#501 The End of Capacity

Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. It is the feeling that you bring forward. It is your emotional connection that really sets the tone for what is going to be happening to you and for you. And you know that feeling when you touch it, it just spreads through you. I'm Summer McStravik, and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hi, it's Summer, and a quick request before we jump into the show, if you like or even love what you're about to the number one reason this show has gotten around and stays in the favorites in itunes and the App Store, it's because of your reviews. And we are in our 11th straight year because of you and your reviews. People rely on your opinion, and frankly, they often misunderstand Flow Dreaming. And the only way to correct that is through you leaving a few words about the program. And I can't do it. I would if I could, but it has to be you. So if I've made any impact on your life at all, please scoot over to itunes, your podcast app, and either subscribe to Flow Dreaming or write a review of the show or the app or both. And mega kisses for doing both. I'll send some good flow your way, too. So pause the episode and do it now or just get onto the show. Welcome to Flow Dreaming. Hi, everyone. So happy to be with you. We're here in the middle of the summertime. That's what I'm taping today's podcast episode, and that means that my kids are home and you're going to hear all kinds of doors slamming and maybe boys shrieking and a full house behind me. So just warning you now, that's what's going on. Today's program is the end of capacity. The end of capacity. What does that mean? What is that word, capacity that you keep hearing thrown around all out there in the world of coaching and personal development? So we're going to dive, dive into that. Before we do, a quick note. I got a little makeover. My website is halfway made over, so I'm celebrating the halfway point. Whoa. That means the home page. The blog looks beautiful, extraordinary. Go check it out whenever you have a chance. And hopefully in A few more months, I'll be able to announce when the shop gets its makeover. So let's get on to this concept of capacity and why it's come up. Now, many of you know that I coach and I teach and I mentor different groups of students. I mentor my Flow Dreaming students in MI school, my personal Mastery students who are people who've graduated MI school and gone into a second or third or even more year. And I mentor my diamonds. And those are people that I work with intimately, privately. Every month, a common theme runs through most of these higher achievers, and that's this idea that if I can only learn more, if I can only become more, I will have expanded my capacity. And this is a phrase that I myself use quite a bit. So I really want to define it for you today so you understand what I'm saying and particularly what I am not saying. So let's look at some of the big players, right? The people that we look at out in the world. You know, we look at Oprah and Richard Branson and even the president, we think, how in the world do they do all that, right? Their jobs, their world seems so huge, so expanded, so fraught with responsibility. We think, how do they possibly manage it? Don't they have the same 24 hours that I have? And of course, the answer is yes. So what are they doing differently with their time, energy, focus and emotion to regulate their lives in such a way that they can handle all of this? Whereas for us, sometimes just waking up and being able to get the kids off to school and pick up the groceries and get into work, all, you know, at the same time is that's about the end of what we can handle. What's the difference inside of us? So let's talk about what capacity is not. And I've been having this conversation recently with several of my high achievers. Capacity does not mean I can keep adding things into my schedule continuously. Just adding in, adding in, duplicating, overlapping. Instead of spending a full eight hours here, I'll spend four hours here and four hours there. But hopefully I'll get the same out of it. Capacity doesn't mean overextending yourself, overextending your goals. If you. And I'm speaking, for instance, to a coach here, if you want to have four coaching clients and you set yourself a goal of 40, and you think, well, if I expand my capacity, I can hold all 40. Here's the difference. You can hold all 40. If you have created this kind of foundation for 40, if you haven't created the foundation, you will only hold four. You may end up with 40 people, and they will all leave you because there's no foundation for that kind of capacity. And I see people doing this. They get themselves really burned out in this kind of cyclical. Get more, get more. Oh, I lost it. Oh, I lost it. Get more, get more. Oh, I lost it. Sign up for this class, Sign up for that class. Oh, I didn't really give any of myself to either of those classes. Work this job and then work that job and then, oh, I'm so exhausted. Oh, I'm in burnout. I don't want to do anymore. You can fill your time. You can fill 24 hours of your time, but that is not capacity. Capacity is supposed to be this ever growing