another. This is just as important as sexual affection.
4. Hendricks advises creating a support network with a few friends, who would be willing to work together with you on the happiness threshold problems. You can support one another and hold one another accountable.
Attachment Style Conflicts
Beyond the type of relationship sabotage that Hendricks discusses, attachment styles may also be affecting your relationship.
Research on attachment styles explains some problematic relationship dynamics. For example, people with anxious or avoidant attachment styles may be more likely to sabotage their relationships, because of the fears triggered by intimacy. An avoidant attachment style, in particular, may explain a partner tending to pull away after an emotionally intense period, even if it’s intensely positive. People who did not experience deep love and affection as children can feel uncomfortable with that in romantic relationships, because it’s unfamiliar territory. Therefore, a pattern of conflict happening just when things are at their best is consistent with an unhealthy attachment style.
How to deal with attachment style conflicts in relationships involves understanding both of your attachment styles. If both you and your partner are aware of the tendencies and triggers of the other’s attachment style, you’ll be better equipped to respond well. The advice for partners to withdraw and have alone time after an intensely positive period may be right for those with avoidant attachment styles, but not necessarily for those with an anxious attachment style.
You can take a quiz to discover your attachment style here.
Addressing our happiness threshold problem by identifying our false beliefs and self-limiting behaviors is crucial for working toward living in a state of fulfillment. But Hendricks points out that it’s equally important to have a clear vision of what a state of fulfillment looks like for you. This begins by discovering your “passion.”
Those of us in all levels of success, even the high-achievers, often spend time feeling frustrated and unhappy with some aspects of our lives and blaming outside forces. Hendricks points out that we all have excuses for why we can’t do what we would love to be doing. But our excuses are never really the reason we don’t act; underlying those excuses are self-doubt and fear of failure. We need to shift to thinking about the inner resources we do have to reach our state of fulfillment. (Shortform note: Some common excuses people give for not pursuing their passions include: lack of time, lack of resources, lack of knowledge, being too young or old, and fear of failure. These all reflect limiting beliefs and a deficit mindset.)
Therefore, Hendricks offers some advice to help you get clear on what that state of fulfillment would really look like for you. What’s the driving force behind why you love what you love? To find your driving force, or “passion,” ask yourself these questions:
1. What do I love doing so much that I never tire of it, and that it doesn’t even feel like work to me? Ponder this deeply until you have a clear answer.
2. What aspect of my current work gives me the greatest amount of satisfaction? Here, Hendricks says that everyone has something. It can be a really small, seemingly insignificant part of your work, such as chatting with your coworkers. Once you find this, start putting a high priority on doing some of it every day. Think about how you generally prioritize tasks in your life, and whether you can re-prioritize to put these high-satisfaction activities above other lower-satisfaction activities.
3. What special gift or talent do I have? This one may take some deep examination to get to. It may be an ability within another, within another. Hendricks describes it as like a set of Russian dolls, so he says you need to keep digging until you get to the foundational passion or gift. Use this example to follow this line of questioning:
Continue this line of questioning until you feel an inner spark of excitement, and you’ll know you’ve discovered your gift. For example: I feel like I’m really shining when I’m creating art. Specifically, I’m translating a vision I have in my mind into a visible creation using paint or other materials. What I love about that is being able to use my imagination to create something that adds beauty to the world. That’s my gift! Now I can think about how to apply that to my career and other areas of my life.
Once you have explored this line of questioning, Hendricks says, you should have a clear picture of what living in a state of fulfillment would look like for you. Use this to write a new story for yourself.
Dream Up a New Story for Yourself
If you’re having trouble getting to the heart of your passion with this line of questioning, or just want to go more deeply into this question, consider self-help guru Tony Robbins’s thought exercise called The Rocking Chair Test. He suggests you imagine yourself toward the end of your life sitting on a rocking chair on your porch, reminiscing over your life. Imagine what kinds of regrets you might have. What do you wish you might have accomplished or done more of in your life? Use anything that comes up here to think about what passions you might want to pursue now so that you don’t end up with those regrets.
As far as writing a new story, Hendricks doesn’t explain whether that means actually writing it out or just using your imagination to envision it. But You Are a Badass gives a step-by-step guide to uncovering some of your limiting beliefs and the narratives you use to justify them. Jen Sincero suggests that we cling to our limiting beliefs because we get some benefit from them (for example, it relieves us of a responsibility). So, she advises that you write down each false belief you can identify, and then write what benefit you think you’re getting from holding on to that belief. For example, if you think “I’d love to start my own business, but I don’t have the time or resources to do it,” you may realize that by believing that, you relieve yourself of the hard work and burden of trying and of risking failure. After you’ve done this, you can replace each of those limiting beliefs with a positive version—for example, “Many people start successful businesses, so I can too.”
When you learn how to break free of your limiting beliefs, discover your passion, and make the “big leap” into your state of fulfillment, Hendricks says you’ll need help navigating life in that state, because it’s different from the life you’re accustomed to. It’ll likely take some amount of diligent maintenance to avoid falling back into your old patterns of thought and behavior.
