Mike Walker: Welcome to The Wealthy Consultant Talks. Today we’re exploring “upper limits” and sustainable success with somatic success expert Kerri Ford. If you can’t hold what you have now, you’ll sabotage what’s next. Kerri will show us how to build capacity in the body, not just tactics in the mind. — I want to begin by getting present. Put your feet flat on the ground. If your chair has a back, gently press your back into it. Feel the support. Notice the relationship of your back against the chair, and the chair against your back. Close your eyes for a moment if that’s comfortable. Listen for the most distant sound you can hear in your space. Then the next closest sound. Then the closest sound—maybe my voice or a computer fan. Bring attention back to your feet. Gently press them into the floor. This is a somatic practice called “orienting.” A phrase I like when grounding: “I am where my feet are.” We are animals with a nervous system having a human experience. Of course we have upper limits: protective responses show up when the nervous system perceives danger. You can’t outthink or outperform your current level of safety. Many people try to change from the neck up; but if the body isn’t on board, it will drive behavior anyway. Bottom‑up work can feel illogical, but it’s effective. You might have heard “you can’t outperform your limiting beliefs.” Same idea, different door. We’re looking at the body first. Somatics is simply “body.” Soma is the Greek word for body. I want you to identify one tangible pattern where you’ve sabotaged something in the past. When you see it, you can’t unsee it. Instead of only mindset work (top‑down), we bring the body online (bottom‑up). Often, after a short grounding, people notice “I hear more. The light looks brighter. I feel held by the chair.” That’s capacity growing in real time. — SUSTAINABLE SUCCESS & UPPER LIMITS Kerri: I recently spoke to a room of 75–80 seven‑ and eight‑figure women in West Palm Beach about upper limits. We often climb the left side of the “achievement mountain.” We get a taste of the peak—then sabotage. Not because we’re broken, but because it feels unsafe. I invite you to reframe “sabotage” as “protection.” Consider lottery winners: about 70% spend it all and return to baseline. Not because they consciously choose it, but because the nervous system knows struggle and survival. Without somatic capacity, the system sheds what it can’t hold. Gay Hendricks calls this the “upper limit problem”: our tendency to sabotage once we exceed the artificial limit we’ve placed on ourselves. — FOUR SELF‑PROTECTIVE RESPONSES (S.P.R.s) Kerri: The body constantly scans for safety. When it flags risk, it brings online protective responses in varying degrees: 1) FIGHT (confront): signs can include blotchy skin, narrowed eyes, forced breath, pursed lips, lunging posture, sweaty palms. 2) FLIGHT (leave): restlessness, fidgeting, on your toes, tapping legs, looping thoughts, reaching for distractions. 3) FAWN (appease): “What do I say to keep the peace?” Smiling while thinking the opposite, people‑pleasing to avoid conflict. 4) FREEZE (shut down): functional freeze looks like going through the motions, feeling heavy or cold, pale complexion, “I’m here but not connected.” When I’m with clients, I listen at the level of the body. As they approach an edge, I watch for these somatic tells and help them move through, not around, the activation. Audience (Dustin): “The unconscious is beautifully illogical.” Kerri: Exactly. Bottom‑up is often not “rational,” but it’s real. — HOW TO TRACK YOUR EDGES Kerri: Track three moments somatically: • Approaching the edge: “I’m close, I can taste it.” Where do you feel it? What’s the sensation (tight/loose, hot/cold, rough/smooth, edges/no edges, color/sound)? • Immediately after the win: “I did it.” Where do you feel that? How does it move? • When sabotage happened: “I talked myself out of it.” Notice that sabotage almost always sounds rational—especially when it comes wrapped in “it’s not aligned.” Ask: is it truly misaligned, or is it simply unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable? — TOP‑DOWN VS BOTTOM‑UP Kerri: Meditation is powerful—think