Breaking Through Your Upper Limit

We reframe self-sabotage as protection, then show how safety sets our limits more than talent. We share tools to regulate the nervous system, shed old identities, and use micro shifts to break the upper limit in money, relationships, and performance.

• self-sabotage as survival wearing a Gucci suit
• the upper limit as a glass ceiling of safety
• Peloton story revealing mind negotiation at thresholds
• ability vs safety in big financial and life goals
• fears of visibility and responsibility rooted in childhood
• chaos as familiar identity; drama, overspending, procrastination
• regulation before acceleration; you can’t out-hustle dysregulation
• shedding old selves floor by floor; normalization over motivation
• micro shifts, morning affirmations, and widening “a lot”
• awareness of invisible ceilings through repeated patterns
• retiring inherited scarcity and choosing thrive over survive

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Transcript

Setting The Theme: Infinite You

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Once you see what you actually are, that you're an infinite, limitless being, you'll see that nothing exists outside of you. I'm your host, Derek Grant, and this is the Pathway to Your Results Podcast.

unknown 0:25

Bro.

Defining Self-Sabotage As Protection

The Upper Limit And Glass Ceiling

Peloton Story And Mind Negotiation

Safety Vs Ability In Big Goals

Fears Of Visibility And Responsibility

Money, Chaos, And Familiar Identities

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pathway to Results Podcast. It is your boy DG. Oh man, we're gonna talk about something today that I don't probably none of us have ever heard of. It's a form of self-sabotage. Right? Self-sabotage and how we will stop ourselves from being all that we are truly capable of, right? So, first thing we need to understand, I don't want you to think self-sabotage is a form of weakness. It's not a form of weakness, right? Self-sabotage is really, um, I don't know how to say it, it's really just uh self-protection. It's survival wearing a Gucci suit. That's all it is. We sabotage ourselves, but really it's just this version of us who's afraid of becoming who it's capable of being. So it tries to protect itself. Tries to stop itself. So here's what it does: it develops this thing that we call the upper limit. The upper limit. So what this is is nothing more than your glass ceiling. It's your internal ceiling that your uh nervous system feels emotionally safest. Okay. So uh what I see is uh happens a lot of times, not only in my life, but people I work with, is uh we'll stop, and it's not because we can't go on anymore, we'll stop because our nervous system's like, oh no, we have to become somebody we've never been. I told you all the episode I was on the Peloton, and it went from, it went from uh uh this is what it did, it had the like you run to like five miles an hour, and it asked you, not see, it should have told you what it was, why I was asking you. It asked you at the beginning when you first got started, what was the best mile that you ever ran? And I put the best mile that I ran when I was in college. I put the best mile that I I said six minutes and 30 seconds. Why'd I do that? I'm not in college anymore. Well, little did I realize when I asked that, I thought it was asking for information. It was asking so it would know how to tailor the workout. So it was, it goes from um easy to moderate to challenging to hard to max. I'm over here looking at it. One point I was running so fast, it said that I was running a four-minute pace. I was never at what? Four minutes? What do you I'm not running four-minute model? Not right now, at least. But my point of this was while I was running and it was really challenging, I started to see my mind come up. I was starting to see this version of me saying, we've never done this before. We've never run this fast. We stop, stop, get off. And I started to see my mind negotiate with itself. But really, what it was doing was trying to sabotage. But really, what it was doing was just trying to protect. But really, what it was trying to do is we were reaching the upper limit. We were reaching the glass ceiling. The reason why I say it's a glass ceiling, because you have a hammer in your hand. Your glass ceilings, your limitations were meant to be broken. They were meant to be shattered. Go ahead and usher and say it to yourself. My glass ceiling, my limits were meant to be broken. So don't stop because you think you can't. This isn't that moment you have to affirm yourself. I'm safe and I'm good. This is just my nervous system right now panicking because growth is imminent. Growth triggers old survival alarms. So now when you start to look at this upper limit, your upper limit of what you believe is possible has nothing to do with your ability. It has nothing to do with it. It has to do with safety. So you think, oh man, I don't know. I like, I don't know if I can make, you know, seven figures. That's gonna be. Yes, you can. You can make seven figures. You can go ahead and make eight. You have all the capability and the ability. But the issue is that you have a nervous system inside that says, I don't know if we'll be safe. I don't know if we're safe. This is a version of me who I've never been before. Remember. Remember what the nervous system's doing. It wants to uphold the old identities. It would rather stay familiar than to become something that it's never been before. So here's the key. Here's the key, okay? Number one, you have to first identify why it feels unsafe to hit a new level. Why does it feel unsafe? So ask yourself, in this moment, I'm scared of the threshold. I'm scared of this new limit. I'm scared of going to the next level. Why? Why am I afraid? Why am I afraid if I really go hard on social media, if I really start to post these things, if I really start to go like I know, because I got a message that will help the world. I know I need to. Why am I so scared? What is it? Maybe you're afraid of being seen. Because growing up, you weren't seen. And there's a version of you, good God almighty, I don't think you hear nothing I'm saying. There was a version of you who became so accustomed to not being seen. Being seen now feels scary. Being seen feels foreign. So I won't do what I need to do so I can be seen. Also, that old version. Hold on, let me take my sweatshirt off because I'm getting hot in here. This old version of me now is like, wait a minute, we've never been seen before. Don't post that. Don't put that out there. Please don't. No. Or maybe, maybe, the version of you growing up had to become an adult before it was really ready. And you had responsibility thrown on you. And now you're terrified of doing the right or wrong thing because you emotionally didn't feel safe enough to make the right decisions because cognitively and emotionally you didn't have the tools to be able to do that at that age. And now here you are. I'm afraid of really blowing up and really getting out there and doing my thing so the world can see me because I don't want to be responsible. Oh, and I don't want to be seen. Or maybe you grew up with a program. Ah, it's too good to be true. Or maybe you had something and you lost it. You experienced poverty, or there's a sudden whiplash and you lost everything. And now it's the fear of what if we accumulate all of this and we lose it.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

