Ep 156: Toni Everard - Your Goals Require You to Expand Your Emotional Capacity

You've probably got a goal you're working towards.

More money.

More freedom.

Better health.

A different kind of relationship.

A bigger business.

And you've probably been thinking about what you need to do to make it happen.

But what if there's another piece that's even more important?

Do you have the emotional capacity to actually have what you're asking for?

Because achieving something isn't just about creating it.

It's about being able to receive it, hold it, and maintain it.

And sometimes the thing keeping you stuck isn't a lack of strategy.

It's that the result you're asking for requires you to feel things you're not yet comfortable feeling.

More money might require you to become comfortable being seen differently.

More success might require you to let go of old beliefs about what success means.

More freedom might require you to stop using busyness as a reason to stay safe.

And healthier relationships might require you to build the capacity to set boundaries, disappoint people, and still trust that you're going to be okay.

Your nervous system has learned what feels safe.

And when you start moving beyond that, even towards something you really want, it can feel uncomfortable.

So what if the next level isn't about pushing harder?

What if it's about expanding your capacity to receive, create and maintain the life you're asking for?

In this episode, we explore why your goals require you to become capable of holding a different reality, how old patterns can keep you anchored to what feels familiar, and what changes when you stop asking only, "What do I need to do?" and start asking:

"What do I need to be able to hold?"

🔗 Let’s Connect

If this episode resonated, join Toni’s Facebook group
Business Growth for Heart-Led Coaches, Practitioners & Therapists

If you found this episode valuable, share it with a business owner who is ready to level up, or leave a review to help more people discover The Coaching Circle.

Order your copy of The Turning Point
If you’d love to dive deeper into Toni’s emotional freedom work, you can pre-order your copy here: The Turning Point Book

Links and Resources:

🔹 The Turning Point Book

🔹 Book an Action Call

Connect with Toni Everard:

🌏 Website

📥 Email

💼 LinkedIn

📘 Facebook

📸 Instagram

📺 YouTube

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Ep 156 - Your goals require you to expand your emotional capacity
===

[00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the Coaching Circle, and, you know, one of the things... I often think about this, and people ask me what it is that I do, and there's a lot of variety in the work that I do, and the types of clients that I work with, and the size of their businesses, and the types of challenges that they have.

Uh, but ultimately, it is the same patterns of things that I work on, and this is gonna apply to you if you're... If you've got a goal that you're working towards, and you're facing some kind of challenges, this episode is definitely for you. And the reason is because- Whenever we set a goal, it's... And you would have heard me talk about this before.

Whenever you set a goal, it is not just about you achieving the goal through doing some things, it's about who do you need to allow yourself to be fully expressed [00:01:00] as so that you will do the things that result in you having that goal achieved and whatever the outcome or result is, and for you to maintain it, right?

So it means you're gonna have to let go of aspects of who you're being now and how you have the result that you have now. Okay? So there is no reality where you're exactly the same person now, but just with this whatever goal that you wanna achieve. Like, it just does not work like that. You cannot achieve something majorly different in your life by being the same as you are now, right?

That's a given. And so we have to really look at, okay, what is the underlying structure in there? So every goal that you achieve, you achieved it because you became capable, you had the capacity, uh, in your emotional regulation and in your nervous system to be able to create it and to be able to hold it and maintain it.

[00:02:00] If you achieve something but then went backwards again, so like when you see people, they do, you know, sort of like eight-week challenges and stuff at the gym, and they go hard and they, you know, full on into it and get an, a result from eight weeks, and then just go back to their normal life, right? That, that is a really good example of you didn't build the emotional capacity in your nervous system to maintain that outcome.

And usually, whatever you're doing in an eight-week challenge, you don't wanna do consistently forever. That's why it's called a challenge. And so that's why it's always, you know, better to make, um, changes into what you wanna sustain rather than just going flat out for a particular thing because you might achieve something in a short amount of time, but you won't sustain it, right?

