Ep. 35: It’s Not a Capability Problem, It’s a Capacity Problem

You’re not incapable. You never were. The question was never whether you could do it — you’ve already proven that. The question is whether your nervous system can safely hold it. Today’s episode is about the difference between capability and capacity — and why one of them has been quietly running the show. 

This episode reframes one of the biggest lies high-capacity women believe:

“I’m not capable enough.”

When in reality…most women are wildly capable.
They’ve already proven that.

The real issue is capacity.

Can your nervous system safely hold:

• rest?
• love?
• visibility?
• money?
• support?
• peace?
• expansion?
• success without self-destruction?

Because capability gets you there.
Capacity determines whether you can stay there.

This episode explores the difference between performing and holding, and asks a deeper question:

What if everything you’ve been through wasn’t punishment… but preparation?

Not in a toxic “everything happens for a reason” way.

But in a:
“What if life has been slowly stretching your nervous system to hold what’s already yours?”

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Low and Slow Podcast. We're your girls, Crystal and Lakin. If you press play today, trust. You made the right decision.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

And know whenever you're listening to this, it's exactly the right time. We invite you to pull up a seat to the conversation, get curious about your current perspective, and lean in for the opportunity to see yourself in another woman's story.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

We created that girl magic because we've been where you are.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Here, the talk is real and the breath is steady. Let's get into your next mindset shift.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I think a lot of women are walking around believing I'm not capable enough. Yeah, but that's not usually the issue. No, it's not. And most women are listening that are listening to this are incredibly fucking capable. They've survived hard things. They've held everyone together. They've literally built nothing. Like they've built nothing from nothing. Um, they create from nothing, they've handled pressure in a way that would have probably broken someone else. Um, they've carried the responsibility that was never actually theirs to carry for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah, like these are some, you know, high achiever type A, I can do it all by myself kind of ladies. And the question is not, can you do it? I think a better question is can your nervous system safely hold it? And we've been talking about this and kind of referencing this topic quite a bit up until this point, but that's what we're gonna go deeper into today. So welcome to the Low and Slow Podcast, Lakin and Crystal as always. And today, what are we chatting about, C?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Today we're talking about the difference between capability and capacity. And why one of them has been quietly running the show in the ways that you haven't fully named yet, right? Maybe it's like this is just the way I am, or like this is my identity, this is how it's always been. I've never known it to not be this way, right? That's all of how that normally sounds.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, and recognizing that capability often gets praise, and capacity is the one that gets ignored because we live in a world that's obsessed with capability. It's like, how much can we produce or handle or accomplish or what can we push through to get to the next thing? And women in particular have been trained to prove capability constantly. They feel the need to demonstrate that they can handle it, they need to show up no matter what, even at the cost of themselves or to perform competence, even when they're, you know, running on E or they don't have any energy left. And nobody teaches women about capacity. And capacity is not visible, right? Capability is the visible thing. That's why it's what's getting affirmed and rewarded. You can measure it, you can post about it, you can, you know, get all the accolades for it, but capacity is invisible. It is something that's internal. It's the difference between reaching the goal and actually being able to inhabit it once you're there. That's why a lot of times when we achieve something, can we even hold it? Or do we go into that self-sabotaging behavior, or do we resist it or try to try to tell ourselves that it it doesn't, um, it's not really, it's we haven't gotten there yet. Like it could be better, right? And capability will get you there, but capacity is going to determine whether you can actually stay there and sit with it or not.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah. And I here's the distinction that I want to make sure is crystal fucking clear. Capability is performance. Capacity is regulation, right? You can be capable to do the thing, to perform, to produce, to create, whatever. Cape capacity is going to be the thing that is um allows you to regulate your nervous system to be able to stay there, to stay consistently being steady at what the fuck you just did in the first place. So capability asks, can I can you do the thing? And capacity asks, can my nervous system remain connected to itself while I do it? Now, let me be clear about something. It does not mean that your nervous system has to be regulated the entire time because we all think that a regulated nervous system is we live here, right? But no, a regulated nervous system is being able to go up and down and come back to regulate. Can you receive the love without immediately waiting for it to leave? Can you rest without the guilt um dis dismantling the guilt or the rest before that it before it lands? Like can you actually rest without being feeling guilty for freaking doing so? Um, can you be visible without the exposure feeling like a threat? Right. Again, this the capacity is allowing you to stay with yourself while you're doing the thing. Can you hold success without your system quietly looking for the quickest exit? Right? Like can can you just stay there? These are capacity questions, and most of us have never been asked them. Why? Because most of us have we're only going off of what we've previously seen. And if we've seen someone not being able to operate in the capacity that they actually need because of unmet needs, or, you know, um just this is just the way it is, and each generation keeps doing that, right? Um, we've learned from never being asked the questions, right? And we've been teaching ourselves like, oh, I just want to be different than this person, but we wind up being very similar to that person because we're also seeing that they were never able to give themselves what they needed. So we've only ever been asked the capability questions. Can we do it? If I just push harder, all the things, right? But like being able to hold yourself while you're doing it, that's that's the real shit.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

