First off, a quick reminder: The Busy Girl's 6-Week Plan To Balance And Fulfillment is starting on MONDAY!

I am so excited for all the beautiful women who have already signed up. It will be an amazing journey and I cannot wait to see the participants flourish in completely novel ways by the time Thanksgiving roles around.

If you have been thinking about joining, this is YOUR chance. Sign up here. We'd love to have you <3

The Upper Limit Problem (do you have it?)

On another note, I wanted to tell you about The Upper Limit Problem, which a client of mine actually introduced me to earlier this week.

It's a concept developed by Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap and It. Blew. My. Mind.

The Upper Limit Problem essentially describes the idea that we unconsciously self-sabotage ourselves when, either we get a taste of something really great OR when we feel guilty for outshining others.

Have you ever thought: "Everything is going so well, I am just waiting for something crappy to happen now."

Or have you ever felt really excited about something and then you get sick or something else "unexpected" happens... well, perhaps that's not a coincidence?!

Hendricks says that every person has an "inner thermostat setting" = the amount of good feelings we allow ourselves to feel before we tell ourselves things like:

let's be realistic
it's probably too good to be true
I don't deserve this
(on a more unconscious level) if I outshine others, they won't like me, so I should hide my spark and step back from the spotlight

Sometimes something can feel SO RIGHT (you can feel it in your gut!) and we want to say YES super badly, but the moment we actually think about going for it, a wave of fear swamps over us:

What if I will be disappointed?
I shouldn't spend this money on myself.
It's not the right time anyways... I need to focus on my job and be productive.
It feels selfish and indulgent. Who am I to actually do this.

In other words, we self-sabotage, because we have reached our inner thermostat of how good we allow ourselves to feel.

What it comes down to is the very sensitive question of DESERVING.

Hendricks himself says: "The ULP is the human tendency to put the brakes on our positive energy when we've exceeded our unconscious thermostat setting for how good we can feel, how successful we can be, and how much love we can feel. The essential move we all need to master is learning to handle more positive energy, success and love."

WOW! Did that just blow your mind, too? (I think it just blew mine for the second time;))

Here is a secret (that you can tell everyone!): Unless you permit yourself to feel happiness, success, and love without sabotaging it, you will always be struggling.

Psychology often talks about the "addiction to struggle" and this becomes very relevant here as well.

Many of the women I meet are extremely generous human beings with others but kind of greedy with themselves -they have an extremely hard time spending money or time or care on themselves, on their own needs, on their own personal improvement. They pull the breaks.

Over the last 10 days, I have gotten a substantial amount of emails from women telling me that they really want to take part in The Busy Girl course. They tell me that:

they know it would massively change their life.
they so desire to understand themselves better and love who they are (including their bodies).
they are so ready to invite real (= cuddly AND sexy) romance into their life.
they are incredibly tired of feeling bored out of their mind at work.
they just don't know what they really want to do (what they really want to scream is "What the H*LL is my purpose?????" Sound familiar?).

BUT that they are worried about things like money and time.

While I am always encouraging people to spend their money wisely, I have undoubtedly found that many women think that "wisely" means "practical" or "not on me."

And I get it. To tell you the truth, I spent years feeling like spending on myself was selfish, lavish, and excessive. My mind's auto-response was "I'm fine, I don't need that."

I now realize that that also meant that I never really gave myself a chance, that I had an Upper Limit Problem.

I pulled the breaks because spending on myself meant that I had to first say that "I am absolutely freaking worth it!" Plus, I was scared sh•tless of letting my perfectionistic guard down... I didn't want to be vulnerable and seem like I needed help ("C'mon, I'm not that messed up.").

What I want you to know is that these fears, your ULP won't go away -your life won't change!- if you don't break your own patterns.

One of the women who participated in the first round of The Busy Girl's 6-Week Plan To Balance And Fulfillment described her hesitations like this:

"When I first signed up for the course I had hesitations: For example, I wasn't sure if it was going to be an added burden or long 'to do list' on top of everything else. I also wasn't sure whether the content would cover things I have done before or not. But I also knew that I was feeling that my life was all 'rush rush' and that the pleasure was missing. I felt that I knew what I wanted in my life but could not connect to it and was not sure how to help make it happen. So I felt stuck in my busy-ness."

She made the choice to join The Busy Girl and experienced substantial changes in the way she approaches her life:

Look, I'll be honest: this course isn't about giving you a magic pill, it is about honest self-improvement so that you can make the changes you need to create greater balance and fulfillment in your life now and in the future.

Whether or not The Busy Girl calls your name, I want to encourage you to think about where in your life you are limiting yourself? Where are you playing small to make others comfortable? Where are you denying yourself feeling really good?

If your intuition tells you "Yes, I want to take my life to a new level of self-awareness," I invite you join The Busy Girl. We are starting this coming Monday, the 29th of September so this is your chance. Sign up here:)

love,

Caroline