Four Hidden barriers that Keep you from personal growth
Have you ever been on a personal growth journey and told yourself, “I’ll feel much better and be satisfied after I achieve ?” If so, did you actually feel satisfied when you met that goal? If you did, it probably didn’t last very long. You see, life constantly issues a new set of challenges, opportunities, and obstacles. This makes a spiritual life difficult. After all, how can your focus be inward or upward when there are immediate, attention-grabbing, outward problems? How can you have consistent faith if you are consistently being bombarded with challenges? In some cases, people might actually create their own problems as a way to define the self or to self-sabotage. This brings me to the topic of upper limits.
Upper limits are things that hold you back from achieving your true potential. Some people call them “glass ceilings” or “bliss blocks.” Whatever you call them, they are extremely limiting and potentially destructive. You see, we all have an inner thermostat for how much good in our lives we feel we can tolerate. It defines how much success, love, and creativity we can comfortably enjoy. This thermostat is usually programmed in early childhood, largely based on childhood experiences and parental attitudes and behavior. It is astounding that even though these thermostat settings are programmed at such a young age, they can forever prevent people from fully enjoying life and abundance.
When people hit their limit, they manufacture problems, negative thoughts, and upsetting emotions – almost as though they are looking for a problem. For instance, many people engineer anxiety-producing, extreme thoughts about events that have a very low probability of ever occurring. Today I want to discuss the four hidden barriers that keep people from breaking through their upper limits.
Four Hidden Barriers
The first hidden barrier is feeling as though you have some fundamental flaw. This barrier conveys to you that you should not hope for too much so you’re not disappointed. It makes you feel as though you don’t deserve much happiness or success. To overcome this barrier, you must acknowledge and celebrate your unique gifts.
The second hidden barrier is abandonment and disloyalty. That is, you may feel as though you can’t explore your full potential because you might leave people behind and end up alone. To further compound this, you might believe that spiritual growth or success means that you are disloyal to your long-time friends. This barrier can cause you to feel guilty, which holds you back from success or from enjoying what you have already learned. To overcome this barrier, you must have open lines of communication with your friends and family, including them in your journey. Also reach out to those who are also on a journey of spiritual awakening!
The third hidden barrier is the belief that you would be a burden if you reached higher success or spiritual awakening. Perhaps family members, friends, or exes have contributed to this damaging belief through their actions or words. The reality is that the world desperately needs you to reach your full potential because you have something unique and special to offer.
The final hidden barrier is the fear that you will outshine others because of your success or growth. This fear is very common among the gifted and talented. Many people turn down the volume of their genius to make others feel more comfortable. This behavioral pattern starts early in childhood and often continues throughout life.
The Hidden “Shadow” Behind What Holds You Back
You’ve just learned about the external and psychological barriers that show up on your personal growth journey — but there’s another layer that often goes unrecognized: your shadow.
In psychology, the shadow refers to parts of yourself that you’ve pushed into your subconscious: the thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and reactions you don’t like to face or admit that you have. These aren’t “bad” parts of you, just unacknowledged parts — the jealousies, fears, unmet needs, or old shame you learned to bury early in life. When we don’t bring these into the light, they continue influencing our choices, reactions, and even the way we interpret life’s challenges.
Shadow work is the process of consciously exploring and integrating these hidden parts, not to criticize yourself, but to understand what’s been secretly driving your patterns and limiting beliefs. Shadow work invites you to ask questions like:
What do other people trigger in me — and why?
What traits in others do I judge or envy?
What emotions do I avoid feeling?
What stories about myself have I been telling that don’t serve me?
These reflections aren’t comfortable — but they reveal the real reasons so many of us sabotage our growth, even after learning about surface‑level barriers like fear of abandonment or self‑worth limits.
Your Inner World and Your Body Are Connected
Unresolved emotional and psychological patterns don’t just stay in your mind, they murmur in your nervous system and show up in your body as inflammation, cravings, tension, fatigue, or digestive imbalance.
That’s why true personal and physical transformation doesn’t happen only through knowledge or willpower — it happens when you release what’s buried beneath the surface, emotionally and physically.
If you’re ready to go deeper — beyond barriers and into real internal reset — I invite you to join my 21‑Day Total Body Reset Cleanse — a complete mind‑body detox that supports emotional clarity, physical renewal, and a refreshed relationship with yourself. click here to learn more
This is your invitation to move past what’s been holding you back in your thoughts, behaviors, and your body.
Personal Growth is inevitable, not accidental
Unless humans have significant unresolved trauma, are closed-off, or inflexible, they tend to move to higher levels of consciousness throughout life. But higher consciousness is not possible without the development of certain virtues, which are associated with a concept called spiritual consciousness. These virtues include: humility, forgiveness, kindness, patience, and truthfulness.
Let me explain it like this: first you have the physical realm – like the brain and other things that you can see and touch. Then you have consciousness, ideas, thoughts, and other non-tangible concepts. Consciousness enables people to gain greater perspective on the physical realm, allowing them to derive meaning even from ordinary life events. Going beyond consciousness is spiritual consciousness.
If you think of consciousness as a greater and deeper understanding of the meaning of this life, then spiritual consciousness is seeing even beyond this life to an ultimate reality. This awareness of and search for an ultimate reality beyond the lived human experience awakens dormant properties of an ordinary human. Unfortunately, most people stay spiritually asleep stuck in surface-level habits, chasing temporary validation, and numbing the discomfort of deeper truths. But Most are spiritually asleep which is an unhealthy and suboptimal way of life, yet many live their whole lives this way.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way! Anyone can awaken spiritual consciousness with the right effort. But keep in mind that spiritual consciousness doesn’t just happen. It follows a full-fledged spiritual awakening, which as I have already mentioned, is a gradual, long-lasting transformation.
Perhaps nothing in life is as difficult – or as rewarding – as awakening spiritual consciousness. There is a large difference between “normal” consciousness and spiritual consciousness, so people who have awakened their spiritual consciousness tend to lead much different lives than those who haven’t. You might find such individuals fully embracing each and every day, going on new adventures, and not being bogged down or discouraged by the hardships of life.
Spiritual consciousness can be awakened. But it requires more than inspiration. It requires doing the inner work which is why shadow work is so important.
Whether you’re just beginning or ready to go deeper, shadow work is a powerful gateway to lasting transformation. When you face and integrate what you’ve been hiding from emotionally, mentally, and physically, you come home to yourself in a way that changes everything.
So if you’re ready to align mind, body, and spirit join my 21‑Day Total Body Reset Cleanse and take the next step in your journey to wholeness. I hope this helps!
In Good Health,
Amber Stewart, BS, ACSM-EP, CTNC, TBMM-CES
Holistic Nutritionist | Stress Alchemy & Mental Wellness Coach
Hi! My name is Amber and I’m a Body Goals Builder, Master Life Coach, Certified Health Coach, CTNC Mental Health Specialist, Stress Alchemist & Fear Conqueror
I used to be a people pleasing, work-a-holic who stressed herself out to climb the wellness industry’s corporate ladder, while obsessing over her self image. I soon realized that none of it mattered if I wasn’t happy with myself, inside and out, and surrounded around people who loved and respected me.
I now help individuals who are stressed out, out of shape and struggling to find balance in their lives learn how to ease their worries, improve their health, create 10x more joy in their lives and manifest the life of their dreams. At the STEW Project, we are maximizing our living potential by Simply Taking an Emphasis on Wellness.
