Upper Limiting

I was talking with my business coach earlier this week about the downside of success, the limiting beliefs I have. 

I'm smack-dab in the middle of launching my 4-week online course and things have been in flow, I've been getting sign-ups and it hasn't felt effortful. 

And then suddenly things started to come to a crawl. Two days went by and no one purchased. A bunch of people unsubscribed from my newsletter list.

My energy tanked and I didn't feel satisfied in my work, even though I was taking action. 

She asked if this had ever happened before. Of course. Of course. 

I shared with her that I've been working on and exploring my belief that tells me that having self-sufficiency/success means that I will lose support and there will be no one there to help me and I won't be able to take care of myself. Connected to that is the belief that if I am successful, I won't be healthy. Whether it's working too hard or to much to allow me to meet my movement needs or see the practitioners I want, I'm not exactly sure. Fears about stress are definitely part of the mix. I KNOW how stress impacts me. And it ain't pretty.

So how could I allow myself to be successful if it means I'm going to stop being healthy? I feel tender even now as I write this.

Today I realized the inverse is also true.

How can I allow myself to be truly healthy if it means I'm going to prevent myself from being successful (which for me has a lot of connection with speaking my truth in the world)?

It's a bit of a double bind. I need to pay the bills, I want to travel and allow my husband to work less. There are so many people I know I can help. I am itching to move across the country. I have a long list of people I like to receive support from whom I PAY. I have stories to tell...

And I also really, deeply desire whole-self health. 

I've seen this with clients, too. Clients who come so far, who make so many commitments, who start to really see improvements. And then who stop. Freeze up. Begin to mysteriously hurt again.

It's like we've run into their upper limit of health. If they get healthier, something "bad" is going to happen. 

Clearly, I get it. 

Has this happened to you? You travel down a path toward health over and over again only to get stopped at about the same place you got stopped last time?

It's hard, isn't it?

I wonder how it would feel to give yourself some empathy for this. To recognize that some part of you is working to keep you safe, to take good care of you. To prevent you from stepping off a seemingly dangerous ledge. It may be an old part and it may not be very useful to you now, but the intentions are good. 

Can you identify your limiting belief(s)? Name them? 

I find that pulling things out of the darkness is most of the work.

And then when you've seen them, taken a look at them, can you come up with examples of how that might not be true? Times when you've been healthy and x, y, or z hasn't happened? Times when you've pursued your health goals fully and were also able to have the other things that matter to you?

If you can't find examples in your own life, what about in the life of someone else?