What is you upper limit problem?
Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. You just made a huge sell for business or you just scored the game winning point or (add in your last big success) and you are so excited that you are having an internal celebration. Then, minutes or even seconds later your mind shifts to some kind of worry like “I don’t know if I can do this again” or something totally unconnected like, “I haven’t heard from my daughter in awhile, I hope she is ok”. Before you know it, you mentally spiral out of control until you take some kind of action trying verify everything is ok, or worse yet find some way to numb the feeling.
This is called an upper limit problem. Gay Hendricks has a book called “The Big Leap” which is one of the best books on the subject. If you deal with this and really want to fix it, read the book. FYI, don’t fool yourself, we all deal with it. This was such a big revelation for me to understand this. I have done this my whole life. No one told me that I could learn to feel good all of the time. That it was a decision. A decision that would alter the course of my life.
Now to be fair, I am still work in progress, but I am way closer than I have ever been. Plus, I now can recognize it when I am hitting an upper limit, which is the first step. The key is to learn to grab the good and exciting moments and hang on to them a little bit longer every time. The next step is to begin doing that with everyday moments and then every moment, moments. Gay talks about the difference between fear and exhilaration is simply breathing. By recognizing the fear moments and beginning to slow and deepen your breathing you can turn that fear into exhilaration. You will certainly notice that you start feeling better.
Take a look at your life and think about any move you didn’t make that you wish you had and I bet it was attached to some sort of fear. No more though. There are no more excuses for breaking upper limits when we are aware of them and know how to break thru them. Have fun with this new knowledge. Enjoy the process of mastering it.
