Brooke: You are listening to The Life Coach School podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 536.
What's up, beautiful friends? I got inspired. I was out on a hike, got inspired, was thinking about capacity, was thinking about capability, was thinking about all of you, and I started asking myself the important question, which is, what is the difference between capacity and capability?
And the biggest question that I think I have and that I mull around with is why don't more people utilize the capacity they have? And even more importantly, why don't more people focus on increasing their capacity, increasing their capability?
So, several years ago, I was talking a lot about the concept of the capacity to have, and I was talking about it in relation to money. Because what I started to notice was that many people were blocking their capacity to have more money.
And I would watch it happen with my students. They would earn a bunch of money, but they would immediately spend it. It was like they couldn't be present with the amount of money that they had earned. They couldn't increase their capacity to have. The terminology capacity is often used when talking about corporate, like talking about manufacturing, the capacity to be able to produce a certain amount of product.
But there's also like the capacity, an easier way to think about it, I think is the capacity of like a glass to hold water. And what is the capacity of that glass? How much water can that glass hold? And that will determine how much it can, quote unquote, handle.
And that's similar to how we can think about it for us. So, I started thinking about what prevents capacity? What prevents us from holding more, from having more, from being more? What is the thing that blocks that from increasing, blocks that from being bigger? I mean, think about the power of just that question to ask for yourself. What is your current capacity for the biggest things you want in your life? And what could it be? What do you want it to be?
Now, I want to make sure that this isn't being confused with capability. They're very similar and they support each other, but they're two different concepts. Capability is your ability, your skill to handle the increased capacity. And your skill, as your capacity is increased, as your desire to increase your capacity happens, you have to increase your capability to keep up with your increased capacity.
And I just love both of these terms. I love both as a way to think about yourself, to think about your own life, to think about possibility, right? I'm always talking about impossibility and possibility. And so it's like, if you look at a certain glass and you look at how much water it can hold, you can say, okay, that is the maximum capacity for that glass, and that is fixed. And there's no way that it'll ever be able to hold more. And that's true.
But I believe with humans, that isn't true. We're not fixed. We can increase our capacity to open up to a bigger life, to more of everything that we want in our life. And the more we increase our capacity, the more we'll be able to handle a bigger, more impossible life.
So, the question then becomes, okay, if this is true, then how do we increase not just our capacity to have and be more, but then how do we increase our capability to be able to keep up with it? Now, the reason why I love these two questions together is I love the idea of increasing both throughout our entire life and making a commitment to becoming more capable constantly and to increasing our capacity constantly.
Because if we're constantly saying, oh no, we can't handle that, or no, we don't want that, or I'm going to keep myself smaller, I'm going to keep this container that is my life as small as possible, the capacity needs to be very low because I can't handle anything beyond that, then you're always going to be limiting yourself.
And I think this limitation on our own capacity, this limitation on our own capability is so unnecessary. Let's go back to our example of a client who learns the skills, okay? I teach them the skills of how to make more money. I teach them the skills of marketing. And they go out there and they make all this money. Now, if we haven't also worked on their capacity, if they also haven't expanded it, they are not going to be capable of the money, of the success, of the attention, of the growth that new capability has offered to them.
And this is where you see so much sabotage. And I'm fascinated by this topic because of my belief system in people and their increased capability and their increased capacity and how so many times people are falling short for themselves and letting themselves down and coming to me and being so frustrated by their own inability to increase their own personal ability to be able to handle overwhelm and to be able to handle stress, to be able to handle the mental overload that comes with increased capability and increased capacity.
So, I want to break it down for you and keep it as simple as I can in an effort to help you think about this in a way that will change your life. And so let's talk about the first question, which is, first and foremost, and this is the order that it should be done in, how do I increase capacity? I want to suggest that you try to prioritize capacity over capability because if your capability increases and you can't handle it, then it doesn't even matter that you have the skill. It doesn't even matter that you're great at it.
Let's use the example of my son Christian, professional golfer. If he learns how to hit the ball farther, he learns how to putt better, and he learns how to, you know, chip more accurately, that's great. But if he gets into a tournament and he doesn't have the mental capacity to handle the pressure, it doesn't matter how skilled he is. It doesn't matter how capable he is, he will not succeed. It's the same that I watch with life coaches who are trying to start businesses. They have all the skills, they've learned the skill set, they have all the material there, but they don't have the capacity mentally to handle what it takes to constantly be increasing that capability.
So, here's the question. How do you increase capacity? And the first thing is, you have to ask yourself the question, how much am I willing to handle? How much am I willing to take on? How big am I willing to be?