So now here's what we'll do.

Success Anxiety And Drama Cycles

SPEAKER_00 7:12

We will unconsciously sabotage ourselves. Or maybe you're this, okay? Don't at me on this one. You over here growing and building, you working on yourself, and you know you can do more, you know you can be more. Are you starting to experience a little success in your life? Are you starting to your bank accounts growing? Your nets, your net worth and everything around you growing, but then you go off and do something. You go buy that car knowing you don't need that car. You go on that vacation, knowing you didn't need to spend$25,000 on no vacation. You go and do something to put yourself back in this fear-based survival mode. How many times do we do this? You'll get$100 and we'll spend 90 of it instead of just holding on to the$100. Because I felt more familiar and more safe living with$10 in my pocket than I did$100. Believe it or not, I may want the$100, but the$10 is what's familiar. That's what I'm accustomed to. So now here's what ends up hot happening. We start programming ourselves to live in chaos. And living in peace and freedom feels foreign. I know that sounds wild and it sounds crazy, but you have to understand why. Because everything that we do is a frequency. And a frequency comes with an identity. An identity does not want to die. The identity's job is to survive. So no matter what frequency it was created in, it could be created in lack, it could be created in shame, it could be created in guilt. The moment that you are about to break free from that, it will sabotage to pull yourself back into the frequency that it was created in, because it needs the frequency it was created in in order to continue to exist. So, yes, you may have the cognitive understanding, the consciousness to live in a wealthy and abundant life financially, but your nervous system still has an identity that says it feels better to have nothing. So when you get that chunk of change, you get that that opportunity, this situation comes, you will do something to kick yourself in the shin so you fall back down. And it's so unconscious. It is so unconscious, we don't even realize that we're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

So this is why a lot of people are afraid of being successful.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

I know that sounds weird. A lot of us is afraid of being successful. Oh, you oh, you're not afraid of being successful? Why don't you go ahead and do it then? No, no, no. Go do it. We don't realize that we're afraid of being successful.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Because there's a version of you deep down inside that really didn't believe that it could be successful.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