And that's why success can feel really unsafe. Why, you know, like I mentioned, women will hit goals, but they'll still feel really anxious about it. Like you get into, you know, the relationship, the one that someone's actually showing up consistently in. And instead of being able to fully relax and like exhale into that, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, or you're waiting for it to fall apart, you're waiting for them to disappoint you. And, you know, in scenarios where maybe you got the visibility that you are wanting at work, right? Like people are seeing the way that you show up, they're they're responding to it, they're sharing it. And instead of receiving it, then you you retract, like you want to disappear. You don't want to be seen in your performance. Or, you know, you got maybe you got you allow yourself to take rest. Like you actually take the space to slow down and recover. And instead of using it, you allow the guilt to be so loud that you can't hear yourself think. So you're not actually resting, like you go into this spiral and you stand there wondering, like, what is wrong with me? Why is this happening? It's like, I wanted this, I worked for this, like, why does it feel this way? But it's not necessarily that something's wrong with you. It's your your capability got you there, but your capacity hasn't caught up yet.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

There's um I have a good example of like report to the previous episode we did about like the ceiling and the like uh the pit has a pattern, right? That yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

I was actually just talking to a client today about the like practical application of this, right? So she owns her own business and she is going to open her business, and her first client that's there for the day is 15 minutes early. In the back of her mind, she's like, ah, shit, because you know, she had planned on coming in, getting her coffee, setting up her like her area, going to the bathroom, like taking her space to make sure that she was prepared for that client's appointment, which was 15 minutes in the future. Now she's feeling the projection of the expectation that, like, oh, she's here early and she's expecting to be seen right away as soon as we walk through the door. So there's like all this weird resentment and like icky feeling associated with that of like, oh, there's this pressure, right? And historically, her old default pattern would have been to fall into that pressure and feel guilty and like hurry up and accommodate. And then either, either I feel guilty that I don't show up as quote unquote expected by that person, which I'm really just telling myself that story, right? We don't know what her expectations are. Or I'm going to um that person showing up 15 minutes early is probably for them. So then you feel like I got here on time. Right. Like I'm either gonna feel guilty if I don't do it, or I'm gonna feel resentment if I do do it because I'm not giving myself what I need in that moment, right? And I was super proud of her because we talked through it and this is something that we've been working on. And she was like, you know, I actually decided to take my time for me and I communicated to her and I let her know, hey, go ahead and have a seat. I'll be with you at such and such time, the time that her appointment started. I'm gonna get things ready and I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee and use the bathroom and then I'll be with you. And she was like, there was still like that twinge of guilt of like, oh, like, is it gonna be received? Is it gonna be okay? Right. We all this fear when we change patterns like that. But it was a really beautiful experience and an opportunity for her to gather evidence in that because everything was fine. She got to take care of herself. The client waited on her, and every like she was happy. Everything was fine.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

And think about that, guys, ladies, like as you're hearing this, that is ultimately a woman that has learned to give herself that permit, give herself what she needed, and what a reflection she is to the other woman that this is what a boundary looks like. This is what um someone taking care of themselves look like, right? I took care of me by getting me here 15 minutes early. Great. That's probably what's good for that person's nervous system. But it's like, I don't need to be so available, so urgent, so all the things all the time. I can give myself what I need. And what, like when we talk about boundaries and we think boundaries are always like a negative thing. Well, here's a boundary in front of you where you it's respecting the boundaries there to respect the person who was having the appointment and the person who was delivering on the appointment. And that's huge.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

