How To Create Good Health
Dancing Elephants Book Project Health and Wellness — Group 1
Does this sound familiar? Things were going well. I had accomplished my big goals. I had knocked out a bunch of minor annoyances. I was feeling great about my progress. Before I started on my next big project, I wanted to take a short break in the pool to chill out and cool down.
Instead, I stayed out in the sun too long, and gave myself a horrific sunburn. I wasn’t able to do anything that required using my arms for almost a week. No baking. No cleaning. And the pain prevented me from getting decent sleep or being able to focus enough to write.
I’d started off feeling great about my situation. With just a few bad decisions, I was upset, in pain, and beating myself up over my failures.
This is what Gay Hendricks, in his book The Big Leap, terms an “Upper Limit Problem”. When things get too good, we subconsciously do something to bring the situation back into our comfort zone.
Think of it like a rubber band. If you stretch it too far, when you release it, it snaps back. Often, it snaps further in the opposite direction.
What type of problems repeatedly come up for you?
Some of the common ways people “solve” their upper limit problems are with financial crises, relationship crises, or health crises. Others invent anxieties and fears so that they can rein in excess happiness.
Take a look at your life. See if there’s a repeating pattern that shows up.
In my case, my go-to solution is a health crisis. Hospitalization. Skiing accident. Crushed by a garage door. Allergies. Infections. Diseases. Cancer. Diabetes.
Whenever things were getting too good, boom! Another health crisis.
Somehow, I decided on the subconscious level that a health crisis was an acceptable way to back off from success. After all, it wasn’t my fault if I got sick or injured.
Except, it was.
If your personal life history also has an above-average number of disasters in one particular area, whether it’s health, finances, mental health, or relationships, that may be how you’ve chosen subconsciously to “solve” your upper limit problems.
Common health advice won’t work for upper limit issues
The common health advice — eat less, exercise more, meditate — won’t work if you’re using your health to “solve” upper limit problems. In fact, your early success at any of them is likely to trigger a rebound failure.
When I ate less, I developed cascading food allergies that triggered Metabolic Syndrome and eventually Type II Diabetes. When I exercised more, I reaggravated old knee or back injuries that would lay me up for days. Even meditating, sitting quietly in one position, triggered a neck muscle spasm that dislocated one of my vertebrae!
Instead, you need to identify your upper limit belief. It may be a specific amount of something (very common with financial upper limits). It may be a comparison, such as comparing your success with your spouse, sibling, parents, or friends. It may even be a general world view statement, which can usually be identified by having the word “should” somewhere in it.
Finding your upper limit belief
Think back to what was happening and what you were thinking right before your last disaster. See if any of that can be interpreted as being “too good”.
In my case, I was on track to meet all of my goals. We’d gotten through the challenge of moving to a new country, and my writing career was back where it had been before we decided to move. I was on track for finishing my Masters program by the earliest date possible. I’d even lost 12 pounds!
Things were looking good! Too good. How could I be successful when all my family members were struggling with health or career issues?
A nice case of sunburn prevented me from finishing “too strong” for the quarter. In fact, I actually missed one of my monthly goals — writing this article by the end of March.
Healthy solutions for upper limit issues
The subconscious can be clever, but it’s usually not very smart. “Solving” an upper limit problem with a crisis of some sort is clever in the short term, but dumb in the long term.
Instead, put your conscious brain to work on the problem. The next time you find yourself facing a crisis in your repeating pattern, try this:
- Recognize that the crisis is part of a pattern, and try to remove any baggage from it before solving the immediate crisis. That usually makes the immediate crisis easier to solve.
- Look at what you were thinking/feeling just before the crisis, and try to identify any upper limit beliefs.
- Work on those beliefs. Are they outright falsehoods? Are they oversimplifications? Is there any room for “stretch” in the statement?
The good news is that frequently, identifying the belief that is limiting you is all that’s needed to break it. As you progress through your limiting beliefs, knocking out the big ones (the ones that try to convince you that you don’t deserve something basic, like love, happiness, or success), your crises will naturally get smaller. A bad case of sunburn is nowhere near as drastic a “solution” as cancer or diabetes.
Resolving problems as well as beliefs
If you have trouble getting rid of a belief, especially the big ones, you can use affirmations or some variety of counseling or therapy to help root it out. Hanging off the side of a mountain, screaming my truth into the wind worked for me. My husband preferred a more gradual process of small gains over years.
You can also use other modalities to address persistent situations. For example, I was able to reverse my Diabetes by an intensive program of natural veganism for nine months. Pendulum healing helped get rid of the emotional baggage surrounding certain injuries, making me less prone to them in the future. Both my husband and I have used EMDR therapy to uninstall beliefs created by traumas.
Final thoughts
If the idea of getting over your limiting beliefs appeals to you, I highly recommend The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks. I wasn’t as impressed by his follow-on book, The Genius Zone, since it covered much of the same material, just with a shift in focus.
Always address the immediate crisis. Upper limit work can help you prevent future crises, or pull the emotional fangs from the current one. But changing your deep seated beliefs will do nothing to fix the mess you’re in because of them. Clean up the mess before you clean up your beliefs.
I knew someone who lost over 200 pounds, simply by changing her beliefs. Beliefs can cause health problems, and also heal them.
For better health, happiness, and success, identify and remove as many of your limiting beliefs as you can.
An in-depth discussion of how to get rid of Limiting Beliefs:
For more insights from Gay Hendricks:
Other excellent articles on health and wellness that I recommend:
Thank you, Dancing Elephants Press, and the DEP book project editors, Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, and Sharing Randomly.
