Your Limit Doesn't Lie

What if the version of yourself you're chasing is actually out of reach, and the real breakthrough is knowing where your ceiling truly is? In this episode of See Through, hosts Dev and Roger break down human capacity, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through a practical lens: why knowing your limits isn't weakness, it's the clearest sign of real self-awareness.

Dev shares a grounded framework for understanding your emotional, intellectual, physical, and psychological limits, and why pushing past your true capacity without recovery leads to burnout, not breakthrough. Roger introduces allostatic load (the chronic stress that reshapes how your brain allocates energy) and a simple three-level framework, depleted, strained, or at your peak, to help you assess your real-time capacity.

Together they explore why the most successful people are often clearer on what they can't do than what they can, and how accepting your limits creates space to double down on where you actually excel.

In this episode:

• The human capacity framework: emotional, intellectual, physical, psychological
• Why capacity isn't fixed, and why burnout isn't a discipline problem
• Allostatic load, explained simply
• The 3-level emotional capacity check: depleted, strained, peak
• Why self-aware people define themselves by their limits, not just their strengths
• Practical tools for career transitions, burnout recovery, and emotional resilience

Whether you're navigating a career change, a hard relationship, a personal setback, or just feel stretched too thin, this episode offers a grounded, science-informed take on mental health, resilience, and personal growth, built for real life, not highlight reels.

🎧 New episodes of See Through every week. Subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

Follow us @seethroughpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to See Through everybody. Great to have you back for another episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

How's everyone doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hope everyone's doing well. Now, one thing Roger and I were debating before we recorded today is we'd be really curious to know where you're listening to our show from. Like, are you running? Are you walking?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Are you driving your car, commuting? Maybe you're laying in bed ready to get to bed and you're listening to our soothing voices.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

I guess. I mean, listen, I I have, I just actually on that note, I just wanted to take a moment right up front at the top of this episode. And on behalf of Roger and I, I have to say the amount of positive feedback we've been getting and notes of encouragement and just kind comments towards the show so far. Seriously, thank you so much. You have no idea how much that means to both of us. I'll speak personally. This project has always been something I've wanted to do. I've always wanted to have a podcast, have a show. And you should also know another fun fact some of the episodes that you would have listened to prior to this one were recorded over two years ago. Yeah. That's crazy. It's been a work in progress. A huge work in progress and a lot of imposter syndrome and a lot of, oh, well, what if people say this? Or what would people say if that if we did that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Yeah, it's that jumping off moment, right? You're afraid of the sink or swim kind of feeling. Yes. And I think we debated for a long time. Years. Do we, yeah, do we do this? Why do this? Are people even gonna resonate with us?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Are we even qualified? Yeah, which we're not. I know we're not qualified, but I think honestly, again, coming back to the positive notes, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Grateful.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

It really allows us to want to continue to try. And again, we don't really have like an end goal of like this show needs to be the number one show on earth or anything like that. If it even helps one of you just feel better, be better, do better.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Mission accomplished.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I feel so insanely grateful that we were able to create that. So thank you for listening. I just I want to just say that right up front.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

I'm gonna echo the same sentiment. Um, you know, Dev and I keep sharing with each other some of the comments that you are all making, and it really does warm our hearts, right? From inspiration to hey, some of the things you guys are talking about, I don't I don't hear that anywhere else. Yeah. And so that feels really nice that we're able to reach out and and sort of keep you all on this journey with us.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Totally. And and another shameless plug. We would love to talk about the things that you also want to hear about. Honestly, a lot of the conversations that we've been having so far have been things that are most on our minds, but we are happy to explore topics that you want to see through differently around. Uh, and we're also excited to the future parts of the show, bring in subject matter experts or bring in people that have expertise in topics that we honestly don't. And I think could be beneficial for all, even Roger and myself, to see through something that we maybe think we have correct or we have a very strong opinion on. But after we get educated and actually, you know, get our perspective changed, okay. You know what? This was the last time we haven't changed our minds on something.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

It's a the growth mindset, right? And to bring in people that can shift our perspectives. Totally. We're trying to do that with all of you. Yeah. I think it's only fair that we allow people to do that to us as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