That's and let's say, like, worst case scenario, right? Because there will be some people that are listening to this, like, well, if I were to do that, that person would get pissed off. Okay, cool. Let's let's go that scenario. If they do, then this is an effective training exercise. Because if you push through that and answer to the guilt pressure and hold the resentment, not only are you holding resentment on your end, but you're teaching them that that's okay and that they can do that, right? And so the alternative is that when I don't react in that way, then I'm able to teach them that this you there is no expectation moving forward. I'm literally setting the expectation for the for the pressure that I don't want to hold when I answer that guilt.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah. Well, again, what does the boundary do? It teaches others how to interact with you. Right. Right. And maybe this is that other woman's boundary. She has a boundary of when she goes to appointments, she wants to respect the person's time that she's seeing. And so she's going to make sure she's there on time, right? That's something. And it's like this is the thing. When we live in our own world, in our own head of why we choose to do the things, at the end of the day, we're doing these certain things that we do because that's what we think we need in the moment or what we need in the moment. And when we learn that, when we're interacting with someone that has a different need than we do, it's like, gosh, this is where it's it's beautiful to see that, especially between between women. Like I would even, you know, let's go back to what she said of like, hey, okay, you're seeing your appointment time, right? I'll be right with you. Like she checked in with her, even more. I can guarantee you, it's like you keep needing that different. It's obviously gonna get easier, and you will also find yourself less explaining. She doesn't know what you need to do before you see her. Her appointment time is like this time, and it's like you will get more comfortable, but you did the scary thing and you communicated it and you said out loud, like, yes, there was some icky feelings, and look, I stayed with myself through that. And next time when I do it, it's gonna be easier and it's gonna be a little better, right? And it's like that's huge. Yeah, love that. I love love that go bravo, whoever that was. Yes, fucking ma'am. Okay, so let's talk about the nervous system's explanation for why this happens when the when the capacity hasn't caught up yet, right? Your capability got you here, you're here, I've arrived, whatever, right? And now the capacity in my nervous system is like, hold up, girl. The nervous system doesn't care about your vision board, it doesn't care about what you are set out to do, what your dream is, all of that. The nervous system is only operating on its own timeline, right? It cares about familiarity, it cares about what is um what it's used to, right? It cares about keeping you safe. So is it constantly um running a background scan? Like that's really what it's doing. Is this safe? Is this survivable? Do I know how to exist here? This is why nine times out of ten, imposter syndrome comes up for a lot of people because they're just doing something that they haven't done yet for that they don't have enough evidence for, right? So when something good arrives that your nervous system doesn't recognize that for as familiar, maybe in relationship, like a consistent partner or an emotional, emotionally available partner, right? Maybe some financial stability, um, maybe actual good quality rest, maybe um being seen, right? Truly being seen. Like someone knows the real you, sees you for the real you. The nervous system can sometimes read that as a threat. Not because it's bad, not because it's wrong, right? Not because it's anything, but just because it's new. It wants to go with what's familiar. Anything unfamiliar, aka change, it's gonna be like skr. What is happening? What's happening here? Unfamiliar and unsafe are not the same thing. But to a nervous system that learned to survive on scarcity, learned to survive in survival mode, they can feel identical. So it's very important here in this distinction for you to understand that when your nervous system is having this response, gosh, can I zoom out for a second? And why the fuck am I shitting on myself or being so hard on myself that my nervous system isn't maybe where my mind is, or my nervous system isn't, um, doesn't really know what to do because it's only operating on the last reference point, the last reference point that it has when it did feel safe there, right? And this is where it's like when we talk about like quantum leaping, or like, um, it's like, God, you're trying to go into the next version that your nervous system hasn't built safety around yet. So when we really want to do that, can we just give ourselves the time that we need? I will call myself out here. This has been a thing for me and that I've been moving through, where it's like my nervous system is has been, I'm here, I'm ready, right? And when it comes to being seen and when it comes to allowing others to see me in a way that is um actually how I am, maybe when I'm I'm not facilitating or when I'm not, um like just being being the real me, right? Like if you really, really know me, you'll get this version of me. But you may not get that, you may not always see that version all the time. And so my nervous system, it's taken a while to get there, right? And I but can I not be using this in a way where it's like drafting or hiding or all the things that maybe you do to keep yourself here because you don't feel safe to be that? Like, can you be patient with her? Can you allow her the space of what she needs? Can you allow her to, if she's asking for safety in certain things, to build that or take that without guilt, without judgment? And yes, that's a journey in itself, but I'm bringing up the example of myself because when you have a reference point of what this is like in your own body, you can really be the mirror for other women that are also experiencing that and saying, like, hey, like this isn't this doesn't mean you can't do the thing. That just means like you're upgrading your capacity, right? You're you're expanding your capacity. You're sitting with yourself through before was not actually giving yourself what you needed. And now when you start to give yourself what you need, you'll be able to do the thing a lot easier, right? And I think it's like this is the shit that most women don't talk about enough. They don't talk about enough that that's happening.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Also, very uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Well, it is, it's it's uncomfortable, it's uncomfortable to acknowledge that you it's hard, it's so easy for us to say I can't do that or I don't know, right? But it's uncomfortable to acknowledge that oh wait, I don't have the capacity for that. What? Like, what do you mean I don't have the capacity? So and so can do it, right? If she can do it, I can do it, right? Women are always saying that. So I want to offer a reframe with that, right? It's like I bring up myself here because I think it's very important that women listening realize that when we talk about these topics, it's not like we're immune to it, right? Like this is this is something we all experience. And I want to offer this carefully because I know how easily it can tip into the thing that I'm not saying, right? I'm not saying everything happens for a reason. I'm not saying the hard things were secretly good. Um, I'm not saying I want you to be grateful, right? Like God gives his soldiers the hardest battles, blah, blah, blah, right? Like I'm not saying that to be grateful for the pain and that was real and that like it costed you. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that. What I'm asking you is, what if the hard things weren't just happening to you? Okay, but they were actually stretching you for what is happening for you, right? What's actually already yours, that it's like you have, it's like you've been training for this. These things are happening. Stretch your capacity so that when you do have the thing that you want, the relationship, the business, the clientele, whatever it is, that you will actually be able to hold it. The amount of money that you're manifesting in your mind, but then you get that and you're like, oh my God, I don't know what to do with this, right? Like everything that you that's happening is actually preparing you for the very thing you're holding. This is where I want to insert human design for a second, why I'm so fucking obsessed with it and I cannot stop talking about it, because there is a there's a tale telling sign of when you're operating in your design, and there's a tale telling sign when you're not. So, for example, for myself, when my not self-sign is when I'm frustrated or when I'm angry, right? And I will spend a lot of probably my life being frustrated or angry about something, because that is the tale telling sign that I need to do something different to get to what I actually want to be, which is satisfying for manifesting generated satisfaction. So frustrated, angry, satisfaction. What happens? That's a spectrum here. And when we're on this spectrum, it's the same thing. What if the things that I was going through that were frustrating me or that were making me pissed off or whatever it is are actually just the thing that are allowing me to experience them so that I can have more capacity to be able to hold everything I'm satisfied by. I'll do for you, and you tell me if this resonates for you. For a manifestor, a manifestors is when she is angry, it's legit anger, solely anger. And on the other side of her spectrum, her tale telling sign of when she's operating by her design, with worth working with her energy, is when she's feeling peace. Right? There will be things that she, that's her response. That's like there's with each energy type, there's a go-to emotion that is just present there with the energy. And it doesn't mean anything about you. That's just what it is for a manifestor. And the anger there is actually the very things that are telling her, like, this is not it, right? Like, this is where we get to make a change. This is where if you're feeling angry about this, can you go inward and see something here? Because what you're really wanting underneath all the anger is peace. And the anger, being able to work through that and stay with yourself through that, try different things, right? That's actually stretching your capacity to be able to hold the peace that you actually want. And it's like when we think about it that way, it's like, wait a second. So you mean to tell me like all the cliche shit, right? Like everything happens for a reason, all that. It's it's not good advice, but underneath it, it's like I could see why people why people have been trying to say that. And until you have your own reference point of that, it's it, it's like that's not the shit that's landing until you until you have a different shift in perspective.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

