Crack your glass ceiling on goodness
How to rewire the subconscious belief that thriving is a zero sum game
About a year ago, everyone was raving about this book in an online community of women I’m a part of. It didn’t catch my interest at first.
One day, on an impulse, I downloaded the book and started listening while on a spring walk - I ended up binge listening to it in a day or two.
Titled, “The Big Leap,” it’s written by psychologist and leading coach, Gay Hendricks. The message is at once very simple and a complete paradigm shift, like any activating idea must be. It pointed out something I have been doing forever, subconsciously, and brought it to the light - so I could see it, rewire it, and transmute it.
This limiting belief still comes up daily for me, especially lately, and if you’re reading this I’m sure it has crossed your mind before too.
Upper Limit of Good
We believe that that goodness is a zero sum game - as in, there is a limit to how much positive experiences (love, money, relationships, success, you name it) we can receive. We believe that if we have more of it, others have less of it, and if we’re thriving then a negative experience must be right around the corner.
Hendricks calls this the “upper limit problem.” It’s the notion that we have a quota for goodness, a subconscious program that keeps us from experiencing our full potential.
Some colloquial phrases that encapsulate this are the idea of “another shoe will drop,” “God doesn’t give with two hands,” or the idea we all have to “face the music.”
To be fair, this notion is grounded in reality.
This earthly reality involves hardship and adversity, and we are wired to survive it, which includes an inherent negativity bias. We naturally see what goes wrong and predict it happening as a way to better prepare ourselves for the future - it’s a useful adaptive trait.
Yet in our modern day, we’ve become completely wound up in it, what started as a necessary survival mechanism leading to a cascade of anxiety and mental health issues.
If logic got us here in the first place, it can also move us forward to where we want to be and go. The mind is the most powerful tool we have to change our reality, a technology that’s often vilified in the wellness and spiritual realms as something we should detach from. If we work with the mind as our ally, from the heart and soul rather than the ego, we can transform our experience here, one thought at a time.
Rethinking What’s True
Take a step back and think about the last, maybe 5-10 things you’ve been worried about happening. Or, consider the one lurking notion that you can’t have everything you desire, that if you have too much goodness, something awful will happen.
I want you to ask yourself: is this true?
In your own life, have those horrible things you’re anticipating happened?
If they have, has it been very often?
How much good has happened too?
Think about the successful people you know and admire - have their lives been plagued with horrible events? Has negativity followed every success? Does it seem like there’s a level of thriving that their experience is capped at?
No.
My ULP Pattern
As I wrote this, our nanny texted me. All she said was “are you around?” Immediately, a thought flashed through my mind of something being wrong with the baby, and how ironic it would be that this was what I was writing when it happened. What was the issue? She was asking if I had packed a change for the baby because his other outfit had a poop stain on it. Not the life-threatening emergency that had flashed across my mind for a moment.
What did I do when that thought came through? I soothed it. I said, “Kelly is that really even likely?” I knew it wasn’t, so I let the worry go.
I am in regular conversation with my upper limit problem, and understanding it exists is what has made it possible for me to do the work on letting it go, and building a different narrative of not only my potential, but of the inherent nature of life as love.
As someone who’s had a lot of good in my life, I’ve always had this feeling that at some point it would run out or that I was greedy to ask for too much. I am naturally well resourced in almost every sense of it, but the downside is that my subconscious narrative that I don’t deserve more is quite powerful.
How to Shift It
For me, the most potent ways I am alchemizing this belief come down to three elements:
Surrounding myself with mentors and community that believe that our potential for success and goodness in every form is limitless.
Daily practice in loving my self through consciously weaving an inner narrative of love. Countering any negative self-talk with soothing kindness and positivity.
Cultivating a belief system that not only am I love, but that God, the Divine, the Universe, and Life itself (to me it’s all the same thing) IS love.
If I were to believe that Life is painful, that we are here to suffer, that this is all some strange happy accident of evolution, from speck of dust to amoeba to human, then an upper limit problem makes perfect sense. Even if I thought, well I don’t really know what this is all about, that energetic of disinterest isn’t very life-giving, is it?
What gives me more love? What gives me more life? What supports me in thriving?
When I believe that Life itself is benevolent, that humans were created for a positive experience here on earth, that I was born to flourish, it becomes so much easier for me to dispel the notion that I have an upper limit problem. In this paradigm of love, it my nature to experience goodness, I was born to expand my potential, I am a Divine soul on a mission to embody and amplify love in the world.
I love this affirmation that Hendricks shares, and come back to it again and again:
“I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.”
When we change our entire worldview to align with the frequency of love, the ceilings we have held for ourselves don’t shatter, they evaporate.
P.S. - If you’re just finding me & Ancient Future Heart, welcome! This is a space, a movement, to amplify and embody love in the world through shifting our mindset within to create an entirely new paradigm without. When you subscribe you’ll get love letters and mindset medicine a few times a week to support you on your journey. You can get more details here. I’d love for you to join us!
PPS - the beautiful piece at the top of this essay called by Spirit in sky by
Susan Anne Russell at Saatchi art (found via Pinterest).