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So, there's a line from a 2,000 year-old book I read in college and it lives in my head rent-free. It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live in imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. And I think the
Clark Kegley explores breaking out of 'sleepwalking' life narratives using Gay Hendricks' four zones and four reflective questions to find your zone of genius and close one life chapter.
Key Takeaways
- Life chapter transitions are signaled by restlessness; leaning into that feeling rather than numbing it helps reveal what comes next.
- The zone of excellence (career success) can prevent people from pursuing their zone of genius, the work they love and are exceptionally good at.
- Reflective journaling on four guided questions can help close one chapter and open another.
- You find your zone of genius through experimentation, taking steps without needing to see the full path.
What the video covers
- Opens with a quote about living your own destiny imperfectly rather than imitating someone else's life perfectly.
- Argues most people follow a pre-set life narrative (school, work, retirement) without questioning it, often waking up at milestones feeling their life was chosen for them.
- Frames restlessness or discomfort as a signal that one chapter is ending and another is beginning, rather than something to numb with distractions.
- Introduces Gay Hendricks' four zones from The Big Leap: incompetence (dislike and bad at it), competence (good but not loved), excellence (good, paid, but not loved), and genius (loved and exceptionally good).
- Explains that many people get stuck in the zone of excellence, where career momentum and praise keep them from pursuing a calling.
- Uses Bob Ross as an example of someone who left his zone of excellence (Air Force master sergeant) to live in his zone of genius.
- Discusses Carl Jung's shadow and 'golden shadow' concepts: admiring others reflects qualities we carry within ourselves.
- Presents the first reflective question: what are you great at that you need to stop doing?
- Recounts the speaker's own story of being fired from freelance radio, in debt, and deciding to pursue teaching on YouTube.
- Presents further questions about satisfaction and unique capabilities, and stresses that taking steps through experimentation reveals one's genius zone.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
older we get, the harder that hits. So many people are running their lives on momentum, whether it's a job that was supposed to be a two-year thing and it turns into a five, 10 year or a major that you took one class in in college
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and then before you know it, you're too far to pivot or even relationships. I went on a couple dates, we moved in, uh we've been doing this for five years, we might as well get [music] married. It's not even your fault necessarily. I think
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we're all born into this pre-selective narrative. On the left, you have being born and on the right, you have about the average life expectancy around 80 years old. First 20 years of your life, you're young, you know, you go to
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school, maybe you go to college and for the first 20 years, people are asking you, what do you want to be when you grow up? [music] What do you want to do with your life? What's your passion?
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What are your interests? But then, we got this giant chunk in the middle here, which is when we're an adult, we have to get serious. Got bills to pay. Maybe have kids and mouths to feed. And so you
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have to go get a job for 45 years, retire at 65. That question, what do you want to be when you grow up, stops feeling fun and starts feeling like pressure. And then if you're lucky, you get maybe 15 years at the end where you
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can do [music] what you want with your life. The reason I'm showing you this is because most people are sleepwalking [music] through life. They just follow this plan and they don't even question it. And then they wake up at one of these milestones,
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these big birthdays and they look around and feel like, did I even choose this life or was it just chosen for me? But then you see people who have kind of broken out of this and we likely have
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seen them on your social media feed when they come up and you look at their life and you're like, how did they do that?
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How were they able to do something totally outside the box of this? A lot of people feel that discomfort and push it away, and they want to go back to [music] sleepwalking, to this narrative, and just ignore it altogether, and say,
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"Oh, you know, I'll tackle that next year, or maybe when my kids are out of the house, or when I've graduated." Or people numb themselves to it with distractions intoxicants doom scrolling, escaping to fantasy. But in my experience, whenever I tap into
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that feeling, instead of numbing it, it's usually a sign that one chapter is coming to an end, and another one's about to begin. And if you open it instead of ignoring it, I think that's how you get clear on what your next
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chapter is supposed to be. So, for the remainder of this video, I want to do two things with you. I want to give you four questions that have really served me over the years as sort of this workshop, and I think if you do these
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four questions in a journal, you know, and you you don't just make this a video that you file away for later and kind of go back into this, but if you stop and really go deep on these, it does have
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the power to close out one chapter for you and open another. So, this is something I am borrowing from Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap, which goes over uh these four zones that we can fall in
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when it comes to how we're using this 90,000 hours of our life. This axis we have what you love versus what you do not love. This axis we have what you are really good at versus what we're not so great at.
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Doing something you're really bad at and you don't like is called the zone of incompetence. You want to avoid these as much as possible. My wife would say anything that requires remembering a date is my zone of incompetence. I've
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told you this four times. What are you talking about you don't remember? Zone two usually falls in between a mix of things we're not so great at, but love, and really good at, but maybe is not our favorite thing and that is your
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zone of competence. These are like things you can do but others can also do better. Maybe this is like design. It's something you can do, you know how or you can figure it out but other people are better but you don't mind doing it.