So, like why at the very least, it's also an opportunity to look at it in a way that's going to serve you as opposed to something that's gonna work against you, right? Like, even if you were to not just not to subscribe to that and it feels like icky to you, it's still like what's the alternative? The alternative is that all this shit is happening to me, there's nothing I can do about it. Yeah, and I'm just gonna stay stuck here. So it's like, yeah, you don't have to believe that it all the way through, but it is an opportunity to seek a different option that opens up more possibility for you.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So choose a different perspective, right? A different lens, the lens that you are seeing everything through, yeah, it's that's all formulated by what is shaping your mindset, right? But if that first piece, what if the hard things weren't just happening to you? Happening to you puts you in the victim mentality. We all have a victim mentality. And what if the second piece that comes in but is stretching you for what's already yours, for what you're really wanting, that's the perspective shift. That's the mindset shift of like, oh wait, I didn't think about it that way. Like, what if the hard conversations that we have, they felt, even if they felt like they were breaking you or stretch or like they were hard for you, right? They're uncomfortable. That's the main thing of like I had an uncomfortable conversation. What if they were actually building your capacity to hold different truths with someone else, right? Different opinions, right? Without collapsing in your own, right? What if that's showing you that you can be even more convicted in what you believe and you can stay with yourself and not have to shrink or just be agreeable or whatever? Like it's when we apply it in different ways. I'll give you another one. Like, um, what if the grief that you're experiencing was actually expanding your ability to stay present inside the feeling? Because grief is hard, and grief, when they say it comes in waves, it does, right? Grief is gonna look different. Grief, you can be experiencing that, and then you can be experiencing another emotion later. That is a spectrum, right? What if it's expanding your ability to stay present in the feeling? Because when grief takes over, you are just stuck in that present moment. You go there. It's like a place that you go, and what happens? You disassociate a lot of the times, right? But can we focus on, okay, I can two truths can exist. I could be feeling grief in that moment, missing a loved one. And then I can also, I could be feeling joy and I could be present in what I'm feeling because I've I know what this one is like, and I have a little bit more capacity when I actually hold myself through that. What if um this one's a good one? What if the boundaries that felt impossible were actually the training plan your nervous system needed in order to believe that your needs were real? Right? It's like these were the things that are so far out of reach of like, I don't think I could do that. Well, how will they respond? Right, kind of like what you said with your client, right? They're actually the things that needed to be there. It was the it needed a plan, it needed a container, it needed a structure for your nervous system to say, okay, we're safe to need something here.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Even if I have to-y won't have it without the context. Like you have to show yourself the thing to be able to say, Oh, it's available to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Right. The evidence, right? And if if, oh, I have a client waiting on me and I have needs, I could take that and I could take her at the same time, and I was okay, right? Um, what if the seasons of uncertainty were actually teaching you that you can you can survive the unknown and come back to yourself on the other side, right? I think this one's a huge one where so much when we operate, when our nervous system operates from a state of fear, right? And fear's driving here the things that feel uncertain to us or the things that feel like I I can't have a clear decision here. It's like when we are making decisions from that place, it's it's not actually the real place we want to be making decisions from. Like you, they feel like not yourself because you don't have the certainty there. But what if in those moments it's like, oh my God, I can survive that I didn't know this thing and I came out on the other side of it, and whatever decision I made in that moment was the best decision for me then. Like it's in all of these examples, like what if slowing down um was the only what if slowing down when we had the saying of like, I was just actually saying this to a client today. She said, I think underneath the slowing down, why I'm so scared is like it's it's the fear underneath that, the fear that I will just stop, or like the fear that I'll lose momentum, or the fear that like uh I'll become lazy, right? And it's like slowing down is this actually this thing that allows us to speed up because what if the only way to build the capacity to hold the rate of the speed that you want to be going was so that you can do that, right? Like the speed you were going at before is not going to actually allow you to receive what you're wanting at that time. So slowing down allows you to gain that capacity so that when you are going at that speed, you can you can receive it along the way, right? Like if you never hold space for all that, if your plate looks like Thanksgiving and you're trying to add more to it, right? Like when you take some things off, are you able to actually sustain what you were what you had before? Like you're you're not. You're you're gonna feel like you keep having to add and you're staying in this rat race of like still operating at that that pace. Slowing down doesn't feel like an option, right? So it's like in all of these examples, it's like you are really stretching your capacity almost by doing the very opposite of what you think you need to be doing, which is like when you see it that way. Can we try that on for a second? It's like emotional weight training. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