When I was first becoming a life coach, I was doing a weekend training, and we were doing the work of Byron Katie. And the work of Byron Katie asks you to question your thinking. And I didn't even know what my thinking was, let alone question it at the time. But when I started to look at what my thoughts were, one of the thoughts that I had was, if I get too big, I won't have any friends. I had this sense that if I became too successful, if I became the person that I had in my mind's eye, that nobody would like me and I would have no friends. And I really struggled with this thought. And I can see now that it was capacity blocking, right? If I felt like I wasn't going to have any friends if I got too big, I was always going to keep myself as small, I was going to keep my capacity low, I was going to keep my container for what I could hold small.
But I did the work on that thought. I did a lot of work on that thought. What I realized, and with the help of coaching, I realized that if I'm not my true self, if I'm not as big as I could possibly be, then any friends that I do have aren't really my friends because they don't even understand who I really am inside. And that changed it for me. That made it so much easier for me to realize that as I go through this process of growth, there will be a lot of change.
So, I re-asked that question to myself. And this is the first question you need to ask yourself is how much are you willing to handle? As a side note, sometimes capacity isn't a choice, right? Sometimes we are thrust into increasing our own capacity because of the circumstances of our lives. But I would say that this happens less and less often as we become more and more modernized as a culture, right? We actually have to make a deliberate decision to move beyond the comfort of every day and expand ourselves. And so the question is how much are you willing to handle? And I would live with the question if I were you. I would really be honest with it because it's a big question and it deserves a big thoughtful answer.
The second thing that you need to do in order to increase your own capacity is make a decision to do, to be, and to have more of whatever it is you want to grow, in what area you want to grow. And my suggestion is you increase your mental capacity, the way you think, you increase your emotional capacity, the way that you feel, you increase your behavioral capacity. And the way that you do that, right, the way that you increase all of your capacity is with your capability, with your skill set, with your practice. But you first have to make the decision that you will do that.
And I want to talk about decision making here briefly because it's very important to understand that a lot of times the word capacity is used in discussing someone's ability to make a decision. You've heard someone say, oh, they don't have the mental capacity to do that, especially if it has to be around mental illness or dementia or that sort of thing. Do they have the mental capacity to make these decisions, right? Are they aware enough? Are they capable of making a decision? That's a capacity question, right?
And so, when I read about this sort of thing and when I think about this sort of thing, it makes me appreciate that I do have the awareness to increase my own capacity, not just utilize the capacity that I have, but to increase it, and to make the decision that I want to keep growing, that I want to handle more, that I want to take on more, that I want to be bigger in certain areas of my life, to be more capable and to have more capacity all at once, I think leads to a much more fulfilling life. And then the third step of that is exercising it, right? Living out that decision, staying committed to that decision and making choices daily that support the bigger choice of increasing capacity.
And then once you've kind of made that decision, once you've you've kind of stepped out of your own limitational thinking, limitational, that's a word, limitational thinking, once you've done that, then you have to get to work. And the way that I have always suggested that everyone is going to increase their capability is through massive action and failure, trying it, doing it, practicing it, failing at it, learning from it, trying again. I mean, this is not a difficult concept. It's difficult to execute, it's difficult to do, but it's not difficult to understand. Everyone wants to know exactly how do you do something that will prevent you from failing. But if you approach your own capacity growth with, no, I'm going to get better at failing. I'm going to increase my capacity to fail. I'm going to increase my capacity to feel. I'm going to increase my capacity to take action. I'm going to increase my capacity to handle challenges, to handle obstacles.
And as you have this breadth of growth, then everything becomes easier. Think about it. If you're constantly avoiding failure, constantly avoiding the capacity to feel big emotions and manage them, you're going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Your capacity will actually become less and less and less. But if you open up to, I want more. Think about this concept. I want more overwhelm. I want more stress. I want more pain because I can handle it, then all of a sudden your options become bigger. Your opportunities become bigger. You're not trying to avoid the world, you're trying to embrace it, you're trying to go after it. And you're actually looking for challenges to try so you can increase your capability and ultimately your capacity for life.
Think about it. Those of you who have this increased capacity, who have opened yourself up to bigger actions, bigger emotions, bigger goals, you have bigger lives. And as long as you don't let it trample you, which it will try to do, you will come out stronger from having overcome it. So the way that you increase your capability is first, you understand your thoughts, you challenge your limits and you question the thoughts that you have. You change them so they're bigger, so they allow for more. The second thing you do is you look at all your emotions and you say, how much stress can I actually handle? Think about this. I think we have gotten to a place where we are trying to avoid stress, right? We don't want to deal with stress. So we set up our lives in a way that is quote unquote protective. Oh, I don't want to be in stressful situations. I don't want stress brought into my house. I don't want to deal with stressful circumstances.