You have to make the changes that you're gonna sustain over a certain amount of time. And so that really requires for you to be able to let go of, you know, how you're showing up in the world now. And so this is really important to understand because everybody has [00:03:00] an egoic identity, right? You have an e- egoic identity, which is this, uh, aspect of what you've learned is safe and acceptable and, uh, you know how it all works for you to show up in the world in this particular way.

And as you show up in the world in this particular way, um, your egoic identity, right, will die to know how things are, right? So it will set up rules and beliefs and things around- What you're allowed to do, how people respond to you, what your responsibilities are, what's the hierarchy of how you fit into your family, you know, your, with your colleagues, your communities, all of those kinds of things.

And the moment that you try to step outside of that is gonna be uncomfortable, and you're going to have to... Your nervous system has to find another way for it to feel okay and safe for you to be in the world. Okay? So, um, so this [00:04:00] applies to every kind of context of your life. And so I wanna share with you in this episode some of the examples, and these are all things I, I've either, um, experienced myself or w- worked with clients through Right?

But they're real examples so that you can get an idea of what this really means. 'Cause once you understand it, once you understand your patterns and can recognize your patterns, then you can do something to change it, and you can let go of those old patterns. You can de-identify from those old patterns, and you become much stronger in, uh...

You become much stronger internally, which means you have greater emotional regulation and, and greater, uh, capacity in your nervous system for the change that's required for you to achieve that goal. So I'll give you some examples, and I'm gonna start with health, right? Health and emotional regulation.

Now, y- to start with, [00:05:00] right, the amount of people that I have worked with that have had some kind of, like, chronic fatigue or, um, the, uh, oh, what's the other word that often affects women? It'll come to me. Uh, but these kind of mystery illnesses that are either, like, lots of pain or lots of inflammation or, um, th- and things that can't really...

Oh, fibromyalgia, that was the one I was thinking about. There's lots of symptoms that the doctor can't really pinpoint, and they can't really seem to do anything about, um, and they can't really find a solution, will always be, uh, with people who have had a lot of unresolved emotional trauma or that are, are the emotional shock absorbers for a family unit, okay?

So they're the ones that are like, they make sure everybody's okay, or they're the ones that, you know, keeps the peace, or they're the ones that, you know, have been, you know, abused or, or all [00:06:00] kinds of things. And, um, so that's one extreme of that, right? And I'm just talking about that to demonstrate the connection.

The same with pain. A lot of, um, consistent, uh, chronic pain, especially in the neck and back and, you know, sciatica pain and things like that, uh, comes from emotional, uh, trapped negative emotions. And this has been proven. Um, this guy called Dr. Jack Sarno, who was a back surgeon and, and, uh, did, um, a lot of research around back, uh, uh, back pain and, and surgery and what was actually fixed after surgery.

And, um, and often those back problems weren't solved from surgery alone. And there's a technique that I used to teach when I used to teach NLP Master Practitioner. There was a technique that was for chronic pain, and you literally go through this process of helping people connect to the emotions that they're not facing, um, that they are...

you know, can't deal with or don't wanna face or don't wanna admit to, and, um, get them to actually connect with it, and [00:07:00] then there's a whole release, right? And their, the pain disappears. Like, I've seen it time and time again. Done this process with my daughter once as well. Um, and it's really, really in- interesting.

Um, but I'm sort of getting off a little bit of topic, but I'm so passionate about that, like, y- you know, physical symptoms are not just physical symptoms, right? Y- your whole body as a human is a whole system between your mental and your emotional and your spiritual and your physical. Um, but anyway Um, this-- a simple one that you might relate to is around losing weight.

So a lot of people that I speak to, um, say that they would like to lose some weight, or that they're, they're struggling to lose some weight, right? It's pretty common in our, in our culture today. A lot of people really struggle with losing weight. And when are the times that people put on more weight?