100%. 100% practice what we preach. You got it. Now, with that, before we jump into the topic today, um, how's your week been? Like what you've been up to this last week.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, you know, really good. I did a an impromptu getaway um by myself. I just needed some space. Like a solo trip. A solo trip. Wow. I don't even know the last time I was.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I was about to say, I don't think I've I don't think in our entire time knowing each other I've ever heard of you taking a solo trip. Yeah. Um, also it makes sense as to why you were basically like MIA last week. I'm like texting this guy. I'm like, yo, what episode should we post this week? Zero, zero conversation, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Dev, I just need to walk away.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Yeah, okay. Yeah, okay. I get it.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

And then I walked away and I came back.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

That's good. No, it's good. It's glad I'm glad you're safe. I'm glad you're back.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Where did you go, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I went out west.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Okay, nice.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

I'll just leave it at that. I won't say where out west, but I went out west. I needed some space.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Mysterious, mysterious.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Some nature. I needed some sunlight, I see, all of the above, I see, fresh air.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

All right, nice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

But I'm glad you had a good trip. I appreciate you for that.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

What about you? How's your week?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Honestly, this week has been a bit chaotic. Uh, for the parents that are listening, or even non-parents. Um, I don't know. I don't know why they don't advertise this more. I don't know why, as a new parent, I'm so shocked by this. But my 18-month-old, or I don't like using these months. My year and a half old, I hate when people are like 25 months, 23 months. My year and a half old. I know, I know. My year and a half old is constantly in and out of being sick because he just started daycare.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

And I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but I've been sick the last week too. So just been working through that, but also just balancing, kind of ensuring that all the new things um that are entering my life, I'm able to give the right energy to. My wife and I are going through another transition in the next couple of weeks where she's gonna be done her MAT leave and going back to work. Big. And actually, I've seen uh, because we have some analytics that a lot of you are listening that aren't in Canada. And so I just want to shout out the Canadian maternity leave, paternity leave system. I'm not, I do not take that for granted. There's a lot of things broken in Canada right now, but that in my opinion is not one of them. And if you know any parents that are over the age of 50 know that they did not have these benefits when they were becoming parents, no, we did not. I know you definitely didn't. We didn't. We've talked a lot about that. And so go easy on them if your mom or dad or any caregiver wasn't, you know, at every soccer practice growing up or you know, wasn't that present early in your life? But to make a long story short, I'm excited to do the show today. Um, and I'm really excited about today's topic. So, what are we going to talk about today? So, today we're gonna be seeing through something that I've been really thinking about the last couple of weeks, which is what is the way that you can determine your capacity or capability in something? Like, how do you how do you find your limit? And so everything, in my opinion, has a capacity. Like everything physical has a capacity. Like a bridge has a weight limit. Sure. Uh, hard drive has a storage limit, a battery has like a you know, capacity battery limit. I don't know, I'm not a engineer.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Charge capacity.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Everything has got a capacity, yeah. And I believe humans also have capacities. Yeah, they're not they have emotional capacities, they have intellectual capacities, yeah, they have physical capacities, got it, they have psychological capacities, they have lots of capacities or capabilities. I would use those words kind of interchangeably.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

And so that's what I want to talk about today.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Okay, so then I have a follow-up question. Is today a debate or is it a dialogue?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Great question. I'm gonna say today we're gonna do more of a dialogue and we're gonna jump right into it after this quick break. All right, so let's get into this discussion. I'll start by maybe prefacing what it is that I really want to discuss in today's episode, and I'd love to get your perspective on it. Ultimately, I feel a lot of people are chasing something that's not attainable. And what do I mean by that? I've seen so many talented friends, family members, even colleagues that I honestly don't even care about that much try and chase being able to do something, but not recognizing that either they've hit their capacity in that particular area, or they've been trying for so long to increase their capacity in that area and are basically like plateaued permanently because everything has a limit, nothing is unlimited. And like a really raw example of this, and if I had to use like first of all, just a really basic analogy, is look at like let's say your physical capacity.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

If you wanted to be a faster runner, you could train every day for the rest of your life, quit your job, and only do the best training program for running. And there will come a point where you will run at your fastest capacity or capability, like your absolute limit.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