And yet, if we instead said, I want to get better at managing my own stress. I want to get better at eliminating the emotion that is triggered when there's a quote unquote stressful situation. I want to embrace this. I don't want to crack under this pressure. I want to bloom under this pressure. So then instead of avoiding things we deem as stressful, we start getting better at managing our own stress, of processing our own stress, processing our own overwhelm. Because so many of you say, I don't want to set that big goal. I don't want to go after that big thing. It's so overwhelming, it's so stressful. I don't like what it brings up for me.
And my question then becomes, okay, but wait, what if you were really good at managing what it brought up for you? Would that increase your life's capacity? Would it increase what you were willing to do, willing to try, willing to have? And the answer is most always yes. Because it wouldn't even be an issue if it wasn't something that you had desire around. So if you make this decision, I want to have bigger capacity for my life. I want to be able to take on more. I want to be open to more. I want to have a bigger circumference for circumstance, any circumstance that is brought my way and any result that I create, I want to be able to have the capacity to handle it.
Think about it. How many people can't handle the success that they create? They can't handle the money that they earn. They can't handle the wonderful relationships that they have. It's just constant sabotage. Right? And that may be you. And the reason why we're sabotaging is our capacity hasn't caught up with our capability. We're able to make the money, but we don't have the capacity to have it. We don't have the capacity to be within the calm relationship. I mean, this was me for so long. I developed the ability to attract a caring partner into my life when I was in my 20s, but when I met someone who actually really cared about me, I didn't have the capacity to be in that relationship in the beginning. Right? This is when I was much younger, when I first met Chris, I didn't have the capacity to hold that. I was constantly trying to sabotage it. And so I had to increase my capacity. This is so fascinating, right? I had to increase my capacity for peace, for love, for boredom, for non-conflict. I didn't have it. I didn't have the capacity to handle it, to hold it. It was crazy. And so when you think about the capacity to hold something, right? What are you able as that container, what are you able to hold without sabotage?
I did the same thing with my body, with my weight. I didn't have the capacity to be at my natural weight and relax. I had to learn how to do that. I had to learn how to have that freedom. I had so many years without it. And so I think a lot of times because we don't understand that our capacity to take things on, to invite things in is so much bigger than we give ourselves credit for. And can grow so much bigger, right? It's like, what is the capacity of your life? How much can your life hold when it comes to possessions, when it comes to friendships, when it comes to clients, customers, family members? Is your capacity where it wants to be?
Now, I want to be really clear that I'm not talking about numbers of things. I'm not talking about, well, I have the capacity to hold this many clothes in my closet, right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, do you have the capacity to hold the quality of that life, to hold the intenseness of that life, to be on the cutting edge of your own greatness and appreciation and gratitude in your life? That's the type of capacity that you can increase. Now, to increase your capability is right along with that, right? We're increasing our skill set. We're increasing our ability to fail. We're increasing our ability to have really hard conversations, to be uncomfortable, to tell the truth, to take care of ourselves fiercely. Those are all things that we need to be capable of doing.
And once that happens, the result of that will require the capacity to hold such a big, amazing, beautiful life. And you will know when you haven't increased it. You haven't made the decision. You haven't had the willingness to do, be and have more. And it seems subtle. You know, if I give you the example of money, I'll have a conversation with someone and say, okay, you just made a million dollars. And notice how stressed you are about having that million dollars. Notice how quickly you want to spend that money. Notice how you don't want to tell anybody about it. Notice how you're not even believing it yet. There's so much overwhelm and stress and anxiety around it. Your capacity to have that money is very low. So we need to build up your skill sets. We need to build up your ability to process emotion, your ability to question your thoughts, your ability to take action, your ability to not take action when you have an urge. That's all part of this process of living into and owning your own capacity for life.
This is the key, my friends, right? This is the trick, is to expand, is to expand what you are willing and capable of holding. It's a difference between a skill set that you'll develop through failure, hopefully, a lot of failure that you're willing to do, and then the willingness to say yes to it, is your capacity, right? Your willingness to say yes to more.
So if I look at a client and somebody will ask me maybe, are they capable of this thing? And I will always say 100%, this person is capable. They can develop the capability to do this. They are already capable. So, I want to be clear too, when I look at someone and they're asking, are they capable of it? They may not yet have the skill set, but they're definitely capable of developing it. 100%, no doubt in my mind. But what they may not have is the capacity to handle it. And that's a very different thing, right? Are they able to do it? Will they do it? Will they develop the capacity to handle it?
