The last time we spoke to New York Times best-selling author Gay Hendricks, he discussed overcoming upper limit problems and functioning more in The Genius Zone, also the title of his latest book. At a time when it’s easy to think negatively, Hendricks joins The Atlanta Small Business Show to dive further into what the ‘genius zone’ is, how to find it, and how to stay there.
Hendricks is also the author of The Big Leap, President of The Hendricks Institute, and has appeared on over 500 media segments, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and CNBC, to name a few.
Transcription:
Jim Fitzpatrick:
So Gay Hendricks, thanks so much for joining us once again on the show. We very much appreciate it.
Gay Hendricks:
Well, thanks a lot, Jim. I really enjoyed our conversation last time and I’m really glad to be back. Well, the Genius Zone now has been out for a year or so. And I can say also that I’ve worked now, I’m continuing to work with people all the time. I mentor several people a year, and then I work with smaller groups on The Big Leap and The Genius Zone. Sure. And I’ve learned a lot since even last time I was on your show. So I’m very eager to share a couple of the new points with you.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Well, let’s jump right in. I don’t want to keep our audience waiting. What are some of those new points?
Gay Hendricks:
Well, in The Big Leap, which came out some years ago, but it’s the prequel to the new book, The Genius Zone. The Big Leap makes two big ideas. One is how to get established in your genius zone. And by that, it’s when you’re doing what you love to do, what you’re best at, and what makes the biggest contribution both to yourself and to people around you. That’s the sweet spot of your genius zone.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
So The Big Leap was kind of like, how to take a big leap and get yourself established there.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
And the main thing is to start focusing on doing more of what you really love to do in your work. Just start bumping that up. Now, the new book takes it one step further. If you watch a bird getting off the ground, it takes some effort in the first little bit just like it takes a lot of fuel to get a jet craft-
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
… off the launchpad. Well, in a way, that’s how it works. It takes some effort to get into your genius zone.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.
Gay Hendricks:
And I’m not going to make any bones about it. Some people will come in and tell you it’s an overnight thing or it’s a snap of the fingers.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
But just like, if you’re doing any other thing of value, if you’re selling something of value, for example, what you have to have is a deep commitment to it that people can feel. And so to get into your genius zone makes… You’ve got to work at it a little bit by deepening your commitment to it. You’ve got to wake up every day and say, “Okay, today, all over again. I commit myself to bringing forth more of my genius every day of my life.”
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
So that’s how I get up every morning. And that’s how I recommend, if you really want to do something, it’s not like going to the gym once a year and working out until you’re sore. It’s by doing 10 chin ups a day.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
And learning how to integrate it into your life.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
I’m using that metaphor because I just came back from the gym. So I was just doing chin-ups, which I never used to be able to do by the way. And now at age 77, I can finally do chin ups.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Wow.
Gay Hendricks:
So it’s never too late.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That is fantastic.
Gay Hendricks:
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I’ve been doing resistance training for about 12 years now and I could not believe how different it makes me feel as far as that kind of jazzed up feeling. Anyway, back to The Genius Zone. So it takes a little bit of effort to get off the launchpad.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah.
Gay Hendricks:
But like here in my area, we have hawks that circle around up in the sky.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
It’s a feature of this mountain valley I live in. And if you watch a hawk, it uses no effort whatsoever to kind of make its little tiny adjustments and move around in the wind currents. I can see them up there just circling for an hour sometimes without burning up any energy. And that’s the way the new book shows you how to stay in your genius zone.
Gay Hendricks:
It tells you a little adjustment you can make, but it’s a little tiny adjustment that changes everything. And the adjustment is this, when you come up against some problem you can’t figure out the solution to, or you find yourself running a tape in your head of some conflict you have, here’s the tool that will change your life.
Gay Hendricks:
When you come up to those stressful situations, ask yourself, “What am I trying to control here that I have no actual power to control?” Because every time you get yourself stuck, it’s because you’re trying to control something that’s really not within your power to control. And you know what us human beings do when we come up against something that doesn’t work? We do more and more of what already isn’t working, and we burn up our wheels that way.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right, that’s right. That’s exactly right.
Gay Hendricks:
So here’s a much more leisurely, easy way to be gentle to yourself and make those little improvements that keep you in your genius zone. Just watch for that one little thing. What am I trying to effort to control here that I couldn’t possibly in a million years control? For example, a recent client came to me and this is a high, high level person. A venture capital guy who probably massages a billion dollars a year going back and forth.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure, sure.
Gay Hendricks:
So this is the person that’s operating at the high end of the game. And he had gotten stuck running a loop in his mind of this other person that he worked with that basically was based on, he didn’t think the other guy liked him. And so he kept running this tape. So I had a 10-second solution for him. I said, “Together, we are going to pick up the phone and call the guy.” And he said, “Oh, no, no, no, no.” And I said, “Come on, man. You want to play in the big leagues or not?”
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
And so we got him on the phone and straightened the whole thing out in about three minutes, but he’d been running that loop for three weeks and it’s something-
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Unbelievable.
Gay Hendricks:
A three minute problem. So it’s a lot about Jim getting off of the idea that we can control everything.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
The moment you let go of that, it becomes a moment, for example, of freedom that a person feels. Like in a 12 step meeting, if they say, “Oh, I don’t have any control over my addiction.”
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
Just acknowledging that I’ve seen people like my main golf buddy, he’s got almost 20 years of sobriety now. And that changed his life.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.
Gay Hendricks:
That one little concept
Jim Fitzpatrick:
It’s a breakthrough.
