Our Ingenuity is Holding Us Back

First published on November 6, 2017

The human mind is ingenious. Completely ingenious. And as ingeniously creative it is - let us not forget we live in an age of wonders the likes of which almost no one forty years ago, let alone four hundred years ago, could possibly imagine - so is it ingenious at stopping us from doing things.

I delivered a workshop on Resistance a few months ago, and told some stories about just how ingenious it can be. How I once convinced myself that by not making this website that had been in my mind for several years I was protecting the idea from being done by someone else, when in reality the other similar ideas I had played with had been done by someone else first because I hadn't put them out into the world. How my client Molly was Resisting writing an ebook so much that she went so far as to do other things, which she had been avoiding for years. They were done, which was fantastic, but the book remained inside her. How just as my dad was getting really excited about publishing writing, which he has come back to every ten years or so throughout his life, he got really quite ill and stopped. Thankfully, I got the website up, Molly has launched her business (although the ebook is still to come) and my dad is back writing again, publishing his latest book just a few weeks ago.

But there's another element I want to turn my focus to today. It's not just not getting things done that we are ingenious at. We are ingenious at not being happy, sometimes, too.

Gay Hendricks, in his brilliant book, The Big Leap, talks about the Upper Limit Problem. He describes how, because of narratives and stories we tell ourselves, usually starting in childhood, almost all of us have an Upper Limit Problem. This means that as we reach the maximum level of happiness that our narrative says we are allowed to have, we find a way to avoid exceeding that limit. We sabotage ourselves. We get ill. We procrastinate. We engage in unhelpful, or unhealthy behaviour. And we worry, so, so much.

I am currently on the other side of the world from my native UK, and - apart from the desire for a sprawling house in England near my family and friends, and a couple of other little things like really nice pyjamas - living the life I set out in a vision document for what my day would look like in five years if everything turned out remarkably. The universe opened this up for me less than six months after I wrote that vision. And yet, I spent the first few days her fighting with myself, worrying furiously about everything from the internet, to getting a £100 refund on some insurance, to whether I was wasting my time not working enough, to whether I was wasting my time working too much. And, yes, there was jetlag. And, yes, it is hard to move countries. But above all, there was my Upper Limit Problem.

So the question is, where in your life is your Upper Limit Problem showing up? Where are you stopping yourself from finding happiness, not because you can't have it, but because of some out-of-date story, no longer factually accurate or useful, which tells you that for some reason, you shouldn't have more happiness, because you aren't worthy, or you'll outshine others, or some other nonsense.

Because you can have it, if you want it. And you are worthy. I promise.