Teri Holland (00:16.418)
Have you ever felt like you were finally, finally about to break through to that next level in your business and then you find yourself distracted, exhausted, or maybe even picking a fight with your partner for no reason? You have the strategy, you've done the mindset work, you know exactly what it is you need to do to hit that revenue goal or launch your new program, but the closer you get, the more you start to drag your feet.
Now, most coaches will tell you you just, you'd need more discipline or you need better time management. But here on Success of Mind, we look a little deeper. So today we're gonna talk about the capacity ceiling. We're going to dive into why your nervous system might actually be perceiving your success as a threat and how to retrain your body to feel safe while you grow. So let's dive in.
Teri Holland (01:17.324)
In the world of NLP, we talk a lot about the unconscious mind. Now, its number one job is not to make you rich or famous or even happy. Its number one job is to keep you alive. And to your unconscious mind, alive equals familiar. So think about your current level of success. Think about it like a thermostat. You have a set point, a specific amount of money.
or a specific amount of visibility or responsibility that your nervous system has mapped as safe. And when you start to exceed that set point, you start to maybe push a little further when the money starts coming in faster or when you're suddenly booked for 10 podcast interviews, that internal thermostat notices the heat.
and it starts to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've never been here before. This is unknown territory and unknown equals danger.
Teri Holland (02:29.272)
So to cool you back down and bring you back to your safe temperature, your nervous system,
So to cool you back down and bring you back to the safe temperature, your nervous system triggers a cybernetic mechanism. It kicks in procrastination, maybe brain fog, or that sudden urge to pivot your business entirely right when things are finally working.
You aren't lazy, my friends. You're just reaching your upper limit. And there are three pillars of capacity. And usually when we hit the ceiling, it usually falls into one of these three pillars. So let's talk about those. So the first one is the visibility pillar. This is a fear of being seen. If you grow, more people will have opinions about you. More people will have thoughts about you.
More people might start commenting on your content. And for your nervous system, being judged by the tribe used to mean exile. And exile meant death. So you protect yourself by staying small. And these are primal instincts we're talking about. Because back in our tribal ancestry days, you couldn't survive without the safety of the tribe.
And so you didn't want to stand out. You didn't want to challenge the chief. You didn't want to be noticed. You just wanted to blend in with the tribe and just be like everyone else. So number one is the visibility pillar. Number two is the responsibility pillar. You're afraid that more success equals more weight, more weight that you have to carry.
Teri Holland (04:22.124)
And so you worry that you'll lose your freedom or that you won't be able to handle the demands of a bigger team or more clients. Literally more weight on your shoulders. And the third one is the worthiness pillar. And this is that identity based block that we talk about. If you don't believe you're the kind of person that holds this level of wealth, your body will literally feel allergic to the money.
it will start to feel like it doesn't belong to you. So you'll find ways to spend it or lose it just to get back to that familiar state of wanting, but not having.
So those are the three pillars. Visibility, responsibility, worthiness. So how do we expand your container? How do we fix it? We don't just push through. Pushing through is how you end up in burnout. Instead, we want to expand the container. Expand your capacity for allowing more money, more success into your life. So first, you need to name the feeling.
So when you feel that success anxiety kick in, stop and say to yourself, my nervous system is feeling overstimulated by this growth or I'm just feeling fear right now. By naming it, you move the experience from the reactive amygdala to the logical prefrontal cortex. You're telling your brain, I'm not in danger, I'm expanding.
So the second one is to use somatic anchoring. In NLP, we use anchoring to trigger states. So I want you to sit with the feeling of your next level. If you think about having 50,000 months and your chest feels tight, your container isn't big enough yet. If you think about having the beach house and you start to feel panicky, you're not ready for it yet. So practice microdosing.
Teri Holland (06:32.46)
success. Spend five minutes a day fully embodied in that future version of you. How does she breathe? How does she sit? And when you teach your body that the next level feels calm and grounded, your unconscious mind stops fighting the growth.
And then finally, focus on regulation over motivation. If you are in a success hangover, which I talked about a few episodes back, don't reach for another espresso or a motivational video. You don't need more motivation. Not in the success hangover. Reach for a regulation tool. Box breathing, meditation, going for a walk, calm the nervous system.
so that it knows it can handle the heat the next time your thermostat rises.
Teri Holland (07:46.328)
No.
