Upper Limit or Out of Alignment? How to Tell the Difference

We are gonna talk about upper limits today because I think this is something you may have experienced or may experience in the future. As you are manifesting, you know, the life of your wildest dreams and the business of your wildest dreams and more abundance than you’ve ever manifested before, there’s a good chance as you expand, you may hit an upper limit.

So we are gonna dive into what an upper limit is, how you can work through it. And also help you clarify. Am I hitting an upper limit or is this decision actually not aligned? Did I make a mistake? Am I actually going for something that’s not quite right for me? This is something that I recently was asking myself as I was freaking out after making a huge decision and woke up at like four in the morning with.

All kinds of anxiety, all of this fear flooding me thinking I made a massive mistake and that next day I really thought about it and as I sat down and started journaling, I was asking myself, is this a mistake? Is this something that. Out of alignment or am I actually just hitting an upper limit? And so I came back to some of my trusted questions that I like to ask myself when I’m trying to discern that.

And I did some journaling on it and. I personally revealed that it was in fact an upper limit. So we’re gonna talk about the differences between the two. What the heck is an upper limit? What does it mean to be out of alignment? How do you tell the difference if it is an upper limit? How do you work through it if it is a misalignment?

What do you do? How do you pivot? And sometimes it’s a combination of each. Sometimes it’s like an 80% upper limit, and then maybe there’s a portion of it, like 20% that is out of alignment. And that’s where you can make a small tweak to, uh, ground yourself and feel so much better about your decision. And I wanted to talk about this because once you understand the differences, and you can discern whether you are having an upper limit.

Or you are out of alignment, you can move forward a lot faster and you can work through it and you can make decisions a lot faster. So let’s talk about the differences. Number one, you may have never even heard of an upper limit, and I hadn’t heard of an upper limit, um, until. About, yeah, it is, uh, several years ago now until I read The Big Leap, which is a book by Gay Hendricks.

And, um, that book talks about when will we take a big leap, right? A big leap in our life, meaning. We are expanding, we are leaping into something new. If you’re manifesting something new, if you invest in something that is going to expand you, if you make a big decision, that’s gonna be life changing. If you make a decision in your business that is from your future identity, but maybe you’re not quite caught up to that yet, but you know it’s in alignment with your future self and all this.

Sudden you start freaking out and you feel out of alignment and you probably have a lot of anxiety coming up, or you notice that you’re wanting to sabotage it, you’re wanting to turn backwards, you’re gonna wanting to go back on your decision. This is an upper limit, my friend. So basically the way that Gay Hendrix describes it in the Big leap is that we all have this energetic set point, and I talk about this all the time with money, how we have a money, a financial set point, which is like our subconscious comfort zone when it comes to money.

But we have it for many things. We have this subconscious set point when it comes to the amount of love that we allow in our lives, the amount that we are willing to risk. Steve, the amount of what Gay Hendrix talks about in his book is love, joy, and abundance, right? We have a set point of what our comfort zone is, what we are used to, and when we go beyond that, right?

It’s like our nervous system freaks out, even if it’s a positive thing, even if you’re stepping into something really exciting and really new and towards your dreams, if it’s not with. In your normal comfort zone, your body can start to freak out. Your brain can start to freak out. Your anxiety can kick in.

Fear can come in. All of the thoughts that come along with that of, oh my God, did I make a major mistake? Should I turn backwards? Is this the wrong thing? Or you might notice old habits creeping in where. You’re doing things that like just seem like your total past self, and it’s like, it feels like there’s this energy that’s trying to pull you backwards into who you’ve been in the past, right?

And bringing you back into what your old sort of unconscious comfort zone was. Right, and none of this is conscious. It’s typically all subconscious, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t recognize it. Notice what’s going on, and do some grounding things to help you reset and expand into a new set point.

And we’re gonna talk about how to do that, but. An upper limit is basically when you’re expanding, and I think of it as growing pains. That’s what it is. It’s like you jumped into something new and there’s a part of your brain that’s freaking out, but it is still in alignment, right? It is still what you know is that next move for you.

It is still you stepping into your dream. So I’m gonna tell you how to discern. Whether it is an upper limit or out of alignment, but I wanna talk a little bit about what a misalignment or something that is out of alignment looks like, that looks more like I’m not let up by this decision, right? This choice is just simply not in alignment for me.