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You're probably smart enough to recognize what you're not so good at and maybe what you're great at but don't really like as much. Where we get stuck is the next two zones. Especially this zone and this is the zone of excellence.
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So usually this is what you get paid and praised for. You went to school, you learned a skill, you're good at it, you have experience with it. You can make money there. This is usually where careers happen and this
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is also what makes it so hard to do something else because we're good at it.
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We have experience and we're making money there. But ultimately what we want to be in and like the ideal thing that will make these 90,000 hours feel like not just we're working a job or a career but really a calling. The highest level
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that not all of us are fortunate to find and do but hopefully these questions will help you get into it is zone number four.
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[snorts] That is your zone of genius. Quick story time on this that illustrates it better than graphs could is on Bob Ross. Now when you think of him, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Probably painting a tree on
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public television, a giant fro, a really calm soft-spoken dude. Maybe there's a happy tree, evergreen tree. He lives right there. Start with just touching the canvas.
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And he's a legend because he has that vibe that is just so likeable and a lot of people found it calming. That was him in his zone of genius but it was not his zone of excellence. For 20 years he was
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a master sergeant in the Air Force and he would yell at people but he said he hated it and when he left he's like I'm never going to raise my voice again. And he became the calmest dude on TV. You
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see people who are in their zones of genius, and it's inspiring. Carl Jung, the legendary psychologist, he talked he spoke about the shadow.
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Um this aspect that when we see others, like the negative traits of them, it triggers us because we have that within us, too. Well, there's also the flip side of that called a golden shadow.
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That when you see people who are crushing it, you know, musicians, rock stars CEOs entrepreneurs anyone you're inspired by, you're inspired by them, and you find them charismatic because you have some of those aspects within you, too. You see the good in
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yourself and other people, and that's why it's inspiring. You have some kernel of that. That's like your genius calling you up. And oftentimes, we're not failing at life or our life isn't in shambles. It can look pretty good, but
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something feels off, like we're done with the chapter, and that's usually when we're in our zone of excellence, but feeling called towards a zone of genius. Now, for this next part of the video, I want to give you four questions
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that work as a mini coaching workshop. And I've done some version of these multiple times whenever I feel like that pressure of one chapter's closing and another is about to start.
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Question number one, what are you great at that you need to stop doing? So, back in the day when I felt this chapter closing, it was in freelance radio. Um I had gotten this job around college working for a blog that needed a
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podcast. And so, I was interviewing New York Times best-selling authors, famous people in the health and wellness space.
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And it was paying well at the time. And then one day I go to a coffee shop, open my laptop, and there's an email sitting in the inbox saying, "We're cutting the show." I got fired. I lost my only
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income source. And my head was spiraling because in that same month, I had just broken up with a girlfriend and I was 30 grand in debt and had to move back in to my mom's basement. And so I had a choice
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right there. I'm like, "Okay, I could go back and try and find another podcasting gig." And I even applied to like five different radio shows and thought I was just going to go back into my zone of excellence right there.
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Or I could use all those skills and do something for myself and I felt called to teach on YouTube. And that was what put me on this path that you're seeing right now. And had I not done that, had
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I gone back to sleep, I wouldn't be here. And I'll give you some of the best advice I've ever heard about productivity here. Manage your energy, not your time.
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Everyone approaches productivity like we're robots without emotional ebbs and flows. But what really happens is you work a job for 40 hours a week and then you're so tired, you gave all your energy to the zone of excellence, you
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got nothing left to move into this zone of genius right here. Maybe this is something as simple as cleaning your house so you can spend more time writing or in your zone of genius. You know, if you can hire someone for 20 bucks an
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hour or 30 bucks an hour and buy a couple hours of your time so that you can spend time here, that [snorts] trade-off for people might be worth it.
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Essentially, what are you great at that you need to stop doing is saying, "What am I excelling at here that's preventing me from being up here?" Question number two might sound a little funny, but it's one of my favorites. And that is, "What
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leaves me most satisfied when my head hits the pillow at night?" What work do you love doing so much that you would do it for free? What work gives you more energy after you do it? And by energy, I
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don't mean you're ready to go to the gym and like max PR a deadlift. I mean that there's this deep satisfaction at night that you've done all that you can do. I way back in the day would spend a lot of time playing video games
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and it was so fun. I was so engrossed in it. It put me in this flow state. I could pretty much do it all day. But when I would put my head on the pillow at night, I felt totally tired and like
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this dread of what am I doing with my life? Versus days that I feel physically tired, but I created content all day or I shot a video or I worked on a program or I did something that was in my zone of genius,
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my head hits the pillow at night and it's the satisfaction feeling. Yeah, I guess I would describe it as this ease that you feel that you did everything you could and even if you're not there yet towards your biggest dream or goal,
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you at least are on that path working towards it. Musicians who are in their zone of genius, you know, they're in the studio writing a hit song or not even a hit song, but just producing something and they come out of there
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feeling like time just faded away and they love that so much they would do it all day. This is why you hear stories about entrepreneurs who are working at a company 16 hours a day and sleep under my desk. The average person is like,
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"Wow, they're so disciplined." But to them it doesn't feel like discipline because that's what they want to be doing. Those are two different feelings at the end of the day and I think that's one of the truest ways you can find that
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uh sign of like pursue that. Go down that more. Then you're ready for question number three. What comes easily to me that I've forgotten was special?