of it as listening—but somatic work is where we renegotiate stored charge in the body. We work at the pace of the nervous system, with a “healing vortex” to counterbalance the “trauma vortex,” so the old pattern stops running the show. Fear often arises from historical experiences. “The body keeps the score.” Trauma can be “too much, too soon, too fast” or “too little, too late, too long.” It isn’t always a single event; it can be cumulative (e.g., withdrawal of love as punishment). You may never find the exact “T0” moment—and that’s okay; you can still heal. — CHAOS, TIME, AND SELF‑CREATED PRESSURE Kerri: Many entrepreneurs know hard work so well that peace feels unsafe. If you only know pressure, you’ll create more of it: new projects, new mountains, filled Fridays. You can’t get enough of what you don’t actually need. — HIGH ACHIEVER vs HIGH PERFORMER Kerri: High achiever is a season—chasing, hustling, doing it all yourself, sympathetic‑dominant (fight/flight). It builds resilience and self‑trust, but it isn’t sustainable at the next levels. High performer has transitioned: letting go of control, delegating, working in peak cognitive windows (e.g., deep work in the morning), protecting energy, installing systems other people can run, leading with vision and service. Do “1% work” in your 1% hours. — ANXIOUS ACHIEVER ARCHETYPES (linked to S.P.R.s) Kerri: You may see yourself in all of these, but you’ll have a dominant one (and a secondary). FIGHT • Controller: struggles to delegate; must hold everything. • Pusher: constantly finds a new mountain; rarely celebrates. FLIGHT • Futurist: rarely here; always scanning the horizon. • Alarmist: persistent urgency driven by false timelines. FAWN • People‑Pleaser: says yes when they mean no; over‑commits. • Perfectionist: fears being seen as they are; chases flawless. FREEZE • Robot: functional but disenchanted; bare‑minimum momentum. • Victim: “everything happens to me”; powerless to act. When stress rises, intellect drops and these take the wheel. The work is learning to notice activation sooner and shift states. — PRACTICALS & DAILY RHYTHMS Kerri: Capacity grows with simple practices: • Morning‑light walk: first thing outside to anchor circadian rhythm, support sleep, and down‑shift baseline stress. • “One thing by noon”: one meaningful win before midday to keep momentum without overloading the system. • Plan tomorrow today: wrap the day by sketching the next; give your nervous system a clear runway. • Grounding on demand: “I am where my feet are,” plus orienting to sounds and supportive contact (chair, floor). — DISCOMFORT VS “NOT ALIGNED” Kerri: Beware spiritualized avoidance. Sometimes “not aligned” is true intuition. Other times it’s a clever mask for fear. Contraction often precedes expansion. Sit in the contraction long enough for the system to widen its window of tolerance. — LIMINAL SPACE & CAPACITY Kerri: Transformation lives in the liminal—the in‑between. You’ve left the old room; the lights aren’t on in the new one yet. Everything in you wants to go back to the familiar. Don’t. The lobster metaphor: the soft body grows until the shell is too tight; under pressure it sheds and builds a bigger shell. It doesn’t ask, “What if I can’t fill it?” Growth makes capacity inevitable—if you allow the process. — Q&A HIGHLIGHTS Angela: How do we get more detail on signs? Kerri: Study the somatic tells. Track your own body and others’. Notice eyes, breath, posture, temperature, micro‑movements, urgency in speech. Michael: I retreat into what’s familiar. Kerri: Normal. Notice it earlier each time and choose to stay in the edge a little longer. General: Is it harder to see it in ourselves? Kerri: At first, yes. With practice, it becomes second nature—like going to the gym. — CLOSING REMINDERS Kerri: Stress constricts vision. Relaxation returns it. Higher levels of success can bring more stress, so build capacity to metabolize stress—don’t just add goals. Wealth without internal safety feels empty. Grow your capacity to hold the good. Find me at elevatewithkerri.com or on Instagram @iamkerriford. Mike Walker: Powerful session. Thanks, Kerri. Thanks to everyone who joined. See you in the next episode.