So success threatens that identity. So when I told you that survival or self-sabotage is really just survival or self-protection in a Gucci suit. It's just another mechanism that the ego's created to live in survival mode. That's all it is. Oh, the reason why you procrastinate? Okay. That too. Or how about this? You've been around people who just create drama. We call them drama queens. They just create drama. Yeah. Things are going well, you're just gonna start an argument. Why are you gonna start an argument? Because I grew up in drama. I grew up with chaos. I grew up with dysfunction. That feels normal to me. So I don't feel safe when things are peaceful. So I'm gonna go and start something. Matter of fact, I'm gonna go look through his phone right now. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna look through his phone and I'm gonna get in his DMs and I'm gonna see what he's been doing. And it he ain't done nothing to you. Why are you doing this? For what? You don't even realize it's a form of self-sabotage because maybe you didn't have the best image of what a healthy relationship looks like, and you don't believe that you're worthy of having a healthy relationship. So even though he you got you a golden retriever, man, is that what they call it? The golden retriever they they just do everything that you want. You got you, you got you a good, wholesome man. And you'll go and start some sh with him. You'll go and start some drama because this, I don't know. This is I'm not used to having a good man.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

So here's my point.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

This upper limit needs to be broken. It needs to be broken. So you got a version of you. You say, all right, what's the most you want to make? Alright, I want to make, you know, a hundred thousand dollars. You're gonna have to create a version of you that can make a hundred and one thousand. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to break the version of you. You're gonna have to put the version of you who's at 100 to sleep because 100 ain't gonna get you to 101. Do you see how this works? So this is why willpower will not fix your upper limit. You can't out hustle a dysregulated nervous system. That ain't gonna work, trust me. I'm telling you from first hand example. First hand, it ain't gonna work. When you force it, all you're gonna do is create backlash. So this is why you keep hitting the same levels repeatedly.

SPEAKER_03 12:38

Nah.

Survival Patterns Passed Down

SPEAKER_00 12:39

The key is for you to let yourself know this version of you. We're done. You're safe. It's time to go up to the next level of the house. Imagine this: you're in a five five-story house, right? And you have five different versions of you. But the version of you on level one can't go to the can't go to the second floor. Can't. So you gotta put them in their place. You gotta let them go. And then when you get to level two, yeah, this is great. But you do realize that that is the upper limit of level two. The level two version of you can't go to level three, do you see? And we have to keep busting through these floors and keep pushing up and keep going up. So now when you understand that this is actually how you reach goals, this is how we obtain goals. It's really just a shedding process. We can look at the look at a snake. You're just shedding old versions of you. Go ahead and there, you know, like I said, there's gonna be a stage where you're gonna be blind, just like the snake, when it's shedding that skin and it's losing the skin over time. It can't see. You know, if you're like, well, where do I go? What do I do? Sit still. Pause. So the key is to understand the expansion. The expansion in your life is gonna come from normalization, not motivation. It's not gonna come from like, okay, let me just push through this. No, it's you gotta regulate yourself first. You gotta regulate yourself. You have so many versions of you that were created out of survival. Do you know how many versions of you are created out of survival? We have no idea. Like, life is doing its job to bring it up. But we have so many versions of us that were created out of survival. And it doesn't, I mean, what what area of life? It doesn't matter. It shows up in all areas of life, financially, relationship-wise, uh, health-wise. Okay, I'm gonna show you. You ready? I just realized this during COVID.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

I would eat even when I wasn't hungry.

