Let me show you specifically how
the Upper Limit Problem holds us back:
Each
of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love,
success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our
inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage
ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we
feel secure.
Unfortunately, our thermostat setting
usually gets programmed in early childhood, before we can think for
ourselves. Once programmed, our Upper Limit thermostat setting holds us
back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance, and creativity
that’s rightfully ours. It keeps us in our Zone of Competence or at
best our Zone of Excellence. It prevents us from living in the ultimate
destination of the journey—our Zone of Genius. We’ll explore these
zones in more detail later in this chapter. For now, though, what you
need to know is this: if you make a spectacular leap in one area of
your life, such as money, your Upper Limit Problem quickly enshrouds
you in a wet-wool blanket of guilt that keeps you from enjoying your
new abundance. Guilt is a way our minds have of applying a painful grip
on the conduit through which our good feelings flow.
In
childhood, our Upper Limit Problem develops in acts of misguided
altruism. Specifically, it develops with our attempts to take care of
the feelings of others. Children are uncommonly skilled at reading body
language. Perhaps you notice that the smile disappears from your
mother’s face when you outshine one of your siblings. You quickly learn
to pull back a little from shining to take care of your mother’s
feelings. Many years later in adult life, you may find the very same
pattern operating even though there is no mother around whose feelings
you need to protect. In the next chapter, we’ll explore in great detail
the underlying mechanisms of the Upper Limit Problem.
A RADICAL IDEA
Take
a close-up look at how guilt operates in conjunction with the Upper
Limit Problem. It shows up when we’re feeling good (or making extra
money or feeling a deeper loving connection in a relationship). When
we’re feeling good, we may come up against the hidden barrier of an old
belief such as “I must not feel good, because fundamentally flawed
people like me don’t deserve it.” The churning froth of these two
powerful forces clashing with each other is the chief constituent of
the irritating, itchy, slow-drizzle feeling of guilt.
When the
old belief clashes with the positive feelings you’re enjoying, one of
them has to win. If the old belief wins, you turn down the volume on
the positive feeling (or lose some money or start an
intimacy-destroying argument with your partner). If the good feeling
wins, congratulations! Your practice in expanding your capacity for
positive energy is paying off. Your capacity expands in small
increments each time you consciously let yourself enjoy the money you
have, the love you feel, and the creativity you are expressing in the
world. As that capacity for enjoyment expands, so does your financial
abundance, the love you feel, and the creativity you express.
Take
a moment to appreciate how radical this idea is. Most people think they
will finally feel good when they have more money, better relationships,
and more creativity. I understand this point of view, because I felt
that way half my life. What a powerful moment it is, though, when we
finally see that we have it the wrong way around. All of us can find
and nurture the capacity for positive feelings now, rather than waiting
until some longed-for event occurs.
If you focus for a moment,
you can always find some place in you that feels good right now. Your
task is to give the expanding positive feeling your full attention.
When you do, you will find that it expands with your attention. Let
yourself enjoy it as long as you possibly can.
As you get more
practice, you will be able to use this radical act of appreciation in
other areas such as money and love. Instead of waiting to feel good
until you have all the money you want and need, go ahead right now and
appreciate your current money supply. All it takes is a few seconds.
Find a place in yourself where you can feel good about the money you
have. Give your full attention to that place of satisfaction. If you
can’t find any place in you where you feel good about money, create a
positive thought about it in your mind. Float a new thought through
your mind such as “I enjoy the money I have” or “I always have plenty
of money to do everything I want to do.”
Try it out in the area
of love. Instead of focusing on loneliness or stagnation in a
relationship, find a place in yourself where you can feel good about
the love you have in your life. Give your full attention to that place
of joy or satisfaction. Feel it expand as you give awareness to it. As
you get more skilled with this practice, you discover that your
positive feelings, your abundance, your love and creativity all begin
to expand. Then, the outer aspects of your life change to match the
expanding good feeling inside you.
Because few people understand
how the Upper Limit Problem works, many of us believe we are flawed,
not destined for greatness, or simply not good enough to deserve the
dreams we want to achieve. Others miss out on big-time success and
chalk it up to bad luck or bad timing. Millions of people are stuck on
the verge of reaching their goals, can’t seem to scale the wall, and
are struggling under a glass ceiling that is completely within their
control, waiting to be removed. But here’s the good news: You’re not
flawed or unlucky or anything of the sort. You’ve got the Upper Limit
Problem, and it can be transcended in the wink of an eye—if you’re
equipped with the right tools and a willing heart.
Here’s a
deeper look at how the Upper Limit Problem keeps us trapped: When you
push through your Upper Limit thermostat setting by making more money,
experiencing more love, or drawing more positive attention to yourself,
you trip your Upper Limit switch. Deep inside your mind a little voice
says, “You can’t possibly feel this good” (or “make this much money” or
“be this happy in love”). Unconsciously, you then do something to bring
yourself back down to the thermostat setting you’re familiar with. Even
if you do achieve a glorious new height, it is often short-lived.
If
you want some real-world evidence of the Upper Limit Problem in action,
take a look at the studies of lottery winners. One study found that
over 60 percent of them had blown the money within two years and
returned to the same net worth as before their big win. Some were even
worse off financially than before they won the lottery. Add to their
financial woes the large number of divorces, family squabbles, and
conflicts with friends that lottery winners often experience, and you
have a classic example of the Upper Limit Problem at work. A man named
Jack Whitaker, winner of more than three hundred million dollars in the
Powerball lottery, has been extensively studied because of the litany
of disasters that have befallen him after his big win. Here are some
(but by no means all) of his post-win misfortunes: his wife left him;
he was robbed of $545,000 cash when he passed out in a strip club; his
granddaughter died of a drug overdose in his home; he has been arrested
for drunk driving and assaulting a bartender; and he has had more than
four hundred lawsuits brought against him by friends, family members,
and others. Ironically, he was already a millionaire when he won the
three hundred million dollars, so it is quite clear that the massive
infusion of new wealth pushed him past his Upper Limit thermostat
setting.
Each of us has an unconscious tendency to trip our
Upper Limit switch, and each of us can eliminate that tendency. We
deserve to experience wave after wave of greater love, creative energy,
and financial abundance, without the compulsion to sabotage ourselves.
That’s what I want for you, and I hope that’s what you want for
yourself. If you want to eliminate your Upper Limit Problem—if you will
make a commitment to clearing it out of your consciousness—you’re more
than halfway there. ###
From
THE BIG LEAP by Gay Hendricks. Copyright © 2009 by Gay Hendricks.
Reprinted by permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers. For more information please click
HERE.
FEATURE: Gay Hendricks, How the Upper Limit Problem Works 
