Ep #33: Expanding Your Capacity For The Relationship & Life of Your Dreams

You don’t get the relationship or life of your dreams just by wanting it harder. You get it by expanding your capacity to hold it.

In this episode, I’m breaking down why desire doesn’t equal readiness, the mistakes that keep you stuck even when you’re “doing the work,” and how to stretch your nervous system so you can finally hold more love, success, and visibility without sabotaging it.

Inside this episode, you’ll discover:
• Why wanting more isn’t the problem (and what really is)
• The hidden ways your nervous system shuts down the very love and success you’re asking for
• The biggest mistakes keeping smart, self-aware women stuck in the same patterns
• A simple framework to expand your capacity without overwhelming yourself
• How to finally turn self-awareness into embodied confidence and secure love

If you’re tired of wanting more but never quite getting there — this one’s for you.

🎧 Tune in now! And if this episode resonates, send me a DM on Instagram—I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Transcript

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You are listening to the Secure Love Club podcast. I'm your host, Mimi Watt. Hey friends. Welcome back to the club. We are back today with a solo episode, just you and me, and we are gonna dive straight into it. I'm coming at you today with a bit of fire and a bit of passion and a bit of tough motherfucking love. Hear me out. You don't get the life or the relationship of your dreams just by wanting it harder. You get it by expanding your capacity to hold it. Let that land. Now, this is where so many women that I talk to get stuck. They want the healthy relationship. They wanna start the business. They wanna show up confidently online, whatever it is. But it's not that they're not capable. It's that their body, their nervous system, their current capacity just aren't set up to hold more, more love, more success, or more visibility yet. So in today's episode, I'm gonna walk you through. Exactly why desire isn't enough. The sneaky mistakes people make that keep them stuck even when they're doing quote unquote all the right things and how to actually expand your capacity. And build your capability.'cause there's two parts to this, so that you can create the relationship and the life you dream of. This is one that I'm so excited to sink my teeth into, and by the end, you are gonna see why your nervous system and your capacity matter more than your vision board and how to start shifting it today. Let's dive in. Wanting something is not the same as being ready for it. Desire does not equal readiness. You can want the healthy, secure relationships so badly at fucking aches. You can want to finally start your own business or shift careers. You can want to show up online and share your voice or be seen and. I know you are smart enough and capable enough and good enough to do it, but if your capacity isn't there, meaning if your body and your nervous system can't actually hold the stress, discomfort, or even the vulnerability of that next level, you'll sabotage, you'll shrink back or stall every single time. Now, let me give you some examples because I know you'll relate. Let's start with dating. So you say you want a secure, emotionally available partner, but then someone shows up who actually communicates well, doesn't play games, does what they say they're gonna do, is predictable and reliable. Okay? They enter your life and suddenly you are anxious. You're second guessing, or you're pulling away and panicking because it feels unfamiliar. It's not that there's a lack of desire for that type of relationship, it's that there's a lack of capacity to hold the safety and intimacy that you say you want. This is such a common experience. I was just talking to one of my clients who brought this up. We've been working together and she was previously anxiously attached. She's healing her anxious attachment and she has met someone who is secure. Cully attached, which is the goal, right? He is showing up, he is being consistent. There is no game playing and things are feeling pretty good. But then she came back to me and she said, this is starting to feel boring. I don't know if I actually want this. And this highlighted to me that the focus here is not that he isn't actually a mismatch for what she wants, it's that her nervous system isn't used to this sense of safety. So it wants to sabotage the relationship and it wants to find ways to validate why this isn't what she wants. Okay, and maybe you've experienced this. I know I certainly did. You may have heard me talk about in my secure relationship, my nervous system tried to sabotage the fuck out of that relationship in the first few months, right? Because it was the first time I had been held in love with such consideration and safety, and I didn't know what to do with it. Seriously. I tried to create drama and fighting and arguments when there was nothing to argue about. Like there was no issue, but my brain being the intelligent, sneaky thing that it is. Tried to find reasons to start an argument or to be passive aggressive or whatever, and it's not because he was doing anything wrong, it's because my nervous system. Was not ready. I didn't have the capacity at the time to hold the relationship, and thankfully I was. Aware of what was going on so I could catch myself and work with it before I like fully sabotaged the relationship. But it's a very real experience. Okay. Anyway, we're gonna go more into that in a moment, but let's move on to another example just to really paint this picture. Let's talk about career or business. So let's say you dream of showing up online. You wanna share your content, you wanna launch a program, or you even wanna apply for a leadership role, okay? Or a new career position. But when the moment comes to hit post or to send the application, your whole system freaks out. And the way that