I have been leading a book study group on the Big Leap and just completed today! What a powerful 20 weeks it has been, sharing deeply with 8 other courageous souls, taking their life on.

The book is based on us living in our zone of genius, and powerfully removing any upper limit barriers that come into play, sabotaging our relationships, health and finances. Gay clearly states how we will only allow ourselves to feel so much joy, peace or good feelings for so long before we take ourselves out and go back to our comfort zone.

He clearly speaks into the space of how we all have a unique ability and can live in our zone of genius, instead of our zone of competence or zone of excellence. This is where the magic ensues!

The four barriers that get in the way of us living in our zone of genius:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. The fourth barrier is the false belief that we must dim the bright lights of our brilliance so that we wont 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.

He states that if we understand why we have limited ourselves liberates a new energy in us, which we can draw on to propel us to new heights of abundance, love and creativity. Who else wants more of that?!!

I cannot recommend this book enough! Step into your life fully, and live the life YOU choose. Blessed be

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As my dear friend and mentor Greg Reid says, “turn your obstacles into opportunities.”

Well, most of us don’t do that. Most of us don’t have the persistence to make it. Greg talks about those mindsets in his book, “Three Feet from Gold.” Malcolm Gladwell talked about the paths to success in his bestseller “Outliers” and how hard work lay behind seemingly overnight success.

What is it that makes people give up? For some of us, it’s self-sabotage (many people are happier when they’re living the status quo, and dreaming of possibilities). For others, it’s an inability to follow through (the end is so near but you run out of breath).

More important, however, is to consider what lies behind success. For that, let’s go back and look at Napoleon Hill. He’s relevant, because Greg, who carries on the teachings of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, lives by Hill’s “think and grow rich” principles.

Napoleon Hill was a journalist (back in the days when that meant working for an actual newspaper) who was in the middle of a continuing assignment about writing profiles of famous men of his day (Hill lived a long life – from 1883 to 1970) when in 1908 he met the one who would have the greatest impact on his subsequent life. That man was the philanthropist, steel titan and businessman Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie’s experience (he was then in his early 70s, and would live another 11 years) taught him that success came down to a simple formula. Cunningly, Carnegie didn’t reveal the formula, but suggested that Hill find out for himself, by interviewing or exploring the careers of some 500 successful men and women around the world. There was no pay for this enterprise – only out-of-pocket expenses.

Like any good budding entrepreneur, Hill took the bait. He interviewed some of the most prominent people in the world, whose fame has been enduring. They included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt. Even Joseph Stalin.

Hill, cunning like his mentor, put these tantalizing interviews and his thoughts on them and success together in his mega-selling Think and Grow Rich, which sold tens of millions of copies since its publication in 1937, some quarter-century after Carnegie’s death. It took Hill a long time to synthesize what he’d found out, and to put all of his thoughts into book form. But again, like his mentor, while he stood his ground and forged ahead, he didn’t actually reveal the formula. He left that up to people to discover for themselves, based on the stories that he told.

I’m cunning enough, myself. But not quite as withholding as Carnegie or even his remarkable disciple Hill. Learn to identify the path to success, and how not only to identify the areas within yourself for growth, but how not to waver, no matter the obstacles.

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