You are never stuck. You are only ever at the edge of your capacity.
Nothing is ever wrong. You are just experiencing something outside of your capacity.
That task that’s easy for you but impossible for your employee? You have the capacity for it, and she does not.
The news is stressing you out of your mind, but your husband is unfazed by it? He has capacity for it, and you do not.
Every single thing you think, do, have, and experience is dictated by your capacity. Your capacity is your internal setpoint for what you can hold and handle in life.
When your capacity is limited, even the smallest disruptions overwhelm you. When your capacity is expanded, those exact same challenges don’t even make you blink.
The good news is your capacity isn’t fixed. You can grow it endlessly. But there’s one critical shift you need to make first.
Your Internal Thermostat
Think of your capacity like the thermostat in your house. If the thermostat is set to 68 degrees, it will constantly adjust to keep the temperature at 68, no matter if there’s a heatwave or a blizzard outside.
Your capacity works the same way. It’s your internal setpoint for how much you can handle in life. Sometimes it works to protect you from things that could hurt you, and other times it limits you from experiencing the things you want.
For example, if you keep trying to get ahead, grow your business, save money, or build a healthy relationship but keep hitting a wall, it’s not because you’re bad, weak, or unlucky. It’s simply that your setpoint isn’t set to allow those things into your life.
No matter what, your setpoint is dictating your actual and your perceived reality.
How Your Capacity Was Formed
Your capacity wasn’t chosen by you. It was shaped by your life experiences, your environment, the people around you, and even the media and information you consume.
If you grew up surrounded by dysfunction and chaos, your capacity was set to expect more of the same. Without realizing it, you seek out stress and chaos because that’s your setpoint. Peace, abundance, and calm are foreign in that container, so you unconsciously steer clear of them, even though you desperately want them.
This isn’t logical or conscious. It is about resonance. Like a tuning fork resonating with another tuning fork.
Alternatively, if you grew up with encouragement, love, and support, your setpoint was set to expect those things, and you’ll naturally resonate with relationships and experiences that give you encouragement, love, and support.
These patterns are running your life right now.
Think of it like this. Say your capacity is the size of a coffee cup. It doesn’t take much to fill it up and overflow. A diagnosis, a job loss, your partner leaving, your teenager glaring at you for chewing. Any of these things can push you over the edge. Overwhelm takes over, and there’s no room for anything else. This is when you overthink, ruminate, self-medicate, get sick, and stress-eat.
Now imagine your capacity is the size of Lake Tahoe. Those same challenges can show up, but they take up only a tiny space in the vast body of water. The Lake-Tahoe-size-you has massive amounts of room for all of it, but there’s also room for so much more. More calm, wisdom, resilience, abundance, and creative solutions. In this expanse, every answer to every question you have ever had is already there, the trauma from your past can be there but it doesn’t hijack your every thought, your creativity and joy comes out to play.
And the best part is, you don’t have to stop at the size of Lake Tahoe. There is no limit to how much you can expand your internal capacity.
What You Can and Cannot Control
Spoiler alert: You cannot control anything outside of you. Not your kids, the economy, your boss, traffic, and not even your millionaire landlord threatening to bankrupt you and take your home because you had to shut down your restaurant during the Pandemic.
You can’t even control your own perceptions and emotions. Think of the last time you were overwhelmed and someone told you to “just relax.” Did that ever work? Of course not. If you could control your emotions you would.
The only thing you can control is your capacity. Here is where you have to train yourself to make the shift. When your capacity is the size of a thimble, your emotions will feel overwhelming. When your capacity is the size of the Pacific Ocean, those same emotions take up only a tiny fraction of the range of emotions you can experience.
The approximately Fifty Billion Dollar self-help industry would like you to believe that you have to fix what is outside of you to feel happy. If you just chant this mantra, take that supplement, download this app, attend yet another retreat, your life will be healed. If that approach was truly working, wouldn’t the demand be shrinking instead of the industry growing exponentially every year?
But more importantly, looking outside of you is like putting your hand on a hot stove then taking pain killers to make the burning stop. In order to make the burning stop, you have to take your hand off the stove. Growing your capacity is taking your hand off the stove.
I’m not suggesting you ignore what’s going on around you. You still have to pay your bills, go to work, and hire an attorney to answer your landlord’s lawsuit. But the way you will handle and perceive these things is drastically different depending on if you are coming from a place of limited capacity vs expanded capacity.
So the goal is this.
Any time something comes at you that disrupts your peace or confidence, first look inside and ask yourself these questions:
- Am I feeling calm and grounded, or am I tense and reactive?
- Am I breathing deeply, or is my breath shallow and tight?
- Do I feel clear and focused, or am I confused and scattered?
- Am I approaching this with a sense of control, or am I feeling overwhelmed?
- What small action can I take right now to create more space in my nervous system?
These questions guide you to check in with your body and nervous system before reacting to external challenges.
When you train yourself to live from this place of self-awareness you reach a truly awesome state of expansion and personal power.
Make that your habit.
How to Grow Your Capacity
There are endless ways to grow your capacity, but the most powerful and effortless one is this: Surround yourself with people and things that expand you.
The fastest way to grow your capacity is not by doing it alone. Surround yourself with people who are where you want to be, not where you are, and definitely not below where you are.
People who complain, stress, and gossip will pull you down to their level. That’s where you’ll resonate, like a tuning fork. People and information that are at your level will keep you the same. But when you surround yourself with people and inputs that are above your level, that embody the life you want to create, they will pull you upward.
It’s not just people. It’s everything you surround yourself with: the books you read, the shows you watch, the music you listen to, the art you collect. Everything carries energy and influence. When you choose things that resonate at a higher level, you will achieve higher as well.
That one simple act, surrounding yourself with people and things that expand your capacity, has the power to transform your life.
It’s the shift that removes every limit.