shows up is you procrastinate, so you kick the can down the road, right? You find every other thing in your life that needs doing and it becomes a top priority over this one thing. You overthink and you convince yourself that you're not ready yet, and again. That's not about your capability. You're capable of doing these things. It's about your current capacity to hold the discomfort of visibility, rejection, or failure. So you see capacity is the container. It's the size of the cup you're currently drinking out of. Now, you might have a gallon of desire for something, but if you are pouring it into a tiny little espresso cup of capacity. It's gonna overflow, and when things overflow, they feel overwhelming, unsafe, and your nervous system says, yep, too much. Okay, so your capability, which means the actual skills, competence, your ability to do the thing that only grows inside of capacity. Okay, stay with me here. So if you don't expand the container first, you never even give yourself the chance to build the skills. So bottom line, if you want to create the relationship or the life of your dreams, your number one focus can't just be on wanting it harder or doing more personal development or creating another vision board, you have to look at. What is my current capacity? How much love, vulnerability, risk, or discomfort can I actually hold in my body before I collapse, run, or sabotage another area. You see, this is with money. This is why you see people who you hear stories about this all the time, people who win the lotto. And maybe before they won the lotto, they haven't been someone who's ever had much money and then they win millions of dollars and within a year, two years, they're back to being broke. They've spent all the money. That's because they never grew their capacity to be someone who can hold millions of dollars. And this is a very real thing. Take a look at your own life. Maybe you have a certain upper limit when it comes to money in terms of how much you seem to always have in your bank account. Maybe it's, you only ever have$10,000 in your savings account, or$5,000 or 3000. Maybe it's 50,000, whatever it is for you, but you don't seem to go above that limit. That is because your nervous system. Capped itself at a certain amount of money to be able to hold. And so it's way if it starts to go over that, so maybe you experience, uh, an influx of cash or you, you get a pay rise or whatever, and you notice that you spend that money as quickly as you can. It's like as soon as you see a few thousand extra thousand dollars come in, you're like, oh, perfect. And you just go and spend it. It, and this is crazy how this happens. It's quite subconscious, like you're not actually aware that you're doing it, but it's because your capacity is at a certain level where it can only tolerate so much money that you are holding. So if I say to you, I want you to imagine that you've just made$1 million. You've just made a million dollars sitting in your account. Now, just tune in for a second and notice how your body feels. Do you feel a sense of panic, of overwhelm of stress, or perceived like responsibility that you are now gonna have? If you picture yourself becoming someone who makes millions of dollars, do you fear that no one is gonna like you anymore? No one's gonna wanna be around you. They're gonna have a, a different perception of you. Just an interesting way to test where your capacity is at when it comes to money, because we will find ways to sabotage if we are not at the capacity to hold X amount of money to hold X relationship, to hold X amount of eyes on us in our social media. All of these ways that this shows up in our life, it is so fascinating and so interconnected when you really look at it. Okay. Now that you understand why capacity matters more than desire, let's talk about where most people go wrong. Because if you're listening to this and thinking, yep, Mimi, that's me. I want it so bad, but I keep tripping over myself. I want you to know you can have the things that you want. You're just caught in a couple of sneaky patterns that are blocking your capacity from ever growing. So let me walk you through the big ones. Number one, mistake number one is confusing awareness with growth. So many women in my community say things like, well, I know my attachment style now. I know that I tend to get anxious in dating. I know my childhood impacted my relationships, and they think that knowing these things means they're quote unquote doing the work. And whilst it's part of it, awareness is not the full extent of the growth required. Awareness is like turning on the lights in a messy room, right? So now you can see the clothes on the floor, you can see the dishes on the table. You can see the dust everywhere. Great, but turning the light on doesn't clean the room. And that's why so many people, or that's what so many people do, sorry, with self-awareness, they turn the light on, then they sit in the mess, feeling overwhelmed and think, why hasn't my life changed yet? I can see it all. So shouldn't I be healed? Shouldn't I be healed if I'm aware of all of this? And sadly, unfortunately, no. My love awareness is step one. That growth happens when you actually stretch your capacity in real time. When you move through the discomfort instead of just observing it. Mistake number two is waiting to feel ready, and oh, this one is a biggie that I know you can all relate to. We've all been here. People waste years of their lives waiting until they feel ready. I'll start dating when I'm more confident. I'll shop up online when I have more clarity. I'll invest in myself when I feel secure enough, but. You will never feel ready, and that is the entire point. Readiness doesn't come first. Readiness is a byproduct of stretching your nervous system and proving to yourself that you can hold more. So if you're waiting for fear to disappear before you act, you will be waiting forever. And while you wait, time