Shift From Survive To Thrive

Micro Shifts That Create Breakthroughs

SPEAKER_00 14:42

And then I would get mad at my kids for not finishing their plate. And they're like, I'm full. And they'd be like, Dad, why would I eat this if I'm not hungry anymore? Oh my goodness, I never asked that question. See, I grew up with a grandmother. When you went and poured a pitcher of tea, you better drink all of it. She used to tell me, she said, Boy, you better drink all that tea. I'm like, I will, I'm thirsty. I got halfway. I'm like, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to drink this anymore. Now I'm just Lena Leggett, she's just looking at me like, well, you won't drink all this tea. You gonna drink it. So then I started to realize this got passed down. My parents did the same thing. This got passed down, so now I won't waste. Why are you afraid to waste? Because you live in a survival mode. You don't know when you're gonna see the next thing. This is do you see how this works? So now I had to realize and catch this in my own life, and then to see that I was passing it down. I had to stop it. We do this with money. We do this with relationships, we do this with everything. So here's the key. You ain't gotta live in survival mode anymore. You ain't gotta survive anymore. You don't. You don't have to survive. Let me go ahead and tell us go ahead and close the door because they ain't trying to hear nothing I'm saying right now. You ain't gotta survive anymore. Why don't you go ahead and flip that switch off for survival and go ahead and crank that thing into thrive? I ain't here to survive. I came here to thrive. I came here to win. I didn't come over here playing not to lose. Do you see the difference in the frequency, the energy? Do you see? Think about when you do something. I can shoot a ball with the intention of making it, or I can shoot it scared to miss. Both of them are the same thing. I'm shooting the ball, but they come from different frequencies. One's coming from survival, and the other one is coming from thriving. So look at your life. Take a look at your life and see am I doing this out of survival? Am I doing this out of thriving? You didn't come here to stay the same. You came here to break the upper limits. You came here to break the upper limits. And some of them upper limits ain't really yours. Some of those upper limits were bestowed and cast and programmed into you. So you over here walking saying, oh my gosh, if my it would be my dream life if I could just make a hundred thousand. The universe looking at you, girl, don't you know you were capable of making 10 million? Huh? Do you not hear? I know, I know it sounds foreign. 10 million, you wouldn't even know what to do if you had 10 million. But that doesn't mean that you weren't capable of it. Just because you don't know what you would do with it, just because you don't know what it would feel like, doesn't mean that you weren't capable of creating it. I need you to fracture, I need you to take this hammer, take this ballot, take this thing, and break this glass ceiling that you have put on yourself. Because when I created you, I didn't create you with any limitation. I didn't create you with any uh ceilings. You put that on in your hard-headed behind. You the one who listened to what they were telling you. You the one who listened to what society said that you were gonna be. You did that. Take it back. Take it back. Take it back. Take what back? Take your power back. You did not come here to play small.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

You came here to be infinite in a finite existence.