And you may still not be happy with how fast that is. Yeah, you're like, no, I want to go faster, I want to be better. And what you're gonna do, and what I see a lot of people do, is they then convince themselves that they can buy something, learn something, invest in something that's gonna enhance that capacity, when in reality, there that's all a waste of time, energy, money, resources because they've hit that capacity. That is that is as fast as they can run, as as much as they want to go faster. And I don't mean that to sound demotivational, but hopefully you're all getting that there's this really weird concept that I think not enough people talk about, which is when do you know you've hit your limit? But not like in a giving up kind of way, but in a I've done everything I'm capable of, and this is as good as I'm capable of.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Does that make sense? It it makes absolute sense. You know, you kicked off with when you were first introducing the topic around capacities intellectually, yeah, mentally, psychologically, emotional capacities, and then also physical capacities. And, you know, for me as you're speaking, I think of the words self-awareness. Right? Like, so if I'm assuming I can do something, but yet I'm not thinking about what my capacities or capabilities are, or like you said, I've met my bandwidth, if that's the right word. Um, am I self-aware that I may not be able to potentially get to the end goal that I see myself trying to do? Yeah. Right? Completely. The other component that I have on it, and it's just coming to me as you're speaking out loud, is when I think of capacities, especially in those elements of intellectual, emotional, physical, and mental psychological. Does one have to give way in order for me to bring on more of something else? Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, this is an interesting point. This idea of you've got to rebalance because, for example, your mental capacity is like artificially limited because of your emotional capacity at the moment, right? I think that's an important distinction. Can you give me an example? Yeah, okay. So, like I've seen people, like I'll even use like students as an example. Like when most students are in deep exam mode, yeah, their mental capacities, they're trying to achieve their highest capacity, right? They want to be able to retain the most amount of knowledge, be able to, you know, regurgitate that knowledge to get whatever mark they need to get into whatever course, yada, yada. You get my point. And what I often find is when students are hitting or trying to hit that peak, well, usually their emotional capacity decreases, they're more snappy, they are more volatile in feeling any kind of emotion, whether it's anxiety or depression or happiness or rage or whatever. And obviously, unfortunately, most students take that out on the people that are closest to them. Separate topic, separate topic. But I do think if people were more aware of, hey, in order for me to hit this capacity or to achieve my strongest capability, I also have to recognize I can't simultaneously do that in these other kind of areas, to your point. That does take self-awareness. For sure. But it also takes this other word that I really think a lot of people don't like, at least in my kind of orbit, which is acceptance.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah, that's a good word.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

You've got to accept the reality of your situation. I see so many people that it's super clear externally looking that they've hit their capacity. And I think emotionally, this is a great example. Like, if you've ever had a conversation with somebody that's in a bad relationship, yeah. Any kind of relationship, yeah, romantic, friendship, work relationship, I don't care. Any type of situation involving person A and person B, and you're talking to someone, you can very clearly see when they're like so like at their like come over it. They're done. Yeah. And you're either close enough to them to being like, hey, like you've got to cut this out. Yeah. Or you're just kind of silently judging them because it's so obvious to you that they're like, they're like at their at their width's end. And it's like, I think more people need to accept that they've hit that. That's I think the thing that I want to really unpack.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah. No, with your definition there now, I can see clearly how this is such an important topic. Yeah. Right. I so I'm gonna self-reflect in this moment and I think of let's go to mental capacity. And what red flags do I see in myself when I know I've hit my mental capacity? Yes. And it's those simple errors, right? Maybe I'm typing out an email or building some sort of document, and there's simple mistakes I'm making, and they're where I normally wouldn't make mistakes. Totally. Right. So I think at that point, maybe mentally I'm drained. I don't have the capacity in this moment. Yes. And so then I'm gonna now layer in the second component. Going through life traumas absolutely impacts your capacity. Totally. When I'm emotionally drained or emotionally distracted or emotionally distraught, yes, I know my physical attributes aren't firing on all cylinders. I definitely know my mental capacity is out the window, psychological safety is gone, and then my emotional bandwidth. It's I wouldn't say that I become, you know, lack or lose of composure. I won't say that, but I definitely know that I have trouble um balancing myself, right? And coming back to logic because emotion keeps coming at me from you know, left field and it takes me down a dark path. Yes. And so then I have to really think about what it is that I'm doing, what's causing this self-reflection, and then stop for a moment to breathe so I can come back to reality.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