keeps ticking. Opportunities pass, life moves forward. The people who actually get what they want are the ones who felt ready. They're the ones who took action before they felt ready and let their capacity grow through that process. And I'm gonna walk you through what that looks like a bit later of how you actually stretch your capacity. But I just want this one to land. It is such an illusion that you are gonna feel ready one day. Okay. Whatever excuse you put in front of, I just need X, Y, Z, then I'll feel ready. It is exactly that. It's an excuse, and it's born from fear. Fear of judgment, fear of failure, fear of being misunderstood, fear of rejection, abandonment, whatever it is. There's always gonna be something to be afraid of, but this is about recognizing that. In most of the situations with the things you're wanting to do, there's not gonna be actually anything that is life threatening. It just means you're probably gonna experience some level of discomfort. So this is about looking at what am I waiting for to feel ready and do I need to wait any longer, or can I recognize the stretch that taking this next step is going to require of me? And can I just do it anyway? And in doing that, know that I'm expanding my capacity. So that's mistake number two, waiting to feel ready. Mistake number three is trying to bypass discomfort. So this sort of ties into mistake number two, and this one is sneaky because on the surface it looks like self-care, right? But it's actually avoidance. You know, I hear women say, I just need to protect my peace. I'm just not gonna put myself in that situation. I'm just gonna focus on me for now. And while, yes, absolutely. There are times when boundaries and pulling back are important a lot of the time, this is actually a cover up for avoiding discomfort. True capacity doesn't come from living in a bubble where nothing ever triggers you. It comes from putting yourself into stretchy, uncomfortable situations and learning to regulate and stay grounded in them. That's how your nervous system learns, says, okay, this is uncomfortable, but I survived. I didn't die. I can hold this. And if you keep bypassing the uncomfortable stuff, you never give your system the chance to grow. If we keep choosing a life of comfort, we're gonna create a life that's very small and very insular. It is far too easy these days to create a life where we barely touch the edges of discomfort. We are so safe, we have so much at our fingertips. We can get food on demand. You know, we can be distracted 24 7 with social media, with Netflix. Like, it's just so easy to stay comfortable and bypassing discomfort is unhealthy. It's actually not a good thing, right? We think sometimes it's a good thing, like, oh no, it's just self-care. I'm just taking care of myself. I don't wanna put myself in any situation that's gonna cause me any unnecessary stress because stress is so bad and so toxic. But I want you to question that notion. Okay, I am not talking about go and put yourself in the most fucked up, stressful situations and completely bounce back the other way, like 150%. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that there is a healthy amount of stress and discomfort to put yourself under if you're wanting to grow. So we need to stop trying to bypass the discomfort. Mistake number four is seeing mistakes. As proof that you're not capable and this one hurts because it's so common. You finally put yourself out there. Maybe you go on the date, you try showing up online, you apply for the new job, and then it doesn't go perfectly, quote unquote perfectly.'cause what is that? Maybe the date ghosts to you. Or maybe the post you made doesn't land, doesn't get much engagement. Maybe you don't get the interview for that job that you wanted, or you have the interview but you didn't get the job and immediately your brain goes, see, I knew it. I'm not capable. This proves I can't do it. Capability doesn't grow by getting it right the first time. Capability grows through messing up, failing forward, and learning. Every mistake is literally building your muscle of resilience. Think of a baby learning to walk. Okay? This is the classic example. They fall 50 times before they take a step. Imagine if babies thought like adults, and they're like, well, I fell once, so I guess walking isn't for me. Like, no. They keep going and that's how they build capability. If you treat every mistake as evidence, you're not capable. You cut off your growth right at the foot. Do you think that, and I say this I while eating humble pie, but for real, do you think that I built an audience of over a hundred thousand people by posting once and or every post being perfect. And just posting 50 times and then boom, the audience is there. Absolutely not. I posted for a long time having no idea what I was doing, having 50 followers of just my friends and family, being there, feeling embarrassed, feeling like people were judging me, wondering if this was ever gonna go anywhere, if it was ever gonna land or make sense. I had all those fears and all those feelings. But every day you make a decision. I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna show up again and again, and again and again. I'm going to host that webinar guys. I've hosted webinars where I had literally two people sign up. I did a two day webinar once where two people, those two people came on day one on day two, no one showed up. I was live doing the webinar, literally speaking to myself. But did I cancel and just click out of it? No. I delivered that webinar like it was a hundred people in front of me. I recorded it and I sent out the value. So don't think that other people don't go through challenges or times where they're not getting any sort of validation or response. Everyone goes through this. But it's just about not looking at your mistakes or your, those initial STA stages as proof that you are not capable because you know, in your heart of hearts, you