The Limit-less Leader
Part One of a Mini Series
Dear friends,
Rarely has a hyphen been so important.
When I first started coaching and giving thought to my core goal, I kept coming back to the idea of “leading without limits.” It didn’t take long to update my thinking to a more practical and realistic goal of leading with fewer limits. I am weary of the pervasive cultural push for perfection. Whatever happened to damn good or good enough? I want to focus not on limitless potential, but limit-less potential.
Our self-imposed limits arise, for the most part, from our brain, an incredible organ that serves as Chief Safety Officer. Our brains spend the vast majority of their energy on one top priority, which is to keep us safe. Staying safe is most efficiently achieved if we work and live in our comfort zone. When we leave those zones and feel the normal stress of growth and challenge, our brains send us pain or anxiety to encourage us to stop doing the activity that’s threatening us. In the best case we push through this corporate version of no pain, no gain. In other cases, we retreat.
Taking this concept out of the ordinary, advances in neuroscience are confirming the extent to which we can intentionally interrupt the fear/pain/anxiety cycle by purposely rewiring neural pathways. I know this from personal experience. My story, which I’ll tell you in a radically shortened version, is an example of how mind, brain, body and story came together to dramatically limit my life for years. And how I used rewired neural circuitry to find my way back.
In 2019 I went to a doctor complaining of something I no longer remember. As part of the intake process they asked dozens of questions. Based on those answers tests were ordered and back came some surprising and seemingly alarming news. “You have the Epstein-Barr virus.”
I had noticed over the past ten years or so that I would have to fight off bouts of minor illness quite often. I never paid it any attention other than a moment in time when I started to simply note it in my calendar. But now with a diagnosis, I went from a healthy mindset to a sick mindset in an instant. And to make it worse Covid 19 was just on the heels of my own virus diagnosis and my brain became hyper-vigilant about otherwise normal immune symptoms.
We began treating the virus, and not much changed. I went to other doctors to for help with a growing pattern of symptoms Every one of the many tests they ran surfaced plausible reasons for why I couldn’t suppress this ubiquitous virus. And all the while the bouts of symptoms grew longer and closer together.
Fast forward four years to 2024, my symptoms had grown from a curiosity to a point where I needed to spend half the days in a month resting on the couch. I became discouraged, depressed, and increasingly convinced that I would never get better. My rheumatologist ran through a number of diagnoses and finally decided I had chronic fatigue syndrome. With her best bedside manner she said, “there is no cure.”
I refused to accept that fate and was very lucky to find a Boulder MD, Dr. Brad Fanestil, who had a very different approach. He listened to my medical history, looked at all of my tests and said something no one else had ever said. “You are NOT sick,” he said to me on December 5, 2024. He went on to explain that my symptoms were neuroplastic, meaning that my brain had developed habit loops in its neural circuitry - learned behaviors in the nervous system -that biologically were meant to protect me but were, in fact, harming me. He could teach me to retrain my brain to create healthy pathways. My brain and I needed to learn to interpret my symptoms not as threatening but as safe.1
By mid-winter I was back to full health and have been every day since.
The point of sharing this story is to underscore the power of both mindset and brain. My cure was six parts cognitive and four parts neural reprocessing. On that December day in his office my entire story of being a sick person dissolved in almost an instant. With that story deleted, I made quick progress with neural reprocessing and full health.
Stories have power. Brains can be changed. Limits can be lessened and often eliminated. You can do it.
Over the next couple of posts we’ll explore more of the neuroscience behind our self-imposed limitations. We’ll explore more about the power of stories, mindset, polarities, and blindspots. As we close out we’ll learn techniques to lessen our limits and embrace our fullest potential. I hope you’ll stay with me.
Cheers,
Betsey
If you’re interested in this science, all of which was born from the research into chronic pain, send me a direct message and I’ll send you a list of resources. Or, more quickly, look up the work of Dr Howard Shubiner and you’ll be on your way. Neuroscience can treat chronic pain, anxiety and medical syndromes.