Knowing you're ready for the next big leap
You think you'll never be ready for the next big change in your life. Then once again you're at the precipice and you have to jump. How I'm learning to take that leap and live in my Zone of Genius.
The yellow butterfly skims across my path as I walk toward home in my lakeside residential community. In the past four months living here I’ve never encountered a butterfly on one of my walks. I stop and watch as it flutters several feet above my head, coming to rest against the trunk of a tree—the very tree that I wrapped my arms around and laid my cheek against the previous day, thinking of my tree-hugging mother. The butterfly alights into the sky, continuing its journey. I smile and give a silent “thank you” for that gift. My worried mind eases, my heart rate slows. I walk home, comforted by a presence I feel deeply in my bones. She’s here, with me.
I had always imagined my mother’s death would leave me helpless, overwhelmed, unmoored. She was my touchstone for so long, central to my life. I knew who I was because I turned in her orbit. I will never be ready, I told myself. Her loss will devastate me. And then it happened. The long goodbye of dementia reached its final farewell, and her beautiful life of 87 years came to an end. I was more ready than I ever thought I would be. In my mother’s peaceful acceptance that her moment had arrived to leave this earth, she helped me and my siblings get ready. A mother to the end.
Two weeks after her death, she and that butterfly (I want to believe they are one and the same) remind me that at so many other other major milestones in my life I feared I would never be ready for the next big change—and yet somehow I was.
Taking a leap of faith, again and again
My readiness for the next big leap has been on my mind a great deal these past few years of huge change:
My decision in 2022 to leave my long marriage, which was not easy. How could it be, when there was love and a whole life and two beautiful daughters we brought into the world?
My decision, a month after moving out, to be the sole at-home caregiver for my mother as her dementia advanced and she needed 24/7 care. It was a decision that I barely hesitated over; I loved her deeply, this is what I was in a position to do, my duty, my privilege. It was only later I realized how honoring her and myself meant making a different decision—painful but necessary—for her to live in a memory care facility as she became so much more dependent on me for basic care.
These decisions led to more big changes:
Living alone for the first time in my life. A solitude I’ve grappled with—enjoying it and also getting comfortable with my aloneness when it veers into loneliness.
Handling aspects of life I’d delegated to my ex-husband during our marriage, like financial planning and investments. I knew how to earn money as our family’s main breadwinner; managing it was a new learning curve. I discovered I was equipped to handle most of the practical matters of life and if I wasn’t, there were experts to hire.
Starting a journey of inner growth from which I continue to reap great dividends.
With each change, I have surprised myself with my readiness to take a leap of faith. And I am reminded that I have taken many such leaps in my life. It did not start two years ago.
Marriage: When I met my ex-husband at 28, and we decided to marry, that was stepping off a precipice. Pledging an entire life with someone; it’s amazing that any of us find the courage and the optimism. But we do. And for a long time, we held hands and walked that path together, until the undercurrent of my unhappiness rose to the surface and I realized I was drowning.
Motherhood: When I became pregnant with my first child at 32, I had moments of sheer terror about being ready for motherhood. I would look at my friends with their babies and young children, so confident in their care of these little ones. Where did they learn to do all that?, I’d think, who taught them? As it turned out, my mother had taught me well and I was fine. Maternal instinct took over, and where it didn’t, when I was overwhelmed, there were all those friends to consult. They wouldn’t let me fall. Two years later, I gave birth to our second daughter and I was the one dispensing advice.
Living in my Zone of Genius
Today I stand at another precipice. I want to live in my Zone of Genius. I know what that is. I voiced it in Hawaii in March at the yoga therapy retreat that was as much soul searching as it was downward facing dog and warrior poses. When asked by our teacher Michelle Andrie to identify this joyous place where time stands still, I wrote:
My Zone of Genius is my ability to convey through my words what is in my heart and soul and to connect with other hearts and souls through that gift.
The Zone of Genius is from the book The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks. It was the framework Michelle used for our explorations in Hawaii in how to live a life of abundance, love and success without our usual human tendency to self-sabotage as we move towards that beautiful vision.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the precepts Hendricks shares in the book. I think the universe had a hand—as it so often does—in putting his ideas into my hands at the moment I most needed them (and thank you, Michelle, for being the messenger).
Hendricks has defined four different zones of function in his book:
The Zone of Incompetence: You’re engaged in an activity you inherently don’t understand or have the skills for.
The Zone of Competence: You have efficiency in these skills, but so do many other people.
The Zone of Excellence: This is where many of us spend most of our time (a trap, as Hendricks warns). You’re doing something for which you have considerable skill and are rewarded monetarily and in other ways. It looks deceptively like success.
The Zone of Genius: You tap into your innate abilities. When engaged in this zone, you’re in a flow and find ceaseless inspiration. You bring to the world work that is distinctive and unique because you are using your gifts to their fullest extent. Your talents coincide perfectly with your passion. It is a place of joy and ease.