Well, often when they're stressed, right? Often when they're stressed. And [00:08:00] so the, so the, the problem with that is, is what, what you have to work out is that the behaviors that cause your body to carry extra fluid or fat or whatever, uh, behaviors that generally, um, are ones that help you to soothe or relieve some kind of stress or emotional discomfort.

Okay? So I'll give you some examples, right? Um, you know, during COVID, uh, alcohol use went right up, right? Alcohol u-use increased incredibly. Um, and there's a really good reason for that, because a lot of people were very isolated, and they didn't have any social outlet. Sometimes there were people that couldn't even leave their house, and so people did not have a way to, uh, to connect with others, to be [00:09:00] active, to be able to deal with their emotional regulation in a healthy way.

They're in isolation. They're in a limited, you know, um, environment. So alcohol use went up because alcohol use is one of the first ways people numb out their emotions, right? When people are going through challenging times at work, they often drink more. When people are going through challenging times with their relationships, they often drink more.

So alcohol is something that people often use to regulate their emotions. Now, excess, uh, alcohol will also cause inflammation, um, excess calories, you know, makes your liver work harder or struggle to do the work that it's need to. So you end up with a lot more toxins and fat and, um, inflammation in your body Right?

And it's the, uh, reaction to being able to deal with that stress. Um, people often will talk about that even if they're in a, you know, maybe their relationship isn't that great [00:10:00] or something's going on in their life that's not having, you know, that's not really positive, they're not really excited about it, they might end up sitting around binging on Netflix and eating chocolate and drinking wine or, you know, eating chips or whatever those things.

So, so those behaviors of just like numbing out on the couch and eating and drinking stuff that aren't, uh, aren't good for you are, are generally done because they're used as a form of emotional regulation. So what does that mean? Well, it means that for you to be able to be healthy and to lose weight then, that you have to be able to regulate your emotions in a healthier way.

Right? If you're not able to regulate your emotions in a healthier way, then you're going to keep doing those behaviors that cause you to, you know, have the inflammation and the weight gain and all those kinds of things. And so people being on a, [00:11:00] um, like on, to be able to lose weight and, and maintain losing weight need to have good emotional regulation, right?

Because they, they go hand in hand. And so no amount of nutritional knowledge or, um, exer- knowing the b- right exercises, uh, to do are going to create that long-term change unless you know how to regulate your emotions or you know how to work with someone to release old, those old emotions. And I, I know this for myself.

When I was younger, I used to drink, uh, way more than what was healthy and ate all kinds of junk food and all kinds of things, and there was definitely times that I was a lot heavier than I am these days. Um, and it was because that was part of my emotional regulation, right? And, and I see it in other clients all the time.

So that's an area where your nervous system has to expand its capacity to be able to deal with your being healthy [00:12:00] because you need to, uh, expand your capacity for emotions, um, and c- and regulation and, and being able to manage that for yourself to be able to stick to a healthy, uh, diet and exercise plan.

To maintain, right? You might be able to do it for a short amount of time, but at the end of it, then you're like, "Oh, great, now I can like stop having to deal with all this crap," and numb out again. Okay, so health, that, that's, that's an area of life, right, where your goals have to... Your c- emotional capacity has to expand to achieve those goals Uh, also in relationships.

Okay, so people, um, if you're in a relationship that you're not enjoying or there's things that aren't going well, you're not getting your needs met, maybe there's a lot of, um, arguments, or there's a lot of resentment because, you know, your partner's not doing their fair share, or they're not pulling their weight or, you know, whatever, and this is ongoing, then we've gotta look at what's actually going on here.

And I've talked to a lot of clients [00:13:00] about this as well, and, um, definitely something I had to go through with my own relationship, is that the reason why you put up with stuff for years or years or ongoing or ongoing is because you haven't got... d- developed the emotional capacity to be able to put clean boundaries in place.