And to fully break down like what happens when you are weight training, right? Or you're using progressive load. It's like when you lift something heavy and your muscle is reacting to that, it has to tear, right? It tears at the fiber level, and then that's what creates that soreness. And then it has to rebuild from there. But when it rebuilds, it's stronger than it was before. And that only happens if you're recovering properly. So you have to give time for the muscle to be able to recover in order for it to rebuild and come back stronger. And only if you keep tearing it before it's healed, like you can create a scenario where um I can go too far, right? It's like if we're overtraining or we're under-recovering. So your nervous system works in the same way. Like there's hard seasons, there's gonna be grief, there's gonna be discomfort or like growing edges. And those are where that tearing happens. But the slow work, the rest, the regulation, the small steps, the the rebuilding, right? That that is yeah, the stuff that we want to discount. That's that's where all that rebuilding happens. And you need both. The tearing without the rebuild just produces more exhaustion and it puts you in a state that you don't want to be in that doesn't serve you. And the rebuild without ever being stretched produces stagnation. And so then we get that stuck feeling of like, I'm never challenging myself, I'm not going anywhere. And you could be in a rebuild cycle and feel like you're behind, but that's not necessarily the same thing. It's interesting when you were talking about, you know, like the human design of being on this kind of like anger peace spectrum for me personally. And I think about applying this emotional weight training to that, where um those emotions do resonate a lot with me. And historically, I used to be very angry all the time, right? And I did not have a lot of capacity for peace. And then over time, as I have done my work and as just, you know, part of aging also, and just um learning about myself and being able to go through different experiences and gain this exposure and emotionally weight train and do the reps of slowing down and being intentional and understanding myself better. Over time, I have so much more capacity for peace and I get angry far less often. Like it takes a lot to make me angry. Once I'm there, I have to process that. And that's me working through something else to be able to hold more peace moving forward, because then it's going to take me much longer to get to that anger again in the future, right? But I'm at a place now where the balance is tipped the other way, where I'm in peace so much more often. And then occasionally anger will come through and it's something that I have to work through to be able to hold more peace so that that threshold is even bigger before I would get angry again.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Right. And like, and I love that you put it in that way, right? And that when that comes up, it's like that is a tale telling sign to like it's there's we can overcorrect here, we can hold space here of like what what do I need here so that I can get back to that? It's it's not that some people will say stuck being in the spectrum that is they're not self. And but in reality, I want you to think of like, what are the what is that thing called where you have the balls and it goes like this, you know, you know what I'm talking about? I don't remember, but I'm just trying to remember it's like a pendulum thing. But basically, it's like don't say stuck here, allow this other emotion that is totally opposite be the thing to magnetize you back. Like you we to course correct, right? Like if you are here in the not self, that's okay. But you're it's like you're always trying to go back here, and when you stretch the capacity, you're building um the ability to hold being at that other emotion that is so opposite of you know, the of the other side. Yeah, I love that. I love I love human design. I literally like it, it's just it's nice. It's nice when you you have this framework and example in front of you where you're like, oh gosh, I did, and then you put it in in terms of your own self, like integrated terms in your own life, and you see where it's like, can I start to work with the energy rather than against it? Because when I'm working against it, I'm staying not even like my actual self. Like that's not actually what I want, which is wild. Um, okay, you cannot hold more while clinching. Okay. I think this is why so many high capacity women are fucking burnt out, right? They're not burnt out because they're doing too much. Um, they're burning out because they're trying to force expansion while still white knuckling and gripping the shit out of the life, uh, out of their life with the survival patterns that they've had up until this point, right? They're holding on to things with both hands to control, to perform, to manage how they're going to be perceived, um, to staying one step ahead to being in the future, right? And um one step of the head of the thing that they're actually scared of or afraid of. Um, and this is the thing you cannot hold more, right? Like the Thanksgiving plate. I cannot keep adding to it and think I can just still hold it without addressing that. It's like, oh my God, I have to let some of this shit go first, or I'm just gonna keep shoving all this stuff on my plate. And when I then eventually break, I'm so confused, right? Physically, this is not how this works. A fist that's gripping the shit out of their life cannot receive. You have to open, you have to expand, right? You have to give it room. Capacity grows through safety, not punishment, not force, not one more push past the point that your body already told you to stop, and we will ignore, right? Like this is why it's for most people, they won't make a change until it's painful or hurtful enough in order to do so, because they are they are gripping on so long to where it's like, oh my God, they have this breaking point of like it's not an option, right? So the expansion that you're really looking for is not on the other side of more effort. It's on the side of learning how to stay with yourself, to be able to tolerate, to be able to receive, to let the things be easy without immediately waiting for the other shoe to drop.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

