picture: Alexis (CCO Public Domain)
People chase the perfect relationship, a lot of money and ultimate freedom. What most people do not know is that once they reach all of what they wanted, the upper limit will most likely kick in which then makes them sabotage themselves and their environment to get back to a less happy state.
What the upper limit is and how it’s dangerous, will be discussed in this article.
Imagine yourself having the perfect relationship and all the money in the world. Feel it right now. Set aside the “Oh that’s cool. I can never reach that but that’s cool” and really start to imagine yourself having it with the knowledge that it’s possible. Spend some time imagining having all the money you will ever need and having the perfect partner. Spend some time here.
Now feel if you have any resistance. Feel if any tension in your body arises. Observe if a thought like “I don’t deserve that’” or “That’s fine but this will never happen to me, I am not special enough, good enough or worthy enough” comes to your mind. If so, you’ve reached your upper limit in that imagination.
The Upper Limit- Your Internal Thermostat
The Upper Limit is a phenomenon that everyone has inside of them but not everyone really experiences. It’s an invisible line of how much happiness and success you are worthy of. It’s like a thermostat where the hot temperatures represent your overall happiness and the low temperatures represent your overall misery and unhappiness. Everyone has a temperature that makes them feel miserable once that is reached on both ends. Let’s use real temperatures, for example. You might start to suffer when the temperature goes above 32°C or below -15 °C. You get annoyed, uncomfortable and stressed. On top of that, you maybe have your perfect feel-good temperature of 21°C where you can perfectly function as a human.
Now the thing is that you have that very same mechanism for your happiness. You have a maximum happiness that you can handle (like 32°C) without going crazy and without sabotaging yourself. And you have a low level of happiness that you can handle (like -15°C). The minute you hit any of these marks, your mental and emotional system is alarmed, because you are entering the unknown territory and you either consciously or unconsciously do something to get away from these temperatures.
Most people catch themselves consciously in the lows of life where they start to think “What the hell is going on? Why am I so miserable? That’s not how it should be, let’s get out of here.” This realization often pushes them to radically change something about their life. And while people are able to consciously catch themselves in the low levels, they often can’t consciously catch themselves hitting their upper barrier of happiness, which then causes them to subconsciously stop and go back to a more normal, common temperature of happiness.
Can You be too Happy?
The thermostat for the high ends of happiness got set when we were young. Growing up we learned how much happiness we deserve. We learned that by seeing how happy our environment was and we learned that by the way, our environment treated us in high levels of happiness. Everything that we observed and that happened to us shaped how much happiness we can tolerate today on the upper end. So we developed a very clear definition of how much happiness we deserve.
Now imagine that this will become a huge problem in your journey towards happiness and fulfillment. Because you basically go out and chase something that you think deep down you don’t deserve. This basically means that you will never allow yourself to be perfectly happy. You will always find something that is wrong or not working to make you right of the fact that you don’t deserve this amount of happiness.
To help you better understand that, I can give you a personal example:
Someone in my very close environment once said to me a couple of years ago when I had a series of crazy manifestations and synchronicities happen in my life: “I am glad you have so much luck in your life and that people are so good to you. And I hope this will last for you a little longer because one day this luck ends. One day someone will treat you very badly and that’s when you will not be that happy, positive and optimistic anymore. So enjoy that now”. This basically set the bar of how much luck I am worthy of.
This was a huge problem a couple of days ago. Because I found myself being so extremely happy, and having fulfilled so many of my dreams at a very young age and somehow I felt a block of going further. I tried to manifest the next level and I somehow had so much resistance to that next level that I could not make the manifestations happen. This got me to research and introspect because I tried to figure out what was happening and why I feel all of that resistance.
And then it came to me. I basically thought that I don’t deserve more luck in my life because of that statement a couple of years ago. On top of that came the thought that I don’t deserve to have such an easy life when everyone else in my environment is struggling and suffering. And that was when I hit my upper limit.
There is No Limit to Happiness
There is no limit to your happiness. There is never an end to how happy you can be. Feeling good every second and feeling better every day is your purpose. You can choose your state of being. So the only thing in your way is your upper limit that tells you what you deserve and what you are worthy of. Becoming conscious of the upper limit is the first step, but there is some more work to do to help you handle your upper limit. Below you will find 5 tips.
How to handle the Upper Limit
Tipp #1: Find your Upper Limit Trauma
Try to go back in your memory and find something that defined your upper limit. Maybe it was something somebody said to you or something you observed. You can easily do that by focusing on the feeling of limitation or restriction that comes when you visualize yourself having everything you want and then try to recall a memory.
Tip #2: Increase your Capacity to Feel Positive Emotions
One hugely important aspect of handling the upper limit is to start embracing your positive emotions more. Whenever you feel a positive emotions, focus on it and really be with it as long as you want. Celebrate your positive emotions. Celebrate your life, your successes, and your achievements. Don’t shy away when someone is giving you a compliment, celebrate it. Also, notice your positive emotions increasing when you feel and celebrate them. Try to be less afraid of feeling good and challenge yourself to feel as good as you possibly can every second.
Tip #3: Feel the drop
Sometimes, when you feel very good, there is a drop. Notice when you suddenly have a thought that is causing you to worry or to complain when you are in a very high state of positive emotions. Become aware of that and ask yourself if that thought is there to sabotage you because you hit your upper limit of happiness? If so, acknowledge the thought and chose to shift your focus back to the present moment of positive emotions. Choose to not let yourself get affected and pulled down by little, irrelevant thoughts.
Tip #4: Notice your mind manipulating
Notice that your mind is manipulating situations by finding a tiny fault in a perfect situation. Notice that this is not your mind being mean or bad to you, but rather your mind reminding you that you are about to reach your upper limit. In these situations gently choose to keep enjoying the moment.
Tip #5: Commit
Commit to happiness and commit to always feel good no matter what. Commit to fully accelerating your joy. To fully climb the mountain of happiness and to never reach a top. Make a commitment to focus your days on feeling as good and as positive as you can.