If I think about myself in the future. Doing this thing, living this thing, it does not excite me. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels like there’s no spark within you that’s moving in that direction. It feels like it’s out of alignment from your dreams, right? It’s just not quite right, or you just know it’s not the best decision for you in this moment, so it doesn’t feel super.

Fearful when it’s out of alignment, it doesn’t feel anxiety provoking and like buzzy the way that an upper limit feels, but it feels more heavy dead end. There’s no motivation. It doesn’t, doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel right. And I actually have two examples of clients who have stepped into. The same thing in their businesses.

One of ’em had some of that energy coming up of, oh God, what did I get myself into? What did I do? But she was upper limiting. The other client that stepped into it had a similar thought. What did I get myself into? But she was out of alignment. So similar circumstances, but two different energies behind them.

And I wanna tell you the differences. So number one, client A, who stepped into this new thing but was actually upper limiting. Decided to create a group program for the first time. She was moving from one-on-one into group, right? And so once we explored, because she said, Jamie, I’m freaking out. Oh my God, I have so much anxiety.

There’s so much coming up around this. What am I doing? Should I just go back to one-on-ones? It’s easier. I know how to enroll it. I know how to do it. And I said, okay, breathe for a second. Number one, the question that I asked her was this. Do you see your future self doing this? Like when you think about your future having a full group?

Are you aligned with that? Like, does that light you up? Does that feel good? And she was like, yes, I love it. I would love to have it. It’d be amazing if it just all worked out. But she was just having fear of stepping into that identity. But it was actually like seeing her in that in the future made her feel lit up and excited and alive.

And that’s how I knew it was just a fear coming up of. Fear of those growing pains of expanding and of stepping into that new identity of holding space for more than one people. And there’s some growing pains that can come along with that because you have to learn how to hold a new container, right?

And so when I helped her see that, no, this is an alignment and you’re just hitting up against some growing pains, and let’s work with those limiting beliefs that are coming up around it. Things like, oh God, I can’t hold more than three people, and. Oh gosh, what if they don’t get value from it? And oh my gosh, what if it’s just too much to handle?

What if it’s too much work for me? I had to help her kind of piece through and challenge those limiting beliefs and see it in a new perspective where she felt safer to expand into that identity, but I could see that it was an upper limit because she still felt, felt so lit up. By the vision of it, it still felt right, there was still desire there versus client B who did the same thing.

She moved from one-on-one into group coaching, but she started having these questions like, did I make the wrong decision? So I decided to explore that with her. And the thing with her is that she said, you know what? I actually just. Love deep diving one-on-one. So much better. The reason that I decided to do a group is because I thought that’s the only way to scale as a coach, right?

She’s like, that’s what my mentor told me, that you basically have to go from one-on-one into groups, but she’s like, I really don’t like it. I said the same question. I said, well, does it light you up thinking about it? If you had a full group, how does that feel? She’s like, honestly, not good. She’s like, but if I think about having a full roster of like one-on-ones and being able to make the kind of money I want, that feels really good to me.

She’s like, that’s actually what I want. I love doing that. And that’s when I knew we had to work on her limiting beliefs around being able to make the kind of money she wanted, doing business in the way she wanted, being able to. Scale as a one-on-one coach and letting go of the idea that she had to have a group, right?

So that’s where I saw, oh, this isn’t just an upper limit, this is a misalignment. So one of the questions you can ask yourself if you ever get in this situation where you’re wondering, am I upper limiting or am I not aligned, is go to your future self, right? Go to the you, let’s say six months, one year down the line, and let’s say it’s done.

You have that. Thing that you have, you know, that you’re stepping into. How does it feel? Is there an aliveness in it? Is there a motivation? Does it feel right? Does it feel like it’s one of your dreams? Because if so, you know, you’re just working through some upper limits and there’s some limiting beliefs coming up.

Up that are hitting up against you, and it’s just time to work through those versus if it doesn’t, it feels dull. Let’s say the vision feels dull. You’re like, no, I know this actually is not what I want, but I thought I had to have it. Or someone told me this is the next best thing, or I thought this is what I was supposed to do.

That’s when you know you need to like look at your limiting beliefs about, you know, you being able to have what it is you truly desire. And that’s when it’s time to get really honest with yourself and you know. Get honest and truthful about what is it that you really desire? If you could have what it was you really wanted, what do you really want?