ability to handle more. More money, more activities, more friends, more business coming in. Beginners always overstuff their capacity. It's like a. It's like a green olive with a pimento. They're trying to shove more and more pimentos into a small hole and the olive bursts and they go into burnout. And they say, what's wrong with me? How come someone else can do it? How come that person can do it, but I can't do it? Beginners challenge themselves by continuously adding more, adding more, adding more until everything gets very surface. Yes. And you get burned out or stressed out or here's another way to tell you simply don't get the results you want. Remember how everything that life gives us is a response. Right. Your flow is always responding to you, responding to what's inside you. You never need to ask for, am I doing okay? Am I doing all right? It's always there. The proof is always right in front of you. Whatever your life looks like right now is telling you something. And if you have things that aren't performing, you need to look and say, ah, maybe this capacity thing is not working. Maybe I've overstuffed. Maybe I've stressed out. If it's not coming back to you the way you want it to, you have to step back and take a look. And I know for many of us that that concept of stepping back can become a sense of failure. I can't pull back. I only pull back if I'm going into healing or if I'm going into retreat. And sometimes, in fact, that's what you're doing. You are retracting because the way you were going forward wasn't working. And so you retract and you retool. And sometimes that's a great thing. Because it's conscious. Sometimes the retraction happens because you're afraid to go bigger or add anything more. You're afraid it's fear based. So you pull back and you're like, okay, this is good enough. This is what I can handle. I'm going to stay here because if I grow anymore, if I add any more, if I push myself, I'm feeling uncomfortable. And if I push myself, oh, I might lose all that great stuff I just created. That's a lack thought. So I know this is starting to get a little tricky. You're like, wait, Summer, you just said it was this and now you said it was that and then it was this and then it was that. Well, that's the thing with the energy. The whole trick of it is being very conscious of what you're actually doing, what you're actually saying. So let's go back for a second to that person who is adding so much into their life that they're starting to drop all the balls around them and they're seeing that because stuff isn't panning out. If that's you, raise your hand. Stuff not panning out. Fine, good. No big deal what you say. What do you mean no big deal? I'm supposed to be, da da da, da da da. No big deal. This is instructional. This is a necessary next step in the evolution of you learning what true capacity really is. What true ability to hold more in your life really looks like. Let's just go back for a second and remember, most of us can remember the first time we moved out of our parents house and you were excited. And because you were probably young, you were kind of irrational. You didn't really think too far ahead. You thought, well, I guess I could always go back if I needed to. Maybe there's some safety there. I'm just gonna leap for it, right? That's what we do when we're young. We have less of a idea of what pain might feel like because we haven't experienced it. So we leap, we jump. And that first month that rent was due and you went, oh my God, where am I going to get that? 400 or 5 or 800, however much it is. Where am I going to get that money? Oh my God, I got the money. And maybe your parents also said, you make the car payment now, you pay for insurance now. And you began to scale up. You began to realize, oh, well, if I go to work and if I manage myself correctly and I manage my cash flow correctly, I can start to handle all of these things. On my own. For those of you who ever bought a house, you probably went through the same freak out when you acquired your first mortgage and you went, oh my God, I've never bought anything this expensive. I don't know if I can do this. When you got married, the same feelings, wow, now I am adding this whole second person into my life when you had a baby. Now I'm adding a third person into my life. Can I really care for them? Can I be that responsible? Oh my God. I just got in my car to go to the grocery store and I forgot I left the baby in the house because I'm still adjusting to this fact that I can't ever be alone again for like the next 10 or 15 years. That's capacity. And you leapt into each one of those new grooves. You did it. You did it. You said, I want this, I want this so much. So I'm going to figure out how to make it work. I'm going to figure out how to make it work. Right there. That's you turning the corner into your next understanding of what capacity really means. It means using your time as wisely as possible. Now who, whoever says that when it comes to capacity, I don't, I can't remember any coach, any teacher ever saying that before. You've heard a variation of this though. Work smarter, not harder. In all places. At work, in your personal life, with your body. Work