IT 021: Why I Got Stuck in An Elevator (Literally) + How To Beat the Fear of Success
Click here to listen to today's Podcast on my website, and click here to listen to it in iTunes. Or, enjoy the transcript below. As you may know by now, I am a huge fan of teaching what I am currently learning and implementing in my life with full transparency, and this episode is no exception!
Today, I’m talking about how to identify and deal with the fear of success, which is often a hidden & underlying saboteur to happiness & real, lasting fulfillment.
Like many of you, the past few months have been busy & very transformative for me. Many of my clients and peers have made major moves, life changes, career changes and in general, positive life movement as well.
Two weeks ago, I had a minor surgery (which thank the Universe, went amazingly well), and last week, Michaelangelo (my husband), Ella (my Persian kitten!) and I officially moved to our dream city, San Diego.
Now I live in a luxurious, 5-star resort-style community surrounded by palm trees and the sun, and I have an incredibly fulfilling business where I get to serve women who uplift and inspire me with their transformations. And I literally just spent part of Monday afternoon lounging poolside.
While everything was falling into place and aligning – my business, my lifestyle, upcoming travel plans, my finances, my family – I found myself having moments of disbelief and fear.
I was sabotaging my happiness before I even allowed myself to feel it
More than once, I’ve thought … do I really live here? Is this possible?
And then I thought… what’s the catch? Is this all going to be taken away from me? Is this too good to be true? Can I really afford to live here and sustain this lifestyle?
Old Money Beliefs & Programming LOVE coming up when you're ready to feel joy - it did for me.
So I started distracting myself and mentally checking out with the usual suspects – social media, food, texting. I even was tempted to start playing WoW again (which stands for World of Warcraft, a massive online game that I was addicted to in college – I know you learn more about my weird quirks every Podcast)!
And while I’ve experienced moments of presence, incredible gratitude, and even bliss, I’ve also noticed that I’ve been distracting myself and shying away from feeling really, really good. The second it starts to feel good, I distract myself, ignore my beautiful surroundings and choose to focus on some super minor problem (like what to get for dinner).
I even got stuck in our elevator alone for about 10 minutes without my phone about an hour after we moved, which was really scary! I’m convinced I somehow manifested this on my mission to self-sabotage my happiness. (As a side note, if you ever get trapped in an elevator and find yourself panicking, sit down and breathe through it as you wait for help!).
Self-sabotaging is VERY real, lightworkers. To the point where you can make yourself get stuck in an elevator.
If you’re questioning if this is even possible? The answer is YES, it is SO possible! One of my business mentors, Marie Forleo, talks about how she used to always get physically ill after a successful business launch.
Or have you ever heard of people who’ve won the lottery (sometimes, they’ve won numerous times!) and then shortly after become bankrupt?
Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Think of a time when you manifested something you really wanted, or just felt really, really good and proud of yourself. Maybe it you found an amazing home, carved out extra time, made a surplus of money, got a raise, a promotion, a man, lost a ton of weight, experienced a really powerful meditation … and then something bad happened after to pull you out of your joy.
You pick a fight with your spouse, you have a panic attack, you feel stupid or experience self-doubt, embarrassment of what your friends and family might think, you check your Facebook feed to find bad news, you eat unhealthy food, you call energy vampire. That’s the fear of success in action.
So what’s going on here?
Why do we fall into a trap of pulling ourselves down when things go really right?
It has to do with the theory of the upper limit, which is a natural sort of brainwashing that we all have to keep ourselves safe. Logically, we all know that we should be enjoying ourselves. But often, the underlying saboteur, the fear of success, comes out and disguises itself as all kinds of things.
If you want to learn more about this topic, check out the book The Big Leap to learn more about this concept.
In short, we can and often do sabotage ourselves if we feel too good.
What does “feeling too good” mean? It really varies person to person, but the idea is that we have a set point for how to feel. Many of us are familiar with how it feels to go below our set point – we feel bad, we get sad, we cry, we get angry. But what we don’t realize is that we also have a upper limit to how good we can feel.
So what can we do to expand this upper limit?
How do we crash the ceiling, which I’m assuming if you’re listening to this, is important to you?
I have 3 tips for you based on what’s helped me ground deeper into my joy. Read all 3, and choose the one that resonates with you the most when your upper limit comes up, or use all 3!
First, I worked through a process similar to The Cure, which is a tool that I use regularly to banish fears (you can get your free copy of the workbook at at monalisaondevilla.com if you haven’t already). But instead of focusing on a fear and releasing it, I focused on feeling good for as long as possible. I let myself feel amazing and light and giddy for as long as possible, instead of distracting myself. Remember, what you focus on expands. This is a powerful tool to manifest more of what you want. If you’re an empath like I am, it’s especially important for you to expand your joy using this technique. Realize that you feel very deeply – both the good, and the bad, and it can feel like a pendulum that I’ve often heard described as a blessing and a curse. If you’ve experienced deep sadness and loss in your life, these feelings can also come up when you experience joy, as they are two sides of the same coin.
Second, I grounded myself in gratitude and gave a huge thank you to my angels & the Universe for bringing me exactly what I wanted and more, on such an amazingly fast schedule! Give a shoutout to your higher power and feel the love coming right back at you and receive it. Write it down and get clear on exactly what you’ve manifested and what you’re grateful for.
Lastly, I tuned into the visualization that I used to manifest my life today. When I did that, I realized that all of the good feelings that are coming up are not foreign to me – in fact, I planned to feel them on purpose using my Core Desired Feelings, which is a foundational Desire Map principle I use in my 1-on-1 work. They felt more familiar when I remembered that I did this on purpose, and my primary intent was to feel good and that it was now my responsibility to receive and feel good!
Alright lightworkers, that’s all I have for today! I hope that this has served you and that the next time you feel a sense of anxiety or gloom raining on your parade, you remember this episode. See you next, next Tuesday for the next episode of Intuitive Tuesday.