What does your soul want? Not what does society want for you, or what are you told or what did you think you should have? But what do you truly want? If there’s no rules, if no one’s judging you, if you’re not judging yourself, time to get honest with yourself. Right? So that’s one of the ways that you notice the difference.

And for me, I’ll share a personal story of what I recently went through where I had to ask myself these questions. So if you’ve been following along with the podcast, you probably know at this point that I have been manifesting one of my biggest dreams, which is to move to Hawaii. And I mean, I am manifested in a way where.

It’s straight up what’s been on my vision board. It is wild true miracles, the way everything’s been coming together. It has been quite a journey, but oh my gosh, am I stepping into my dreams and into. So much expansion and so much of what has been on my vision board, and it is the most wild thing because we miraculously manifested our dream home.

When I say we, it’s me and my husband. It’s both of our dream and literally manifested the house that was on our vision board. It’s not the exact house, but it looks so much like it. That. I sent the pictures that said, I found this vision board that I did six years ago, and I sent those images to one of my friends and she said, wait, isn’t that the house?

Like you just sent me pictures of your house? I said, no, that’s not it. I’m like, that’s how much it looks the same. And I was pitching myself. I’m like, oh my gosh, if this doesn’t prove that manifestation works, I don’t know what does. Because we manifested the exact vision and more that we have held. In our frequency and in our vision and just held space for, and held knowing for.

But here’s the wild thing. We finally manifested it after this wild journey all summer of trying to find our house. And just a couple episodes back, I talked about how we manifested our dream home. Well, what I didn’t mention was what happened the day after we manifested it. It. So the day of, I had so much energy going through my body.

I was ecstatic. I was texting everyone. I was telling everyone about it. I was sending the videos, I was sending the pictures. I was like, whoa, look at my house. Oh my God, this is how it happened. Oh my God, I can’t believe it. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? I had. So much energy I was on, it felt like I was high on something.

Right. And I’ve never done drugs, but I would imagine that’s what you feel when you’re high on some kind of drug or something. ’cause I just had all the energy pouring through me and I just couldn’t believe it. I was thrilled. I was so grateful. I was so excited. I. Was so happy. Like every elevated emotion of this energy of celebrating and feeling like we did it and it’s done and oh my God, after months and months and months and months and months and months and months of looking for this house and dreaming of it for years and years and years, here it is.

Holy cow. How did this happen, that kind of energy? Well, the next day, as I mentioned, I woke up at like four in the morning with. Extreme anxiety, extreme fear of OWTF. Have we done? What are we thinking? What are we doing? This is way more expensive than we were planning on, than we were thinking. We would, you know, do and go for.

Do we even need this extra studio? Oh my gosh. Can’t we just make it work in the main house? We can just put two bedrooms together. Put Josh’s studio in there. I was freaking out. I’m like, is this the dumbest decision we are ever making, renting a house for this much? Money. I was freaking out, and it wasn’t just my brain offering those thoughts, it was my whole body and I suddenly just felt exhausted.

My energy went from one extreme to the next, and like I said, I felt like I was on a high the day before and I was definitely on a low the next day. And I, you know, when Josh finally woke up, I started telling him, I’m like, I don’t think we should do this. Do you think we should? Let’s think this through.

’cause we were literally about to sign the lease that day. And I’m just like, Josh, I don’t know. This is crazy. You know? And. This, or I didn’t say, this is crazy. I said, is this crazy? Are we making a huge mistake? Is this gonna be over our head? Is this gonna cause X, Y, or Z? Is this gonna cause stress, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right? So my brain was just offering all of these fearful thoughts, and I really believed him in that moment. And he was the one who mentioned, Jamie, what the heck you. We’re so excited yesterday. What happened? What happened? And then one of my best friends in Italy was like, Jamie, what is going on? ’cause I started describing this to her.

She’s like, I think you might be upper limiting. And then Josh said, I think you might be upper limiting here. Right? And you know, in some ways he was a little concerned about a little couple of the aspects. Too. ’cause you know, my brain’s like, we haven’t even sold our house yet. How are we gonna sign a lease on this?

And again, it’s more than we were like planning on paying, but it felt so right and it felt like so expansive. That’s the thing. It felt expansive. And my brain was saying, this is more than we need. Which is why I was trying to say, maybe we don’t need that separate studio. Maybe we just shove his studio in two bedrooms and then make my office somewhere else.