Gay Hendricks:
It’s a breakthrough.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
And I want people to have that breakthrough every day of their lives.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
That’s how you get to be 77 years old and still so happy [inaudible 00:07:41].
Jim Fitzpatrick:
And doing chin ups every morning, right?
Gay Hendricks:
That’s right. Every day.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right. That’s where so many people fall short, right? I shouldn’t say fall short, but give up. When you’ve got those tough days and you’re like, “Well, I hear what Gay’s saying, but he’s a successful book author and got his own business and he doesn’t know how hard it is out there for us every day, ordinary people to try to live in that genius zone, right?
Jim Fitzpatrick:
And try to get up every day with a positive attitude with this ocean of negativity that’s overcoming my life every single day,” right? It’s so important that these people stay in the game, not just one day or two days or one week or two weeks, but as kind of a new part of their everyday lives, right?
Gay Hendricks:
Exactly, Jim, because one of the things that people do gets them stuck is they try to take on too much at a time.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
Instead of trying to change one tiny little habit, one tiny little bit each day, they’ll say, “Okay, well, I got to lose 100 pounds.” And then when they gain a pound, they freak out and they junk the whole thing and gain 10 more pounds.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.
Gay Hendricks:
I can say that with expertise because 50 years ago I was a 300 pounder who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and was in a terrible marriage.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Oh, my gosh. Wow.
Gay Hendricks:
And now, I’m 180 pound guy that’s been in a 40 year old great marriage. And I completely changed all my habits, 10 seconds at a time.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s great, that’s great. And that’s what it takes, right? It’s all about moving the football just a little bit further down the field, to your point, not going for that Hail Mary every single morning, right?
Gay Hendricks:
Exactly. Instead of quitting your job and running off to meditate in a cave first, just go in a room by yourself and meditate for 10 minutes.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Exactly. Right.
Gay Hendricks:
Let’s start like that.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s exactly right.
Gay Hendricks:
And there’s a lot of people out there that have come through these last couple of years first, especially with COVID and now we’re looking at an economy that is just crazy out there with regard to gas prices and interest rates and a war broke out. And there’s a lot of people that are scratching their head, trying to figure all of this out, going through this, whether you’re in sales or you’re a small business owner, an entrepreneur or whatever the case might be, that you feel that some of these things may immobilize you, right? And you need a breakthrough like this, a new way of thinking.
Gay Hendricks:
Well, here’s the thing, Jim, if you’ve been living in a way that you haven’t been able to find any creative solutions to create change in your life, you gradually slip into a kind of a low level mood of despair.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
And from that place of despair, that gains a lot of life in itself because a lot of times then we’ll call somebody else who’s also in a state of despair and commiserate with them.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
And that’s why all I say, every single one of us needs three to five people who, when you walk in the room, their faces light up.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
There you go. That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
You don’t need 20 best friends. You just need a few key people that’ll also call you on your BS if you’re trying to run BS on them.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right, that’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
We all need those kind of people too.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Boy, there’s no question about that. There’s no question about it. So what are some of the other takeaways? And I know we’re very limited on time here, but what are some of the other takeaways that we can drill down on from the book? Because I know that our viewers are going to send me emails, “How come you didn’t ask for more from Gay? We love when he is on.” So what are some of the other teachings?
Gay Hendricks:
One more thing that I really want to leave everybody with is that you can actually feel it in your body when you’re operating in your genius zone. And I’ll tell you exactly what the symptoms are in your body. You actually feel a pleasant flow. It’s kind of a flow of ease and it’s got a sense of confidence to it, but it’s something you can actually feel in your body.
Gay Hendricks:
And here’s a big surprise. You can feel it right now, wherever you are, because it’s back in there behind a lot of those other feelings that accumulate in living a stressful life like despair or anger or sorrow or fear. All those kinds of feelings kind of are out there because we deal with them every day. But I promise you, in the background is this very serene, easeful flow of creativity, and it gets activated by your awareness and your commitment.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Right.
Gay Hendricks:
So make a commitment today to expanding your genius zone more and more every day of your life. Don’t worry about the how, just make the commitment and let the answers roll in.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right, that’s right. And when you are creative like that, we’re all walking around with the answers anyway, aren’t we? It’s just allowing your mind to be more creative. It’s like when you take a long walk, things are… You’ve got one of those hard days going on and you say, “To heck with it. I’m going to take a nice long, a couple of mile walk here,” and all of a sudden, some positivity sets in you feel better about yourself, and you start to come up with the answers, right? And the solutions to your problems that day, right?
Gay Hendricks:
Yeah. Remember, Sr. Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree when the apple fell on him and suddenly he realized how gravity works. Okay, he wasn’t sling in the lab. And same thing with Watson and Crick-
Jim Fitzpatrick:
That’s right.
Gay Hendricks:
… when they discovered the structure of the DNA.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Sure.
Gay Hendricks:
They were out walking on the beats. They did that every day to kind of refresh their minds. And that’s when they had the aha.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, yeah. No question about it. Well, Gay Hendricks, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We very much appreciate it. For those of you that are out there, you’re going to want to get this book for sure. We’re going to put a link right underneath this video. And do yourself a favor, do your family a favor, do your business a favor and get ahold of this book and do just what Gay is telling you to do in this book.
Jim Fitzpatrick:
I promise you will not be sorry. I did it, I’m not sorry. I’m living a better life as a result of it. So Gay Hendrick’s, New York Times’ best selling author, president of The Hendrick’s Institute, and all around, great individual, great human being. So thank you so much for joining us on the show once again.
Gay Hendricks:
Thanks, Jim. I appreciate you.
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