Hendricks emphasizes that the first important step to living your fulfilled life is to explicitly and fully commit to doing it. (Shortform note: Hendricks doesn’t give specific instructions for a commitment strategy, but psychological research shows that having a friend act as an accountability partner may help you achieve goals.) Then, there are some practical changes you can make in your life to help you maintain your state of fulfillment.
Living in a state of fulfillment requires that you prioritize spending time on activities that enhance that state, and avoid activities that don’t. But one of the most common boundary problems people tend to struggle with is saying “no.” When you take stock of what you tend to spend time on, you may notice you invest a lot of energy into doing things you really don’t want to do, because you feel obligated to say “yes” to others. Hendricks suggests you start saying “no” to anything you can that doesn’t align with your state of fulfillment.
Each time you’re asked to do something, don’t respond immediately. Take some time first to think about whether it aligns with life in your state of fulfillment. Of course, doing things in the service of others often feels fulfilling, so in those cases, say “yes.” However, in some cases, you may conclude that saying “yes” to something would be counterproductive to your fulfillment. For instance, if you’re asked to take on an extra project at work, but that would mean sacrificing spending time with your family, you may decide that’s not worth the sacrifice, even if it would mean extra money. In this case, spending time with your loved ones will enhance your state of fulfillment more than money will. So, you must say “no.” Hendricks calls this an “Enlightened No” because you’re explicitly saying no for a higher purpose—the purpose of living in your state of fulfillment.
(Shortform note: The internet abounds with self-care advice extolling the virtue of saying “no.” However, there may also be good reason to critique this practice, as well as other practices encouraged under the guise of self-care. We need to be careful that we’re saying “no” for the right reasons, and not just to avoid responsibility or obligations to others.)
Another common defeating behavior people tend to engage in is not using their time effectively. This creates a constant source of life stress for many of us. Hendricks suggests that this really stems from a faulty way of thinking about time, and he offers a different perspective to shift your thinking in this area. When you transform your thinking about time, you remove the stress created by the idea that there’s “not enough” or “too much” time. This allows you to feel more peace and abundance in your life and to devote more time to those things that enhance your state of fulfillment.
The shift in thinking Hendricks suggests essentially involves changing your concept of time as something outside of you that constrains you, to something that comes from within you and is abundant. He explains the difference in terms of Newton’s and Einstein’s theories, where the Newtonian model is the way we typically think of time, as objective and finite, as opposed to Einstein’s concept of time as relative and subjective.
(Shortform note: Reviewers of the book have raised questions about whether Hendricks’s descriptions here accurately represent the theories of Newton and Einstein. But if we take them as loose interpretations, we can use these concepts as a basis for thinking about how to use time more wisely. Some fairly simple shifts you can make are: Try focusing your attention fully on the present moment, spend less time thinking about doing things and more time doing them, and don’t get distracted by the “small stuff” that wastes time.)
A concept of time based on Einstein's model would mean understanding that time is relative to our experience of it. Depending on what we’re doing, it can feel like it goes faster or slower—we’ve all had this experience. Time seems to drag when you’re waiting for medical test results, but flies by when you’re on vacation. Hendricks argues that this is due to how your attention is focused. When you fully focus your attention in the present moment, you can use the time more deliberately.
You can use this relativity to your advantage by realizing that you control your experience of time; thus, simply understanding time from this new mindset will be a positive step toward eliminating the constant feeling of rushing from our lives.
As a practical step, Hendricks suggests you can begin by changing how you speak about time. Notice where you complain about time, for example how often you say you “don’t have time” to do something. Usually when we say this we really mean we don’t want to do it. It’s more about our priorities. If something is important you’ll “make time” for it. According to Hendricks, this means you can always make time. So, as a first step in changing your perception of time, Hendricks urges you to eliminate any complaining about time, or reference to time constraints, from your language.
Time Is an Illusion
The Secret discusses time as an “illusion” and offers suggestions for how to re-conceptualize time, in much the same way as Hendricks describes. In this case, it’s rooted in the concept of the “law of attraction,” which is the principle that everything you experience is a product of, and determined by, your thoughts; in other words, “what you think about, you bring about.” This is based on the idea that everything in the universe is energy, including your thoughts. So when you have a thought, you’re putting that specific energy out into the universe, and that will attract the same kind of energy. In this way, we all create our reality with the power of our thoughts, and therefore we can change our reality simply by changing our thoughts.
So, according to this principle, if you think you have limited time, you will in fact have limited time. But if you simply switch to thinking you have an abundance of time, you will have an abundance of time.
Another practical tool Hendricks offers for maintaining a state of fulfillment is a mantra meditation. A mantra is a word or phrase used to help train the mind to be in the present and redirect it from negative thought patterns. (Shortform note: The Chopra Institute, founded by world-renowned guru Deepak Chopra, explains that a mantra can be understood as a seed you plant in your mind, to grow an intention into a realization.)
Hendricks has formulated a mantra specifically designed for combatting the false beliefs and limiting behaviors discussed in this book. It serves to open your mind to accepting all of the abundance of life in your state of fulfillment. He calls this the Universal Success Mantra, or USM.