No, I I really feel both of those kind of thoughts that you just shared. I want to kind of circle back on I think two things that really stuck out to me. The first is I think there's a difference between something out of your control and something in your control affecting your capacity, which you kind of touched on, both of those things. Yeah, a controllable and maybe an uncontrollable, which I want to quickly touch on both. On the controllable side, if something controllable is decreasing your capacity and you don't want it to, well, it's super easy. Just control the controllable. Yeah. So if your mental capacity is weakened because you physically are drained because you're not eating well or you're sleeping an hour or you're, you know, doing something to your physical system that's causing turbulence, yeah. Okay, we'll fix that thing, you're good. You got it. But the uh the thing I just really want to emphasize with that is I think it's important to note if you're hitting a capacity limit, like we'll use your email example, but everything is totally fine. Like you're having a very normal week, normal day, you're feeling at your best, and you're still finding your flubbing or you're maybe having trouble getting through. Cause then you've now maybe been hitting you're hitting your wall, you're hitting your ceiling. Sure. And that's not a bad thing. That doesn't mean you need to like you need to go back to school. Like, that's okay. That's just accept it. That's just the reality. That doesn't mean you're stupid or that you're not good. It just that's as far as you can go. Yeah. And that is okay. You don't need to sign up for a course or like watch like some motivational video. Like, it's okay. Like you're good. Like it's all good. Like, you don't have to like put yourself on this pedestal. So that's the thing I would say on the first. Do you have a thought on that before I jump to the second?

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I do. And it's just, you know, we can we can come back to this later. And I'm having this sort of moment where so we talked about hitting your capacity for mental. Yeah. Well, maybe you've had bigger capacity in emotional, yes, physical, yeah. Or, you know, one of the other attributes versus that one. Totally. And that's why, you know, and I think a lot of us aren't understanding that they're they're not all equal when you think of capacities.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah, and they don't need to be. And you also don't want them to be because what makes you intrinsically unique is you may have a capacity in a certain area that somebody is just not capable of being. For sure. Like I've met so many people who have, like, okay, I'll use this as a real world example. I honestly think it's criminal. Like child, early child educators, like people that work in preschools and daycares, their emotional capacity is something I could never even dream of having because I have never seen, like, I've observed some of the people that interact with my son. And just how genuinely kind they are at the end of their day is astonishing to me because they probably dealt with basically the same meltdown a hundred times and they still care. Like there's genuine care. And I do not have that emotional capacity. I am not capable physically, emotion, like it is not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

That's a great example.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

And it's like I've accepted that. And so, to your point around recognizing that, the most successful people I know actually are more clear on what they suck at than what they're good at.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

They're actually way more, they know exactly like, you know what, that is not my game. That's not what I'm good at, that's not my technique. So I'm not gonna try to fake myself to pretend like I'm somebody that I'm not. Like, if I'm not technical, like I remember there's this one leader that I worked with who worked at a tech company because I used to work at a tech company, and they were the most non-technical person, but that is what they would start the conversation with is I am not technical. That is not my game. I'm here because this is what my capacity is, sure, but it's not here. And they own that. They didn't make that seem like some, oh, I gotta put this under the rug, or else I'm gonna be screened out of conversations, or I'm not gonna. So it's okay to own your just own who own what you are, own what you you're capable of.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, you know, I was doing some research on this, and I think I might be wrong, but I think there's something called radical acceptance, and it's called true self-awareness. It's to knowing what your limits are to exactly what you're describing and then calling them out, right, in the situation so people know that you may not be the person to rely on in this specific topic, but you're willing to learn, right? And I think that's the component for me that um I have to keep at the forefront when I think of my own development. Yes, right. I agree. I want to rewind just a little bit, and there's another sort of behavior practiced, practiced controlled exposure when it comes to your capacities in those fields. And what that actually means in layman's terms is to expand a capacity, you must briefly step over the line to being uncomfortable or a place of discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah, basically, like push yourself a little bit past your limit and you kind of know where that limit basically.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

But then what you have to do is you have to be super aware of to retreat back.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Yeah, I was gonna say that could be dangerous if you do it for a prolonged period of time.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

100%. Well, because you have to recover from totally let's go back down to this example. So let's say this email, I didn't go back and proofread it and I just sent it out. Yep. Maybe I sent it to my boss, yeah. Maybe my boss's boss, yeah, and it comes back like, hey, like what are you actually trying to do?

