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November 4 - November 19, 2021
It makes no sense to take your Big Leap into greater financial success in such a way that it destroys your relationships, your inner sense of yourself, and your connection to your inner wellspring of creativity.
Life is at its best when love, money, and creativity are growing in harmony.
I have a limited tolerance for feeling good. When I hit my Upper Limit, I manufacture thoughts that make me feel bad.
When I hit my Upper Limit, I do something that stops my positive forward trajectory.
If I can eliminate the behaviors that stop the flow of positive energy, can I learn how to feel great all the time?
Can I allow things to go well in my life all the time? In relationships, can I live in harmony and intimacy all the time?
Can our species live in expanding waves of peace and prosperity, free from the pattern of messing things up when they are going well?
If you would like to make your journey to the Zone of Genius smooth and rapid, please take a moment now to answer four questions.
Am I willing to increase the amount of time every day that I feel good inside?
Am I willing to increase the amount of time that my whole life goes well?
Am I willing to feel good and have my life go well all the time?
Are you willing to take the Big Leap to your ultimate level of success in love, money, and creative contribution?
How much love and abundance am I willing to allow? How am I getting in my own way?
There’s only one way to get through the fog of fear, and that’s to transform it into the clarity of exhilaration.
the very same mechanisms that produce excitement also produce fear, and any fear can be transformed into excitement by breathing fully with it.
The goal in life is not to attain some imaginary ideal; it is to find and fully use our own gifts.
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.
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.
Our activities in the world occur in four main zones:
The Zone of Incompetence is made up of all the activities we’re not good at.
The best way to handle most things in your Zone of Incompetence is to avoid doing them altogether.
It’s worthwhile to do something you’re not good at if the intention is to enjoy or master it.
You’re competent at the activities in the Zone of Competence, but others can do them just as well. Successful people often discover that they expend far too much time and energy in this zone.
In the Zone of Excellence are the activities you do extremely well. You make a good living in your Zone of Excellence. For successful people, this zone is a seductive and even dangerous trap.
Liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction. Your Zone of Genius is the set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw upon your special gifts and strengths.
The false foundation under the Upper Limit Problem is a set of four hidden barriers based on fear and false belief.
Hidden Barrier no. 1: Feeling Fundamentally Flawed
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.
Hidden Barrier no. 2: Disloyalty and Abandonment
Hidden Barrier no. 3: Believing That More Success Brings a Bigger Burden
Hidden Barrier no. 4: The Crime of Outshining
Worrying is usually a sign that we’re Upper-Limiting. It is usually not a sign that we’re thinking about something useful.
Worrying is useful only if it concerns a topic we can actually do something about, and if it leads to our taking positive action right away.
When I’m operating in my Zone of Genius, I am doing what I love to do and I’m enjoying what I have.
I mentioned earlier that most worry-thoughts have absolutely nothing to do with reality. That’s true for criticism, too. In other words, when we criticize something, it usually doesn’t have anything to do with the thing we’re criticizing.
Many of us crimp the flow of positive energy by avoiding it altogether. The mechanism we use is what I call deflection;
Deflection keeps the positive energy from landing, being received, and being acknowledged.
Arguments are one of the most common ways of bringing yourself down when you’ve hit your Upper Limit.
When people step out of the victim position and take 100 percent responsibility, their marriages and their businesses flourish.
When things are going well, some of us have a pattern that is pure Upper Limit Problem: we get sick or get hurt.
Not all illnesses or accidents are Upper Limit symptoms, of course.
Your exploration will go easier if you have a map. The map I use is what I call the Three Ps: punishment, prevention, and protection.
Here’s the bottom line on prevention and protection: when you suffer symptoms of illness or experience an accident, you often do so because you’re unconsciously trying to prevent yourself from having to do something you don’t really want to do and/or protect yourself from something you don’t want to feel.
Committing a breach of integrity is one of the quickest ways to bring yourself down after an excursion past your Upper Limit. The most popular integrity breaches are lies, broken agreements, and withheld truths.
I commit to discovering my Upper Limit behaviors, and to having a good time while I’m learning about them.
How can I bring forth my genius in ways that serve others and myself at the same time?
Discovering your Zone of Genius is your life’s Big Leap. Everything up until now has been about hops, not leaps.
If you confine yourself to hops, you run the risk of rusting from the inside out.
There is a huge fear underneath every complaint: 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?
In your Zone of Genius, work doesn’t feel like work.