smarter, not harder. Use your time as wisely as possible. Prioritize, delegate. Now, now you're getting into the nitty gritty of what capacity is. Capacity is not that feeling like my friends and my peers and other people are doing all this stuff. I should be able to do all of that stuff too. And oh my God, now I'm drowning in, and not doing any of it well. Right? That's kind of your emotional, competitive, ego driven understanding of capacity. I want to be as big and cool and rich and well liked and blah blah, blah as they are. That's not what you're really going for. Expanding your capacity does not mean biting off everything and then expecting your own self, you to do it all. All. It does not mean expecting that your day is going to go from having 24 hours to 36 hours in it. It doesn't mean waking up at 4am and shutting off the computer at 11. That's not truly expanding your capacity. And the reason is because that is limited. You will reach a point where you say to yourself, I can't do this anymore. I need more than five hours sleep. It's Limited. It's the same concept as something I happened on many years ago when I used to. When I put myself through college, I did graphic design and editing, copy editing, which I know. People who know me now laugh at the concept of me as an editor. But I was damn good. And the reason that I eventually ended up kind of switching out of it because I realized at a certain point, there's only eight or nine or ten hours a day that I can bill hourly. This means looking ahead the rest of my life. This is the income limit I can realistically achieve for this service. And I decided, that's not good enough. Not good enough. And it dawned on me, oh, my goodness, really good designers, they don't say, it's going to be eight hours, and that's $50 an hour, and that'll be a $400 job. Good designers say, I'm so good, that's a $1,500 job. I don't know how many hours it's going to take me, but this is the cost because I'm now basing my worth on value, not on time. Now, there are plenty of occupations where work is based on time, and usually those are more secure occupations, right? If you're an employee, you're probably based on time. If you're an entrepreneur, you're probably basing yourself on value. And that's where I switched. Yes, I was an entrepreneur when I had my own company, but I was treating myself as an employee and I switched in my head. That immediately changed my capacity. It meant that I was working less and I was getting better jobs and I was being paid much more. My capacity had just expanded. Even though the amount of time I put in decreased, Even though the amount of effort ultimately I put in decreased my income, my capacity for income, my capacity for more time in my life increased. That's just one small example. Today, when I'm learning how to handle more, right? I have a multi pronged approach to this one. That's my expectation now in flow. When I go into flow and I flow, dream, my feelings are always, how can we get this done on the easiest path? What is the cleanest, clearest route to get there? Do you know how often we forget that? Who out there has ever tried to put together a new system or a summit or, you know, a new proposal for at work? And you, you end up just growing it and making it more complicated and more complicated, and then there's more pieces and more pieces, and pretty soon you're drowning in it and you're thinking, I Should be able to handle all of this. Well, a couple things here. One, you've moved away from the feeling of, hey, I want the biggest possible result for the least possible effort. You're totally allowed to ask for that. I want the biggest possible result for the least amount of effort. And now a part of you is crying out, oh, wait a second, you know, isn't that cheaping out? Don't people, won't, won't we drop the ball? Won't I not get what I want if I approach it like that? No, there are people out there who will say, I want this, but I'm going to put no effort into it whatsoever. And you know that they typically don't get what they want. It's true. And they're habitual about it. Their whole lives look like that. We see them and we are like, oh, for the grace of God, there go I. No, don't. Ah, that's never going to be me. But by and large, those of us who are involved in self growth, personal growth, that becomes our quest. It becomes who we are. We're the opposite. We're always willing to do way more than necessary. We're willing to overcompensate, to hedge all of our bets. We get slowed down, we get overburdened, and Pretty soon it's 11 o' clock at night and you haven't shut the computer off. And I know because I've been this person and I still work to not be this person. That's not the kind of capacity I want. The hours in my day are the lowest possible capacity. Look at it that way, like they call it the lowest common denominator in math. Your hours in your day, that's the basic capacity in everyone's lives. Scale out of that. Please work fewer hours. Make that be part of your capacity and you scratch your head. How is that possible? That right there is the increase in capacity. How do you work fewer hours? How do you give yourself more time with your family? That is elevating your