And I want to get real about what capacity work looks like in practicality, because it's like we said, it's not glamorous, it's not, it's not fun, it's not sexy, it's not like you know, a transformation Pinterest board. It looks like taking rest without feeling like you have to earn it, or being able to receive help without immediately apologizing for needing it, or letting something be good without waiting for you know something bad to happen because that's inevitably gonna happen, like always bracing for negative impact. It's being able to sit with joy without catastrophizing, like, well, this always happens, like it's always gonna go this way. So I have to, you know, worst case scenario. Right. Pausing before reacting instead of just reacting faster, right? Tolerating uncertainty without filling the silence with control, not trying to handle every situation. Those are all reps. They are unglamorous, invisible, but profoundly important reps. And every time that you do one of these reps, every time that you choose to rest without feeling like um, feeling guilt around it, or every time you do that, you're teaching your nervous system that rest is safe, right? Every time that you are able to receive something from someone else without having to apologize for it, you're teaching your nervous system that your needs are not a burden. Or every time Yeah, or every time that you know you allow something to be to just be good and enjoy it without dismantling it in your head, you are teaching your nervous system that you can have good things and like good things are allowed to stay, and that can be your reality. And that's the way that you build your capacity. It's like it's those little things over time, and it counts, even when it doesn't feel like anything is happening. And I think that's the really hard part is because people want to do this one time and they'll be like, well, it's not working. It's like, girl, that is not how this shit works. Like, you have got to put in so much practice of shitting on yourself, so much practice of forcing and controlling and apologizing and discounting yourself. And it's like, you think that a week of doing this, it's just the same as any other habit. Like it takes time and consistency and practice, and it will happen.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Right. Think about if you have all of this, all of these deposits of the negative, yeah, you are putting in fucking pennies, you put in thousands of dollars here, right? And you're putting in pennies. Can you give yourselves the the evidence, the deposits of each time? Because your nervous system, it's creating a whole new record, right? Like, here's the old one. You go to it, it's gonna play the song. You gotta let it make a new one. Scratch some new grooves in it so it has like it takes these deposits and learns from it. You're you know what I just thought of, oh my god, all this AI stuff, right? The chats, the things, it's literally like a nervous system. You are training it by what you feed it. Okay, so it's like we want to, unless we train it, it's just gonna go off the default that it knows. Can we give it some new information? Can we deposit some new evidence? Can we? I don't know why that just came to my mind like that, but it got me so excited because I'm like, yes, I don't, I think we think of the nervous system as this like taboo thing where it's like, guys, this is our body, guys, this is our health. This is our like we're so up here as women that it we're we've been trained to be disconnected from our bodies, and it is the very thing that it has all the answers if you allow it to be a part of the conversation. Okay, I'm getting out of my butt.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

