SDS 140: Upper Limiting

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast, ladies and gentlemen, and today, we’re going to continue on from the previous Five Minute Friday episode, where we talked about the zone of genius.

In fact, last time, we talked about the zone of incompetence, zone of competence, zone of excellence, and zone of genius, and the concept of these four zones comes from the book, written by Gay Hendricks, which is called The Big Leap. Lana and I listened to that book on a road trip through Europe last year, and that was one of the two most powerful concepts that we took away from that book for ourselves, that have impacted our lives.

Today, we’re talking about the second concept, and the second concept is, the problem of upper limiting. So what is this all about? Well, let’s start off with an example. Let’s take an example of a person who wins a lottery. How often do we hear stories about a person winning a lottery, and then, blowing all that money away extremely quickly, like, within a year?

So, if they win $1 million, or even $10 million, within a year or so, or two years, all that money’s gone, and they’re back at where they started, or even worse off, and they’ve lost all their friends. They’re maybe even in debt, and basically, they weren’t able to hold onto those winnings, and reinvest them, and make more from that money that they got.

Yeah, that happens extremely often, so why does that happen? Well, this is where the problem of upper limiting comes in, and this problem applies in many spheres of life, not just in finances. It applies in relationships, in other places, and so, the way it works is like a thermostat. So, let’s say that person that won the lottery is, before winning the lottery, was earning a salary of $50,000 per year, and they were in that salary for, two or three years.

So their psychology was used to the amounts of happiness that comes with that annual income, and why it works as a thermostat is, let’s put the lottery aside for a second. If they, for instance, if their situation drops, and, for instance, they lose their job, or something happens, they have to move to a different location.

So, basically, their annual income drops, that won’t hold for long. Their inner willpower and their inner psychology will force them to find ways to get back to that $50,000 a year level. On the other hand, if that amount increases all of a sudden, like, they win a lottery, for instance, that amount rapidly jumps up. Again, it works like a thermostat.

It works like, as if you set the air-conditioning to 22 degrees Celsius, or, I don’t know what that would be in Fahrenheit. I don’t know, hypothetically, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, or whatever we set the degree as temperature in the room to, in Fahrenheit. You set it to that temperature, and then, if it goes down, the air-conditioning will bring it back up to the level you set at it. Or if it goes up, it will bring it back down.

In this case, the thermostat or the air-conditioning is your inner psychology, is your, maybe even, subconsciousness. Like, you or that person, for instance, when they win the lottery, all of a sudden, they’re way above what they’re used to, in terms of the amount of happiness they can possibly create, or the amount of financial wealth, they can possibly create for themselves.

Instantly, the thermostat kicks in, and they start spending money, buying useless things, putting 120 televisions into their new house, and so on, giving money to all their friends, left, right and center, and quickly, very quickly, all that goes back to where that person started.

So that’s the concept of upper limiting, and it basically explains that we have, within our psychology, a integrated component, which will kick in, and which will prevent us from going beyond our zone of comfort, whether it’s going down, or whether it’s going up. This works, not only in finance, as this works in many different, pretty much any area of life.

You can think of it, also, in relationships. For instance, you’re used to a certain level of happiness in a relationship, and when, for instance, you meet somebody who can possibly bring you more happiness. Or things happen in your life where you can have more happiness. All of a sudden, you start sabotaging that.

Sometimes, you might even catch yourself, that you’re sabotaging that possibility of more happiness. You start saying rude things to your significant other, or you start behaving in certain ways, which you don’t even recognize for yourself. That is that thermostat kicking in, bringing you back down to the level of happiness, which you are used to, and in essence, what that is, a good way I found, on one blog on the Internet, that they put it, is that it’s joy resistance.

Your psychology is resisting joy. On the other hand, if things start getting worse, going back even worse, like, getting worse than they are now, then you’ll start. That thermostat will kick in, and you’ll try to bring it back up, but what we’re most interested in is, of course, removing that upper limit. We don’t care about the down limit. In fact, it’s good for us. It helps us stay above that lower limit, but we only get rid of the upper limit.

That’s why the problem is called upper limiting, because we want get rid of that upper limit, to go through the roof, and to think extremely high. For instance, going back to the concept of salaries. If somebody’s earning $50,000, that same person, they’re just used to it. They don’t even imagine, in their head, they could be making $200,000 a year. That’s like, their upper limit psychology kicks in right away, even when they think about that idea, it just feels too crazy for them.

Yet there are people out there, that make $200,000 a year, that make $500,000 a year. There’s even people that make $26 million a year, but their thermostat is set at a different level. So that’s examples in relationships, in finance. It could also happen in, like, in projects that you do. For instance, you might be going towards a big presentation for a lot of clients, or an internal presentation for your manager, and so on.

All of a sudden, you will fall sick the day before. Well, that doesn’t just happen randomly. That is, again, your subconsciousness, or your psychology kicking in, and putting an upper limiting problem, and it’s not because you’re afraid to do that presentation. It’s not because you don’t want to do that presentation. It’s because, you know that if you succeed in that presentation, the doors will be open to a brand new life, a brand new opportunity, or many opportunities, to experience things differently, to live at a different level. To be, maybe, better rewarded at your work, or to get a promotion, or to take on a new role, and things like that.

Your psychology is already set, the thermostat is set at where you are currently, at your zone of comfort, or at what you’re used to, and so, it prevents you doing that. And it, in the book, he actually describes examples of when people fall sick. So it’s not just about things you do, it’s things that happen to your body, because your body lets you fall sick. Your immune system slows down, just so you can fall sick, so you stay at that level, and it’s very important.

So the idea in the book that he shares, that Gay Hendricks shares, is that you need to be aware of this upper limiting problem, and you need to see, feel, when it kicks in, and understand that it’s not happening, something’s happening at random, or something’s just, that’s just the way that things are meant to be. No, you should realize that this is the upper limit problem. I am sabotaging my own happiness. I am sabotaging my own success, simply because whatever lies ahead is way out of, like, way beyond what I’m used to, and you should stop it.

You should consciously stop yourself from sabotaging it. You should say, to yourself, that this is exactly what you want, this is what you’ve been working for, or what you’ve been looking for, towards. If it’s a conscious behavior, then you can work on it, to prevent it, if it’s unconscious.

It’s all about preparing yourself mentally, understanding that this, there there’s this risk of this upper limiting problem happening. Then, once you know it, once you’re prepared for it mentally, then you can walk through that threshold, and be successful, and make things happen.

So, there we go. That’s how the upper limiting problem works. Hopefully, that was helpful to you. Maybe, even, you can think of some examples from your own life, like, recent, or examples from the past, where you have encountered this upper limiting problem, and how it’s prevented you from achieving success, whether it’s financial, or whether it’s in your career, or whether it’s in some business project opportunities, or sports, even. Or it has prevented you from being happy, just in things you do, or being happy in a relationship.

So, there we go, once again, that upper limiting problem. If you’d like to learn more, highly recommend the book by Gay Hendricks, which is called The Big Leap, you can get as an audiobook, as well. That’s what we did. We listened to an audiobook.

On that note, try to look out for the upper limiting problem this weekend. See if you encounter it, and how you can combat it. It’s a very hard thing to do sometimes, but it is definitely possible.

So, there you go. I look forward to seeing you back here next time, and until then, happy analyzing.