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To make the kind of leaps Michael Dell makes, we must practice a specific skill. That skill is to identify and transcend our Upper Limit, wherever and whenever we encounter it.
The pattern was simple: enjoy a period of feeling really good; then do something to mess it up. I also realized that the same pattern had a grip on the world at large.
I have a limited tolerance for feeling good. When I hit my Upper Limit, I manufacture thoughts that make me feel bad. The problem is bigger than just my internal feelings, though: I seem to have a limited tolerance for my life going well in general. When I hit my Upper Limit, I do something that stops my positive forward trajectory. I get into a conflict with my ex-wife, get into a money bind, or do something else that brings me back down within the bounds of my limited tolerance.
There wasn’t a class in elementary school or college called “How to Tolerate Longer Periods of Success and Good Feeling.” I think it’s remarkable that we can go all the way from kindergarten to a Ph.D. or MD without anybody mentioning something so fundamental, but that’s the world we live in at present. We’re going to change that world, though, and we’re going to reap phenomenal benefits from doing it.
Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.
In childhood, our Upper Limit Problem develops in acts of misguided altruism. Specifically, it develops with our attempts to take care of the feelings of others.
Your capacity expands in small increments each time you consciously let yourself enjoy the money you have, the love you feel, and the creativity you are expressing in the world. As that capacity for enjoyment expands, so does your financial abundance, the love you feel, and the creativity you express.
If you focus for a moment, you can always find some place in you that feels good right now. Your task is to give the expanding positive feeling your full attention. When you do, you will find that it expands with your attention. Let yourself enjoy it as long as you possibly can.
At that point, most of us don’t say, “Oh, I’m about six months into this wonderful relationship. It’s about time for my big issues to come up and cause me to sabotage the relationship.” Instead, most of us go to the opposite extreme: we herald this time of deepening by seeing a fault or flaw in the other person, then studying it so microscopically that it expands into a vast new field of scientific inquiry.
The false foundation under the Upper Limit Problem is a set of four hidden barriers based on fear and false belief. Every person I’ve worked with has uncovered at least one of the barriers, and sometimes two or three. I’ve never met anybody who had all four. The Four Hidden Barriers all have something in common: although they seem true and real, they are based on beliefs about ourselves that are neither true nor real. The fact that we unconsciously take them as true and real is the barrier holding us back. We take them as true and real until we shine awareness on them.
The form it takes depends on which fears and false beliefs you picked up in your early life.
The beliefs based on those fears are false and cause you to have a misunderstanding about who you actually are.
When you remove those false beliefs, you feel a new freedom to invent a life based on your natural genius.
Hidden Barrier no. 1: Feeling Fundamentally Flawed
The best way is to shine the light of awareness on the thought that you are fundamentally flawed and label it as what it is: an Upper Limit bug.
I use bug in two senses here. It’s like a computer bug, because it’s a false line in your code that causes a breakdown in your operating efficiency. It’s like a bug in the mosquito sense, too, because it bites you when you are going to higher levels of love, abundance, and creativity. You start slapping at the bug and bring yourself back down to your previous level.
The fear of being fundamentally flawed brings with it a related fear. It’s the fear that if you did make a full commitment to living in your Zone of Genius, you might fail. It’s the belief that even your genius is flawed, and that if you expressed it in a big way, it wouldn’t be good enough. This belief tells you to play it safe and stay small. That way, if you fail, at least you fail small.
I cannot expand to my full success because it would cause me to end up all alone, be disloyal to my roots, and leave behind people from my past.
I can’t expand to my highest potential because I’d be an even bigger burden than I am now.
I must not expand to my full success, because if I did I would outshine _____________________ and make him or her look or feel bad.
And yes, worry is definitely an addiction. In fact, worrying is like playing a slot machine in a gambling casino. Occasionally the worrier will hit the jackpot and be rewarded for something that actually happens.
Imagine squeezing a tennis ball in your hand, then releasing your grip and dropping the ball. A lot of people don’t realize that they can dismiss worry-thoughts just like that.
when we criticize something, it usually doesn’t have anything to do with the thing we’re criticizing. When we blame someone or something, we’re doing it because we’ve hit our Upper Limit and are trying to retard the flow of positive energy.