You know, trying to make it work and navigate it so that it wasn’t, you know, the, that price. And so I took a deep breath and I started asking myself the questions that I asked myself when I’m trying to identify an upper limit. Because in that moment I wasn’t aware until my friend pointed it out, until Josh pointed it out.

’cause they’re like, you went from one extreme to the next. So I thought, okay, I gotta sit down and journal here. So what I did was. I ask myself these questions.

The first one that was just the most PO powerful is when I imagine myself living in this decision six months from now, do I feel expanded or contracted? That one was really eye-opening because I felt expanded. It felt so right. It felt like, yes, it feel truly expanded when I thought about that vision, and that’s when I’m like starting to get onto something.

I think this might be an upper limit. And then the next question I ask myself is, does this feel like the next version of me or like I’m forcing something. And the answer was, it feels like the next version of me. It just feels like I am stretching myself into a new identity. I am stretching myself into an expansion, right?

This is growing pains. That’s what it felt like. The next question that I asked myself was, if fear wasn’t in the picture, what I still want this. And the answer was yes. Right? And then I did that future visualization where I thought the same question that I had asked my clients of, okay, in six months from now, if I see myself there, how does it feel in my body?

And I felt. So good. I felt so open. It feels like the next version of me, it feels like, oh my God, it’s gonna be so nice to have my own office where I can record. And Josh’s studio, that’s separate. ’cause we both record, right? He’s a recording musician. I record podcasts and lives with my clients and all the things, and it just feels like, wow, that’s gonna feel so good.

It’s gonna feel like convenience. It’s gonna feel amazing. And I’m allowed to have this, I’m allowed to have this, right? It’s an expanded version of me. So that’s when I was clear it’s an upper limit, right? Because I would know that it was out of alignment if it just felt dull. If it just felt like, you know, this is not really what I want, or this isn’t the full picture.

But I will tell you this because I did get into chat GPT and start asking it some questions. Sometimes that gives you some powerful prompts. So I was asking it some questions about upper limiting and kind of trying to decipher through some things. And one of the things that came up is it said, you know.

What if this is a portion of this as an upper limit, maybe there’s a portion that’s out of alignment. Is there any portion of this that’s out of alignment? And what I realized was this. Uh, majority of this feels super good. 80% of this feels super good. What didn’t feel good was the timeline because we were about to sign a lease for October 15th, which was the date that I mentioned in the podcast episode.

But what I realized was that felt stretch. Even though I was super excited to move over there, it felt like we were gonna have to do so much in a short period of time. It also felt like I’m gonna have to put off my launch what I, which I wanted to, you know, do, um, a, a big launch for the money manifestation movement and do a big live event.

And I was like, oh my gosh. I’d either have to put that. Off, or I would have to, you know, change the date to some later in the, and that didn’t feel an alignment. Right. And also, our house is still for sale, so I was like, as long as we can stretch it so that we’re not paying the rent and our mortgage on the house, and we can get this house sold as we’re manifesting.

That all feels better. If we could even push it by two weeks, I suddenly felt so much better. So there was 20% which was out of alignment, which was the timing. It was the date, and once I solved that, so much of that fear and anxiety lessened it just. Started feeling right. It felt in alignment and I realized, oh my gosh, I just have to do some regulating of my system and really tell myself that I’m safe to expand, that this is right, that everything’s working out, that I don’t have to know the whole how, but this is the vision, and it wouldn’t come to me.

It wouldn’t be available, and it wouldn’t. Feel like the right move in terms of how I felt the day before in terms of seeing myself in that vision and feeling really lit up in my body. It wouldn’t be the case if it wasn’t right for me, so I just had to get my nervous system on board and create some safety for it there.

And so that is my recommendation. If you feel like, oh my gosh, I’ve just stepped into this big thing. And I’m kind of freaking out. It might be that you signed up for a big retreat, that on some level your ego knows is about to expand you. It might be that you’ve invested in something that’s gonna be really expansive.

Maybe it’s going to create a lot of abundance. Maybe it’s gonna create a lot of business growth, right. It and your brain starts freaking out. Maybe it’s that you’ve made a big decision that’s gonna change your life, like maybe starting a family or starting a business, or starting another business. Or maybe it has to do with partnership, right?

It can be so many different things, but it’s always like when you’re about to move into an expanded version of you that’s going to take an I identity upgrade, that’s when we tend to upper limit. And that is when you really need to catch it. Not listen to those fearful thoughts, but catch it and regulate meaning.

