Why do we pull back just when we’re getting close? Learn more about the ‘upper limit’ and discover ways to navigate it.

You know how it goes… We do the inner work and update the image we have of ourselves. Then we build the vision. And we train the mind to hold it.

And then something happens.

It’s completely unconscious. And it happens precisely when we’re getting close to something real. We pull back and self-sabotage. We shrink back to what’s familiar just when the evidence was beginning to arrive.

Gay Hendricks calls this the Upper Limit Problem. And his book The Big Leap offers the best explanation of this pattern I have ever read.

But before I get into his framework, I want to share something personal. This episode isn’t just about a concept. It’s something I live with and that I’m still working on. And I wonder if you might recognize it in yourself, too.

My Two Upper Limits

I have two upper limits that persistently show up in my life. And naming them out loud, here, in this post, on the podcast, is part of how I’m hoping to dismantle them.

The first: if I really succeed, part of me is afraid that success at that level is an isolating, lonely place. Who knows where I got that idea? Maybe a movie I saw as a child? I have a vision in my mind that having huge success leads to overall unhappiness. This probably came from something I heard my family talking about a long time ago. It’s so funny how these ideas can stick – over decades!

The second: when I picture myself with the level of success and visibility I truly want, I immediately start to wonder – how will I balance all of this? My family, friends, travel, and personal interests. etc. The things that make me me. I can’t yet picture exactly how all of this fits together. And because I can’t picture it, I don’t fully pull the vision in.

I’m sharing these not because I’ve solved them. But because naming them is the first act of moving through them.

Why You Pull Back: The Internal Thermostat

Each of us has a different internal thermostat for how much good we allow into our lives. The good can take many forms — success, love, joy, and abundance. There is an unconscious limit on all of it.

When we exceed that limit, the subconscious brings us back down. We’re getting close to what we say we want, and then something happens, and we go back down. Maybe we create conflict, worry, or self-sabotage. It doesn’t feel like self-sabotage in the moment. It feels like bad luck, the other person’s fault, or just life getting in the way.

But the pattern is universal. And it shows up most clearly when things are going well. (Surprise, surprise!)

Maybe you can relate: things are going so well in your relationship, and almost subconsciously, you pick a fight. An opportunity you’ve been wanting appears, and you start listing reasons it might not be right. You get to the second date with someone who genuinely excites you, and suddenly you’re spiraling with worry about how it could all go wrong.

UGH!

These are not coincidences. They are your internal thermostat resetting.

“The upper limit problem is our tendency to place a limit on our own good energy owing to some imaginary restriction.”  – Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap

The good news, and this is key, is that understanding the pattern removes the shame from it and creates agency. Once you can name it, you can catch it. And once you can catch it, you can choose differently.

You can’t dismantle what you haven’t named.

What Upper Limiting Actually Looks Like

Upper limit behaviors are sneaky because they rarely feel like self-sabotage. They feel reasonable. Practical. And even responsible.

• Worrying – especially about things outside your control. The relationship is going splendidly, and instead of relaxing into it, you worry yourself down the thermostat.
• Blame and criticism – focusing outward so you don’t have to look inward.
• Getting busy with tasks that don’t move you forward – the craft drawer, the photos from 2015, the Instagram scroll. Anything to avoid doing the thing that would actually get you what you want. (Guilty!)
• Talking yourself out of opportunities – I did this recently. Someone offered me a speaking opportunity, which is the most directly aligned action to get me what I want, and my first instinct was no. Because what if too many women sign up? How will I balance it all? The upper limit in real time.

And the moment to watch most carefully is right after the breakthrough. That’s when the upper limit strikes hardest. You get the date. The job. The opportunity. And suddenly you think – maybe this isn’t right. Maybe I can’t do this. You create drama where there wasn’t any. Because you’re not yet sure you can expand enough to receive what you know you truly want.

Taking a Deeper Dive: The Four Hidden Barriers

According to Gay, beneath every Upper Limit Problem is one of four hidden barriers. False beliefs held so deeply that we never think to question them. Identifying yours is the beginning of everything.

Barrier 1 — I Am Fundamentally Flawed

Ugh, this one hurts. It’s the belief that something is essentially wrong with me. Or that if something good happens, I’ll inevitably mess it up. Because good things don’t happen to people like me. It doesn’t feel like self-loathing – it just feels like realism.