My assignment to you: become a keen observer of critical statements that come out of your mouth or fly through your mind. Begin to sort them into two piles: Pile One contains all the criticisms about real things you plan to do something about (“Hey, you’re standing on my toe. Get off!”); Pile Two contains all the others. I predict you’ll make the humbling but liberating discovery, as I did, that Pile Two towers over the paltry stack in Pile One.
Many of us crimp the flow of positive energy by avoiding it altogether. The mechanism we use is what I call deflection; it’s so common we almost take it for granted in human life. Think of how many times you’ve heard conversations like the following example of deflection: JOE: You did a great job on that presentation. JACK: Nah, I ran out of time and had to leave out some of the best stuff. JOE: Still, I noticed that people were really paying attention. JACK: I’m glad they weren’t paying too close attention, because they would have seen more places I messed up. Deflection keeps the positive
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When we shut out positive energy through deflection, we keep ourselves safely in our Zone of Competence or Zone of Excellence. Deflection keeps us from challenging ourselves, preventing us from expanding our capacity for experiencing positive energy.
Here’s what to do when you notice yourself deflecting. When someone says the equivalent of “Nice shot” to you, pause for a moment to register the beam of positive energy that’s being aimed at you. Then thank the person who beamed it your way. For example, when I said, “Nice shot, Al,” he could just as easily have let my positive comment register on him. He could have taken a moment to feel pleasure in the shot, and he could have thanked me for the expression of positive energy I beamed in his direction. The dialogue would have gone like this: ME: Nice shot, Al. AL: Thank you. I wish I’d made
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Arguments are one of the most common ways of bringing yourself down when you’ve hit your Upper Limit. When things are going well, you can crimp the flow of positive energy quickly by starting a conflict. Then, the conflict develops a life of its own, lasting for hours, days, or even years. The net effect: you drop back into your Zone of Competence or your Zone of Excellence. Genius takes a backseat.
If you can learn to see arguments as Upper Limit symptoms, you can make big breakthroughs in getting beyond them.
First, understand why arguments occur. Arguments are caused by two people (or two countries) racing to occupy the victim position in the relationship. Person A claims the victim position (“Why are you doing this to me?”) and then tries to get person B to agree with that assessment. In other words, person B has to agree that he or she is the persecutor. Therein lies the problem. It’s almost impossible to get the other guy to agree that it’s his fault.
The most popular integrity breaches are lies, broken agreements, and withheld truths. If you will begin to focus your keen awareness on those three behaviors, you can make huge strides in transcending your Upper Limit and establishing yourself in your Zone of Genius.
Simply put, if you have some emotion within you that you don’t know how to manage, you seal that emotion away and start trying to manage other people’s versions of it. I decided to play the hunch. Think
What makes those stories seem so real (hard to recognize as “just stories”) is that they were being told before we were born. We’re born into stories that keep us from accessing our genius. We grow up among those stories and become like fish that aren’t aware of the water they’re swimming in. For
I commit to discovering my Upper Limit behaviors, and to having a good time while I’m learning about them.
You can learn a lot more with a spirit of wonder and enjoyment than you can with an attitude of criticism.
Blame and criticism
Hiding significant feelings
Not speaking significant truths to the relevant people. (If you’re mad at John, he’s the relevant person to talk to. It doesn’t help to tell Fred that you’re mad at John.)
Deflecting. (Brushing off compliments is a good example of deflecting)
If I took the Big Leap into my Zone of Genius, I might fail. What if I really opened up to my true genius and found that my genius wasn’t good enough?
I commit to living in my Zone of Genius, now and forever.
What do I most love to do? (I love it so much I can do it for long stretches of time without getting tired or bored.)
So, enter the outskirts of your Zone of Genius by asking yourself what you most love to do. Wonder about this until you have a clearly forming sense of it in your body. You don’t have to know it clearly or specifically yet. You just need to feel the glimmer of it in your inner world.
What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work?
(I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.)
In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction
to amount of time spent? (Even if I do only ten seconds or a few minutes of it, an idea or a deeper connection may spring forth that leads to huge value.)
What is my unique ability? (There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organization I serve.)
“If you don’t know it’s OK to feel good and have a good time, you’ll do something to mess up when things are going well.”
ultimately you find yourself stymied and unsatisfied within it. You’re doing the same thing over and over, and while it feeds the people around you, it doesn’t feed you. You need to get out of any boxes you’re in so you can taste the sweet freedom of living on a continuous upward spiral. To do that, a central guiding intention comes in very handy.