His mantra is: “I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.”
Hendricks gives instructions for repeating the mantra in sequence with your breath in meditation daily. Notice any resistance your mind has to the mantra. It’s natural—just notice it and go back to the mantra. It will take practice to retrain your mind; you’re deprogramming from a lifetime of embedded false beliefs. In addition to setting aside time to focus on your mantra in meditation, occasionally just repeat it as you go about your day any time you think of it. Hendricks also suggests that you may want to write the mantra down on pieces of paper and put them where you’ll see them throughout the day, for example in your house, car, or office, in order to prompt yourself to repeat it regularly.
Mantras and Affirmations Are Tools for Change
Meditating on a mantra is one of the core practices used for cultivating mindfulness in Buddhism, as well as being widely recommended in positive psychology. A mantra can be simply a sound used in meditation, such as “Om,” or it can be a statement, such as a positive affirmation used to focus the mind of a specific thought or idea. Scientific research has confirmed the usefulness of using positive daily affirmations. With regular practice, the use of mantras and affirmations has been shown to decrease stress, help people make changes in diet and exercise, increase self-esteem, and improve academic performance.
Like Hendricks, many self-help authors stress the usefulness of mantras and positive affirmations for realizing desired outcomes. For just a few examples:
Think and Grow Rich offers an affirmation for self-confidence; this involves affirming to yourself that you know you have the ability to achieve your goals, and that achieving those requires self-confidence, and then stating that you have faith in yourself to succeed. The author instructs you to spend 30 minutes per day visualizing yourself as the confident person you want to be, and then 10 minutes focusing on the affirmation.
The Power of Positive Thinking encourages creating a “belief mindset” by repeating “faith statements”; this involves choosing inspiring verses about faith from the Bible, memorizing those, and repeating them daily to increase the strength of your faith.
The Happiness Advantage describes mental strategies for creating positive thinking patterns. In this exercise, you take five minutes every day to write down three things in your life that make you happy, and an extra 20 minutes three times a week writing about a positive experience in your life. Here, the act of writing is the mechanism that creates the positive thought patterns in your mind.
As a final word of advice for ensuring that you remain in your state of fulfillment, Hendricks emphasizes continuous re-commitment. He warns that you must be diligent about watching for old patterns to emerge, or the false beliefs to creep up. Use those as a reminder to commit again to living in your state of fulfillment. Any time you start to feel negativity, dissatisfaction, or unhappiness, make a conscious re-commitment and repeat your mantra.
Hedonic and Eudaimonic Happiness: Which Do We Have a “Threshold” For?
Philosophers have two concepts for happiness—hedonic and eudaimonic—which originate in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Though he doesn’t explicitly name them, Hendricks seems to be alluding to these two types of happiness throughout the book, particularly when he describes why successful people often still feel unfulfilled.
Hedonic happiness is the kind of actively pleasurable feeling we get when we’re experiencing something that brings us joy or satisfaction in the moment. This is the feeling you might have when you’re at a party, or listening to your favorite song, or you buy a new car. By contrast, eudaimonic happiness is a more calm, sustained contentment. This is the kind of feeling derived from having a sense of greater purpose or meaning in your life. In other words, to experience eudaimonic happiness is to feel a sense of fulfillment.
Research has shown cultural differences in how people tend to define happiness. One study compared European Americans to Chinese Americans, and found that the European-American notion of happiness was a more hedonic variety, while Chinese-Americans described a more eudaimonic notion of happiness.
When Hendricks describes “successful” people having the tendency to have lingering dissatisfaction with their lives, this could be the result of the modern Western tendency to pursue hedonic happiness, at the expense of the more sustainable eudaimonic happiness. Could the happiness threshold he describes be a combination of the natural tendency for hedonic adaptation to occur, along with the fleeting nature of hedonic happiness? In other words, when we relentlessly chase this “high” kind of happy, and then achieve it, we are bound to experience disappointment when it doesn’t last.
Psychologists say that eudaimonic happiness is more related to life satisfaction and activities that are meaningful, and that this state is cultivated through mindfulness practices, positive self-acceptance, and discovering one’s purpose. So when Hendricks advises us to explore what activities give us the greatest satisfaction, to shift to a positive mindset, to reallocate our time to more meaningful pursuits, and to sustain that through regular meditation and positive affirmation, he may be advocating moving from the pursuit of hedonic happiness to discovering eudaimonic happiness.
Create positive affirmations out of your false and negative beliefs about yourself.
Which of the false beliefs Hendricks identifies do you recognize in yourself? Can you think of any other false or negative beliefs you might have about yourself that weren’t mentioned here? Write down any false or negative beliefs you can think of.
Now, for each false belief you identified, rewrite that statement in a positive way. For example, “I am flawed so I can’t be successful” might become “I am resilient, and I can be successful.” Reword these in any way you like, appropriate to yourself, as long as you replace any negative words with positive ones.
Reflect here on how this feels for you the first time, and then notice how the feeling shifts over time. Do the statements become easier to believe the more you repeat them?