capacity. How do you stay on the cutting edge of your profession while preserving all of your personal life? That is capacity. How do you have a thriving career? How do you have a beautiful and responsive and healthy body without burning yourself out to get these things? That is capacity. Real capacity. So whenever you're feeling that little flutter, that little panic setting in, you know you have just dropped out of real capacity and instead you're going into compensation. More, more, more, more. That is not capacity. If you're struggling to keep up with more, more, more, more, that is not capacity. I know this is strange because I'm basically saying capacity is actually less. In many cases it is doing less to have more. So to return for a second to those teachers and business owners and politicians and social leaders and whoever else that you elevate in your mind, how do they do it all? They're working, really smart, really smart. They've done a number of things and I can't possibly outline them all in this podcast, but they delegate, right? They've spent the time cultivating a team around them, a team in their home life, right? Who of us is still doing all the laundry, still cooking all the meals, still being the one who plans all the kids calendars. Yet we have a spouse who could do all of this, but we don't do it because we can do it better than they can. And so we just kind of take it on. Why let your spouse do it? If he has more time, she has more time. Let them do it. And you say oh, but it's the. They always screw it up and they always. So what? Give them the opportunity to grow. You've basically taken away that opportunity for them to grow into it and get good at it. That's a very selfish act by the way. You can give that up now. What about all those other things in your life that you're not delegating? You don't delegate if you have a lack of trust. And we talk a lot about trust in flow dreaming. Trust is what really allows you to expand your life, expand your capacity. This means you build a team. You trust a team. Your partner is your team. Your co workers are your team. Your fitness trainer is your team. Your gardener is your team. Grow your team. Allow other people to help you. Allow them to fail, Allow them to succeed. Delegation is it. Here's another one. Prioritizing, prioritizing. This is another one that we bump up against a lot when we're trying to grow our capacity. We say, well, everything is important. I have to do it all. I need this and this and this. Opportunity came in and that and that. And you become afraid to say no. You become afraid to say no to anything. If I say no, it will go away and it won't come back again. What is that? That's fear. That's lack thinking again. Think about the people you revere. Do you think they're ever afraid to say no? They have to turn down multi million dollar deals sometimes that could be pretty awesome. But they still say no. It's not in my plan, it's not my priority. And I have enough trust inside myself. I have gotten through and gotten past the lack thinking that would otherwise say, if I say no, it won't happen or it won't come around again. Now sometimes things don't in fact come around again. And that's when you have to really get clear on your priorities, right? Is this what I need? Do I need it now? Has this come to me because it wants me to say yes to it? And I know many people actually say no when it is their priority. I see this happening oftentimes with people in me school. They say, no, I'm not going to do it now, I'll do it next year. I said, I don't know, maybe there won't be a next year. Are you comfortable with the fact that you have deprioritized this? You want a certain goal, but you've deprioritized a really key way to reach your goals. And then we recognize they're not prioritizing correctly out of fear. So getting the priority piece together is pretty important. You really have to get to know yourself. You have to know, am I acting from fear or am I acting from a kind of inner faith and confidence and knowing, no, this is what I need to be attending to. And sometimes what you really need to be attending to is kind of scary, right? Because that's your expansion. You're in your, I call it your grow zone. My priorities are often in my grow zone. I'm often saying yes to things I have never done before, never tried before, but I know that I have to do them next. And there's a lot of things that I've done before over and over and over. And I say, I don't need to keep doing those. I already did those. Will someone else on my team please do those now? My capacity is expanding because I'm delegating, I'm prioritizing. And most importantly, capacity for me no longer represents shoving more in. It means doing the most with less. Now what is that? That sweet spot, that, that key place right there, that balance right in the middle? That is what I'm aiming for when I flow dream, remember, I connect this back. I'm not just. Even though it sounds like I'm analyzing it and I'm in my mental, my head self right now as I explain this to you. I'm doing that because I have to talk, right? My brain has to organize all of this material for you and get it to you. It feels like I've mentally solved all of