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Why do you work? Did you yeah, did you read this? Did you proofread this? You have AI and you still mess this up. How is that possible?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Exactly, right? So you have to retreat and recover in those moments as well, so you can come back a little bit better tomorrow, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, I completely agree. And so it's interesting because I believe once you're really clear on where your capacities are, life becomes infinitely easier because you're not burning yourself out trying to become better at something that you're already as good as you're capable of being. And I think that's a double-edged sword because I don't want that to read like, hey, you know what? The moment I hit like a tough point or the moment I hit some level of resistance, I've hit my capacity. Like, I don't want to go harder. Because if you need to to reach your app, like your your peak, you got to go through some of the valleys. For sure. But if you can see that you've put in the work, you've really tried your level best, like you've given every ounce of effort that you can to improving your capacity or capability, and it's still not working, well, just accept it and be kind to yourself about it.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

And figure out what you actually have great capacity in and don't let that define you, especially I think when you're early in any type of situation, whether it's a relationship, a career, uh, a life transition, whatever the case may be.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, and I think as it's a journey. Yeah. Right? Yeah, and you have to sort of give yourself the space and the forgiveness of learning and adopting and adapting to new behaviors. Totally. There's this word, and I shared it with you before we hit the record button. Allostatic. Allostatic load, which is the chronic situational stress that causes structural changes in how your brain allocates energy. That's the the textbook sort of definition of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Allostatic load. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Okay. Right? So if you're dealing with a personal crisis, your intellectual capacity isn't going to be what it normally is.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

And I think for a lot of us, we're not always aware of that in the moments that you're describing or defining. Totally. So then you assume you could do something that's outside of your capacities because of this sort of outside maybe energy or event that's not letting you see things as clearly as maybe you should.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

You know, it's interesting. Uh what you just shared really ties into the second thought that I had to circle back on your point earlier. Um Around life trauma affecting that mental capacity in the example. The other thing that I I don't believe I hear enough conversation about, and I believe you need to be more open to is as time progresses, as your life progresses, as you go through different hardships, a death of a really important family member or loved one, the loss of a job that you really loved, you know, a death of a pet, or even like some traumatic injury, like a physical injury, a mental injury, or just something just daily, like you know, maybe financial hardship or you know, relationship hardship, or having something really negative happen, like somebody betraying you or cheating on you or anything of that nature. Yeah. All of the capacities and capabilities that we just talked about, they decrease whether you like it or not. So you at 20 had this physical capability that you could run 30 kilometers with zero prep. Well, at 60, not gonna happen because your capacity in that area has decreased the same way that I would say your emotional capacity before getting cheated on is a lot less than after getting cheated on. For sure. And if you think you're gonna read a course or listen to a podcast or watch a movie that's gonna reignite that capacity and bring it back to where it was, I'll just tell you as somebody personally that's experienced this, not cheating, but just had my capacity decreased. Yeah, that that ain't that's just I hope that's such marketing and just such like kumbai, like it ain't gonna happen. Instead, you have to accept, okay, why is my capacity come down? What caused this? Yeah. Was it bad luck? Was it bad timing? Was it fate, God, universe, whatever you prescribe to? Yeah. But then that acceptance, I think, because I think what what I'm really disappointed in seeing is people trying to kind of push themselves to get back to something that is just it's not possible. Like this is fractured. Yeah, it takes it's not able to get back to that, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Well, I think a lot of us don't do the self-assessment of where we are in the capacity. Yes, right. And I'll give you an example. So if it's an emotional, and you touched on the emotional one, and we'll just sort of unpack that a bit. So there's three levels of this capacity assessment. Okay. So level one would be depleted, and what are the warning signs to being depleted? Irritable, easily defensive, feeling numb, or completely overwhelmed. So that's sort of a red flag, right? Number two, level two would be strained, cruising speed, able to listen, but low patience for conflict or high drama situations.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Okay. And then you've got level three, which is optimal peak state, which is highly empathetic, calm under interpersonal pressure, responsive, not reactive. And knowing where you are on that spectrum can easily help you identify if you're in crisis mode in that specific attribute. Totally. Right. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

And so I think this is the the real thing that I want to make sure that you're all kind of reflecting on is if you were to do a stock of your life in all of the areas and your capacities and how you're showing up for yourself first, because that's the most important, and then for everyone around you that depends on you, are you happy with where you're at? And if you're not, is it because you're being unrealistic about your capacity in that moment? And by accepting it, you now can maybe find help, support, resourcing to then fill in the gaps of what you're not capable of doing. And so, you know, a real example of that is if you feel like in your career, you want to graduate to that next role, you want to get promoted. And that next job comes with a lot more mental workload and a lot more emotional workload. You need to ask yourself, am I even capable? Not do I deserve it? You know, is it what I want? I want the money. These are all the the perks that I get. That's great. I appreciate all of that. But if you're not capable, like if you if you have a capacity limit, you may get lucky and get that promotion. But I promise you, it's gonna burn so many things else off in your life compared to just accepting and then finding, you know what, this is something that I am capable of and I have a much bigger capacity on, and just doubling down on that.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

You know, I I love that you brought that up. I think there's another component of when you're potentially stepping into these expanded roles, expanded capacity roles, whether it's in your professional life, personal life. Was it articulated properly to you before you said yes to it? Yeah. You know, I think what are you signing up for? Exactly. Yeah. I reflect back sometimes and I think of maybe there was a position I did and it was the sweet spot, if you will. Yeah. Right. And then the next position was done, but it was done at a point where it depleted. And I think maybe doing some self-regulation and understanding, hey, I can do that, but what at what cost?

