The Upper Limit Problem is the unconscious habit of sabotaging your own joy, success, love or money the moment it rises above the level you're used to. It's the reason that, just as everything starts going well, something comes along and ruins it. The term was coined by the psychologist Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap. I often just call it being addicted to suffering.
This is one of the most important things I teach, so let me take you right through it: what it is, why we do it, and exactly how to break free of it.
Let me start with a question.
Are you willing to feel good and have your life go well all the time?
Are you willing to feel good and have your life go well all the time?
It might initially seem like a pretty obvious yes. Of course. Why wouldn't I be willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?
But here's what I've discovered, in my own life and in the lives of thousands of students. There is a little monster inside all of us, in our delightful human condition, that actually sabotages that. It has a big, flat no to that question. It does not want you to feel good and have your life go well all the time.
As Marianne Williamson says, it is our light that most frightens us, not our darkness. Strange as it may seem, we have a fear of letting in too much light. We have these built-in limits. And until you see them, they quietly run your life.
The Upper Limit Problem works like a thermostat
Here's the simplest way I can explain it.
The Upper Limit Problem is like a thermostat. We get programmed to be happy with things at a certain level, and any time we go beyond where our thermostat is set, it feels like too much, so we create some sort of sabotage in our life to bring us back down to our comfort zone.
It can also be likened to trying to use a small bottle to fill the ocean. There's a whole ocean of love, joy, beauty, wealth and freedom available to you, but if you're still walking around with that small bottle, you can only let in so much before it overflows and you tip the rest away. We need to expand ourselves to be a bigger container, to raise the thermostat, so we can actually let in the amount of goodness available to us.
Or think of it as a software bug on your computer. When things are going nicely in your life, the bug kicks in and says: okay, that's enough happiness, thanks very much, let's bring it back down to the misery again.
That's the Upper Limit Problem. And it explains something that confuses a lot of people:
"I had never heard about it before, but it was very noticeable in my whole mature life. It all makes sense now why nothing seemed to work to evolve to higher levels in life. I can now see where I self-sabotage my life." Deborah, Awakened Academy student
You can do every course, read every book, try as hard as you possibly can, and still feel stuck. It was never about your effort. It was the setting on the thermostat.
What happens when you don't deal with it
Understanding this self-sabotage mechanism is absolutely critical, because when you understand it, you can stop negativity and negative situations before they come and sabotage your life. Often the reason we get sick, or get into an argument, or have drama, is because we've hit the glass ceiling of our Upper Limit Problem, and it kicks in to bring a negative situation in and pull us back down to a level we're comfortable with.
If you don't know this is happening, here's what tends to go on. As you become more successful, happier, wealthier, freer (as everything starts going well), things come along and ruin it. The black clouds appear and spoil the party.
You'll feel slightly stressed much of the time. Even when you know what to do to feel good, you won't do it. You'll get into arguments with people for no reason. You won't be able to make enough money, and if you do make lots of money, you'll end up wasting it, or something will happen that consumes it all. When you get success, you'll find a way to screw it up and remove it. Opportunities that could change your life, you'll miss or sabotage. And even if you get everything you want physically, your mind will still harass you, attack you, and find something to bring down your joy.
In other words: we can do all these courses and learn all these things and try really hard, and still stay stuck. Not because the teachings don't work, but because the Upper Limit Problem keeps dragging us back down.
"A big part of my aha moment was learning about the Upper Limit Problem and then seeing it happen in my life. I had trained so hard for a trail run: eating clean, working out three times a week. Then my race, my training group and my challenge all ended within a week of each other, and this past week I was sabotaging myself." Amy, Awakened Academy student
"I have received chunks of money and lost them. I'm eager to address this so I can maintain abundance without losing it again." Courtney, Awakened Academy student
Where does the Upper Limit Problem come from?
The phrase comes from Gay Hendricks, but it's the same thing teachers have pointed to for centuries. Some call it Maya. Some call it fear of success, or self-sabotage, or glass ceilings, or false beliefs. I quite like "the Upper Limit Problem". It's a nice way of thinking about it.
What we teach about it is a bit different from what you may have heard elsewhere, because you are an old soul, and you are complex. People who come to our courses have usually tried all the mainstream things, and they didn't work, because they weren't deep enough. Those quick fixes work nicely for new souls who just need a little patch and they're good to go. But when you've got a lot going on inside you, you need deeper, more complete tools to get to the other side.
Most people don't even realise the Upper Limit Problem exists, because it's counterintuitive. It doesn't make sense. So when things go wrong, we say, well, that probably wasn't meant to happen, or we blame the government, or another person, and we file it away as just the way things are. But the truth is, very often we are creating the drama ourselves, because we are not letting ourselves feel happy and have a good life.
It's a mechanism designed by the ego, based on false beliefs. And a lot of it comes from the culture we live in, which quietly tells us it's unsafe to be successful. There's a wonderful passage in Seth Godin's book The Icarus Deception about this. We all remember that Icarus was warned not to fly too close to the sun. But Godin points out that we've forgotten the other half of the myth: Icarus was also told not to fly too low, because the sea would ruin his wings:
"It's far more dangerous to fly too low than too high, because it feels safe to fly low. We settle for low expectations and small dreams and guarantee ourselves less than we're capable of. By flying too low, we shortchange not only ourselves, but also those who depend on us or might benefit from our work." Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception
Gay Hendricks tells the story of how he first noticed it. He'd be feeling elated at work (maybe he'd just signed a big deal, everything was going beautifully), and then, sitting at his desk, he'd suddenly fall into an irrational spin, worrying about his daughter. The things he was worrying about weren't even true. He stopped and questioned it: I'm feeling so joyful. Why am I suddenly in this worry state? That's how he discovered the limit we all place on our own happiness.
