“Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time? At first glance, you might ask who wouldn’t say yes to all of these questions. Well, for many of us, the idea of all of this positive emotion seems far-fetched to begin with. It is easy for us to just assume that with the positive comes the negative. To that I say, “Why not get willing, and see what happens?” We humans have a long and wonderful history of transcending our beliefs about what’s possible. In the early days of the steam-powered train, learned scientists urged capping the speed at thirty miles per hour because they believed that the human body exploded at speeds greater than that. Finally some brave people risked going beyond that limiting belief and found that they did not explode. I think we’re approximately at that same stage of development with regard to our ability to feel good and have our lives go well.” ~ Gay Hendricks from The Big Leap
Gay opens the book by asking us four questions starting with: “Am I willing to increase the amount of time every day that I feel good inside?” then “Am I willing to increase the amount of time that my whole life goes well?” then “Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?” and finally: “Are you willing to take the Big Leap to your ultimate level of success in love, money, and creative contribution?”
Isn’t it a little weird that we seem to have a built-in limit to just how much goodness we can experience?!? I love the vision of scientists saying the human body would explode at speeds in excess of 30 miles per hour. Funny. And, I love the connection to our current notions about the upper limits of our abilities to experience joy, success, love and abundance.
--> “Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?”
Think about that. Are you willing to feel good and have your life go well ALL the time? (Or do you think you’d explode before something like that was possible? :)
As Gay says: “In my view, saying yes to that question is one of the most courageous actions a human being can take. In the face of so much evidence that life hurts and is fraught with adversity on all fronts, having a willingness to feel good and have life go well all the time is a genuinely radical act.”
I say we go for it. :)
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PhilosophersNotes on The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks | |||||
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