Kickstart Your Portfolio Career: Part 4 of 5
How To Identify Your Upper Limits & Move Into Your Zone of Genius By Leveraging Your Human Design
Welcome to the fourth installment of a five-part miniseries, 'Kickstart Your Portfolio Career.' On August 27th, I am hosting a Free Workshop where I will dive deeper into each topic and what it actually takes to launch your portfolio career while maintaining your day job.
In this week’s installment of ‘Kickstart Your Portfolio Career’, I am writing all about how our sneaky upper limits can show up in our Portfolio Careers & keep us playing small.
As a refresher, here is what we have covered so far:
Week 1 - How Habit Formation & Identity work play a pivotal role in launching my Portfolio Career
Week 2 - How I learned to make aligned decisions & discover what work lights me up
Week 3 - How I Built a Financially Stable Portfolio Career & Made Your Side Hustle, My Main Hustle
I got 99 Problems & The Upper Limit Problem is Only One of Them
You may have heard of the Upper Limit Problem, but for those who haven't, I want to introduce you to a framework (and book) that transformed my life. During my coaching accreditation, I encountered "The Big Leap" by Gay Hendricks.
This book delves into the concept of self-imposed limits and how individuals can overcome them to reach their highest potential. It introduces the idea of the "Upper Limit Problem," where we sabotage our own success by subconsciously regulating the amount of happiness, love, and fulfillment we allow ourselves to experience.
The Upper Limit Problem reminded me of similar research conducted by Brené Brown. She discovered that in her 12 years of studying how people live wholehearted lives, the most terrifying emotion for people to experience was joy.
Discovering this work was one of those special moments where I felt seen and didn’t feel so alone in this world.
How the Upper Limit Problem Manifested in My Portfolio Career
I often talk about how I'm not a "natural" at anything. My process resembles falling over a million times until I finally get it. However, when it comes to self-sabotage, I give myself an A+++.
Throughout most of my professional life and into my Portfolio Career, I would actively procrastinate in responding to opportunities because I didn’t feel worthy. I would downplay my achievements, thinking they were just flukes, and I would avoid standing out because I was sure someone would discover I'm not that "smart."
Here are some recent examples from the past five years:
Before doing this work, I assumed my procrastination stemmed from a lack of focus or that I was simply 'lazy.' However, like most things in life, it was a much deeper issue rooted in my subconscious, and when triggered, it would lead me to self-sabotage my progress.
Enter The 4 Hidden Barriers »
The 4 Hidden Barriers
The concept of the four hidden barriers highlights why many of us struggle to reach our full potential: they prevent us from embracing our capabilities and achieving the success we desire. These barriers, stemming from deep-seated beliefs developed in childhood, are key components of the "Upper Limit Problem."
Feeling Fundamentally Flawed (🤯): This barrier is rooted in the belief that there is something inherently wrong with you, leading to the fear that success will expose your flaws. This often results in holding back from taking risks or pushing limits.
Disloyalty and Abandonment: This barrier arises from the fear that success will mean being disloyal to family and social groups who haven’t achieved similar success. Individuals may worry that surpassing the success of loved ones will lead to abandonment or rejection.
Believing That Success Brings a Greater Burden (🤯): Some people fear that achieving success will inevitably lead to increased responsibilities and burdens, causing hesitation in pursuing bigger goals.
The Crime of Outshining: This barrier involves the belief that you must not outshine others, particularly siblings or close peers. As a result, individuals hold themselves back to avoid standing out or making others feel inferior.
I realised the two Hidden Barriers that blocked me the most were: Feeling Fundamentally Flawed and Believing That Success Brings a Greater Burden.
Reflecting on the lengths I would go to avoid the pain of feeling fundamentally flawed was mind-blowing. I actively said no to opportunities aligned with building my Portfolio Career, such as speaking, coaching, and sharing my knowledge on human design, because I didn’t feel smart enough.
But the biggest aha moment for me was noticing the areas in my life where I was running away from success.
Through this work, I discovered I had unconsciously crafted a narrative about what it meant to be ‘successful’. I was terrified of the responsibility that came with holding that level of success. This was mind-blowing because the thing I thought I wanted most was exactly what I was actively running away from! I even went to extreme lengths to ‘outsource’ my power and success, paying a coach $100,000 to ‘own’ this part of me, which ended very badly (you can read about that here).
Transcending Upper Limits & Using Human Design To Help Me Find My Zone of Genius
With access to this newfound information, I embarked on a process of mapping out my core underlying fears and identifying where they consistently appeared in my work life.
The next step was to explore my Zone of Genius. To do this, I leveraged my Human Design to discover what work energised me and allowed me to enter a space of flow, fun, and joy.
I asked myself the following four questions and overlaid my responses with insights from my Human Design:
What do I most love to do? I tapped into my natural energy, experiencing sacral expansion when engaging in work that lit me up. I kept a Joy Journal to track the types of work and environments that left me feeling excited and satisfied. I noticed that none of these experiences included my corporate day job.
What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? As a Sacral Generator in Human Design, my energy thrives when work feels fun and effortless. I began to notice work I would gladly do even without pay. I felt most alive when working on my own business, supporting women in reimagining their lives and building Portfolio Careers, and reading people’s Human Design.
In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to the amount of time spent? I realised I felt most abundant when experiencing 'Rightful Authority'. Having the agency to choose what I worked on and when provided the greatest return of energy. This was another ‘aha’ moment, revealing that I didn’t enjoy executing someone else’s strategy (e.g., my corporate career). Instead, I wanted to create and execute my own strategy and work with the people I was best suited to support.
What is my unique ability? I leveraged the natural gifts highlighted in my Human Design to focus on areas of unique ability:
The ability to hold space for women, enabling them to see themselves as the highest version of themselves and take steps to move beyond traditional structures that no longer serve them.
The ability to fiercely advocate for justice in envisioning the Future of Work, empowering people to reclaim their power rather than outsource it.
The ability to hold people lovingly accountable and help them rise stronger after setbacks.
Once I had clarity on areas of my Zone of Genius, I then started to populate others the framework to get crystal clear on areas that I didn’t want to operate in such as Zone of Incompetence, Zone of Competence, and Zone of Excellence.
Final Thoughts
This may all sound quite linear and I took a set of steps to reach a place of clarity and alignment. That couldn’t be further from the truth!
I fell many times, took incorrect ways forward, fought against my instincts, threw into my shadow my self-sabotaging behaviours, and procrastinated over long periods because things were too hard to face.
And guess what - this is what growth looks like.
Just like Paula Abdul said in her popular 80s song ‘I take two steps forward, I take two steps back’.
Give yourself a break. Growth doesn’t happen in a straight line.
Resources
The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown
Thank you for sharing this! Self-sabotaging feels like a very common and familiar concept.
I remember experiencing being absolutely lost after two of my lifelong dreams became a reality. Being human is confusing 😄