I think it's slower than that, right? Like it is a lot slower than that. I like the analogy of trying to melt an ice cube by changing the temperature of the room, right? And it's like, okay, if you're in a room that is 25 degrees, just for reference, guys, ice melts at 33 degrees, right? So 32 and under is freezing. So we have an excited and then come with the practical because well, if we have an ice cube in a room that's below freezing, essentially, like we could we could set the thermostat, right? But we still have to wait. We could set the thermostat. We could um we could be running around and trying to increase the temperature in the room. We could like put a space heater in there, right? But it's going to take a while incrementally, and you're not going to be able to see the changes in the ice cube, right? The temperature could be rising one degree, two degree, three degree, four degree, all the way up, and it could get right up to 32 degrees. You could be one degree away, and that's where people will fucking give up and they'd be like, this shit's not working.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

I'm doing just like weight loss, just like weight loss.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Yeah, and you're right there, right? And it takes that one degree to shift over and it completely changes the makeup of that piece of matter, right? But it takes time and incremental change and practice and effort to be able to shift it from one stage to the other.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Yeah, yeah. So good. So good. For anyone listening, okay. Let's ground you in for a second. I want to intentionally pause you here because you're listening to us and you're hearing all the examples and all the things. What if this season isn't blocking you, but it's building your ability to hold what's next? What's coming? Capability says I can do it. Capacity says I can stay regulated while I'm doing it. How regulated can I stay with a lot of women in that we work with in a journey of their health, of making changes? How regulated can I stay, right, as I'm doing all the things, and then I step on that scale, right? How regulated can I stay? How safe can I stay when maybe I'm showing up every single day and maybe nothing isn't happening yet? But I guarantee you, you keep staying regulated with yourself, you keep showing your nervous system. Otherwise, it's going to feel safe at one point. It's going to hit a point where it does feel safe. And then what happens? It starts to give you the results that you want. I want you to notice where your body still treats ease like it's danger. Like it's unsafe, that it's like it can't be this easy. You do not need to force expansion. Right? If we really want capacity, we do not need to put like it's not forcing that. The nervous system is not on our logical timeline. The nervous system needs evidence that it's safe enough to stay there. And if this is the thing when it comes to weight loss, too, that I was telling a client the other day, if you've been there before, your nervous system had that safety. And so can we start to retrain it? It has a reference point of when you've done it before. Can we pull that out? And then can we use that as a piece of evidence too? That it's like, okay, well, there's been some things that have changed there, but that's also a scratch in the record. It's in your field, like it's it knows that. Can we go back and not be trying to just be the version of ourselves when we were fucking 20 years old and fitting into a size two or whatever, and allow ourselves to give ourselves what we need so that our body can respond to what it needs now. So your nervous system needs the evidence, right? The difference between performing and holding is something that is huge, first of all. And it's the difference between achieving something and being available for it, right? That that's the difference. Performing and holding, achieving something and then being available for it. Some women are going to be able to create success, but maybe they can't emotionally stay connected to it. Right? They can't they can't be present there. This is where maybe they'll disassociate. Um, some women they can build the relationship, but they cannot stop waiting for it to end. Some women they'll earn all the money in the world, but they can't stop the anxiety about losing it. Right? Sometimes they can receive the recognition, and they're probably giving recognition somewhere else, but they can't actually let it land. Right? It doesn't have the space to actually land. Because underneath all of these high capacity things that we're talking about, the achieving, the nervous system is running on these old beliefs, which is why we even do what we do, right? The limiting beliefs, old beliefs, good things are gonna leave eventually, right? Rest is actually unsafe. Um who am I when I don't perform? Like if I stop performing, I'm gonna lose the love, I'm gonna lose uh the job, right? I actually don't deserve to be here. It's another one. And performing, right? So performing is possible from that place. Holding is not. So you can do all the incredible things from dysregulation, and that's what you think has been giving you all this evidence of like I can do it, right? Women prove that every single day, and I guarantee you they're fucking exhausted trying to continue proving that that I just because I've done it before, that I can still continue doing it. It's not sustainable, sis. It's not, and it's not actually deep down, probably what you want if you're honest with yourself. But you cannot stay connected to what you've built while your nervous system is still convinced it's not safe to have it. So this is why sometimes we will logically tell ourselves one thing, and when our nervous system or body is saying something different, it's like that's where the disconnect is because people want to skip over this step.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Yeah, and eventually you stop obsessing over whether you're ready because you realize readiness isn't the same as confidence. Readiness is your capacity. And it's not, you know, I feel certain this is going to work out. It's I trust that if something arrives, I can support myself through it. So it's not that it's not going to be hard. It's that I'm going to decide that I won't feel afraid in the face of hard things, right? That you're not going to abandon yourself in the middle of it. And that's a different kind of trust. That's something that doesn't really get celebrated. It's pretty quiet, but it is something that's a lot more durable and it's going to be more sustainable over time. And it doesn't come from convincing yourself that you're ready. It comes from, like we said, accumulating that evidence, evidence that you stayed with yourself, that you came back to yourself when you abandoned, that you held the boundary. And that every moment that tried to take you out, it was like, no, I stayed regulated with myself and I stayed true to what I needed in that moment. And that's how you build that capacity. Even in seasons where it feels like it's going to be more difficult, because we're all going to have seasons like that. Life is going to be lifing, right? And it's, can I I just look at every scenario now of like something, it's I have never had a season where it was really difficult and I didn't grow from it, improve for it, or something beautiful wasn't waiting for me on the other side of it.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, when we talk about the readiness too, it's I think uh women say this all the time. I just want to be confident. No, but really, you want to be comfortable. You want to be comfortable that you are ready to do the thing and that you have the capacity to take on whatever's coming your way. Like, God, that's a bar. I trust that if something arrives, I can support myself through it, that whatever is happening outside of me, I got me internally. So the external, I'm not reacting to. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

