Aaron Doughty explores the subconscious fear of outshining others, tracing it to childhood experiences and using Gay Hendricks' concept of the upper-limit problem to explain why we dim ourselves. He argues that shining attracts aligned people and repels those who aren't, and that meditation can help rewire these learned blocks.
If your friends threw you a birthday party, there was a whole bunch of people there and there's all this attention that's coming at you. Are you able to receive that love and attention or do you kind of push it away? This is something I realized in my own shadow recently where it's being afraid to shine or being afraid to have the attention on you. And you might look at me and you're like, well, you make YouTube videos, you know, you're in social media and you have all this stuff going on. So you're always putting yourself out there. But I think it's like within a certain context, like within the context of me making content and adding value, it's very easy for me to do that. But I've never really been the kind of person that like wants the attention on me when it's like, when it's like a get-together or even like a birthday party. I've never really been a huge fan of like throwing some crazy party for myself. And recently I read a book that's called The Upper Limit. It's called, what's it? It's not called The Upper Limit. What's it called? It's called The Big Leap. It's called "The Big Leap," and in it, it's by Gay Hendricks, and in that book, it talks about something called the upper limit problem. And we all have an upper limit problem that is keeping us from really making the big leap into the next phase of our life, into like a new way that we can be. And what I've recognized for myself is on one hand, I'm moving into doing live events. I'm moving into like this new phase where there will be more attention on me, but I'm, in a way, kind of like pushing it away or afraid of it. And one of the reasons being is because it could be a part of my own shadow. Because one of the things that it talks about in this book is that many of us have these subconscious things that hold us from stepping into our true power. And one of them is this belief or this fear that if I jump into this power, into this new version of myself, then I'm gonna outshine other people. And I can dial this all the way back to my childhood because I was the only child until I was about 3 years old when my brother was born and the attention shifted from being on me to my brother. And then from that point going forward, I remember feeling unworthy. There was like a level where I felt like I didn't wanna outshine my brother. I remember that too. So I would always like put the attention off of me and onto him. And it was an interesting thing because I can see how in my life I'm afraid of shining too bright. Because it might either trigger other people or make other people feel significant. I think a lot of empaths have this ability too, because empathic people can feel other people's energy and they want everyone else to be good. And me being one of like 4 kids, or, you know, my parents were divorced, so I have a lot of brothers and sisters. I'm the oldest. So I think that I was always trying to mitigate and trying to like balance out the family in a way, became like a fixer. but I can see how me not wanting to shine has caused me to also have a block around me stepping into this new phase of my life, like this new empowered state of being. So my question to you is, do you have an upper limit problem? Is there some level of identity, like a lot of times with more abundance even, we're afraid that if we become abundant, that we're going to leave our friends behind. We're gonna leave our family behind, or we're somehow like stepping outside of what we should be doing because if our parents had to suffer, then we also had to suffer. You see, these are part of that upper limit problem that it talks about in the book, but not wanting to shine because you might make other people feel insignificant is something that you can become aware of and you can realize that the attention coming on you it's their problem, that's their stuff, not yours if they get triggered by it, and you don't have to try to mitigate how they feel. But understand this as well, you can also reframe this. I'm reframing this as what if I step into my mission, my purpose, my passion of like doing live events and stuff like that, and I'm this like most empowered version of myself, and what if that is able to empower other people to then step into their power? You see what the difference is there? So it's like your energy's gonna be contagious no matter what. And if you're mitigating and trying to play to someone else's frame, then that's also like surrendering to someone else's, you know, like energy, but it's not authentic. What's authentic is for you to be the bright person you came here to be, to really shine your light. And when you start shining your light, what you'll find is that it does trigger other people. And, but it will polarize people in a way to where you attract the people or people that like you or people that really like the real you. And you repel away the people that wouldn't really like you anyways. When I started making videos on YouTube, that was one thing I noticed is it's a polarizing thing, but I had some friends that thought it was weird. I had some friends that maybe didn't vibe with it. That's okay. This is the real me. And I have some friends that it drew them and it even attracted new people into my life. And funny enough now, and now that a lot of people are going through a spiritual awakening, I have people reaching out to me that maybe at one point thought it was weird, but now they're inspired and open to it and excited because they're going through the process of spiritual awakening or whatever they're going through. But that can only happen when you're really shining your light. So my message for you today is to shine your light and to know that if you are afraid to shine it, is that coming from some childhood experience where you were afraid of outshining someone else? You were afraid that if you put the attention on you, that something bad may happen? Some of us grew up and if we had attention, it was bad. If we had attention, it meant we were in trouble. But realize you're not in trouble for your attention now. Realize that you came here to be bold. You came here to express the real you. And as you begin to embody that real you, you will inspire other people as well. I wouldn't be where I'm at today if I didn't take and have the courage to step into a more empowered version of me where I'm making videos, I'm adding value, but now I can see that I'm kind of in this like comfort zone. But the key now is for me to step into this new empowered version of myself, doing live events and being in this space of realizing where do the blocks come from? 90% of all transformation is awareness. Become aware of the childhood trauma or the childhood blocks and realize that you can give yourself the emotion that you crave or the attention even that you crave. You can give that to yourself, your own frame. And when you're feeling safe in your own frame, guess what? Other people are magnetized to that, but you're also feeling safe. And when you're feeling that way, your energy's contagious and you're also more clear and everything in your life tends to change. So that's my question to you. Do you find that you have trouble absorbing or having the attention put on you? Do you find that you shine the light away from yourself? And what are you gonna do to really wire in this new empowered version of you of shining your light? Comment below, let me know. Also, if you didn't know, there's a meditation for raising your dominant vibration permanently. It's one of the most powerful meditations on my channel. If you listen for 21 days, I believe it can completely transform your life. I'm gonna go ahead and link it below for you and let that raise your vibration. Other than that, like this video if you like these shorter videos. Let me know what you think. I'll do more like this. And as always, peace, much love, namaste.