Do more grounding. Go outside. Remind yourself that you’re safe. Put your hand on your heart and breathe. Come back into this moment. Do some EFT tapping. Do some journaling, do some thought work. Take yourself a nice salt bath, right? Whatever you need to do to ground your energy and get yourself into a place of safety.

And one of the best ways is just reminding yourself, I am safe right here, right now. I am safe. This is the right decision. I’ve made the right decision. I’m just expanding. And when your brain understands that you’re just expanding, there’s a different context. It’s no longer like, oh God, did I make the worst decision of my life?

Oh no. Do I need to turn around? Right? You just see it for what it is, which is just expansion. So all of that is. Super, super helpful. Now I wanna talk about the difference in terms of how it tends to feel in your body when it’s an upper limit versus when it is misalignment. So when it’s an upper limit, it tends to feel more active.

Like I said, I woke up with a ton of anxiety and racing thoughts. There’s a buzziness sometimes right underneath it though. There’s excitement and aliveness, right? So when you still think about it, is it still your desire? Yeah. Right. So underneath it is excitement, but there’s a lot of anxiety that’s coming in.

There’s a lot of fear. There’s racing thought, so it feels like fast moving oftentimes when it’s an upper limit or this desire to go backwards and you know, do things that you’ve done in the past or kind of start to sabotage it, and you have urges that you haven’t had in years, right? Or you start overeating or things that you’re like, I don’t even have this habit or behavior anymore.

What the heck is going on? Right? That’s when you know it’s time to ground yourself. Now, you know it’s a mismatch or out of alignment when it just feels dead end, when it feels heavy, when it feels draining, when there’s no excitement for it. It’s just feels like it’s fizzled. It’s just like, I like to think of it.

It feels like there was a fire inside of you for it, but it got blown out. There’s no fire. It’s not there. There’s no motivation. There’s no, yes. There’s not a soulful yes there that’s out of alignment. Right. Um. So you can check in on these things if you’re ever kind of going through this, or if you ever make a big decision and then fear drops in afterwards.

Or let’s say you start expanding, like you decide you’re gonna host a retreat somewhere and you know, you. Start having people enroll and you’re like, what? Who am I to run a retreat? Is this gonna go well? Is this gonna happen? Oh God, who am I? Can I do this alone? Right. That kind of stuff is just upper limiting, so you just have to remind yourself that you are being guided, that you are.

Safe that you’re meant for this, that it’s happening, that you don’t have to control it. It’s all unfolding on your behalf. It’s all working out. These are all my mantras, y’all. So anyways, I hope this is helpful because it is normal and the more you expand, the more you’ll probably experience this and the more you’ll be able to catch it and say, oh my gosh, here I am, upper limiting again.

Or maybe people around you will notice, especially if you go from one extreme to the next like I did where I was buzzing, telling everyone in the world about it, and then the next day thought I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Classic upper limit, my friend. So anyways, I hope this was helpful for you and just remember if you really wanna get the answers, the place to ask.

Is your body, not the anxiety that’s buzzing around in your body, but go to your stomach. Go to your heart, go to your soul, your spirit, and ask, what do I most want? What do I know is true for me? And listen for the whisper. It’s not gonna be the racing thoughts that are right. It’s gonna be the whisper. The whisper’s always, always, always gonna tell you the truth.

It’s gonna say, I don’t know if this is right for me, or it’s gonna say. I want this. I’m just scared. This is just scary, right? So just tune into that whisper and side and listen to that. And if you want support with this, this is a huge thing I work with clients on because a lot of my clients, not a lot, all of my clients.

Are in major expansion in so many different ways. When you get into this work, you really start growing in a big way and having a coach, having you know, or a friendship or someone there to guide you who can say, Hey, I think this is what’s going on. Let me hold your hand through it. Let me hold space for you.

Let’s like work with this fear, but not give into it. Let’s hold space for the fear. Let’s comfort it, but let’s keep going. That’s everything. So if you’d like that support, you can come join me inside of one of my coaching programs. I would love to support you. You can come into the movement, um, or if I’m offering anything else at the time you’re listening to this, come on in.

I would love to support you because this is a big piece of the work that I do with clients. It’s just helping you get in touch with what’s real, what’s real for you. All right, my friend. I’m sending you all my love and I am sending you graceful expansion, which is totally possible when you learn how to regulate your nervous system.

All right, my friends talk soon.