A personal trainer once told me that for Olympic sprinters, a 30 second sprint requires a prior 90 second rest. For an intense burst of activity, your muscles need three times the amount of rest, so they have the energy reserves to break records. That tidbit of information completely changed the way I viewed achieving goals.

Recently I worked with a client who, before we met, had managed to build a very successful business in just a few years time. But here she was, burned out, resentful and at a plateau. The strategies just weren’t working anymore. She had a capacity issue.

Want to know what the main area of our focus is right now to get her to her next level? 

Rest. (Or as I like to call it, Embodiment Capacity).

I’ve given her a really tough homework assignment: no work at all on weekends. Only four hours of work per day, four days a week. This homework is hard for an achiever like her who is used to working 24/7. 

Her normal “go to solution” for a plateau is hiring a new business strategist, re-doing her entire business model or needlessly cutting a program out even if it’s a good revenue stream. 

That’s why she’s burned out and plateaued. 

Many leaders I work with don’t know why their team members keep quitting or why their relationships keep falling apart. Do you know what it’s like to be around you every time you feel the need to solve your unrest by unnecessarily overhauling everything? Exhausting, for one.

I’m sorry to report, one day off or a two week vacation before you go back to your usual grind isn’t what I’m talking about when I say “rest”. 

I’m talking about expanding your capacity to build a life and business/career that not only initially recalibrates your nervous system to get it back to baseline, but also keeps your nervous system at peak levels, always.

Now you’re tempted to ask me what magic plan that is so you can strategize your way into more rest. There’s no such thing. 

Everyone has a unique Capacity Code, which means what’s restful for my nervous system isn’t what’s restful for yours. You need something custom-curated.

In the Capacity Shift program, this is one of the many assignments we work on. Because trying to apply a self-care template is like buying “One Size Fits All” anything: that never goes well..

WARNING. Here’s where I see you possibly running into a problem: it’s not enough to have the right plan. You need CAPACITY to enact it. 

As an achiever, you’re going to RESIST rest and create “restful activities” that don’t actually give your nervous system a chance to settle. 

For example, my client decided to schedule a bunch of spa appointments for her “first week of rest homework”, but ended up feeling equally as exhausted because she had to sit in traffic to get to each one of those “self care” appointments. Sneaky form of self-sabotage, huh?

Ever took a day off for rest, only to feel stressed the entire time about all the things you’re not getting done? That’s a capacity issue. When you build capacity, rest stops feeling stressful and instead feels instinctive. Then the nervous-system recalibration and maintenance can begin.

And now we come to the reason for all of this: what this has to do with success or achieving your goals? EVERYTHING.

Burnout or a lack of consistent downtime/space actually impairs your brain. It guarantees you’ll unconsciously make poor decisions for your career or business. 

That’s why you keep “overhauling and restructuring everything” once a year, yet you still haven’t gotten unstuck. It “looks” like you’re being a smart and strategic business owner when you “restructure”. Instead, it’s the impaired decisions of a fried nervous system.

I have a personal rule that I impart to clients as well: don’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth or brain if you haven’t mastered your unique capacity to rest. 

If you keep trying to make career/business/life-altering decisions WHILE still maintaining your 90 mile an hour pace on the highway… well that’s just a recipe for a busted engine or a crash.

That kind of depleted decision-making is what got you stuck, plateaued and burned out in the first place.

Are you ready to discover your unique Capacity Code so you can expand your capacity to step into your next level? Fill out the Capacity Discovery Form here. I’ll personally review it myself and schedule a call if I feel I can be of support to you.