lisa fabrega
I walked into his office sure I was going to end up paralyzed or worse, dead. My first time visiting a chiropractor and all the doctors in my family who didn’t “believe” in chiropractic were texting me horror stories of adjustments gone wrong.
But I had this soul-hunch I needed to be there. I had tinnitus, an incessant ringing in my ear that was so madness-inducing I cried every day, and terrible migraines with neck pain for months. Yet, rather than invest the time and money into the chiropractor, I’d done this whole song and dance around it because it was “scary” and “different” than the ways I usually resolved these kinds of problems.
It took me being in severe pain to finally show up at his office. Within a few visits, I was no longer having the headaches, tinnitus was better and neck pain was gone. I decided I would go once a month from now on to prevent anything like that happening again. I invested in a year-long package and never had that level of pain and tinnitus again.
While I’m sure you have better things to do today than read about my chiropractic care, that’s not why I’m writing you this email. This story is a metaphor.
Because that incident from years ago got me thinking. About how we wait til things are “really bad” until we’re willing to invest time, money and energy into a solution that will actually get to the root cause and truly “fix” the issue.
But sometimes when we wait til it’s REALLY bad, it’s too late or the recovery feels almost insurmountable (or super expensive) because the problem is already really far along.
A month ago, I spoke with a woman who’s been saying she wants to work with me for a year. I kept waiting for her to book a session to speak with me, but there was always some reason why she couldn’t… she was in another mastermind and not ready to make another investment just yet. She was moving houses, so too much on her plate. etc. etc.
Her business was always struggling with the same issues, but because it was making money and things were “pretty good”, she wasn’t motivated to make the investment to start working on the REAL issue yet: her Capacity.
When COVID-19 hit, everything changed. You’ve probably heard me say a few times that the pandemic has EXACERBATED all the things that weren’t in alignment for us and has REALLY put it IN OUR FACES.
Whatever you’ve been avoiding in your capacity can’t be anymore. All the weak spots in our lives and businesses are being highlighted. So this client finally booked a call with me because her revenue took a hit. She went from a usual revenue of $100,000 a month to $35,000 a month when the pandemic started. But I knew this was coming a year ago when she first wrote me about the small struggles her business was having.
To make matters more stressful, her own clients were freaking out about THEIR clients freaking out about making their payments. And that was causing her payments to get delayed, too. To put it crassly, it was a clusterf&ck. All of her boundary capacity and money capacity issues were rearing their heads and in. her. face.
I feel paralyzed Lisa, she said to me on the phone. She knew this was a moment that required greater capacity from her than ever before. She knew she had to show up as a model of capacity for her own clients, so THEY wouldn’t freak out and in turn could hold space for their OWN clients to not freak out. And she didn’t feel like she had it in her.
Instead she was flailing, not knowing what to do, not showing up for her clients in an empowering way that kept them level-headed and it was affecting her revenue big time.
Last year I thought money was a concern when I was wanting to invest in working with you, but I wish I’d signed up then because the money concerns are way scarier now. And now I have to make an investment decision from a place of greater financial stress.
That’s exactly what happened to me when I ignored the soul hunch to go to the chiropractor regularly months before my neck pain got out of hand. I wished, too, that I’d gone earlier before the problem became so big it required massive amounts of treatment.
Thankfully, she realized that if she just waited til “things got better”, like she’d already been doing for a year, she’d be in this exact same situation again, very soon. So it was now or never.
Sometimes that’s what good leadership requires from you. Good leaders have the CAPACITY to make scary decisions that are good for the long term health of their companies, even during times of financial stress.
She just texted me last week to tell me that in just the last three weeks of us working together, they’ve gone from $35,000 a month in revenue to on track for $70,000. DURING a pandemic. Capacity work changed how she showed up for her community and in turn, they relaxed and made more empowered money decisions (instead of hoarding in fear.)
If you aren’t liking how you’re showing up right now and want to react to all of this in a more empowered way, I’ll tell you what I told her. Cause you know I’m always gonna give it to you straight with a lot of love.
Your capacity issues are in your face right now for a reason. It’s time to deal with them NOW. I realize the inconvenience of this during a time when you’re managing other stressors…
But if you finally deal with this NOW, in 6 months you can be somewhere totally different and better than where you are right now because you chose to face the sh$t that is up in your face for examination and you worked on it, even though it was scary.
Or, you can be doing the same sh$t you were doing before, struggling with the same things you are struggling with now, using the same coping mechanisms and find yourself facing the same problems yet again.
Only this time it will be worse because we’re getting another, worse wave of this then. Every single expert on pandemics in the world has said this. What we’re experiencing now is NOTHING compared to what we’re going to get hit with in the fall.
It’s not fear mongering that I’m telling you this. It’s good common business sense. And a good business owner or career warrior can see upcoming patterns and adjust to make sure that when they hit, they’re already in a strong position and AHEAD of the wave.
I was JUST watching Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur, talking about how right now is actually one of the BEST times for businesses. Because during times like these, those who can innovate and do things differently, stand out. It’s those who are willing to DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY than they normally do who will succeed and thrive during this time.
But being able to do that requires CAPACITY.
Which one of the above scenarios will you be? Because the choices you make now will determine where you are when the tide turns again in the fall.
You’re either gonna be ready or not. You either get that or you don’t. You’re either going to have the CAPACITY to handle it or you won’t. You don’t get “a little bit pregnant.” You’re either pregnant or you’re not. Same goes for capacity.
Choosing to move forward into capacity work is always going to feel like a leap. If it’s not a pandemic, there’s something else stressful that will be going on for you. Times of stress, important decisions– they’ll always bring up your old coping mechanisms because the wiser part of you wants to see if you’re REALLY ready to stop using old crutches and do things anew.
And the moment you leave your old behaviors you rely on behind, is the moment the doors to more possibilities and more abundance open up.
(I recently had a client sign up to work with me on her capacity–as a result weeks later quit her job and almost immediately received a job offer for more money, in her dream field and now has a huge media company chasing her to do a podcast with her!)
In a few days I want to talk with you about another question I get asked all the time “how do I know if an investment is the right one for me?”
I answered this question for a client on a group coaching call recently and everyone was blown away by what we discussed. Stay tuned for my thoughts on that in a few days.