And that might be that you have a fear of upsetting other people, and that if you upset other people, that something bad will happen to you or that you'll end up alone or that you'll end up, you know, losing something. And so to be able to create a healthy relationship, you have to be able to build the emotional regulation and the emotional safety within yourself and the capacity in your nervous system to be able to express your boundaries really clearly and to follow through on those boundaries.

Okay? So if, um, you know, when people say to me, "Oh, well, I put boundaries in place, but my partner doesn't respect them." Um, no, [00:14:00] you're not respecting them, right? Um, people... Like, boundaries, you put boundaries in place, and if someone doesn't respect them, then you take the next step, and you take the next step.

Um, and y- you're only enforcing a boundary if you're willing to go to the point of, like, removing access for that person to you. Okay? So, um, if a behavior is that bad and you're expressing what it is that you want and that that behavior is n- not okay and they don't care and they keep doing it, then you need to be willing to say, "Look, if this doesn't end, I'm going to leave," or, "I'm going to move out," or, "I'm going to do something."

And people are usually afraid to do that because they don't have the emotional capacity for it, because there is a fear that I'll end up alone, I'll end up emotionally isolated, that no one else will ever choose me, that I will end up with no money, that I'll end up on the street, that I'll end up with nothing.

[00:15:00] And so there's this big fear of I'm not gonna be okay on my own. And, um, and that, you know, there's gonna be all kinds of versions of stories in that. But ultimately, in a healthy relationship, you have to decide to meet your own needs, okay? So you gotta make yourself happy, and you've gotta do the things that you enjoy and choose the things for yourself that you enjoy.

And then expect that, that your cl- your partner is going to at least meet you at that level, right? So that they're not going to make your life worse than what you can do for yourself. If you're expecting your partner to make your life better than what you're willing to make your own, then you're gonna put a whole lot of expectation on them that they're probably never going to, uh, actually meet And so then you get into this space of going, "Well, I'm not happy and my needs aren't getting met, and it's their fault."

Right? Um, but it's [00:16:00] not. If you continue- continuously stay in an environment where your needs aren't getting met, it's because you're not seeing to your needs getting met. Uh, and I'll give you example of, um, this, you know, even for myself and in my relationship, I used to get very resentful about doing all the housework, and that being the only person who'd ever clean anything, and that, you know, if nobody else would do it as well as I did and everything else like that.

Well, the fact was, the people I was getting resentful for were never going to do it the way I do it, and they were never gonna want to do it. So what... I wanna get my own needs met, hire the cleaner. Right? Hire the cleaner. Now we get a cleaner that comes in and, and does the things as that I was resentful for.

Um, my needs are getting met. I've made sure that they're getting met. I've decided that that's what's gonna happen. If no one else in the house wants to pa- wants to do that cleaning, then they can pay. Right? That's a boundary. Um, did the same with, um, gardening. Um, like [00:17:00] there's people that come to my... I work from home.

There's people that come to my house. My garden needs to be well-maintained. If my partner couldn't do it, and he works away a lot, so he couldn't do it anyway, then I'm not gonna sit there and be resentful that no one does the gardening, and I don't wanna do it. It's more than what I'm gonna do or that I have time for.

We have a gardener, right? So we pay a gardener, so I'm making sure that my needs get met, and that is okay for my needs to get met and to do those kinds of things. And so you've really gotta think about that in your relationship, right? Like, what expectations are you putting on other people and, uh, or expecting them to do, and getting resentful that they're not doing without asking them and without, you know, taking responsibility for getting those needs met yourself, right?

Your partner, your person in your relationship shouldn't be responsible for meeting all of your needs. You're responsible for meeting your needs, and then they can contribute to that, right? And so once you know that you can do that, [00:18:00] and you build a life where, you know, you have connection, you have outings, you have friends, you have money, you have what it is that makes your life whole, and then this person you're, you know, in a relationship with meets you there, uh, or and however that is, then you no longer have fear that you can't have what you want or that they're not gonna be there because you're already meeting your own needs.

