How Much Amazing Can You Handle?
Earlier this year, I was feeling really good and had found myself more and more where I wanted to be in work and life. I had a few ‘pinch me’ moments where I would pull my attention from what I was doing and have a meta-moment drone-view and let the realization sink in that I was where I had once been longing for. In a quiet way, usually, when I’d be grooming a horse, I’d pause and recognize “this is it; here I am; I’ve arrived.” My desired state had become my present state, without much notice and fanfare from anyone but me.
I’d been learning to trust that my well being was my contribution to life. While the wise part of me knew in my bones and cells the truth of those moments, that wise part of me that was anchoring that feeling wasn’t impervious to attempted trampling and typhoons by some persistent, unruly, old beliefs.
Le sigh.
I call keeping these voices out of your ‘when life feels really good’ life “fighting the good fight.” My well-being was the hard-won prize, and some part of me reared its ugly commentary as if I had just found the prize at the bottom of a crackerjack box versus 38 years of bravely finding my path to being in my element. This over-protective part of me was looking out from some other side of the same coin, with a squinty eye, muttering, “this is all well and good, but are you sure all this good stuff is really OK?” (all with seemingly good intentions from its point of view).
Through that flappable gap entered doubt and distrust for just how great life felt. The knowing that my well-being was my contribution to life was losing solid grounding to contrary notions like: “You’re not doing enough. You should be working harder, panting! You’re not needed at the company. You don’t matter! You can’t do what you love, silly girl! What are you thinking?!” There’s quite the cacophony to keep at bay when these notions show up loudly vying for the driver’s seat of my life.
When life starts feeling good, and we don’t trust it fully, some of us wait for the other shoe to drop. This phenomenon was first introduced to me as The Upper Limit Problem. The upper limit is your internal thermostat to just how much amazing you can handle.
We are often in states of expansion and contraction. We expand when we’re curious, present in our life. We contract when we’re in fear (and any of its expressions, like anxiety). When our experience of joy or goodness or the feeling of fantasticness of life exceeds our upper limit temperature setting for just how much goodness we can handle, we can start to feel less expansive and will contract back to our comfort zone.
This can be as subtle as interjecting a wonderfully fine moment of presence and love with insecurity or old behavior patterns that shut out love. It can be the moment of retreat away from a previous choice towards something you deeply have longed for, due to dismissive self-talk and a litany of reasons why you can’t do it after all. Or, it can be as grand and dramatic as self-sabotaging your life, your job, your career, your marriage, or anything else in your life that was going incredibly, genuinely well.
While the comfort zone may sound comfortable, it is only comfy in the sense that our critter-brain neurology knows what unpleasant things we’ve survived thus far in life (and are thus known to be survive-able) which makes them successful, or safe, even if our ‘comfort zone’ feels not-so-great or even really-really-bad.
When we do new things that support our well being and feel differently than anything to date, this critter neurology can kick in.
The neural reasoning for this has to do with our early conditioning and what programs our system was imprinted with for what’s safe and what’s not safe. My mentor Carl Buchheit says it this way: the things we have survived become the things upon which our survival depends. To break that down even more: if we survived a household of chaos and mayhem, then chaos and mayhem feel ok to our nervous systems, regardless of how awful that may have felt way back then. (To stretch this example further, someone who survived the chaotic early life may find that their current life remains chaotic, regardless of how much they may want to change that. The system defaults back to its safe setting. Or, the CEO who grew up with chaos as their norm may feel unsettled as a company settles into stability (and success).)
In other words, we will recreate the conditions we say we don’t want because in this odd twist of our human neurology those are the conditions we know, are used to, and didn’t die from — all of which is the key for our amygdalas tracking mechanism. The amygdala thinks in black and white and aims solely to keep us alive. When we go through something, anything, and survive, that’s a “yes!” to the amygdala, no matter what tragically horrible or ordinarily horrible chaos and mayhem we went through to get where we are now. The conditions we have survived become the conditions upon which our survival depends. Our brain functions with this evolutionary programming. Like a buggy system, it gets in the way of us making lasting change towards what we say we want and what happens when what we say we want (love, success, other good fulfilling things) shows up in our lives.