And I think the worst, most challenging, most painful thing for me to watch with my students and with my clients is when I can see someone has the capability of doing something, but they don't have the capacity. They haven't developed the capacity for it. And developing the capacity is what we do in life coaching, right? Is what we do when we question what is limiting us, when we question what we can actually handle. And if we can't yet wrap our arms around it in this immediate moment, we may not make the choice. We may not be willing to take on more.
And most of us aren't willing to increase our capacity because we don't think we're capable of it, which is so ironic, right? We don't think we can increase our capacity, but increasing our capacity is simply a decision, not to hide from the world, to open up, to take on more and to take on what comes with taking on more. Okay, so I'm going to set a bigger goal that's going to cause more stress. Okay, I'm willing to take on stress because I'm going to develop the capability of managing it, processing pain, processing stress, and I'm going to get so much better at it.
So, if you look at two people that are handling life, you can definitely see that some people have a higher capacity for pain. They have a higher capacity for stress. They have a higher capacity. And what that means is they can actually handle it. It's not just that they're taking on more stress and it's killing them. No, they're taking on more stress and it's growing them and it's benefiting them and they're having a better life. So if someone says to me, well, I can't take on that much because it'll ruin my life, that's because you haven't expanded your capacity. If you take on more emotion, you take on more challenge, you take on more action, and you wilt when that happens, it's because you haven't opened up to increasing your skill set so you can handle it. Right? If you put anyone in a incredibly stressful situation for the first time, they may not be able to handle it, but the more they do it, the more they increase their skill set to manage that pressure, they'll have an increased capability. And if they make the decision to grow into that, they'll increase their capacity for it. And once you have that, once you have your capability and your capacity joined, you've allowed for more into your life, and you've allowed your skill set to develop, the compounding that happens from that trajectory is unbelievable. It's so much harder to handle that very first time you experience that level of pressure versus the 100th time. By the 100th time, you've developed the capability and the capacity to handle it pretty easily.
So when someone looks at me, my hope is that they'll say that woman is very capable. We can give her a lot to handle. She's capable of handling it. She's increased her capacity. Her capacity is huge. So if I was going to go into, say an organization as an employee, I would lead with that. I would say, I'm very capable, but not only that, I have a huge capacity. I can take on a lot. And I will take on a lot and be very healthy, and I won't be overwhelmed and I won't be stressed and I won't, it won't affect my mental health, because I'm able to handle a very high level of skilled work at an increased capacity of anyone else around me. Right? My production level is high, my ability to take it all on is high. And I can do it with peace, and I can do it with love, and I can do it with self-love. That's what I want for everyone, right? I want you to expand your capability and your capacity at the same rate so you aren't constantly sabotaging yourself even though you're skilled enough to do it.
If I say to you as a student, maybe, how many clients do you think you could take on a day? What is your capacity there? Right? You may say eight, you may say 10, you may say four. Where do you come up with that answer? And if you want to be able to take on more clients, how do you increase that? How do you increase your capability, which is your ability to coach more clients, but also your capacity to handle it? And those are the steps, right? You increase your awareness of what you're thinking that might prevent you from limiting it. Then you ask yourself, how much are you willing to handle? You make a decision to do, have and be more, and then you exercise living out that decision. You make a commitment to it. And then everything else is just increasing capability, increasing capability is trying something, failing, learning from it, moving on. That's it. That's the simple ingredients to a huge, gorgeous life. So, I just wanted to expand on the concept of the capacity to have beyond money. The capacity to have includes everything in your life, to have a lot of emotion, to have a lot of action, to have a lot of thoughts in your life that produce at the highest level. That is my wish for you.
So, as we're coming into the end of summer here, I've had, talk about my capacity to have. I've had so many friends and family up to the house and we've had so much love and so much fun and so many games and so much beauty. I'm constantly expanding what I believe an amazing life is. It's just constantly getting bigger and bigger and better and better and better. And as we kind of close down the summer here, I am very excited to start working on my brand new program that I'm about to introduce to you all, that will be in 2026. And so, please keep an ear out for my next series, which will be a three-part series here on the podcast coming up very soon, where you can learn all about my concept, my idea for my brand new program, why I'm introducing it the way that I am, and some very cool surprises that I think you are going to love. So, stay tuned, my friends. In the meantime, let's work on increasing our capability and our capacity. Have a beautiful rest of your day, everyone. Talk to you soon. Bye.
