Permission to Savor Success

What limits do we put on ourselves? Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I read a lot of books. Being in the leadership business, I devour personal growth, mindfulness, and psychology books at an alarming rate. I recently read Gay Hendrick’s The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level and its surprisingly simple premise kept resonating and re-emerging through many aspects of my life.

“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.”

— Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap

Hendricks calls this the Upper Limit Problem. That when we hit our Upper Limit of good, positive emotions, we hit a wall and self-sabotage in some way to become more secure in a familiar, more negative zone.

This hit home hard.

You see, I am a high performer and through all external measures, have had a successful career and life. Yet while getting these medals of external validation has always felt good and given me a brief…