What's Your Happiness Limit?

​“A state of appreciation is pure Connection to Source where there is no perception of lack.”
-Abraham-Hicks

Have you ever received a compliment from someone and deflected it? It might have sounded like this,

A co-worker says, “That was a great presentation!” You answer, “Thanks, but I totally messed up the last part.”

Just as it is possible to deflect a compliment so that you don’t receive the good feeling it might give you, it is possible to deflect the good feelings of an evening, a day, a month, or a lifetime thereby putting a limit on your happiness.

We do it out of habit, out of training from childhood, or maybe because we think we don’t deserve to feel so good.

We do this by focusing our attention on negative thoughts, thoughts of denial, thoughts of judgment towards ourselves or others, thoughts of criticism of self or others, thoughts of what went wrong, what should have happened, all the things that should have been different.

What we accomplish when we do this is to bring ourselves back to our habitual emotional set-point that feels more comfortable.

In his book, The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks describes this behavior as hitting our Upper Limit for feeling good. Check out my post, “Is Bliss Too Scary?” for more detail about Gay Hendrick’s Upper Limit Problem and an example of how I  hit my Upper Limit for feeling good just recently.

How is it possible that feeling negative, feeling bad about yourself or others or the situation you find yourself in, could be more comfortable than feeling good?

The answer is that comfort in this case is about a familiar and seemingly safe emotional set-point.

We are used to feeling a certain way. At some point in our past, we came to associate feeling like this with safety. This became our emotional set point, our comfort zone. So, we make sure to always return to this same emotional set-point.

If we get to feeling too good, we come up with worries, judgments, criticisms, fights, arguments, and negative events to bring us down emotionally and bring us back to our set-point, all so that we will feel safe. Seems contradictory doesn’t it?

Yet we do it.

What can we do to change this?

Awareness of our Upper Limit for happiness is the first step to change. Once we become aware that we are falling into the pattern of critical and judgmental thoughts, or irritable, argumentative behavior we can choose a different focus of thought. We can choose to focus on gratitude and appreciation.

We can remind ourselves of all that we are grateful for and appreciate in whatever situation we are in.

For example, you and your spouse or friend had a wonderful day out together yesterday. Today you find yourself getting irritable and argumentative with them. 

Why? You hit your Upper Limit for happiness.

Instead of allowing the negativity to escalate, stop. Catch yourself and refocus your thoughts on the good stuff.
​
Think of the enjoyment of your lunch out yesterday, the sweetness of your laughter together. Look out the window at the cloudless, blue sky and listen to the bird song drifting in through the window. Feel the goodness of your life as it is right now. Breathe in those feelings of appreciation.  
 
Regularly focusing your attention on gratitude and appreciation will reset your emotional set-point to that of positivity and feeling good, allowing happiness to be your default setting.

Appreciation is a tremendously effective tool for lifting your energy out of negativity into positivity and raising your happiness limit. Today's Spiritual Toolbox can show you how.

Photo by Artem Beliaikin @belart84 on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

My friend Emily, a very wise woman, recently reminded me of an exercise taught by Abraham-Hicks, known as making a List of Positive Aspects.

This is a wonderful tool to reorient negative thinking and raise your energy level to feeling positive.

Get paper and pen. At the top of the page write the subject that you want to feel better about. If it is a person who is annoying you, write their name at the top of the page. If it is your job, your home, your financial situation, your body, write that. If it is several topics, choose one at a time and start with the one that is bothering you the most.

Now make a list of those things which you appreciate about that person, place or thing.

Ask yourself, “What do I appreciate about this person?” “What do I like about by body?” “What is good about my job, my home, my financial situation?”

Be truthful. If the only thing that you can really appreciate about that person in this moment, is that they are eliciting from you the desire to lift your energy and do this positive exercise, start with that.

It may take a few mintues to change your focus to appreciation but keep at it.

As you refocus on appreciative thoughts rather than negative thoughts, it will get easier and easier to come up with things that you appreciate about each person, place or situation.

You can use this tool anytime you feel yourself spiraling into negativity.

If you don’t happen to have writing materials at hand you can make your list mentally or verbally. Writing down your list helps with focus but positive thoughts and words work too!

Get yourself into the habit of catching and re-routing negativity by focusing on and listing positive aspects.
​
In time, this tool can support you to dissolve your Upper Limit on feeling good, and lift your emotional set-point to happiness.