My own life is full of this
I want to be honest with you, because this is not theory for me.
When I lived in England, a life in Hawaii was just a dream. As I understood the Upper Limit Problem and overcame it, I actually moved there: beautiful blue skies, the beach, the sunrise. A massive, massive upgrade. And when I first arrived, it was so good that I had to sabotage it. I ended up in a relationship that basically sabotaged my joy, and I stopped my spiritual practice for about six or seven months, because that practice was bringing me too much joy.
It was the same with money. It didn't matter how hard I worked, I'd end up with the same amount. I'd try something different (same result, again and again) until I realised it had nothing to do with marketing or business. It was purely an Upper Limit Problem. I wasn't allowing myself to have more abundance. And I wasn't allowing myself to have more love, either, which is why meeting Arielle, and having such a pure, easy, beautiful relationship instead of constant drama, was such a huge blessing.
It even happened with pure bliss. I remember walking across a field at a meditation retreat in the most incredible altered state of joy (completely blissed out, oh my God, this is so incredible), and then something came in. Some weird addiction, or negative thinking, or randomly overeating, something that just had to bring it down, because it was way over the top. I've watched that same pattern play out over and over: it goes up, it hits the switch, and something comes in to smash it back down.
And Arielle will tell you the same:
"When I first met Michael, I actually got really sick. I had this fever and flu for a week straight. I couldn't even get out of bed. My environment was beautiful, everything was wonderful… and then meeting Michael, it was just too good. So I got sick." Arielle
For years, every time her spiritual states got really high (or every time our work together took a step forward and we started reaching more people), the very next day she'd be knocked flat with a brutal migraine. She even spent much of her life sabotaging her own health and vitality: she'd reach a place of feeling strong, healthy and confident, and then, almost on cue, undo it. One part of life rises; the thermostat brings it back down.
That's the thing to understand: this operates on every level: health, wealth, happiness, relationships, your environment, your service. And often, when one level goes up, another goes down to compensate. You make great money, then you get sick. You feel wonderfully healthy, then you lose money. Everything's fine except the relationships. There are many, many versions of it.
Why would we sabotage ourselves? The hidden barriers
It sounds insane. Why would anyone ruin their own joy when there's no need? Because underneath it sit a set of hidden barriers, and every one of them feels, to some buried part of us, like safety. We get all sorts of secondary payoffs from playing small.
Here's a small example from The Big Leap. When trains were invented, a renowned scientist genuinely claimed that if a train travelled faster than 30 miles an hour, the human body would explode (probably because a galloping horse was about as fast as anyone had ever gone). Then some brave souls cranked it up to 40, 50 miles an hour, and they did not explode. These ridiculous beliefs exist to "protect" us. The Upper Limit Problem is full of them. These are the big ones:
Hidden barrier #1: "I'm fundamentally flawed." A deep belief that you're not good enough, not deserving, so success can't be for you. I'll tell you straight: this is one I've personally had to deal with, and still do on some level. I think I got it from my mother, who has a chronic version of it. Even though I'm doing all these things I love, even though I get tons of testimonials and people tell me they love the work, a part of me still wonders, is this any good? Does anyone actually like this stuff? Arielle looks at me completely puzzled. What do you mean, good enough? It's irrational. It comes from the past. But it's real, and a lot of us carry it.
Hidden barrier #2: disloyalty and abandonment. To be successful, sometimes you have to break the family rules. And some old part of us is terrified that if we do, we'll be cast out: lose our status, be put into exile, even feel that God won't love us. This goes deep. In some African tribes, when a person is sent into exile, they don't just struggle; they actually die. Not from starvation; from the sheer shock to their sense of who they are. We don't think we'll die if we step outside our social circle, but the fear of not belonging is powerful enough to stop us doing the things we need to do.
Hidden barrier #3: "more success means more burden." Gay Hendricks was born into a family where he wasn't wanted, always treated as a burden. He tells the story of dropping a copy of his new bestselling book to his mother and brother (his great achievement), and they set it aside on the table and carried on talking without acknowledging it. Some people carry that feeling that they're a burden in the world, so they keep themselves small so as not to cause problems for anyone else.
Hidden barrier #4: fear of outshining someone. Often a sibling, a parent, a friend. We don't want to make others feel inadequate, so we dim ourselves on purpose. And the truth is, when you're happy and successful, some people will be jealous, but those people would be jealous if you got a new pair of shoes. So you might as well go for it.
Hidden barrier #5: "success means selling my soul." Somewhere we absorbed the story that wealthy, successful people lose their values, their privacy, their peace and their real relationships. Look at a magazine like the National Enquirer. It's a double-edged sword. On one page it sells you the dream: be successful, be rich, be beautiful. On the next it rips successful people to shreds. So we end up with a confused message: you should be rich and successful, but rich and successful people are all evil. No wonder a part of us refuses to go there. We have to know, deep down, that we can be successful and peaceful, spiritual and prosperous. It's not one or the other.
There are probably a hundred versions of these. They're all the same shape: I can't shine because… something. You can look at them all (it's worth it), but at the end of the day, you mainly need to acknowledge it's going on, and then be willing to transcend it.
"I really liked the framing: that we sabotage ourselves because we're addicted to suffering. I made the claim that I no longer want to live in lower states of energy. I am willing to live a happy life and feel good all the time." Lleslle, Awakened Academy student
"The Upper Limit Problem and Addiction to Suffering was a huge aha for me. Raised Christian, I was taught life was a cycle of bad times and good times: that the good times are fleeting because the point of life is to test our faith. That never sat right with me. Learning this was a great big breath of fresh air." Angelica, Awakened Academy student
