Have you noticed this time of year tends to bring a deeper time of reflection? Deep thoughts, evaluations, and examination of what the year brought.
I need to be honest with you. It’s been a tough past six months for me. The beginning of the year was great but then around July things suddenly came to a screeching halt. Jobs didn’t come through or were cancelled, I was sick for an entire month, and my personal life was turned upside-down by unexpected events that continue to vex me. To top it all off, I regained extra pounds that I fought so furiously to get rid of, thinking it was for good this time.
Perhaps you can relate to a time in your life when things beyond your control initiated a sh*t storm in your life. We see our self-confidence plummet. We think “not again.” Clothes don’t fit, our bodies are very cranky, we can’t sleep for worry, and headaches flare up. Adding insult to injury, that gnarly internal voice volunteers a whole bunch of uninvited thoughts. That voice sure can be a nasty jerk.
Like Pushing A Rock Uphill
Something was eating at me and I couldn’t figure it out. No matter how hard I pushed forward, nothing improved. I eventually had no choice but to stop pushing and be still.
I bet you know just what I am referring to. I bet you’ve been there, too. It felt even worse than when I wrote about having a hard time adulting.
My internal voice kept reminding me of something I have never shared with any of you. In fact, very few people know this about me…
I barely survived a living nightmare—my own childhood. I grew up with a mentally unstable mother who abused me every chance she got, driving me to the brink of suicide. I remember the terror of not knowing when she’d flip from a nice mom into a ranging lunatic screaming the worst things you can imagine at me. If the insult exists, I’ve heard it. Many times. Often daily.
These are the thoughts that have suddenly resurfaced so many years later. It surprises me because I’ve already done work to put them to rest. I have forgiven my mother who is still alive. I understand she did the best she could with what she had. I realize she is a World War II survivor who suffers from PSTD and severe depression with paranoia. She refuses treatment and lives in a hell of her own. That’s her choice.
But for some reason these thoughts show up in my life as an insurmountable mountain of “baggage.” Give me something to engineer or break down into steps and I will joyfully conquer it. Give me an emotional problem to resolve and I will fail. I just can’t.
Timing Is Everything
Why do these old wounds, these limitations, come up at varies times of our lives?
I am listening to a fantastic book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I urge you to get a copy immediately. Hendricks explains what I am experiencing as an upper limit problem. That’s when things are going really well until our upper limitations kick in and try to boycott those positive emotions of feeling good, being loved, and becoming even more successful.
Hendrick’s idea is so simple that you (like me) will wonder why you didn’t figure this out sooner. Whenever our lives, love, relationships, jobs, etc. are going well, our own internal limitations prohibit us from going too far into the happy zone. We actively and often subconsciously create an event that brings us back to living at the limited level that we know.
I’ve always related to the song “Wishing It Was” on the Supernatural album by Santana. Here are the lyrics that resonate most with me:
Pain never makes me cry, but happiness does
It’s so strange to watch my life go by
Wishing it was
Wishing it was more like a fantasy
Where everyone surprises me
Wishing it was
This feeling won’t last cause I cannot survive
I tell you I’ve been here before
Breaking Through To Break The Cycle
Finally, after all these years, I am ready to fully address the one part of my life that I’ve locked away because the pain is just too intense. I am giving myself the opportunity to resolve it so I can break through my upper limit. Only then will I be able to 100% step into my life’s purpose, which is to support creative ideas in entrepreneurship and women leadership.
What about you? Are you hitting your upper limit right now?
If you can relate to this article I would so love to hear from you. Will you please send me a comment or share your thoughts with our Facebook group? I know so many of us have these same kinds of issues. We want to break through our own restraints yet struggle to do so. Let’s start a safe dialog and use this time of reflection to nurture our hearts and souls, together.
Please head on over to Facebook and let me know what’s eating you or where you are stuck. Let’s support each other.
With much love,
Beate
At her lowest point, Beate Chelette was $135,000 in debt, a single mother, and forced to leave her home. Only 18 months later, she sold her image licensing business to Bill Gates in a multimillion dollar deal. Chelette is a nationally known ‘gender decoder’ who has appeared in over 60 radio shows, respected speaker, career coach, consummate creative entrepreneur, and author of Happy Woman Happy World. Beate is also the founder of The Women’s Code, a unique guide to women leadership and personal and career success that offers a new code of conduct for today’s business, private, and digital worlds. Determined to build a community of women supporting each other, she took her life-changing formula documented it all in a book Brian Tracy calls “an amazing handbook for every woman who wants health, happiness, love and success!”
Through her corporate initiative “Why Acting Like a Girl Is Good For Business” she helps companies with gender diversification training, and to develop and retain women.
If you’d like to book Beate as a speaker on New Leadership Balance or Creative Entrepreneurship for your next event please connect with me.
Hi Beate,
This email really hit home with me. I had a bad childhood with intermittent happy times. But mostly it was bad. An overly controlling, emotionally and physically abusive father, an equally controlling mother, and now just the four of us “children” are left and none of us talk to each other. I feel like my whole life has been about my family’s baggage and I either push it away and try to focus on work, or let myself become dragged down with it and have a hard time being productive when I’m sad about the family, mostly around holidays. It just sucks. I wonder if things will ever improve, but mostly I think that the best thing to do is what I’m doing: focus on work and if these people I’m accidentally related to can ever get their stuff together then my door is open. But sometimes it’s overwhelmingly sad. And it does always seem to be when I’m having a breakthrough professionally, to the next level. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Wonderful Marnie, I spoke to my sister today she believes that every adult year corresponds to a childhood year. That might explain a few of these feelings popping up. Certainly the family focused holidays bring them up with more intensity. For the first time in my life I am willing to allow these feelings and not trying to work like a maniac to make it go away. Because that’s what we usually do. Much of the discord between children are the different sides of childhood disaster and no tools to overcome them. Wishing you joy in your heart this Christmas and I am always rooting for you.
Dearest Beate, I’m just getting to read this post now while I take some be-still time myself. An extended holiday through this week. I’m proud of you, just as you are. Love yourself MORE whenever you remember to, when it’s the hardest moment, when you are feeling bottom of the barrel.
Sending you big love + lots of positive, supportive energy. You’ve got this, just let me hold up a giant mirror here & show you…xx, LFC
Thank you Heather! XX