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Oftentimes we undersell ourselves and what we're good at and we think that everyone else is as good as we are and it's not unique or special. That couldn't be further from the truth because we all have unique capabilities
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and your strengths are different than my strengths are different than somebody else's strengths. I'll give you an example. I knew a woman who was insanely good at holding space for people without having to fix their problems and she was
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just really good at having like deep conversations with people. Um she could take on a lot of emotional energy if someone was opening up to her about uh traumatic [music] things in their life or heavy topics that other people would
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be like, "Oh, that's that's a you know, feels heavy." She loved it. She was really good at it. She was very generous with her emotional energy. She left her job and became a therapist and absolutely loves it. That's an example
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of something that came easily to her, but for other people might be too much and too heavy. Maybe you're someone who's really analytical and you don't see numbers as ones and zeros, but they tell a story behind it. You're looking
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at a company's spreadsheets and you're like, "Okay, this is you know, this matters for decisions. Like, do more of this, do less of this." And that is just obvious to you, but to everyone else they just see numbers. An artist who's
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super talented and can sketch a whole design on a napkin that becomes the whole marketing campaign in like 5 minutes. I find oftentimes artists undersell themselves the most because for them it's just natural and it comes easy to them, but to other people they
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look at that who maybe aren't as creative and they're like, "Wow, you're the way your brain works is amazing." This is a really good one to ask other people that know you super well. Now, question number four is how you put this
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all together and that is, "What would the next 2-year experiment be, not the next 20-year plan?" What puts us back to sleep is thinking that we need this massive 10, 20-year plan and we need to see the full picture. An analogy I
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absolutely love is if you're driving at night, it's dark out and you can't see the whole road. You don't say, "Oh, I need to wait till daytime so I can see it." because you have headlights in front of you that shine the next 20 ft
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and then the next 20 ft reveal themselves and that's how it works. You end up at your destination at night. I think life works that way and that when you take the first step, even if you can't see the second, third, fourth,
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they start to reveal themselves just as you get a little momentum and you start going in that direction. And this is going to require you to like suppress the subconsciously ingrained blurts that come up whenever a possibility is
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presented. We all have this, I have this, every single person I've worked with or known in life, like we have some version of this that wants to keep us here in this homeostatic set point in our life. And what I mean by that is
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when you question this, "Okay, if I wasn't doing this job, what would I do?" Immediately watch how fast, "Oh, but it's not going to pay as well. Oh, but you already have 10, 15 years experience. Oh, but you can't do that,
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your family won't approve." Because in my life, when I stopped holding myself back from trying things, that was when I was able to get into the next chapter and grow into it and it was way better than the previous one. So, the reason I
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like this question and it's helped me a lot, sometimes we have trouble seeing, "Okay, what is my zone of genius?" And the only way you really find that is trying things. And that's really what life is, it's a series of just
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experiments that you run and you cross it out and you say, "Okay, that one didn't work, that one didn't work. Oh, I like that one." And then you keep going with it. If you feel caught in the sleepwalking state, what's something
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that you could just take a detour on for a couple years? And maybe that's not the place you end up at, but maybe it gets you closer to doing something that you are more aligned on. All right, let's
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land this plane cuz we have a lot of things going on and I want to make sure we tie a bow on it and get you out of here. Living a life true to yourself instead of the ones others expect is the
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call that we feel when we're ready to close out a chapter. And most people go back to sleep, they numb themselves, they escape, and they don't want to answer that and they sleepwalk through life, but really waking up and answering
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that requires you asking four things. And these four questions help you go from the zone of excellence where most people are in a career and merging into this leap of zone of genius where really you start to feel like that is your life
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that you are meant to do. Journaling on those and then most importantly taking steps to pursue your own curiosity, that's how you find your next chapter.
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Hey, if you dig this video, big thumbs up on the like button helps us out.
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Subscribe if you're not and I'll link up right here a perfect follow up on this conversation. I think that one helps as well.
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Um thank you for being here. See you in the next one. Stop settling start living. Peace.
Topics:life transitionszone of geniusGay HendricksThe Big Leappersonal developmentcareer changeBob RossCarl Jungself-reflectionpurpose