**Sadly, this is something I work on with women often in coaching. When we dig deep enough, we discover this hidden barrier. The GOOD news: this can be rewritten. And it can happen quickly!

Barrier 2 — Disloyalty and Abandonment

The belief that succeeding means leaving people behind. That rising too far breaks loyalty to where you came from. Success feels like a kind of betrayal.

What do you think of this? It can feel hard to break away and live your life to the fullest, especially if your family feels threatened by it. I was able to move past this in my own life, but I still hear the odd comment from family members now and then. I’ve learned to detach from these comments, and it has been a tremendous gift.

Barrier 3 — The Burden Barrier (Mine)

The belief that your success might burden or threaten others. That if you shine too brightly, someone else will feel small. And deeper – if I succeed fully, I’ll become someone others can no longer relate to. I’ll be isolated and alone.

This one, for me, has layers of dysfunction, and thankfully, I’ve made a lot of progress in my thinking here.

It’s dressed as kindness and loyalty. But it’s not. It’s fear. And it is a ceiling.

Barrier 4 — The Capacity Barrier (Also Mine)

The belief that you won’t be able to handle the success if it arrives. Not that you don’t deserve it, but that you won’t be able to sustain it. For me, this looks like not being able to picture how the success and the full life – the wellness, the travel, the relationships – all coexist. Because I can’t picture it fully, I don’t pull it in fully. The incomplete vision creates the upper limit.

Which of these is yours?

Why You Pull Back: The Zone of Genius

The Upper Limit Problem exists because there is something on the other side of it worth protecting against. Hendricks calls it the Zone of Genius. It’s the place where you do what you’re uniquely brilliant at, effortlessly, in full alignment with who you are. Where time disappears. And where you feel most alive.

Most high-achieving women live in the Zone of Excellence, where they are highly skilled, well-rewarded, praised, and validated. It looks like success from the outside. But it isn’t the Zone of Genius. And staying there is its own form of upper limiting.

The fear of the Zone of Genius isn’t that it won’t work. It’s that it will work, and everything will change. And it requires you to be fully seen. Which is exactly what the Burden Barrier is protecting you from. (Yep!)

How to Begin Dismantling the Stories

1. Name It

Which barrier is yours? Say it out loud. Write it down. Naming it removes shame and creates distance from the belief. The barrier is not the truth; it is a story. And stories can change.

2. Catch the Pattern in Real Time

What does your upper limit behavior look like, specifically? Worrying? Picking fights? Getting busy? Doom scrolling? The moment you can see it happening, you have a choice. That choice is everything.

3. Complete the Vision

If your barrier is the Capacity Barrier, the work is building the complete picture. Use the outcome visualization from Episode 3 to see the version of your life where success and a full, wonderful personal life coexist. The upper limit lives in the gap of the incomplete vision. Fill the gap.

4. Question the Isolation Fear Directly

Ask yourself honestly: Is it actually true that success will make me unrelatable? Or is it possible that success will connect me to a new community – people who are building what I am building? The fear assumes you must choose between your current relationships and your future self. That is rarely true.

And one more thing – find your expanders. These are people who already have what you want. Spend time with them. Observe. Let your nervous system see that it’s possible, that it balances, that the full life exists. It’s very hard to visualize something you’ve never witnessed. Expanders make the vision real.

Learn more about expanders here.

**Bonus – Expand Your Capacity for High Vibrational Feelings

Brene Brown says, “Joy is the most vulnerable emotion we can feel.” To experience joy, we have to allow ourselves to be totally in the moment, and that’s brave.

We must open our hearts to the fullness, richness, and beauty of life, even as we know that in a split second everything can change. It’s brave to open up to love, connection, abundance, and joy because we know that this new energy might move us from where we stand to a new place altogether. But it’s worth the risk!

The Ceiling Is Not Permanent

The stories blocking your vision are not random or the result of bad luck. They’re a pattern – a deeply human, completely understandable pattern of pulling back from the very thing we say we want, just when we’re getting close to it.

I shared mine today. The fear of succeeding my way into isolation. The fear of not being able to hold it all together. I’m not sharing these because I’ve solved them. I’m sharing them because naming them is part of how they lose their power.

The upper limit is not the end of the vision. It is the last layer of protection the old self-image puts up before it changes. And when you can see it for what it is – a story, not the truth – something shifts. And then, everything can shift.

So name it. Catch it. And complete the vision.

This post is based on Episode 4 of the Empowered Vision season. Listen to the full episode here.