lisa fabrega
I was walking out of the gym yesterday when a woman pulled up next to me in her car and said “Are you leaving? If so, can I follow you? I can’t find a parking spot anywhere!”
This is normal at my gym—if you don’t get there by 8am, you’re gonna be driving around for 10 minutes until someone leaves and opens up a spot.
So I gestured to her to follow me so I could give her my spot.
She followed me walking across the entire parking lot (I like to park far so I get extra steps in), and when she and I got to the area where I’m parked, there was another woman who was sitting there in her car, also waiting for a spot.
She saw me and instantly thought she was going to get my spot—not realizing I had already promised it to the woman closely following me behind.
“No worry,” I thought, “I’ll just tell this lady that she can’t take my spot because this other woman’s been following me for my spot from way back.”
But before I could get the words out of my mouth, the woman who’d been following me and requested my spot goes “Oh well! Guess I lost the spot!”
Then begins to give up and turn her car around to relegate herself to 10 more minutes of driving around to find a space to park.
WTF?
I said to her, “HOLD ON PLEASE. Don’t worry, I gotchu.”
Then I walked toward the other waiting car and I said “I’m sorry this spot isn’t available—that women right there has been following me for a while and I promised HER the spot already a while ago.”
She understood and drove off with ZERO fuss.
Then I got in my car, pulled out, and the woman who’d followed me and almost gave up waved a happy wave as I drove away and she pulled into my spot.
THIS IS THE BEHAVIOR IN MY FELLOW WOMEN THAT DRIVES ME BANANAS!
And I am saying this with SUCH fierce love, because I’ve been seeing many of YOU doing the same thing as you’ve been expressing interest in the virtual Visibility Capacity retreat…
What is UP with just giving up so easily when the slightest obstacle presents itself in front of what you want?
I hear this all the time… and I hear it every time I open up the virtual Capacity retreats for enrollment.
“I’m drowning in busy-ness and I really NEED this retreat, but I’m so busy I just don’t even have time to open up my calendar to make the times work.”
“Oh I can’t find childcare, guess I’ll just have to suffer for longer instead of asking my partner or family for help on that day after all the help I give THEM constantly.”
“Oh the EXACT amount isn’t in my bank account right now, so I guess I’ll just slog through, miss this AGAIN and accept my fate.”
In life or business this also might look like:
“Oh my launch isn’t going as well as I wanted it to. Guess I’ll just wrap it up instead of persisting for a few more weeks til I get the number of people I want in it.”
“I need to set some serious boundaries with my mother but it just starts a fight every time I do, so I’ll just allow her to keep doing whatever she wants and making my life hell.”
“I tried to go to my next level and it was really hard and it didn’t go how I envisioned. Guess I’m just not meant to make more money than I am now. Guess I just am not cut out for that level of success.”
Any of these phrases sound familiar? Do they sound like the voices in your head? Or have you actually said them out loud to others?
You know what I think about those voices? FUCK THAT.
EVERYTHING. EVERY amazing, miraculous, and fulfilling thing that you want in life ALWAYS has obstacles in front of it.
And they’re never “EASY” obstacles. They’re usually the kind that make you want to fold in on yourself and go back to the same ol’.
Wanna have a baby? You have to go through labor and there’s no option to “tap out” in the middle of it and decide NOT to have the baby.
Wanna start a business? Get ready for your strength, determination, and SOUL to be tested constantly. I’m 10 years in and I STILL get tested and stressed.
Want to take your business from $50,000 to $10 million. Get ready to upend everything you think you know about yourself and how to run a business. Get ready to lose friends and to experience tons of doubt and fear, too.
Want to become partners at your law firm? Get ready to work your @ss off and face jealousy from colleagues in the process.
Yes, sounds stressful. But if it sounds stressful to you enough that it often makes you turn back and give up like the lady in the parking lot, it’s NOT because you “don’t have what it takes.”
It’s actually because you have a capacity issue.
You don’t believe in yourself enough to push yourself.
And the reason you don’t believe in your ability to achieve those HUGE milestones is because you never fully tested out the edges of your strength. Because you don’t believe in yourself. It’s a cyclical clusterf$ck. And it’s a capacity issue.
Think of the hard things you’ve done until now in your life. You probably felt like it was something you “couldn’t handle” in the beginning.
But just like you forget the pain the minute that baby lands in your arms, the minute you hit your first major milestone in business, the minute you hit your $10 million mark, or the minute you hear about your promotion…
It’s worth it. And BECAUSE you stuck with it and went through it, now your “obstacle overcoming muscles” are stronger and what was SO hard for you before, is actually DOABLE.
That’s called building capacity.
That proves my theory that YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES.
BUT—if you let yourself be knocked off your course THAT easy… you’re NEVER building up your endurance muscles. And that just means you’re always going to be that woman in the parking lot giving up at the SLIGHTEST obstacle presenting itself.
Have you considered that maybe things haven’t gone the way you wanted them to because you literally gave up or folded in upon yourself every time a pushback appeared?
In order to succeed and achieve your goals you have to have the CAPACITY to CLAIM what you want no matter what obstacles appear in your way.
Otherwise you’ll just be that woman having to circle the parking lot for 10 more minutes because she didn’t say “Sorry but this spot is taken.” Metaphorically speaking.
You won’t always be so lucky to have a woman vouching for you like I did this AM for her. I can’t be in your living room, holding your hand as you click “enroll” for the virtual Visibility Capacity retreat and finally decide you’re NOT going to give up so easily.
Sometimes you’re going to have to do it on your own. And the way you pushback against pushback will reveal a lot to you about how much you really want what you want…
And whether you’re willing to be uncomfortable to demand and claim it.
So maybe you didn’t get what you wanted previously not because you didn’t have the strategy or the “special sauce” others you admire have. But because you just crumbled any time obstacles appeared. And you’ve never truly shown yourself what you’re ACTUALLY capable of.
And that’s a capacity issue. One that you URGENTLY need to work on if you want to achieve what you say you want.
The LAST AND FINAL DATE for the virtual Visibility Capacity Retreat is coming up this week, on Friday.
We have only 4 spots left.
Let’s see if you’re going to stretch your endurance muscles and move hell and high water to be there. Because I guarantee you, if you do that, you’ll have stretched your capacity before even having attended the retreat.
In love & capacity,
PS: The second virtual Visibility Capacity retreat happened this past Saturday. The entire time all I kept hearing was “I am SO HAPPY I decided to come to this and got past my fears.”
Here’s proof from our chat room during the retreat:
One woman even got an offer to go speak to a room full of people in Paris, IN THE MIDDLE of the retreat. She was marveling at how it was all connected to having said yes to coming to the retreat.
When you say yes to this experience, the wheels of the Universe start turning in your favor because the Universe sees that you’re actually doing something out of your comfort zone to make your goals happen.