this. Mentally for me is 50% of the game. Flow is the other 50%. My emotional direction, my emotional cues, my energetic cues, my expectations. That's the other 50%. So what's going on there with my capacity? Well, it's like I alluded to in the beginning. Flow. Give me what I need. Give me the game changer. Give me the key component, Give me the exact right thing, Let me go into it, and then let me divest myself of as much of as of it as possible so that only the real key elements that I need to attend to are what I give myself to. Wow. I want to try to facilitate that. I know you want me to repeat that. Right. Give me the next thing that I need to expand and grow and have more and be more and hold more, and yet allow me to attend to just those pieces that are truly mine. Let me have the insight and the foresight to be able to trust other people, to give up some control, to prioritize, to slim down, cut out the fat. All the other stuff that I don't need to be doing. Give me the ability wherewithal to give that up. Now I've really grown. Can you feel that I'm growing? I myself have on the leading edge. Think of an arrow. I'm right there at the tip of the arrow. I got the whole arrow started. But what's happening back there on the rest of the arrow, the people that I've empowered, the things that I've shifted down a second or third place, not quite where I need to be spending all of my time. What's at the forefront of the arrow? My feeling, my desire, my sense of the way that I'm building. This is to not stress me out. If it's stressing me and over complicating and filling every crack and crevice of my time, I'm doing it wrong. Back up. I'm not actually increasing my capacity right now. I'm just overfilling. And that's what I want to leave you with. Increase your capacity. Don't overstuff yourself. They're very different. Play with this concept. It may not have made sense completely this first time through. Maybe you want to listen again. Maybe you want to journal about it, get something deeper from it. Think about it later. Ask yourself, what does capacity mean to me? How would I feel? How would I feel if I really had beautiful, humongous capacity? What would that look and feel like for me? Right. That's the key question. All right, so that wraps up my capacity little monologue for you. I'm going to give you Some pointers. I have created a flow dream called Enough Time for Everything. I'd like you to look that one up at the flow dreaming shop. It helps you better regulate your time so you don't become an overstuffer. Right. It's a really important piece. There's also some flow dreams in the shop about change and transition, about trust. Look for those. All of these will help you with your capacity. These aren't necessarily going bigger, though. That is one, right? Going bigger means increasing your capacity. I just want to make sure you're doing it right. So if you get go bigger as the flow dream, also get enough time for everything. Also pick up one that has to deal with self trust and there are several so that you can go bigger without going crazy. All right, so stay with me. We'll be right back after this quick break. Hey, it's summer again and we're on a break. But this is where I catch you up on a couple of things that can really help you go much deeper with flow dreaming. First, if you're wondering how do I flow dream? What is flow dreaming? Then I have a free kit I created to teach you how to be in flow, how to talk to flow, how to manifest in your flow. Go to flowdreaming.com, enter your email there and you'll get my tutorial on how to do all of this. I also give you a free flow dream to get started with. And this gives you the first step toward creating a freaking awesome life. And it also puts all of the concepts that you're learning in this podcast into context. So pop in your email on my homepage flow dreaming.com right now. Why not? We're on break and I'll send it right to you. Then if you want to go a step further, you can begin expanding your library of flow dreams, which are these emotionally delicious audios that help you grow your power and manifest your future. This is the stuff. This is what we actually work with, how we do it. And they're on all kinds of topics. You can end fear, you can get unstuck or find your perfect career, be seen, get out of debt, find your soulmate, clear your body of toxins. It's just the list is practically endless. These playlists are very powerful and very effective. In fact, I get emails every day with thank you notes from lottery winners, people who've just gotten married, people who got these huge unexpected bonuses at work, or they've reduced massive amounts of pain or debt, or they've healed themselves either inside or in their body. So Please visit the shop@flow dreaming.com and see how you want to begin changing your life. Now back to the show. All right, are you guys ready for a flow dream? Yeah. If you haven't flow dreamed before, please go to my website@flowdreaming.com, download the free kit. It's a really excellent learning resource, learning tool, and it will explain what the flow dreaming process is like. It's not meditation, not self hypnosis, not affirmations. So please don't go into this next process