Expanding What “A Lot” Means

Pain As The Trigger For Change

SPEAKER_00 18:02

You came here to bring heaven to earth. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, meaning I will take these infinite spiritual principles that are the DNA of my divine makeup on the other side, and I will bring this into this raggedy physical 3D world. And I will live as that. So there may be a season where you only feel like you're limited. You better get ready because the breakthrough is on its way. The breakthrough is on its way. Good God Almighty, y'all stay with me as we go just a little bit deeper. Uh so you can go ahead and get get get ready, pass the baskets around, right? You know when you were in church, you know it was it was the the pastor was about to go in when you saw the organists go move from their seat, go sit on the organ, they would they were about to, I wish I had an organist. That's what I that's what I'll do. I need to get I need to get an organist. That's what I'll do. Okay, anyway. Your breakthrough is on the way. Your breakthrough is on the way. Why do you think they call it a breakthrough? Good God Almighty. Why do they think they call it a breakthrough? Remember the last episode when we talked about how you have to have micro shifts, and those micro shifts are what created the breakthrough. What are we breaking through? What are we breaking through? What are we breaking through? You are breaking through the upper limit. You are breaking through the atmosphere. You are breaking through this glass ceiling that you have bestowed upon yourself. But how do we do it? It's doing it through the small things every single day. So before those feet hit the ground, don't you pick up that cell phone in the morning? You sit there, you lay yourself in bed for 30 to 45 seconds, and you tell yourself everything that you know you're gonna be. You tell yourself and you speak life in yourself. So when your feet hit the ground, when you start that day, you were already starting from the frequency as the version of you who came to tear up some stuff. You know Chip and Joanna Games, you know the version of you, the Magnolia, you anybody watch HGTV and they go in there on demo day and they have that sledgehammer, they go in there and they tearing down everything old. This is what we had to do with this upper limit. That upper limit was just the limitations. It was just the cage. It was the fish tank that was created by the version of you who became comfortable living in this frequency of scarcity. And scarcity at that time may have been, quote unquote, a lot, but now you've evolved. So 100,000 now ain't nothing but a monthly expense to you now. You ain't worried about 100,000. You ain't worried about no six figures. Are you kidding me? I spent that last month. That's the way you need to start thinking. This is the way we start to shatter these glass ceilings. I asked a client of mine who plays college basketball, had 30 points. I said, he actually had 34. I said, what was it? What was it? What happened? He said, I gave myself permission to stop thinking 30 was a lot. Good God, I don't think y'all hear what I'm saying. I don't think that you hear what I'm saying. Why don't you give yourself permission to stop thinking that a certain amount of money is a lot of money? Why don't you give yourself permission to stop thinking a certain amount of clients each week signing up is a lot of clients. Instead of you saying, oh man, if I can just make 100,000, why don't you start giving yourself permission to say, man, if I don't make$10 million this year, if I don't make$10 million, you may not make$10 million this year. That wasn't the point of it. The whole point of it was for you to start to dream and expand and push that upper limit. And life, here's what life's gonna do. You push the ceiling up, life's gonna help you to get up there. Life's gonna give you the challenges, life's gonna give you the setbacks, and those were your opportunities to start making those changes to start to push up. I told you on the last episode, ain't nobody gonna change until we feel pain. Ain't nobody gonna change anything until it's more uncomfortable staying the same. I don't think you hear what I'm saying. That's the this is how you create change. You look at people, it's more comfortable to stay the same than it is to change. That's most of the people. When we go through a hardship and we know life ain't working, as we would say, life be life it, it is more uncomfortable for me to stay in this dirt. It is more uncomfortable for me to live as the victim. It is more uncomfortable for me not to be accountable. It is more uncomfortable for me to keep living in this lower frequency than it is for me to change right now. So I'm gonna go ahead and change. And when I tell you your breakthrough's coming, here's why your breakthrough's coming. Because growth is the natural mechanism of this universe, the ceiling could not stay there forever.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

It couldn't hold you down forever.

Seeing The Invisible Upper Limit

SPEAKER_00 22:46

You couldn't stay in this lower state forever. This is why my mama used to say to me, Mama, I know you're gonna listen to this. She used to say, This too shall pass. This too shall pass. Now I understand deeper what she's saying. You know what she was saying? Even this thing that is heavy, you will grow the spiritual muscle to be able to deal with it. Even though this seems like this is too much, you will expand your capacity to be able to move through this. This too shall become beneath you at some point. And here's the deal when you start realizing level one, level two, level three, level four, five, whatever it is, eventually the thing that you were looking up to will be the thing that you look down at. So you used to think that was hard. But now look at you. You said, I wish life was that easy again. You used to think that was a lot, and now you say, shit, we spend that on a meal. Ain't worry about that. You see, but we forget. We have been shattering our upper limits our whole life. What happens when you consciously do it? So here's what I want you to do. I want you to find what your upper limit is.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

What's a lot to you? What's a lot?