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Yeah. And also, even if it's not something where you can necessarily be told, there's also, I think, a level of accountability that everyone needs to have in being able to also ask themselves, what amount of capacity do I need to be successful in whatever situation I'm about to enter? Because, like, I'll, you know, use the example of becoming a dad for the first time. Nobody really explained to me the capacities that I would need. And I can appreciate why some people fail miserably at being parents because they didn't have the capacity to begin with, or they were never aware of where their limitations were. And that's how you get some of these really, really horrific situations that I've I've read online. But that's, I think, the same can be said when you're entering a relationship. That could be said when you're, you know, looking for a new type of um work opportunity, like to your point. So I think also being kind of cognizant of like some things aren't always laid out to you, you have to also be okay with seeing that in the moment and then doing something about it.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, you know, as you're speaking out loud, I go back to sports and the sports analogies. And most athletes will, you know, share when you speak to them around their success, is that they find their sweet spot, if you will. And I kind of mentioned this before, and it's pushing yourself to 85, roughly 85, 90% of what your maximum capacity is in whatever field you're pushing in. Because that 10%, 15% buffer you leave allows you to learn and take on more when you need to. Totally. But then also retreat backwards so you don't deplete your energy. Because if you're running at 100% all the time, yeah, we already know what that leads to, right? Yeah, you're you're leaving no room for error, no, no room for taking on more. You're going to burn out and you're ultimately going to start failing at what it is that you're trying to do in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

100%. I I could not agree more. And there's this other interesting concept, which I will I don't think we should discuss today, but it could be a future episode. So if you're interested, let us know. But something I've always thought about is how do I ensure that 85% of my effort and the output that that creates, whether it's emotional, you know, physical, psychological, whatever, how do I ensure that 85% of my output output, if I looked at my floor, it's still higher than other people's ceilings in that same arena. Yeah. So like me running at 85% at its baseline is still higher than somebody else that's running at 100% in terms of their, they're they're going all out. And I'm still like, I still got room to go, but I'm I'm keeping up with them. And that's like a totally separate topic because that's where if you harness the things that you've got greater capacity in, you got it. You don't need to run at 100% to keep up. Yeah, you can stay at 85. Yeah, well, and I think different topic, but I think it really speaks on that. So I hope you enjoyed our discussion today. This was again something that was really on my mind. I really wanted to talk about it on the show. And so we would love your perspective if you have a thought on what you believe about what how you assess capacities and capabilities. We'd love to hear about it. Now, speaking about the feedback that we got uh about the show, one of the the great notes that we got was y'all really liked these motivational minutes that we do. Yeah. And I gotta tell you, we just thought it could either be corny or people may actually enjoy kind of having a little bit of inspiration at the end. And we we find inspirational things every week to kind of keep us inspired and motivated. And so uh I'm gonna hand this off this week uh to Roger to wrap us up and uh thank you again for listening.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

You know, we often think of personal growth as this thing where we're constantly adding to our plate, right? Another habit, another goal, another thing you've just gotta do. But here's something I've learned, especially over the last little while. Sometimes the growth doesn't come from what you start, it comes from what you let go of. So take a quick scan of your life right now. Right now, as you're listening to this, are you holding on to some guilt about something? A routine that you know isn't serving you anymore? Maybe it's this need to get everything right, perfectly right all the time. And honestly, that's exhausting just saying it out loud. So here's your reminder today, and I want you to really sit down with this one. Saying goodbye to what drains you is how you create the space for what lifts you up. And listen, you don't have to do it all, and you definitely don't have to do it all at once. Give yourself permission. Actually give yourself permission to step back, take a deep breath, and protect your peace. Because when you clear out that mental and physical clutter, you're not just creating downtime, you're creating the actual space you need to grow. So breathe out the pressure, breathe in the present. You've got this. We'll see you next week.