It's like maybe your life hasn't been asking you, can I handle more? Maybe it's asking, can I stay connected to myself while I hold the more, while I'm passing through the more? Like that's that's the work. It it's it is in the staying and not the doing. It's in being honest with yourself and present and being in your body and staying connected to what you actually need instead of what keeps everyone else comfortable in those moments. Cause that really is the easy go-to. It's harder to stay with yourself in those moments. And if you've been doing any version of that work, even, you know, obviously it's always imperfectly and it's gonna be slow, but even in seasons where it felt like nothing was moving at all, you have been building the whole time. And you have to remind yourself of that because it's not, it's not always gonna be accessible like in the moment. And those are the moments where I think it counts the most.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yeah, absolutely. So you were never incapable. If you're listening this, listening to this today, your nervous system was learning how to safely hold what was already trying to find you. And it's still learning. Right. And you're still learning. And, you know, I think about this at a session actually I had today of um a client of mine, she became um a young mother, 18 years old, right? And she wrote when she was talking about a story that came up that she's like, um, I was, I was learning how to parent, I was learning how to be a parent, and then she put in parentheses, I'm still learning, right? Probably because at a very young age, her nervous system went into over, you know, now she's she handles everything, she does all the things, right? Um, and this part of her that's still learning is because her nervous system is actually still learning. Like she, yeah, she's a mom now. Yeah, she handles all the stuff, right? But it's like there, that nervous system that happened at 18 has not actually gotten what it's needed in order to operate now, how she needs, right? It's like the trust that she built in survival is not the same as the safety is what she needs now. It's the same thing. So it is still learning, you are still learning. Know that that is not a flaw. That is the work, right? That is the work. It's something this it there's the pace of that is not gonna always be on your time, and you cannot find the pace if you do not slow down enough to see what pace your nervous system is actually operating at. I mean, think about that. This woman is uh 40-something years old. Her her nervous system, the last time she can go back to is when she was 18. Like, know that the pace that is coming that your nervous system needs is the right one. And we have to be willing to have that be a part of a conversation so that we can start to work with it. Again, the energy, like, can we work with it, not against it?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

So you're not not, you're not, you're not doing yourself any favors because then it will always feel it's always gonna feel hard.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah. So you're not behind. I want you to think of this as a reframe of like you're in a rebuild cycle. Like I I've been saying for myself, it's like a recalibrating that has needed to happen. Capability got you here. Can we thank all the versions of us that were capable that did the thing that got us here? And can we acknowledge that the capacity that we're building now will be the thing that will allow us to stay? It's gonna be the evidence of your growth that is not always visible, but that is real and that it's accumulating over time.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Yeah. So if this episode hit, make sure that you send it to a woman who you know is questioning if she's enough, which should be every single woman that you know, because I don't know a woman who doesn't question that, because she is enough and her nervous system is still catching up to learn how to believe that. And so if this will help a little bit, then it's worth it. So please share it.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Yeah. Allow her to listen to it in her own way. And if you're in a season where life feels like it is stretching the fuck out of you because maybe, yeah, that is what's actually happening, and it's also stretching your capacity. Your capacity is expanding here. So can you give yourself grace in that and and know that if it's expanding there like a balloon, like gosh, I shouldn't just expect it to be this little thing. Like it needs the space, it needs the space, it needs the container. Your capacity is expanding, and that's it's a beautiful place to be if we if we allow ourselves to see it that way. We appreciate y'all tuning in. Please like, share, rate, subscribe, follow. We really want y'all to, if you hear these uh episodes, um please share them with someone else. If something landed for you, women are expanders of each other. Can you share it with someone else? Not someone you shared it with before, like literally just share it with someone else. Hey, I got this from this. I thought you would like it, whatever. I want to introduce you to it. Share it with a friend.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Make sure you subscribe so that way when the new episode drops, you get the notification.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Yeah, you every Wednesday. All right, anything else? That's it. Okay, we will see you guys in the next episode. See you next time. Bye.