6 Ways You Might Be Upper Limiting & How to Overcome it
Are you struggling to achieve the success you know you are capable of? Is the amount in your bank account failing to reflect what you know you’re worth deep down? You may have an upper limiting problem… I did too!
In Gay Hendricks’ personal development novel, The Big Leap, he outlines how we can overcome this all too pervasive phenomenon.
What is upper limiting? It’s when you’re feeling good, but then you do something to mess it up. Subconsciously you’re afraid to allow yourself to enjoy positive feelings for any extended amount of time.
Our upper limit, or happiness ceiling, is programmed during childhood. It determines how much love, success and abundance we allow ourselves to enjoy.
“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 under their control, waiting to be removed.” -Gay Hendricks
What does upper limiting look like?
You get promoted at work, but when you get home you have a big fight with your partner.
You make a commitment to eating right and exercising. Everything is going great, but then you get sick, or injured and it derails all your progress.
You are having a truly amazing day, but then your mind wanders to negative thoughts and suddenly it’s like you have a raincloud above your head and poof! Your good mood is gone.
You know your purpose and what you are here to do, but you can’t seem to attract the clients, work space or money you know in your heart you are capable of.
These are some examples of the ways we sabotage ourselves because we are holding onto harmful subconscious beliefs that we don’t deserve to be happy.
Dismantling the Four Barriers
According to Hendricks, the following are the four central barriers that hold us back from living the lives we’ve always wanted. Most people have 1, but some have 2 or even 3. These limiting beliefs are developed early on in life and prevent us from reaching our full potential. The good news? It’s never to late to overcome them.
- Feeling fundamentally flawed
- This is the belief that there is something inherently wrong with you, that you are profoundly flawed in some way. Consequently, you may also be convinced that you are not deserving of love, success or abundance.
- This leads to cognitive dissonance. When you do get close to achieving happiness you do something to mess it up. Because if you are fundamentally flawed it follows that you are not capable of being loved, or succeeding or experiencing abundance.
- Reframe this limiting belief that you are flawed. Choose to view it as a bug, or error in your coding. Any time this bug rears its ugly head, swat it away. See it for what it is- don’t let it stand in the way of your next uplevel.
- Feeling fundamentally flawed often goes hand in hand with the fear that if you commit to taking the big leap and realizing your full potential that you will fail. That if you share your gifts with the world people won’t think you’re enough. Therefore it is easier to play it safe to avoid the hurt of rejection. But in doing so you never give yourself the chance to succeed greatly and take up space. “When we give ourselves permission to fail we also give ourselves permission to excel.” -Eloise Ristad
- I have personally found that the fear of failure is my biggest obstacle. My advice? Make a list of the things you’re scared of and commit to doing them. Especially if your intuition has tried to bring them to your attention time and time again. They might look like: apply for that dream job, volunteer at the animal shelter, visit Europe (even though you’re afraid of flying), take that certification course, reach out to that life coach, etc. Chances are, your next up level resides on the other side of that step you are afraid of taking, or that thing you’re resisting.
2. Disloyalty and Abandonment
- This barrier is borne from the belief that being successful would mean leaving people behind or being disloyal to your family.
- “Did I break the family’s spoken or unspoken rules to get where I am?
- “Even though I am successful, did I fail to meet the expectations my parents had of me?” (48)
- As a result of this limiting belief, any accomplishment you achieve is eroded by the strain of guilt that you feel. To avoid feeling this uncomfortable emotion you subconsciously do things that sabotage your success.
3. Believing that more success brings a bigger burden
- If this limiting belief could talk, it would sound like, “I can’t expand to my highest potential because I’d be an even bigger burden than I am now.” (51)
- Such a barrier may develop because your parents or siblings made you feel like your existence was a burden. Therefore anything you create is a burden by association.
- Consequently, when you birth success, you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. You subconsciously believe that success does not come without a burden or a price.
- Release the belief that you are a burden and “remove the guilt of the crimes our parents and siblings convicted us of before we walked into kindergarten.” (55)
4. The crime of outshining
- The crime of outshining is the belief that you can’t achieve your full potential because then you would outshine your parent or sibling and make them look or feel bad.
- As a child when you succeeded there was an underlying message: don’t accomplish too much or do too well because it will make others feel bad.
- example: you are on track to be the first in your family to graduate college, but you sabotage yourself and flunk out because succeeding would make your mom feel like a failure.
- Intelligent, gifted children are especially prone to the crime of outshining and therefore they subconsciously dial back their talents to avoid threatening other family members. As a result they receive the secondary gain of sympathy rather than being met with jealousy.
Reaching Your Castle in the Sky
Hendricks’ encourages using this mantra each day, “I expand in abundance, success and love every day and I inspire those around me to do the same. It also helps to picture yourself turning up a dial that increases your capacity for happiness, love, success and abundance. I especially like to practice this when I catch myself indulging in upper limiting behaviors.
Your capacity to enjoy life expands when you focus your awareness on your existing blessings. Gratitude is a signal to the Universe that you are acknowledging the good that has already been bestowed upon you and that you are ready for more. That’s why gratitude is key in the law of attraction and manifesting your hopes and dreams.
In addition to the four barriers, worry is a prime example of upper limiting. Every time we worry we are investing in feeling bad. Unless the worry concerns something we can control and actively do something about right now it is a vehicle for self sabotage. Most of our worries are unnecessary, will not come to fruition and only take away from our happiness in the present moment. Gossip, criticism and negative thinking are other forms of upper limiting. What you focus on expands. When worry bubbles up, simply make the conscious decision to release it. However, if the same worry-thought persists, it could be a sign that something important is vying for your awareness. This might even lead to a new direction on your journey.
Finally, pain and illness can also be indicators of upper limiting. Pain and/or illness are sometimes caused by ignoring a message that is coming through and sometimes we aren’t ready to hear it. It is your body’s passive-aggressive method of standing in the way of things you don’t feel like doing or protecting you from emotional pain. Pain symptoms can point to integrity breaches such as- lying, broken promises and omissions of truth.
When this happens slow down and ask yourself:
What is preventing me from experiencing wholeness?
Where in my life have I failed to honor promises?
What important emotions am I not allowing myself to feel?
Recognizing the signs of upper limiting is half the battle. Now you can take action to dismantle the barriers that are standing in the way of your radiant self-actualization. Observe these behaviors within yourself and choose to release them. You will grow closer and closer to achieving the wild success, love and abundance that you know you deserve.
Source:
Hendricks, Gay. The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the next Level. HarperCollins, 2010.