This is how folks re-create the atmosphere of their childhood. Some of us can even re-create the situations that have been lived through generationally — what their parents, grandparents, and lineage of ancestors went through. It’s hard enough being a human in the here and now without all of that baggage passed on from those that came before us, right? Yet, it’s an inheritance to spend time with to see where we may be caught in its undertow as we venture out and onward into our own lives.
When life starts to feel awesome, or we get closer to what we want, sometimes odd forms of guilt can creep in, raining on your fantastically amazing parade with lines like “I don’t deserve this. Who do I think I am, going for this? I can’t surpass my [insert: mother, father, grandparent, former boss…]” Which is an odd form of survivor’s guilt keeping us in line with the lowest common denominators in our life and, sometimes, lineage. (We hear them as if they utter: “stay small like the rest of us! Don’t leave and make us feel [insert a variety of guilt-inducing emotions here].”)
Guilt can be a shadowed trap to practicing the art of ‘havingness.’ How can you create your life, by the power invested in you, such that you can break away from tradition, old ways of being, and staying small, to step into a life that is yours to live? How can you receive the gift of life fully, without being snagged by notions that limit your sense of deservingness? How can we internalize that our well being is our great contribution to life? And that our well being is perhaps our greatest responsibility, the best gift we can give? Just by allowing ourselves to flourish, sans guilt or fear of leaving others behind, we are allowing others to do the same. There’s plenty of well-being to go around, with more than enough for each of us.
Back to the thermostat settings for a moment: If we are setting out to venture into new territory for ourselves, or create a more amazing life, we need to know what our current settings are, and know what happens to us when we surpass that limit. You’ll be able to tell when all the good starts to feel not as good, and it’s a good thing to track. Making changes from our norms-of-good to ‘even more amazing’ requires attentively re-setting our thermostats to let more amazing in. When do you know you’re hitting your upper limit? What is your contraction style? Do you stop breathing? Do you panic? Do you self sabotage?
The one place I experience my upper limits when I move towards my dreamiest of dreams. There I will be, in wonderment at how amazing things are in real time, and some voice or gremlin or belief from the past will raise it’s head and pontificate how I should really dial it all back down to normal. It’s safer there after all.
Fierce astrologer and social justice activist Chani Nicholas posted these wise words recently, and I share them here because they are in support of moving beyond our upper limits: “Fear. Worry. Unruly anxiety. Need to be named. Held accountable. Held up to the light for examination. Held in perspective. Whatever they are selling that is flimsily constructed needs to be returned to sender with great swiftness.”
Equally as important as knowing your upper limit is: how can you remain open to something new? How can you catch yourself wanting to revert back to the old watermark of Ok-ness? How do you manage the mild-to-maximum discomfort of exceeding that watermark? When you’re at your edge and about to shut down the expansion efforts and return to the status quo, there are tools to try. Breathing is a good exercise to keep handy at the points when your expansion starts to contract. (Yes, Breathing. it can be that simple. And, it tells your brain that you’re alive — surviving! — while stepping out into new territory.)
While the amygdala bug is tricky, the good news is that it is workable to an extent due to another amazing feature of the brain: the power of your creative imagination. When used for good (not for catastrophizing and worrying) the imagination can provide a ladder of escape from places that hold you stuck. With the right guide and willingness, a clear path to what we desire can be filled with more ease (as opposed to more stuckage, stress, paralysis, etc.).
An interesting question to be in monologue with yourself (and all of the parts of yourself) about is: “how much amazing can I handle?” It’s a good question to play with using your positive imagination. Daydream up the visions of what you’d like, feel yourself in those situations and future moments, and breathe.
Often as humans, we deny ourselves the very fantasticness we long for in this life. It takes conscious work to find more choice points along the way to help our scared and skeptical parts trust that all that goodness is can be enjoyed safely.
