How To Hold More Happiness And Break Free From Old Patterns

Why do we pull back when joy expands within us? Many of us have an invisible limit on how much happiness we allow ourselves to feel before guilt or self-sabotage creeps in. We downplay success, create unnecessary struggles, or convince ourselves we don’t deserve ease. This talk explores how to recognize and expand that limit, so we can hold more joy, lead with presence, and show our children that happiness is not something to fear—it’s something to embrace.

Transcript

There is an invisible threshold for how much success,

Love and joy we allow ourselves to experience before something inside us pulls the emergency brake.

You've felt it before.

It's that moment when things are going well,

Maybe too well,

And suddenly you pick a fight with your partner,

Make a careless mistake in business,

Or fall into an old habit that derails your momentum.

Why do we do this?

Why when we are standing at the gates of more do we turn back?

And more importantly,

How do we stop?

How do we expand our capacity to hold more success,

Not just for ourselves,

But for our children who are watching our every move?

The Upper Limit is a concept introduced by Gay Hendricks and it's simple.

Each of us has a subconscious cap on how much happiness,

Success and love we believe we deserve.

That cap is shaped by childhood conditioning,

By the narratives we inherited,

By the silent agreements we made with ourselves long ago.

And when we reach the edge of that cap,

Our system panics,

Protectors flare up,

Parts of us conditioned to keep us safe from too much happiness.

Because too much means risk,

It means danger,

It means standing out,

It means violating old stories like,

If I'm too successful,

I'll lose my connection with my family.

If I'm too happy,

I'm selfish.

If I make too much money,

I'll be judged or resented.

If I experience too much ease,

I'll get lazy and everything will fall apart.

So we self-sabotage.

We get sick right before big opportunity.

We procrastinate on launching that business idea.

We downplay our wins.

We manufacture conflict in our marriage.

We dim our own light because shining too brightly feels dangerous.

But here's the reality.

If we don't choose to work through this limiting narrative,

Then we pass this generational pattern on to our children.

And it's easier now than ever before to get the support that you need to break this generational pattern and build a new legacy for your family.

Our children deserve parents who show them how to expand,

How to hold more without self-destructing,

And how to play big in the sole game of life.

So I want to share a story with you.

I didn't know what to expect when I showed up to my first men's retreat in San Diego.

That really highlights this idea of how much happiness can we hold.

I had only been in San Diego for a short time.

I had moved from New York.

And while I had done plenty of inner work beforehand,

I had never been in a space like this.

This is a space where men could lay down their armor,

Not just sharpen their swords.

It was the first time in my life where I realized that I didn't feel like I needed to protect myself because others were around me able to guard the perimeter.

I thought in this retreat I would walk away with more strategies,

More tools,

Maybe a few insights.

But I didn't expect to walk away feeling lighter than I had in years.

So first,

I had to let myself feel the weight.

For years before this experience,

I had carried something heavy inside me,

Something I rarely talked about.

The years my wife struggled with a crippling illness were some of the hardest years of my life.

I held space for her.

I let our family through it.

I did what I had to do to keep everything afloat.

And as men often do,

I never really let myself feel how much it took out of me.

At this retreat,

Surrounded by men who weren't afraid to go deep,

Something in me cracked open.

For the first time,

I let myself grieve,

Truly grieve.

Not just for what my wife had been through,

But for what I had carried alone.

The exhaustion,

The helplessness,

The quiet moments of fear that I had buried because I needed to be strong.

And then something strange happened,

Surprised me.

After the tears,

And there were a lot of tears,

After the release,

Which was very cathartic,

I felt joy,

Real,

Deep,

Blissful joy.

Not just the fleeting kind that comes from a good laugh or a moment of relief.

I'm talking about a deep,

Untethered joy that felt foreign to me,

Like I had stepped into a version of myself I hadn't seen in years,

A version I couldn't remember,

A version of me that was free.

And then,

Almost instantly,

My mind rebelled.

I felt guilt.

How could I feel this light when my wife had suffered for so long?

How could I let myself be this happy?

I'm being selfish.

I caught myself making little self-deprecating jokes,

Diminishing the joy before it can settle into my bones.

My protectors were flaring up,

Warning me that I was reaching my upper limit,

The amount of happiness I subconsciously believed that I was allowed to feel.

