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HOW TO BREAK THROUGH YOUR OWN GLASS CEILING: THE BARRIERS TO YOUR ULTIMATE SUCCESS


Do you have the feeling that you have a huge, but unrealized potential hidden within you? Do you know, there's a level of success that you have yet to achieve?


You may fear that taking that big leap of faith into your fullest potential will mean that if you fail, you fail big.

And worst of all, you fear that you in your fullest potential will still not be enough. You may feel that you have not yet achieved the level of success that, you know, deep down you can, in some aspect of your life, whether it be your career, your business, or perhaps even in your relationships. You may have felt so close on many occasions, and yet you just can't seem to make that breakthrough.


Now, if you feel like this, if you feel that you have an unrealized potential within you, then you are on the precipice of something great. You are on the brink of finally realizing your full potential.


In the book, the Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks, he talks about the ‘upper limit problem’. He describes an internal thermostat that keeps us in our zone of comfort, making it a challenge to break through our current ‘upper limits’ and into our fullest potential. He speaks about the 4 barriers that get in the way of our ultimate success.


What you need to do is identify, and then work, to remove the barriers to your fullest potential. You need to break through your own glass ceiling.


Your glass ceiling is something you sense is there, you can’t see it, but is holding you back from your biggest dreams.

Hendricks refers to each of the 4 barriers in his books and notes that most of us struggle with at least one and some of us may in fact, struggle with two.


These four barriers are all in fact, self-limiting beliefs. Something that you believe about yourself or the world that feels true but is in fact false. These barriers hold you back from shattering your glass ceiling.


The 4 barriers:

  1. The Fundamental flaw

  2. Abandonment and disloyalty.

  3. Success as a burden

  4. Outshining others.

Fundamental flaw:

This is the most common of all the barriers. It is the deep seated fear or belief that you are simply not ‘good enough’. A fear that deep down there is something intrinsically wrong with you. It is the feeling that the true essence of who you are just isn’t enough. You have a fear that if you were to step into the fullest potential of who you are, and to really ‘go for it’ in your fullest potential, that if you were to fail you would fail big. Failing in the fullest version of your potential would confirm that you are indeed flawed. That you are indeed not good enough. This fear and belief holds you back from taking the leap of faith to make a change and break through your glass ceiling.


Abandonment

This is when you worry that if you were to expand into the fullest version of yourself and into your full potential, that you would perhaps leave behind your ‘roots’. You may fear that breaking through to your ultimate success may leave behind some of your family or your friends. You worry that they would see you as disloyal and ‘getting ahead of yourself.’ If you have this belief, it will hold you back from finding freedom to step into the fullest version of your true potential. You worry about losing your friends and what your family will think.


Success as a burden:

This is the idea that with success comes an increasing burden. If you are someone who struggles with feeling that they are in some way a burden on others, then the idea of further success, can bring with it the idea of placing even more burden on others. If you were to expand into your fullest potential, then you would take up more space and potentially become more of burden. Worrying about your impact on others prevents you from taking that big leap and smashing through your own glass ceiling.


Outshining others:

This is the fear that were you to realize your fullest potential your success may in fact, detract from the success of others. This may come from the way you have been raised – if you have been told to dampen down your achievements and success in order to save the feelings of others, you may worry that reaching ultimate success would meant that you were hogging the limelight and not allowing others to shine. This false belief can hold you back from taking that big leap to break through your glass ceiling


When you have identified your barrier/s and started to address them, you will notice that quite often, as you are about to get close to your glass ceiling or upper limit, something goes wrong.


Every time, just as you're about to break through, something fails.


As Hendricks describes, each of us has an inner setting that determines how much success we will allow into our lives. This could be how much love we allow into our lives, through our relationships, or how much success we allow in through our careers and through our businesses. We get used to operating within a certain zone of success. When we are in that zone, we can't seem to get beyond it.


As soon as we get close, it produces feelings of discomfort within us. When you begin to reach that upper limit, when you get towards the edge of your zone of comfort and closer to your glass ceiling, your brain takes notice.


Your brain notices that you are moving into unchartered territory and it doesn't like it. It wants you to remain within the zone of comfort.


So it starts to send out all sorts of thoughts and feelings and behaviours to try to keep us within that safe zone - this is all in the subconscious. We aren’t usually aware of what is happening.


Before you even know it, you sabotage yourself at that point that you are about to make the critical breakthrough.


And when you sabotage yourself and things go wrong, it just provides a feedback loop to the brain to ‘prove’ that you are not good enough, that you are never going to reach that ultimate success that you dream of.


Examples of self-sabotaging behaviours that scupper our chances at true success:

When you begin to reach your upper limit and get closer to that glass ceiling, you'll notice that a few things begin to happen. For most of you you'll notice that you begin to worry a lot more.


Whenever I'm reaching some sort of breakthrough in my business or my personal life, I notice a lot more anxious thoughts than usual. I start worrying about all sorts of permutations. My brain starts telling me that perhaps, I'm not ready to take that step. That perhaps I still need to do X and Y before I can move forwards.


So, if you are worrying a lot, it is a sign that perhaps you are really close to having a big breakthrough. Worrying should not slow you down. Rather than getting stuck in lots of worrying and anxious thoughts, recognize you could be on the brink of a breakthrough and commit to moving forward. Commit to taking that big leap.


Now the other thing you may notice as you get closer to your glass ceiling is that you may start to argue more with other people and this can be especially so in relationships when you can start to pick at everything. For example: if you're in a romantic relationship and it's going really well and it gets to the point that you haven't gone beyond in any other of your committed, romantic relationships (e.g. about to get married or engaged or start a family), then as you reach your upper limit you may begin to argue a lot with your spouse. You start to blame and criticize. Your brain is not used to you about to break through your upper limit and it looks for ways to keep you stuck.


You may have noticed that just as you are about to do something great and break through your glass ceiling, something happens. You get sick. You're in an accident, you are injured. You see it happening to others all the time. They put it down to bad luck and you hear people saying, ‘I can't believe it, this always happens to me. I get so close and something goes wrong.’


Again, this is most likely to be unconscious self-sabotage.

So if you notice that you are worrying a lot more, if you are picking arguments with people, if you are suddenly becoming unwell or injuring yourself, perhaps you are actually really close to having a big breakthrough. Perhaps you are close to smashing through that glass ceiling to your ultimate success.


Rather than self-sabotaging when you notice those behaviours, it is the perfect time to stop and reflect and ask yourself if you are in fact close to breaking through your upper limit.


I encourage you to honour the feeling that you have, that within you, you do have a great and unrealized potential. I encourage you to examine which of the four barriers may be in the way between you and your ultimate success, and I ask you to begin to notice which of your behaviours may in fact be self-sabotage. Remember you are on the precipice of something. Now is not the time to ‘just about’ reach your upper limit and shrink back. Now is the time to take action

break through your glass ceiling and realize that full potential hidden within you.


If you want to take action, if you want to break through that glass ceiling and excel in your chosen field, then don't forget. you can book a free strategy call with me. Click on and of the ‘free strategy call’ buttons on my website and secure your call.

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