Upper Limit Problem (ULP)
Stub. Referenced multiple times across the ILC master curriculum — “Introduction: ULPs,” “Remember the ULP (living from essence),” “Playing with ULPs” — but never defined in this source. The full description is needs-export from the team’s canonical materials (or from Gay Hendricks’s The Big Leap, the named lineage source).
What it is (provisional, from lineage)
The Upper Limit Problem is Gay Hendricks’s name for the unconscious pattern of self-sabotage that arises when a practitioner exceeds a familiar internal limit of joy, success, love, or aliveness. The body hits an old ceiling — usually set in early life — and the system quietly engineers a return to the familiar level by:
- starting an argument,
- getting sick or hurt,
- forgetting something important,
- introducing a problem,
- collapsing into worry, criticism, or blame.
The practitioner often does not notice they are doing it. Recognizing the pattern — “I’ve just hit my upper limit” — is the move that makes choice available.
This provisional description is included so other tool pages have something to reference; the canonical wording should come from the team or directly from Hendricks’s source.
Why this page exists as a stub
The Six Facets / Aligning with Essence material treats Playing with ULPs as an applied tool (Level II curriculum). Without a page here, those references have nothing to link to. The stub establishes the cross-reference target so the rest of the wiki can speak about ULPs coherently while the full export is pending.
Facets served
- facet-aligning-with-essence — the curriculum places ULP work under this facet’s applied tools.
- facet-getting-unstuck — recognizing an ULP is one of the most common unstuck moves available to a practitioner expanding their range.
Related tools
- experiencing-your-feelings — many ULP “ceiling” sensations are unfelt feelings; the move-through often releases the ceiling.
- personas — the persona enforcing the upper limit can be interviewed directly (see persona-interviews).
Source and attribution
Lineage: Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap (2009). The Upper Limit Problem is Hendricks’s term and the most complete description lives in that book.
Source for the reference in EPI material:
raw/2025 ILC Version AT Master Curriculum.docx.md. The curriculum
introduces ULPs as a topic in the Inner Map week and lists Playing
with ULPs as an applied tool in Level II — but does not define the
term within the curriculum itself.
Status notes
needs-export — page exists so other tools can cross-reference it,
but the body is provisional. Promote to canonical once the full
description is exported from the team’s canonical materials or from
the Hendricks source. The provisional description above should be
reviewed and either replaced or confirmed by the team.