Right? But you have to be willing to do that. You have to be willing to give yourself permission to have what you want. You have to be willing to ask for what you want. You have to be willing to, um, you know, it- be- make yourself happy. And know that that's okay, um, to be in that space. Okay? And so, like I said, for a lot of people, they don't have the emotional capacity for that.

They've got a lot of fear about being alone, about upsetting people, about all the other kind of complicated interwoven things that people have, um, around their relationship that [00:19:00] prevents them from, you know, having happiness, if that's what your goal is. Um, I see this also in business, okay? This can show up in business as well, and a big one in business is when people, you know, wanna have a goal for either having more time freedom or m- more money freedom, um, that there can be some real blocks around receiving support.

And so you have to be able to have the emotional capacity and the nervous system regulation to allow yourself to receive those things, okay? So that might mean, uh, having more clients. It might mean putting your prices up. It might mean delegating more. It might mean building out a team. It might mean, um, holding your team to a higher expectation.

But to be able to do all those things, you, you, you can't do them if you have guilt around that, right? You can't do those things if you feel like [00:20:00] that asking someone to do something means that they're going to get upset and, um, cause problems for you, or that they're gonna leave and leave you unsupported, or that no one can do it as well as you do it, or any of those kinds of things.

So you have to have the emotional regulation and the capacity in your nervous system to believe that these things are possible and that you can receive them, right? That you can receive them with ease. Otherwise, you'll just create these all ongoing situations that just keep you stuck in the same space.

Um, and you know, that could be very much around support in business, okay? That's a big one that I see around for people, like getting support in business and being supported in a way... 'Cause your business ultimately is a structure that, um, is a vehicle that is designed you can use to create a life and business and freedom and impact that you want to.

You get to design it however you want. Um, but most [00:21:00] people get stuck within their emotional capacity and regulation of what they think they can create for themselves. So you have to be willing to be able to let those things go and build that emotional capacity. Now, you can be the same when we look at things like money and success.

Uh, it can be another thing that comes either through business or, you know, other kinds of ways. But this is a thing that I had to do a lot of work around myself for because I grew up with a lot of negative conditioning around money and success, and that, m- you know, money and success, uh, essentially, my fears were that, um, people would hold it against me or people would, like, stop being connecting with me, or that they would think badly of me, or they would be jealous of me, or that I'd become a target or all these kinds of stories because of the conditioning.

So to be able to raise my income and to be more powerful in what it was that I created for myself and to be okay with having a [00:22:00] business that pays me well, that I work from home, that I get to travel regularly, that, you know, I get to have all the things that I want, I had to build the nervous system regulation for that, the emotional capacity for it to feel like I could have that and that I would still be okay, um, and that it wasn't going to cause me to lose something.

It wasn't gonna cause me to lose connection. Connection was the main thing for me. But it could be all kinds of things. People feel like, you know, more money might mean more responsibility, more expectations, um, that, you know, there's more risk of losing. Um, there's all these kinds of things that can sit in your nervous system that you have to be able to emotionally regulate to be able to create that goal and maintain it Okay, so, um, this is, um...

I- it is the same, like, with ease. I've spoke about this before. If you wanna have more ease in your life, you have to be able to put boundaries around ease rather than boundaries [00:23:00] around survival. So most people are stressed out and burnt out and running on survival all the time, um, and wondering why that is, and it's because they don't feel comfortable having boundaries around their ease.

So, you know, busyness is often a boundary for people. If I'm busy all the time, then I've got a reason that I can say no to things. Um, and or if I don't have a lot of money, then I've got a reason to say that I can't afford something or I can't do something. So we've gotta be able to, uh, get comfortable and have the emotional capacity and the nervous system regulation to be able to put boundaries around things that you want rather than just things that you need.

