Why We Feel Bad about Feeling Good

4 hidden barriers to happiness and success

In Feeling Good as a Radical Success Skill, we established that following what feels good is a legitimate path to improved mental and emotional well-being, enhanced physical health, and increased productivity and success. The meaningful wiring of our minds and bodies leads us in the direction of our fulfillment, if we pay attention.

Plus, feeling good feels good!

The question that drives this uplifting practice is: How good are you willing to feel? It’s a loaded question because, although the answer seems obvious (as good as possible!), choices don’t always follow suit. Instead, we find ways to deny, limit or forestall feeling good, usually without our conscious awareness. Why would we do this?

The Upper Limit Problem

Turns out, we each have a learned tolerance for feeling good, an upper limit, says Gay Hendricks PhD, author of “The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level.”

“Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure.”

– Gay Hendricks PhD

Most of us don’t know we’re limiting ourselves. Upon closer look, however, it is likely we have adopted at least one or two limiting beliefs along the way. Dr. Hendricks neatly identifies four categories of false beliefs:

• Hidden Barrier no. 1: Feeling Fundamentally Flawed (and therefore undeserving)
• Hidden Barrier no. 2: Disloyalty and Abandonment (breaking the unspoken code)
• Hidden Barrier no. 3: Believing That More Success Brings a Bigger Burden (more than we can handle)
• Hidden Barrier no. 4: The Crime of Outshining (someone important to us)

Which false belief resonates as the foundation for your upper limit problem?

My Disloyalty and Abandonment

Where I come from, there is the unspoken code that one “does not get up above their raisin’.” When I got the idea to follow my smart schoolmates down the college path, I was told, “No one in our family has ever gone to college; why would we send you?” and “If we were going to send anyone, we’d send your brother, not a girl.” When I persisted and found a way to attend a local state college, I quickly found myself on my own without support of any kind. It was a struggle, but I got my piece of paper in 6, not 4, years. Did I feel good about my hard-won accomplishment? Nope. Instead, I deeply internalized the false belief that my success would come at the price of my most valued relationships…ironically, the kind of relationships that would make success sweet. For years, I saw the upper limiting pattern play out over and over, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, as successes came and friendships fell away.

Overcoming the Upper Limit

When we adopted these limiting beliefs, usually before we are 7 years old, they made sense. They helped us survive. They got wired-in to our neuro-circuitry and, if we don’t consciously reprogram them, they continue to drive our survival strategy throughout our adulthood. Imagine, a 7-year-old at the wheel of your life!

These self-limiting thought patterns are your Saboteurs. In his book, “Positive Intelligence,” Shirzad Chamine describes them as the voices in your head that generate negative emotions in the way you handle life’s everyday challenges. They represent automated patterns in your mind for how to think, feel, and respond. They cause all your stress, anxiety, self-doubt, frustration, restlessness, and unhappiness. They sabotage your performance, wellbeing, and relationships.

Discover Your Saboteurs

You can take that 7-year-old out of the driver’s seat! It begins with knowing and naming your personal constellation of Saboteur patterns, and then depowering them with some simple body/brain techniques that put you back behind the wheel of your life. Use this link to schedule your free assessment and debrief.

Thinking about it? This is a good time ask yourself that original question: How good are you willing to feel?

***

Whole-being well-being expert, Liz Garrett, translates scientific and metaphysical principles into PRACTICAL APPLICATION leaders use to change their lives, their relationships, their work and, ultimately, the world.