If you’ve ever questioned why, just at those moments when you are about to achieve something important, or about to have a great time – or are in the throes of both – something sours it, diminishes it or, worse, stops it entirely, then Hendricks’ book ‘The Big Leap’ may have an explanation. Or, at least, may give an alternative to the more predictable explanations of bad luck or victimhood.

Its basic premise is that we will become good at many things in life and we are more than likely to become excellent at a few things, particularly those things we spend years doing. The most obvious and universal examples being our jobs & careers, family, kids. Hendricks suggests that, whilst these areas of excellence can satisfy our need to live successfully (define that as you need), there is usually an inner yearning to experience something more, greater than all that. Something that produces a heightened sense of abundance, satisfaction and a sense of arriving, at last, at what your life is really about. This is where our genius lies, a set of special skills or unique abilities. To find out where your genius lies involves answering questions such as ‘What do I most love to do?’ and ‘What can I do that doesn’t seem like work, that I can do all day long without ever feeling tired or bored?’

However, whether or not we realise it, we hold ourselves back from staying too long in our genius zone. Or perhaps many of us never allow ourselves to reach it. There’s an undetectable upper limit or barrier to our abilities. That limit is false, being constructed by ourselves and by our past experiences (yes, including childhood, not looking at you mum and dad and school). We know when we’ve encountered that limit when something happens that stops us – we will all have our own ‘something’ – getting poorly just before an event, procrastinating and becoming distracted rather than doing the thing you know you want to do, sabotaging a relationship when it is going well.

This forms the basis of Hendricks’ book, explaining this concept of our upper limit to our own genius, highlighting the many ways we self sabotage and giving practical steps we can take to tackle them. There’s nothing overwhelmingly new in this, particularly if you’ve conducted any previous self-development. Hendricks gives his advice with authenticity and draws from a significant wealth of experience working in the field, which lends a credibility to the work not always present in other self-development guides.

There is an unfortunate and perhaps unrealised fundamental issue buried in the advice, however. Many of the examples and case-studies, including from his own life, are from extremely wealthy people who have built or run significantly profitable companies. Perhaps this is exactly the target audience of the book (and Hendricks talks of his multi-venue corporate speaking and coaching tours) but it introduces a problematic sense that here is a wealthy, comfortable individual preaching advice to others less wealthy or well-off in the world – and taking their money for it. It also poses whether such advice, so rooted in affluence, is thus credible and applicable to most people’s lives.

However, Hendricks illustrates clearly this concept of self-limiting thoughts and behaviours that arise most acutely at the points where we are about to experience our lives at their most satisfying. He does so in apparent earnest, cites from a firm foundation of experience and gives practical steps to address the problem. It redeems the book. There is wisdom here, whether original or reinterpreted is less important than whether it is useful.