You made it to Phase Four! It’s the end of the change cycle, and you made it to the butterfly phase. The last few weeks I’ve been talking about the challenges during the change cycle (you can catch up on past posts here). After all that hard work to get here, we just soar away into the sunset, right? 
 
But for most people, it doesn’t feel like soaring. It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or maybe it feels like massive disappointment or even a hangover. After so much struggle, arriving to the desired destination and celebrating that, we end up feeling exhausted and icky. I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I signed up for. 

If you feel this way after getting what you want, you're not alone. You're so not alone, there is a term for what's going on. It's called hitting your upper limit. You hit your limit for happiness and goodness. 
 
Gay Hendricks wrote in his book The Big Leap that your Upper Limit Problem is defined as “when you attain higher levels of success, you often create personal dramas in your life that cloud your world with unhappiness and prevent you from enjoying your enhanced success.” 
 
In other words, when you finally have the love, money, or success you’ve been working for, we create some kind of drama, ill health, unhappiness or some other block that gets in the way of truly enjoying the fruits of our labor. 
 
Feels like a cruel joke, doesn’t it? 
 
I rarely simply enjoy my good fortune. Something always has to be wrong. 
 
Hendricks believes this happens because there is an internal struggle of worthiness inside each of us. Each human being has a personal struggle with their own worth. And often when we have good things, we think we don’t deserve them.
 
Arriving at Phase Four is like riding your bike up a really big hill. To get there, you pedal hard until you finally reach the top. Your reward for all that work is that you can just coast down the other side.  
 
That period of time when you are coasting down a hill can be spent enjoying the ride or bracing for impact. Impact is inevitably going to happen and bracing for it doesn’t really change anything other than your lack of enjoyment of the ride. 
 
What if I told you it is as simple as letting go of your fear of what’s to come and be willing to enjoy what it is right now? Sounds too easy, right? 
 
The funny thing is that it really is that easy, but our brain wants to make it really complicated. It’s not complicated. 
 
Let me ask you this: Are you willing to be happy? If your answer is yes, that’s all that matters. Whatever is in your way is not as important as your willingness to be happy, so you can set it down right now. You don’t need that in order to get what you want: happiness.
 
I can almost hear your brain right now resisting this idea. It is so committed to being right that things have to be hard and dramatic that it doesn’t want to even see the easy answer. I know this about you because my brain does the same thing ALL the time. 
 
If happiness is what is important to you, take a deep breath. Then let it go. And with it, let go of all the extra weight standing between you and what you want. Just let it go, and let it be easy. 
 
When you feel yourself putting up a fight again (and believe me, it’s going to happen more than once) just notice what’s happening. We get to continually make this choice if we want to be happy. 
 
If this topic is really of interest to you, I highly recommend the book The Big Leap. It was a quick read, and one that I will return to time and again. I learned a lot about myself and my choices. 
 
Where have you had some success, but it still feels hard? Do you have a sense that you’re getting in your own way somewhere? Where can you say, “I am willing to be happy” and let the rest go? 

Comment below and share what's going on with you. I promise you are not alone. 

Lots of love,
Sarah

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Did you find this blog post helpful? Do you want to increase the love in your life? It all starts with yourself, which is why I created a simple self love meditation. Claim yours here and get more love immediately.