That is a big one, right? So many people, and this is another thing I've had to work on for myself as well, that it's okay if, if you've got a need, then it's justified, but if you just want something, then it feels, um, like dangerous, then it feels risky, then it feels like you might be selfish or that you might be judged or whatever.[00:24:00] 

And so we've gotta learn to have the emotional capacity to put boundaries around the level of ease and abundance that you wanna have in your life without worrying about what anybody else will think or what they can expect from you or whether, you know, they're gonna like you or not like you because you're not doing what they want.

So this is, um, such important things and, and there's shifts like this that I help clients with all the time that make huge difference to their business. And in fact, just this week I had, um, one of my clients in Elevate, which is the group coaching program that I have for, um, coaches and practitioners, and, uh, and she jumped on.

It was a group call, and she jumped on and, uh, and shared that from our last session, the shifts that she had, and this was changing her perception and her emotional capacity and regulation, the shifts that she got from that session in-- had an immediate impact of clients coming into her business and opportunities coming [00:25:00] into her business where there had been a big dry spell.

And the reason was the things that we shifted was that in that session, she'd had some challenges that, um, had been coming up around health, and she knew that there were some things coming up that she had to deal with and, and to go through. And that, knowing that those things were coming up but not having certainty a-a-around it made her feel very unsafe in inviting people into her business because she just didn't know.

What if I invite people in and then I can't deliver, or if I do this and then I can't deliver, or w-w- I don't know what I can do? So we got some real clarity about what was going to happen and how would she deal with those scenarios and what was the actual, um, time frames and all those kinds of things.

And once we created the structure around what that's gonna look for her over the next few months, that created emotional regulation, right? Structure creates emotional [00:26:00] regulation. So that changed. And then the other thing we did was that she was, um, having some concerns around, um, you know, before she'd always been selling lower ticket things, and she had created a core offer, and this core offer is around three grand, and, um, she was having some pushback from people saying that this is too expensive.

Now, it's not that three grand is a lot of money, and the value she provides is incredible, but it was a, um, jump up from what she had sold previously. So the thing that we did was go, "Okay, what you actually need to do is create an even higher priced offer Does not mean that you're gonna be trying to sell all this, but you need to have a higher pri- price offer.

So look at what is it that you could deliver if you were giving everybody the best of the best, and they got everything that they possibly could, and there was this amazing outcome. What would that program look like, and how much would you charge? And she's [00:27:00] like, "Oh yeah, easy. That would be 10 grand, and it would have this, this, this, and this in it."

Beautiful. All right. So you've got a 10 grand offer. Now, how expensive does your three grand offer sound? She's like, "It sounds really reasonable." Absolutely, and that changed everything in her emotional regulation and her emotional capacity. There was a different framework. There was a different shift in perspective.

There was a different way that she perceived herself and the value that she offered that created a new level of emotional capacity and emotional regulation, and that's why clients started rolling in. And not only did they start rolling in, but she had an inquiry before that session even finished that turned into a booked and paid client, and that's how fast things can change when we shift and create this emotional security and emotional regulation.

So this is the thing that we have to really understand about whatever it is that you wanna achieve, there's a level of [00:28:00] emotional capacity, emotional regulation, um, nervous system capacity that needs to be, uh, built or be opened up so that you can achieve that thing. And that will require you sh- shifting perspective on who you believe you are, what's possible for you, letting go of anything that is not aligned with that, and being more fully expressed in the truth of who you are so that you can actualize what it is you're here to do.

Ah. This is a topic that... You know, ultimately, this is what I do all day long. My clients, they come to me for all different reasons, whether they're coaches, practitioners, whether they're CEOs of, you know, multimillion-dollar companies, I'm always doing the same thing, looking at what do they want to achieve, and what is the underlying emotional problem that is preventing them from achieving that [00:29:00] and maintaining it.

And once you recognize that, you can release it. You build out the nervous system capacity and structure, and things move fast. That is the work. That is how you achieve your goals. As always, I would love to know your feedback. What resonated with you? Um, send me a message. Hit me up. If you've got some, uh, emotional capacity that you want to expand, this is the place for it.

This is my jam. This is what The Turning Point's all about.