Worthiness, Visibility, And Responsibility

Retire Survival Mechanisms

The Question Of Becoming And Letting Go

SPEAKER_00 24:10

What's uh good to you? Start to see what you believe you're worthy of. I'm here to tell you, you're worthy of any and everything. You're worthy of having it all. You can have it all. No, I'm telling you. You can have it all for sure. I don't I don't subscribe to this nonsense is too good to be true anymore. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing it. I did that in my whole life. And I say, well, why is it too good to be true? Why is there lack? How where's this coming from? I'm creating it. There's no such thing as lack. I can have it all. I can do a job and have an occupation that I love to do. I can make money from it and provide resources and help the world. I can I can have time freedom. I can do all of these things. You don't have to wedge yourself in a box because society's done a wonderful job of making you think. Making you think that you can only have one or the other. I can have this and that instead of this or that. So for everybody here, if you have ears, please hear me. The first upper limit is to make you think that there was limitation in your life. We gotta shatter that. You can have it all. Write down everything that it is that you want. And notice how uncomfortable that it feels. Notice how far off it feels. Focus on that. And when you get that, spend some time with it. Ask yourself, where did this belief come from? Why do I believe this is a lot of money? Why do I believe this this is a hard, this is hard for me? Where did that come from? Start to become aware of that. And this is the deconstruction of the upper limit right now. That's what you'll be, you'll start you'll start the process of it. So here's the key. As with everything, you wanna have to have awareness. You gotta have awareness of what the upper limit is because the upper limit is invincible, it's a glass ceiling, you can't see it, you see through, you keep bumping your head, but you don't know what it is. I remember, yeah, forget I was in seventh grade, I went to somebody's party, it was like a birthday party, and they had the the sliding glass doors to go from the kitchen to the patio. And this poor girl, I don't remember her name, but I remember how she looked when she ran into that study. She walked right into it, she didn't know that it was closed. She couldn't see it. There was a glass invisible barrier, and it was her face right there on that glass. I was like, oh man, but this is what we're doing right now with our own upper limits. We don't even realize that we're creating limitations in our life because we're living in survival. So start to feel. But more importantly, start to look at your action. When people say to me, I just know I can do more. I know I'm capable more. You know what that tells me? Oh, you over here keep hitting your head on the upper limit and you're not even aware of what it is. What is more? Well, I know I can I know I can make a million, but I'm only making 50,000. Okay. Maybe there's a version of you who doesn't believe that it's worthy of a million. Maybe there's a version of you who's afraid of being seen, and if it makes a million, it may be seen more. Maybe there's a version of you that uh if it makes a million, it may be responsible, and it doesn't want to be responsible because it's too afraid of making the wrong decisions for other people. Start to see who these versions are, these ghosts that are haunting you. They're ghosts, that's all they are. When you start to find these, you'll see that each version of it had a built-in mechanism to protect itself. And that built-in mechanism showed itself through sabotage. So the procrastination, the stopping, the not doing, uh, the negative self-talk, these are all just survival mechanisms. You're not weak. You're not weak. You're not weak at all. It's protecting itself. So go ahead and tell them to take off that zoot suit. Tell that version of you to take off that Gucci uh uh uh uh pip suit that it got on. Go ahead and tell them, take it off. Got the now later gators with the canon, and take it off. Take it off. We're done. I'm not living a survival anymore. I came here to thrive. I came here to be everything that I know I am. And in order to do that, I'm gonna have to fracture and destroy this limitation that was self-imposed.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

And I'm gonna leave you with this. That's the only reason why you came here anyway. The first question that consciousness asked itself was who and what can I become? That was it. So ask yourself that. Who can I become? Who can I become? And what do I have to let go of to get there? What do I have to let go of to get there? And when you can start to face that, it's gonna be uncomfortable, it's gonna be painful.

Closing And Promise Of Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Because there's a death that's taking place. Go and let him die. Go ahead and start singing Amazing Grace. Go ahead and start saying the funeral procession has begun. Go ahead and let it. And eventually there's gonna be a new you that's born, that's created. And you're gonna be like, wow, this is great. And then it will go through the same phases of transformation as the last version of you. And then when you start to get the hang of it, you'll start to realize that there's a formula, there's a process. We won't get into it this podcast, but I'm gonna teach you the physics of transformation. There's actually a process of transforming, and when you know it, you can start to transform at will. You can break glass ceilings at will, you can hit limitations. Actually, there won't be any limits. But until then, you know I wish you nothing but the best. The pathway to your results.