Is this pattern familiar to you: You are cruising along just great with your healthy eating and exercise plan and just when you start to notice results… you blow it, skip the gym, eat cake, drink wine and find yourself right back where you started?

If yes, then my friend, you have got an Upper Limiting Belief Problem and until you recognize it, address it and send it packing, you will repeat this same two-steps-forward-two-steps-back dance for the rest of your life.

This past summer I stumbled upon The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks and my life changed dramatically by reading it and practicing the techniques within.  I finally understood my own pattern of self-sabotage in several areas of my life and was actually able to move past these blocks for the first time.  This post is not easy for me to write because it is difficult to condense and summarize such a rich book but I will hope for the best.  Incidentally, the reason it has been a few days without a post, is because I told myself that this was the next one I would have to write before I could move on.  And as my kids would say, I was blocked up with mental “consti-playstation.”

Here goes:

Gay Hendricks is a PhD Psychologist who has written and taught about personal growth for many years.  In The Big Leap, he asserts that each of us has a ceiling of success, an imagined limit to how thin/pretty/good-looking we can be, how much money we can make,  how happy or intimate our relationships can be, the level of success we can achieve at work, etc.  When we reach that ceiling, we kind of bump our heads against it and say “ow” and subconsciously retreat.  This ceiling is an Upper Limiting Belief.  We do not even realize it is there and have no idea that we could ever move past it!

Some examples would be, the above instance of regaining lost weight and returning to old bad habits.  Hendricks also cites as examples, movie stars who appear to have everything: success, money, love, beauty, and talent, but suddenly crash and burn on the shores of humiliation by doing something totally stupid and irrational (think Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, Jude Law, or Hugh Grant just for starters).  Another example is lottery winners, who statistics show, most often end up at exactly the same income level they had pre-winning, through bad decisions and “bad luck”.

And how about this one: You go away for a romantic weekend with your spouse or lover.  You experience great highs of intimacy, romance and closeness and then BAM, one of you picks a fight over nothing and you spend the rest of the weekend, arms crossed angrily wondering how you could be so stupid to “fall for this again.”

Yeah, I don’t know anything about THAT one, no siree!

In all of these cases, the individual has hit the ceiling of what he believes is possible for himself and literally freaks out and does something to bring himself back down to a level he is more familiar and comfortable with. (And that wasn’t an accidental use of the masculine pronoun ).

When I lived in Manhattan, we girls had a saying “You can never have a great apartment, a great boyfriend and a great job all at the same time.  One of those will always have to give.”  Hello Upper Limiting Belief!  Why the heck can one not expect to have all those things at the same time?  Hm, is it because it is unfamiliar and a bit SCARY??

Two days before we were due to make Aliyah, fulfilling a life-long dream of moving to Israel, I crashed the car big-time.  Accidents are often a big glaring neon sign “Upper Limit Reached”.  Not only did I crash the car, but because I crashed the car, M and I came as close to divorce as we probably ever have.  Isn’t it interesting that the War of The Roses began the moment we were about to cast our fate as a couple and as a family into the first great JOINT adventure of our lives?

So now that we understand what the problem is, how the heck do we get past it?  First of all, go read The Big Leap because Professor Hendricks says it much better than I can and the book is just full of fascinating ideas.  But until your book arrives, let’s see what we can do right NOW:

In the book, Hendricks recommends the repetition of a particular mantra: (Yes, yes, I can hear the Mantra-haters amongst you groaning).

“I expand in Abundance, Success, and Love everyday, as I  inspire others around me to do the same.”

That’s it, as simple as that.  Not really, but this is where you start.  I have adapted this mantra to suit myself, as you should also, and I say it several times upon waking and before sleeping, I put it on mental auto-loop when I am struggling in Spinning class or through a difficult run.  I say it when I am feeling fear and wanting to retreat.  I open my hands and imagine light streaming right into and out of the center of my palms while saying “I Expand.  I Ascend.  The ceiling falls away and I effortless move up to the next level.”  I say it when we are on romantic weekends away and I want to pick a fight because my darling husband is making too much noise with a toothpick or something.

But in order for this to work, you have to believe that there IS a next level to which you can ascend.  You have to be willing to let go of what is keeping you small and safe and move forward to a greater level of success or happiness than you ever have previously considered possible.

And that is why it’s called:

The Big Leap

Happy Jumping!!!