Have you ever had the experience where something AMAZING happens in your life, or things are just moving along excellent, and then somehow suddenly even though you are flying high……you find these creepy, awful images filling your mind with fear? Like you just got a new job or promotion and then suddenly you start running mind reels about what if some awful accident happened to one of your loved ones?

What’s going on here? You go from soaring on a happy high to devastation running through your brain.  What gives?

The author, Gay Hendricks, lays out why this happens in this book and what you can do about it. He basically defines it as hitting your Upper Limit. Your Upper Limit is what you feel you deserve, what you feel worthy to receive. When you receive more than you feel worthy of your mind senses it is operating out of its normal level of positive vs. negative balance. So your brain goes to work protecting you, creating these horrible thoughts and worries to essentially bring you back down into the realm your brain is used to operating at. Your brain has a zone that it feels comfortable in and that zone is filled with a certain balance of positive and negative based on your past experiences.

So every time something amazing happens your brain tries to temper that with negativity to get back to your normal state. Well, that sucks doesn’t it? We want to move towards a zone of more positive experiences and thoughts, with gratitude for all the good, and attracting more good. Our brains however are often not operating in the direction we’d like.

Our brains function to be as efficient as possible. Our brains memorize patterns and fit everything into the flight or fight decision mode. Your brain is there to protect you, so does some crazy things in the interest of preventing you from going too crazy, and chasing down buffaloes in the dark by yourself. It says “No, this may be too much for you to handle, watch out or you might get hurt. Let me think of a way you could get hurt. Got one! How about a horrible car wreck where so-and-so gets paralyzed or dies… Or what if….”

Thanks, but no thanks.

The author gives several examples in the book from his life and people he has coached to help us first identify when this is happening for us. The first step is recognize what your brain is trying to do. The next step is work to raise your Upper Limit. He identifies four hidden barriers that most humans hold, that limit where we are willing to place our Upper Limit:

  1. Feeling Fundamentally Flawed – fear you are truly not as great as you hope or as great as others.
  2. Disloyalty and Abandonment – fear that your success will go against expectations set for you by others.
  3. Believing that More Success Brings a Bigger Burden – first believing that you are a burden in general on others and so the bigger your life becomes the fear you will become that much harder for others to bear.
  4. The Crime of Outshining – fear of shining your light too bright that it makes others uncomfortable, unsettling the delicate balance in our relationships now established.

Most people can identify with at least two of these. The messages were ingrained into us early in our lives through our family interactions we had as a child and the role we played in our unique family dynamics.

Once you can witness your brain tricking you into playing small then you can start digging into moving your Upper Limit higher. He gives us the list of tricks our brain plays on us and specific tools to think differently when each one presents itself. The list of tricks our brain likes to go to to keep us from venturing too far out of the comfort realm:

  1. Worry – volunteering to put on a straight jacket for no good purpose whatsoever. No amount of trying on bad events wi ll ever ease their effect. We all know this and yet we succumb to our brain churning in the worry pot.
  2. Criticism and Blame – It is so much easier to blame our circumstances, our financial situation, our family, anything but ourselves just not doing our absolute best.
  3. Deflecting – when positive comments or experiences do come your way such as a compliment for example, how many of us deflect it away like we are repelled by the thought we could be GREAT?
  4. Squabbling – fighting the same fight over and over without acceptance of what IS. Some differences don’t need to be fought through, but rather just accepted.
  5. Getting Sick, Getting Hurt – our bodies have the magical ability to get sick right at the very worst time. It is a physical manifestation of our fear and our body’s way to get itself out of what our brain views as harm’s way.

If you recognize any of these self-sabotage tactics coming from your brain I would highly recommend you pick this book up. It’s full of practical examples and steps to take to move your brain and therefore all you want from this life, to a new Upper Limit for you. The book gives practical steps for how to live in what he refers to as your Zone of Genius where you are living your full potential and not letting fear run the show.

If you want a quick five minute summary video from the author here is a link.

I’d love to hear what you thought about it if you pick it up! Read on!