Our ‘upper limit’ problems
After I gave my TedTalk in 2013 in the black box theater at Barnard, I clambered up the stairs to hug my 4 friends who were in the audience. They were tearful, joyful, congratulatory.
“I cried,” one said. “That was so great!”
A woman was standing quietly on the side, observing me. After all the embraces were done, she approached.
“You should write a book” she said declaratively. “Here is my card.”
I reacted. Me? Write a book? What would I write a book about? Was I even worthy of that exercise: writing a book? Who would read it? Questions abounded.
“My email is on the card.” She was a literary agent with the David Black agency in Brooklyn. I didn’t follow up for years.
What I was doing was a prime example of the 4 ways we, as human beings, diminish ourselves when the light gets too bright. Here I was, coming off this great high of delivering my first TedTalk. Everyone was complimentary, and I had to take the ‘edge off’ the goodness, by questioning it.
Guy Hendricks outlines the 4 ways we do this as human beings in his book “The Big Leap”
🔴 1. The belief that we are fundamentally flawed.
🔴 2. The belief that if we got really successful, we would leave people behind (our family, our friends)
🔴 3. More success would mean we would be a bigger burden to those around us.
🔴 4. That we would outshine people around us and make him or her look bad.
We all have inner thermostats, and although we may go higher or lower in our emotions, spirits, we always settle back down at a stasis. Which one are you subscribing to right now?
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