I arrived super early at London’s Heathrow airport around 5:30am. Got an English breakfast in me and now sitting in the middle of Terminal 5 with the international scene that is Terminal 5 hustling throughout the wide open space. Over breakfast I caught up with my boy, Ryan Cox via WhatsApp. It was awesome sharing thoughts from Straight Outta Compton to the illusive plays life throws our way each day to work updates to books we are currently reading.
I just finished a mind blowing book, The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks. It’s wild. The topics Hendricks explores are cracking me wide open. He has spent the past 20 years researching what he calls our Upper Limit Problem (ULP) and how our ULP prevents us from greater success, abundance, love and creativity. Our ULP is born out of our baseline of pleasure and pain. If we start to experience more pleasure than our pleasure/pain threshold allows then our brains will automatically produce a negative thought/feeling of fear, anger, shame, guilt, etc to bring us back to our baseline. Our pleasure/pain baseline is typically inherited from our family…the stories our parents have told us…who we are, our perceived value, how brightly we can shine, how much guilt we should or shouldn’t feel, our perceived limitations, where we should feel shame, etc.
The crazy theme throughout the book is that most of us unknowingly sabotage ourselves from feeling too much abundance in our lives, too much pleasure, too much success. Why? Because we are afraid to feel too much pleasure/success/abundance because our Upper Limit Problem tells us that we’re not good enough to feel this good or to have this much success or feel this much pleasure. It’s insane to me that I’ve never taken the time to think about this. That I would actually inhibit my ability to feel more goodness in my life?! That I would allow old stories passed down from generations to become my story rather than going inward to discover my true value…the reason I was created and begin living out that truth in all of it’s abundance, love and success.
As I write this literally thousands of people from all over the world move past me. I’m sitting on a little charging station in the middle of the terminal. People of all different colors, shapes, sizes, cultures, belief systems swooshing past with their stories…and their Upper Limit Problems. It’s such a human sabotaging thing to do…to hinder our freedoms to greater abundance in our lives. I look at all of these people, making subtle glances in their eyes, into their stories and wonder why we don’t let ourselves feel the freedom our hearts desperately long to feel.
It’s a wild thing to think about what our lives would be like if we gave ourselves the permission to live openly our greatest desires…to explore those areas of our lives that want to leap forth in love, creativity and passion in search of greater pleasure, abundance and success. To patiently allow the unfolding process to occur that let’s go of our old stories…lovingly let those stories go and kindly forgive those people who told us that those were our stories rather than encouraging us that we can be anything we want…that we are infinite in our abilities, our capacities to love, to create, to FEEL deeply.
A new journey has begun for me thanks to this book, to Suzi Sosa for recommending it and for all of those amazing friends who already see the infinite greatness within me…now for the exploration of discovering it and owning that power myself!
Big love,
Z
ubuntu 
This blog post has everything. Travel, old friends, a reference to the latest movie, a good book, introspection, personal growth and amazing photos (clouds will always be a favorite subject & a selfie without a selfie stick!).
Seriously though, the above could be a list entitled “my favorite things” in my journal. It has been a joy (and at times heartbreaking) to read snippets of your journey in this quiet little corner of the Internet.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I could write for quite a while on each post because they have made me think about many things and have brought about some interesting effects in my life in the last month. But I don’t want to assume I know you by what you have shared so I won’t write each thought here. Who wants a stranger making assumptions, adding opinions and generally misconstruing what you have put so eloquently?
Praying for you, your company and your community (those you love and those who love you)… Many blessings and continued growth.
Wow boitexan thanks so much for your encouragement & loving thoughts! Always thankful to know that aspects of my journey are helpful. Good luck to you my friend!