I’m half-way through a booked called, “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks. The premise is simple – the vast majority of us have rate-limiting beliefs that cause us to sabotage ourselves when things are going very well in our life. This is caused by beliefs we have developed throughout our lives that lead us to believe that it is not realistic to have a life where we are generally happy and that we don’t deserve all of the abundance that life can offer. I picked up this book because I’ve begun to genuinely believe that happiness is our birth-right, yet despite this fact, I’ve recognized the following self-destructive patterns in my life:

1)     As much as I strive to be the best at anything I do, I find myself holding back more often than not. This stems back to being the “smart” kid in childhood and skipping a grade. I learned very quickly that this brings about resentment, mean-spiritedness, and social-isolation from the other kids. I’m not a kid anymore, but I still find myself getting paranoid when I think shining a little too bright causes insecurity in others.

2)    Sabotaging romantic relationships. Still examining this one… although a lot of it stems back to a prior relationship where I felt like I lost my ability to self-express and a fear of letting someone in and then having to hold back who I am in order to make my partner happy and pacify my partner’s insecurities. Writing this out is therapeutic. I need to let go and stop punishing myself for decisions of the past.

3)    A fear of loss. The more invested I am in something, the more I work for and gain, the more I care about it, and then the more there is to lose. But happiness is our birthright. And if Source/God/whatever you believe in is love, then why would our creator want anything other than love for us? I need to look into this fear more because it is a dominant one in my life. Right now, the roots of it I think are in 1) not fully trusting that I can “keep up” and actually be the person I want to be without buckling under the responsibilities; and 2) my confusion about how non-attachment plays in – if one of the keys to Enlightenment is non-attachment (possessions, people, your “identity”) then wouldn’t the ultimate test of that be to lose everything you prize? But if God is love, and our birthright is happiness, then that’s not really congruent with my last statement. And why would God be testing us anyways? Doesn’t seem like something Someone Who is unconditionally loving would do. Maybe we’re the only ones testing ourselves. May it’s all in my head and the whole point to life is to experience as much as you can and want to and to learn about yourself and ultimately God/Source through this. I’m not sure – I am going to park this stream of existential questioning and wait for people to come into my life that might shed some insight through dialogue.

So that’s me and the rate-limiting beliefs and underlying-triggers that I’ve recognized. I’ll write about what the book suggests for over-coming rate-limiting beliefs in another post and leave you to reflect on what beliefs, thought-patterns, and cycles you repeat that keep you from having the life you want and being all you want to be.