absolutely fucking are. We just need to be willing to be bad at something. We need to be willing to be doing something for the first time and keep going until we get to the point we wanna get to. Okay. And here's the last one that I see all the time. So mistake number five, trying to expand too fast. So women try to go from zero to a hundred overnight. They're like, okay, Mimi, I get it. I need to stretch my capacity, so I'm gonna go do the scariest thing possible right now. And then what happens? They shock their system, their nervous system goes into shut down or panic, and they end up reinforcing the story that they can't handle it. Capacity grows in layers, in baby steps. It's about stretching yourself just beyond your comfort zone, not catapulting yourself so far that you retraumatize your system. Think of it like lifting weights. If you've never touched a dumbbell before, you don't start with 50 kilos. You start with five and you build strength, then you move to 10, then 15. That's how you grow. Sustainable capacity. Let's look at some examples in dating. So one could be jumping all in with one person immediately, so you meet someone you like, and instead of pacing yourself, you're suddenly texting 24 7, spending every night together and mentally planning your future. After two dates, you are nervous. System goes from zero to a hundred in intimacy overnight. Okay. And I'm talking to my, my beautiful anxiously attached women out there.'cause this is what we do. And then when they pull back even slightly, your whole system goes into panic, right? So this is about your capacity being stretched too far, too fast. The next one is maybe expecting yourself to feel safe with secure partners right away. So as I was saying to my client the other day, and as I had to. Reinforce in my own experience, let's say a secure person shows up, okay, they're steady, consistent, there's no games. Instead of easing in and giving yourself space to adjust, you put all this pressure on yourself to feel instantly comfortable. But because secure love feels foreign, if you're used to anxious or avoidant dynamics, your body actually interprets it as unsafe. So then you freak out, you push them away or convince yourself you're not attracted and you sabotage the relationship. And so that's why I said to my client, take your time. There is no rush here. When you feel that little voice in your, in your, or hear that little voice in your head or that that fear come up that I don't know if I want this, instead of listening to that straight away, can you notice that there's some discomfort And say, you know what? There are enough green flags in this person that I'm going to give it a bit more time. I'm gonna stretch this discomfort. I'm gonna lean in and I'm gonna see where it goes. And another example is trying to never feel anxious again or, or thinking that you, you'll never feel anxious again. Hey, some women jump into dating with this mindset of, okay, I've done some healing now I'm only gonna feel calm, confident, and secure from here on out. But that's like expecting yourself to run a marathon after walking around the block once you know when anxiety inevitably comes up, because it will, if you are having this perspective of like, I can never feel anxious again, then you're gonna spiral into shame. You're gonna think, oh fuck, see, I'm not healed. I can't do this. And that just shuts your capacity down instead of gently stretching it, which is what we're trying to do. Yeah, so this is why I always say to my clients and my women inside peacefully attached is don't expect yourself to never feel anxious again. You're setting yourself up for failure if you do that because you're a human and you are working to rewire patterns and behaviors that have been conditioned for a very long time. So you're going to go through a process of unlearning and relearning, and it's inevitable. You're gonna have some slip ups or some anxiety in that process, and that's okay. So don't expect yourself to never feel anxious again. So if you're seeing yourself in any of those mistakes. First of all, welcome to being human. This is what most of us do, and it's why we say stuck in the same patterns, even when we want more for ourselves. But the good news is, is that none of these mistakes mean you are doomed and none of the mean that you can't have the relationship or the life that you want. It just means we need to approach growth differently in a way that actually builds your capacity and your capability. So let's shift gears now because I want to talk you through a simple three step framework for how you can start to expand your capacity and build your capability from today. So step number one is you are going to check your current capacity. The first step here is being radically honest about where you are at right now. What is your current capacity? So maybe ask yourself, how much discomfort can I tolerate? Before I shut down, run, or sabotage in dating, how long can I hold uncertainty before I reach for reassurance or start spiraling in career or business? How much visibility can I handle before I start procrastinating or avoiding? This is like checking the weight that you can lift at the gym. There's no shame in it. If you're currently at five kilos, cool, that's where you start. But pretending you're at 50 when you're not is how you injure yourself. So the key here is awareness without judgment, know your baseline so you can stretch from there. Step number two is stretch, but don't snap your nervous system. So now that you know your baseline, this is where we are going to intentionally stretch yourself just beyond your comfort zone. And this is where a lot of people get it wrong. They either stay in the bubble of safety and never grow, which we don't wanna do. Or they catapult themselves so far outside their comfort zone that their nervous system freaks out and shuts down. And we don't wanna do that either. So stretching looks like in