Who wouldn’t want to spend time in the Zone of Genius? It reminds me of Stephen Cope’s brilliant explanation of dharma in The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, a book I read shortly before the Big Leap of leaving my marriage. I recognized then how much I needed to live in service to my calling. It was slowly killing me not to, and in a crucial, undeniable way, it had killed my marriage. To live, I needed to heed that call. As Cope explains, dharma means “path,” “teaching” or “law” but he suggests we consider it primarily as “vocation” or “sacred duty.” He writes: “It means, most of all—and in all cases—truth.”
So when you’ve at last recognized the truth of how you want to live your life—the irresistible calling, the invitation to live in your Zone of Genius—how do you make it happen? And what gets in the way? Both Hendricks and Cope’s books are instructive in that regard and I recommend both for different approaches to the same essential question: In the words of Mary Oliver: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
From Hendricks, I learn about The Upper Limit Problem that keeps us from living in our Zone of Genius. Each of us, he says, has a “limited tolerance for feeling good”—in other words, how much happiness we allow ourselves. When we hit our upper limits, we manufacture thoughts that make us feel bad, and we do something that stops our positive forward trajectory. When we hit our upper limit, previously held, limiting beliefs conflict with our new aspirations and vision for our life.
I recognize this Upper Limit Problem in my own life. When I have achieved some success with my creative writing here on Substack (such as a growth in subscribers and higher engagement) or in my fiction writing (the confidence that I’m finally ready to put my novel out in the world because of my own sense that it is good work), do I invest more time in my Zone of Genius? More than likely, I’ll accept another corporate writing or editing or journalism assignment on my already full plate that effectively cancels out creative writing time. Why do I do that? Because the corporate writing is my Zone of Excellence. It offers comfort and safety—not just financial but also the familiarity of a career I’ve built for over 40 years.
This is the Big Leap for me. Taking the gamble that I can apply the writing skills that have given me a flourishing corporate and journalism career and translate them to a satisfying and just as lucrative career while creating
in my Zone of Genius. I am not by nature a gambler. But increasingly, and especially in the aftermath of my mother’s death and knowing what she wanted for me, this is the big bet that is beckoning.
So I listen to Hendricks when he advises us to be aware of the four hidden barriers to living in our Zone of Genius—signs that we’re “upper limiting” ourselves.
Feeling fundamentally flawed in some way.
Disloyalty and abandonment.
Believing more success brings a bigger burden.
The crime of outshining.
Not surprisingly, these are based on false beliefs we learned in childhood. I knew immediately which barrier is the biggest for me: the crime of outshining. Somehow I had learned in childhood and in the course of my life that my success—living in that Zone of Genius—would dim the light of others. It wasn’t my place. It was boasting or bragging. And who was I to think my light was so bright anyway?
It’s an insidious belief and one that I know I am not alone in carrying. As author Marianne Williamson says: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”
As Hendricks advises, to keep from upperlimiting myself, I’m on the lookout for these behaviors that are warning signs: blame and criticism, deflecting, squabbling, getting sick or hurt, and the big one for me: worry. He writes: “Your worry-thoughts, particularly if you find yourself recycling the same ones over and over, are a flag waving at you from your Zone of Genius. Something is trying to get your attention.” This is why both
and in on the topic of worry last week was the invitation I needed to invite love in and gently remind me worry has no place in the fully expressed, creative and loving life. As Maya writes:The deeper you live into life, the more there is to lose. But the greater the trust that all loss is livable, a new language the heart can learn. Change is inevitable — you might as well welcome it and stop paddling upstream. Your fear is a reminder of how much you love, how much you want to stick around for. On the other side of fear is love. On the other side of stuck, the waters flow towards love. The graveyards are a million testaments to love.
It was the line about the graveyards that resonated most deeply. My mother is not in a graveyard. Her wish was to be cremated and so now those earthly remains sit in a tidy black box among my books, which I know is bringing her bookworm spirit no end of joy. The testament to love she left behind is all around me. The butterflies are welcome to come and remind me anytime. But I know my truth and the Big Leap awaits.
Question for the comments: Do you know what your Zone of Genius is and are you living in it? If not, what keeps you from doing that?
Three Songs for 3-D
Divorce
“Thousand” by Rosie Carney
Love please surround me/I know I've got more to give/There are reasons to leave,/But a thousand more to live.
Dementia
“Butterfly,” Jon Batiste
Butterfly flying home/Stay awhile here with me/Up underneath the stars/
When you go, you'll be free
Destiny
“TRUSTFALL,” Pink
Are we running out of time?
Are we hiding from the light?
Are we just too scared to fight
For what we want tonight?
Close your eyes and leave it all behind
Go where love is on our side
It's a trustfall, baby
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