That was the moment I realized that joy,

Feeling joy,

Requires courage.

And it's even more courageous to be able to share that joy with others.

It takes courage to let ourselves expand beyond the suffering we've known,

To hold happiness without sabotaging it,

To let ourselves be fully alive without apologizing for it.

So that weekend I made a choice.

I would no longer shrink my joy.

I would not dim my light because I had once known darkness.

I would allow myself to be a man who could hold both the depth of grief and the fullness of life.

And the greatest gift of all?

My son now gets to see this version of me,

Not the father who carries the weight of the world alone,

But the father who knows how to feel it all and still stand tall.

If you've ever felt yourself pulling back from joy,

I see you.

But what if instead of shrinking,

You let yourself expand?

What if you let yourself feel the full spectrum of life without guilt,

Without apology?

Because when we allow ourselves to hold more joy,

We give our children permission to do the same.

So let's get into some strategy here.

How do we do this?

How do we increase our capacity to receive,

To hold,

And to sustain higher levels of success and joy?

The key is incremental expansion.

You don't break through your upper limit all at once.

You stretch it,

Minute by minute,

Day by day.

You learn to sit with more success,

More love,

More happiness,

Without flinching,

Without running.

So let me break this down into three actionable steps here.

The first is to identify your patterns of self-sabotage.

First you have to catch yourself in the act,

And this will not feel comfortable.

When things are going well,

Where do you shut yourself down?

What's your go-to move?

Is it getting overly critical of yourself?

Creating conflict where there was peace?

Making impulsive decisions that derail progress?

Suddenly feeling unworthy or guilty for your success?

Journal on this.

Talk about this with your support group,

With your partner.

The moment that you recognize it,

The moment you're able to trace it back to its root,

You weaken its grip on you.

The second step is to expand in small doses.

Once you've identified your patterns,

The next step is to stretch your limit,

Bit by bit,

Step by step.

Now this is nervous system work.

If you feel guilty after a big win,

Practice sitting with that discomfort without reacting to it.

I think a great book to explore this even deeper if you want is called The Presence Process by Michael Brown.

He goes really deep into how to sit with it without reacting to it.

If joy makes you uneasy,

Let yourself experience it for a little longer each time without numbing it out with work or with scrolling distractions.

If you're afraid of outgrowing your peers or your family,

Remind yourself,

Expanding does not mean abandoning.

This is where parenthood becomes really powerful.

The way we hold our success teaches our children how to hold theirs.

If they see us self-sabotage when things are going well,

They will learn to do the same.

If they see us own our success with humility and presence,

They will learn to do the same.

So ask yourself,

What's one way you can hold success today without flinching,

Without guilt,

Without the need to undo it?

3.

Create a new identity narrative The final step in rewriting the story is taking the pen.

The upper limit exists because we are clinging to an outdated identity,

An old map of who we think we are.

What if the new story sounded like this?

I am a parent who holds success with grace.

My expansion is a gift to my family,

To my communities,

Not a threat.

I allow myself to thrive without guilt.

To be selfish is to practice self-love.

And what if you modeled that for your children?

Imagine your children watching you celebrate a big win without downplaying it,

Without brushing it off.

Imagine them seeing you embrace success without fear,

Without guilt.

That's how generational cycles shift.

That's how we raise children who don't just survive,

But thrive.

So my challenge to you today is simple.

Expand your edge.

Hold just a little bit more happiness without shutting it down.

Let success sit in your bones without apology.

Because the world does not need more people shrinking themselves to fit old stories.

It needs leaders who know how to hold greatness without losing their center.

And it starts with you.

Reviews

Thank you for sharing so vulnerably! You made me think of a talk by Brené Brown in which she pointed out that joy is the most vulnerable feeling we can access.
I do sit with one question, however. I wonder why success takes center stage towards the end? What happened to your initial focus on joy and healing in its own right? How do you define success? Our Western understandings of success have a very individual framing, and I believe our times call for a conscious unlearning and reframing of that. I believe much indigenous wisdom has been lost and that an important step as a parent is to look into not only our intimate layers of self-narration, but also the collective dominant narratives. They are so intertwined.
Thank you again for sharing this important talk on grief as a portal to joy ❤️