dating. Going on a date, even when you feel nervous, allowing a secure partner to text you consistently and do the things they say they're gonna do without immediately questioning it or pushing them away. It could be practicing slowing down instead of rushing into all or nothing mode. If it's your career you're looking at, it could be hitting post on that piece of content even though your hands are shaking. And you are freaking out thinking, fuck me. What is my cousin's mom's friend gonna fucking think? Or what are those girls from high school gonna think? Impersonal growth. It's saying yes to an opportunity that excites you and scares you a little. So maybe you've been thinking about investing into a program or investing into a coach and your body feels expanded When you thinking, when you think about doing it. You read through the program details and you think, fuck, this is exactly for me. I wanna do this. But then you see the price tag and you go, oh, and you wanna immediately say, no. Maybe it's a little bit more than you thought it was gonna be. Okay. We're reaching the edge here of discomfort. Can you stretch here? Can you stretch your capacity by finding a way to get the money and invest in yourself? Because that right there, even that act of getting resourceful and prioritizing something and finding a way to make it happen and then, and then making that investment. Is such a powerful way to stretch your capacity. That's why they say the transformation begins with the transaction. And I've experienced this countless times'cause I've invested so much money into mentor mentors and coaches. It's as soon as you make that investment and then transaction into a, a coach or a mentor into a price point that stretches you and scares you a little bit, you immediately uplevel because you have just signified to yourself, to your nervous system. I am someone who is ready to hold more. I'm ready to do more and be more. Do not underestimate that. The rule is it should feel stretchy, not snappy, uncomfortable, yes, but not unsafe. It's just like adding a little bit more weight at the gym. It's enough to challenge you, but not enough to injure you. Let's go into step three. Turning capacity into capability, and this is where the magic happens because capability is what grows inside the container of capacity. So every time you stretch and take action, you give yourself the chance to build actual skills, competence, and resilience. You post a thing and you realize, oh, I didn't die. You go on the date and you realize, oh, I can handle the uncertainty. You set the boundary and you realize, oh, I survived that conversation. You don't sabotage the secure connection, and then a few months later you go, oh, this is fucking wonderful. Your capability grows through repetition, through messing up through learning. Yeah. Every mistake is not proof that you're not good enough. It's the rep that builds your muscle. In fact, I want you to look at mistakes or quote unquote failing as a good thing, as a positive thing, because every time you do it means you have just stretched yourself that little bit more you have put yourself in a situation that was uncomfortable. You've done something you were scared to do, and yes, okay, you made a mistake or you didn't get it perfect. So what? This is where you're gonna learn from it and you're gonna grow. So the formula is simple. Expand capacity by stretching your nervous system, build capability by taking action, learning, and repeating. And together those two things are what allow you to actually hold the life and the love that you're dreaming of. And if you're listening to this and thinking. Oh my fucking gosh. This is exactly what I need, and I know I want this relationship that I've been talking about. I want this life that I'm dreaming of, but I also know that my capacity is what keeps getting in the way. Because no matter how many times I say that I want something, it's not happening in my external reality, then this is the exact work we do inside my program peacefully attached. This isn't just about learning concepts or collecting more self-awareness. You're gonna get all of that. But inside peacefully attached, you'll actually stretch your capacity in real time. You'll learn how to hold more safety in your body, calm your nervous system when it wants to freak out, and build the confidence to show up differently in dating and relationships. And while you're doing that, you'll also be building your capability because you'll be putting this work into practice failing forward learning. And embodying your most secure self so that you can be a match for your dream relationship. You are going to be supported in this container as you are stretching your capacity and capability. The next round starts on Monday, October 6th, and the doors to enroll and apply are open right now. I'm going to leave the link in the show notes below so you can check it out, read everything you wanna read about the program or the information is there, and if you are unsure or you just wanna chat through whether it's the right fit for you, come find me on Instagram and DM me. I'll also leave the link for that below. I would love to have a real conversation with you about it. If you're listening to this and it is sometime in the future and we are not in September, 2025, that's okay because I run this program several times a year and my dms are always open to have a chat about this and see if it's the right fit for you. Alright, my friends. This has been so much fun and I can't wait to hear your feedback on this episode. If it resonated, come and let me know and get out there and start stretching your capacity and your capability. Have a beautiful week and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye If you enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share this episode with your friends and come find me on social so we can hang out between episodes. All the links are below in the show notes.