with that expectation. You will be sorely disappointed. Flow dreaming instead, is something completely different that relies on your emotional self, your energetic self, and of course, flow energy. All right, eyes are closed. Take a deep breath, relaxing, releasing that breath all the way down to the bottom of your abdomen. And as you do, your shoulders are dropping, dropping, your jaws, releasing your brow is releasing. Feeling good. And you're imagining yourself like you're a figure skater. Even if you've never figure skated, ice skated before, you can imagine the feeling. Gliding along on one leg, the other raised in the air, beautifully soft, floating, flowing across this sea of energy. Skating and twirling, dancing, flipping, streaking ahead powerfully. Oh, that feels so good. To stretch and to push and to let yourself go. There you go. Forward, forward. Where are you heading? This beautiful icy river, this lake of energy and flow seems to move forward forever. And it does. It's moving forward forever and time into your future. All the way through the end of this life, into the next phase. Wherever you end up going, you will continue going and going and going. And your flow never stops. It never ceases. Eternal, immortal, infinite. The infinite you. There you go for a moment, just aware of yourself in this space of movement, propulsion, growth, growth. Growth. Every second, every foot, every mile you glide over represents something that you've just experienced, a way that you've grown. New information that's been added into you about you, and you have grown and you recognize. Wait a minute. I don't worry about capacity here. I never think to myself, oh, my soul's gonna be filled up. Can't put any more in. No more experience. You realize I'm a being of infinite capacity. I never have to stop and restock or fill up or push the boundaries or add more. The way I was built from the very beginning is to be a being of growth, spreading out like ripples in a pond, Ripples that go on forever into everything that is all of time, all of space and everything that's beyond time and space. There's no end to my capacity. And yet you look at yourself, oh, little being, playing with all the things you play with in life, all the little goals that we're putting together for ourselves. Look at those things. Look at the walls and ceilings and barriers. Look at all the things that seem to hold you back and hold you small, hold you in place where you say, no, I have to be able to hold. It's an illusion. Do you see this? Feel the illusion? It's an illusion. You can hold everything. You could hold anything. You have to learn how to hold. It's not what you're holding, it's how you're holding it. How are you holding everything? Look around your life right now. How are you holding it? Are you holding it with ease and joy? Are you holding it with trust and team? Are you holding it with these beautifully shifting priorities that just flow in and out, the right thing at the right time always? Are you flowing with a sense of grace and ease in every single place project on your plate? If so, you're flowing well. Your capacity is a heartbeat that just pulses. Your capacity is a heartbeat, growing, expanding, and yet constant. See yourself shifting things off to other people now. You're a part of my capacity and you're part of my capacity and you're part of my capacity. See it all moving outward, letting other people hold things with you and for you, seeing the flow in. As you hold things for others and help them, they ask you to be part of their capacity. Feel how right and perfect, like floating in waves and floating in light. You're floating, you're moving and you're flying. You're in capacity and you're holding it. And with that, you find yourself now returning from flow, having absorbed and really gone into that feeling. Returning now, becoming aware of your body, of where you're at. And when you're ready, you open your eyes. Very good. I hope that felt wonderful. If you want to continue flow dreams again along that line, I encourage you go visit the shop. It does underwrite the program so you can get some really gorgeously produced flow dreams. There ones that are even longer, usually 10 to 20 minutes. To get you even deeper into that space. You can do more, create more, carve out more, become more in your flow. Love you guys. Until next time, happy flow dreaming. I'll see you then. All right, that wraps up our episode today. But before you go, two things. One, you can get the Flow Dreaming app in the Google, Amazon or itunes app stores. It allows you to search and sort to mark your favorite episodes. It's completely free. To download, and it gives you access to the latest several dozen of these episodes, as well as to the Premium Episode Library, where there are more than 400 episodes that date back 10 years. The app's free, so go download it now at Flow Dreaming in the App Store on your mobile device. And last, if you love my show, I'm going to give a shout out to to my mom's podcast. It's called the Dear Venus show, and she's an amazing intuitive and a medium and super, super funny. Search the words Dear Venus in your podcast directory or online and that way you can find her too.