A few years ago, I found myself sitting on my couch, lost in a long train of thought. It’s a train of thought my brain has been habitually trained to go down, based on childhood physical/emotional abuse I experienced. This train of thought says, “yes, you’re successful, all is great, you’ve achieved all these amazing things… but your friend just published a book and has all this publicity for it, she just got a speaking gig, she had a million dollar launch… why aren’t YOU doing that?”

And from there, my brain would then go down this path: “you’ll never be able to get to THAT level. No matter how hard you work, everyone else gets to be seen and celebrated, but you always are the best-kept secret of all those highly visible womxn.”

We all have our version of that “train of thought” that likes to run amok in our brains. And newsflash — no matter how much “mindset work” you do, or how successful you get, you’ll always have a few stories that were hardwired into your nervous system as a child & want to creep back in. That’s just how the human body, nervous system, and brain work. You can’t avoid that.  

But that’s where capacity comes in and can help.

In my case, I was in the middle of that train of thought, sitting on my couch, feeling shitty and suddenly I stopped and thought, “Why did I just waste 15 minutes of my day re-telling these old, untrue stories to myself? What if I just REDIRECTED this energy and time I’m sitting here wallowing, towards making an extra $10,000? Or used this time to ask my friend how she got her book agent?”

In that moment I saw on an even deeper level how utterly INEFFICIENT my ego can be. Our egos think they are so logical and efficient, and “that’s why we should always listen to them”. But your ego also carries your wounding. And your wounding and old trauma can warp your decision-making and cause you to make decisions that keep you small and repeating the same stories over and over again.  

Your ego can cause you to play it safe when you don’t need to and as a result play small with your investments, your time, and your money. And your ego also contains the primitive animal part of you that is concerned with your survival — so it will always look for “proof of danger” when you’re moving into new areas of expansion — even in areas that aren’t dangerous for you to expand in.   

All that time you spend looking for potential danger and reasons to not go for what you want at your next level — could have been used to go to your next level. Get it?

That moment on the couch all those years ago was a turning point for me. I focused on doing the capacity work I teach. For the next few months, I used my energy and time to build my internal capacity (mentally and emotionally) so that these stories didn’t go on auto-pilot and drive my decisions anymore. (Instead of continuing to let these trains of thought waste my time on my couch).

As I did the work of building my internal capacity, the same work I teach to other powerful womxn like you, I started to change the “habit” of getting led into that disempowering train of thought and then making decisions that only reinforced those trains of thought.

Instead, I kept redirecting my thinking time into creating what I want vs. focusing on the “problems”. (Which never actually solves the problem, have you noticed that?). This is something I work on with all the womxn in my mastermind over the course of 10 months, because it takes time to change the way these old stories can insidiously influence us to behave and make decisions like the smaller, no-longer-relevant version of ourselves. And then we wonder why we plateau’d or aren’t getting to the next level of our success.

I see this often when I’m in a conversation with a womxn considering one of my programs. Inevitably, when we get to the discussion about signing up, the very same ego stories come up. The ego starts looking for reasons why this won’t work, why they “just don’t have the money”, why they “can’t make it happen”. Old traumas about losing money come back up. Old fears that they’ll never be able to get to where they want to go, no matter who helps them, haunt them.  

I call this the crucial moment of truth.

They are facing an opportunity to experience an expansion beyond anything they’ve known (within my program) and get everything they have been craving. Yet, even though their soul was a yes ten seconds ago, now the ego has a million questions. It’s trying to find the reasons why it’s “too dangerous” to step into the next level.

I hear the ego excuses come rolling in… “the money isn’t in my account!”, “last time I invested in x and I got ripped off”, “I just don’t have the time with kids and a full-time job” etc…

That’s when I get to see someone’s level of commitment to their expansion. Either they will choose to overcome those old stories and join the mastermind, which changes them instantly and forever because in that minute, by choosing to overcome those stories they become their next level self. Then on top of that they set themselves up for even more success in the next 10 months because we then spend all that time expanding their capacity so they can step into a whole new way of being in the world.

Or they give into the old traumas, wounds, and trains of thought. Really “logical-sounding” excuses come up for why focusing on their inner capacity is not important right now. The excuses our egos love to come up with to keep us exactly where we are. They decide they are too afraid to move forward. Then I watch those same womxn spin their wheels for months, continuing to reinforce the same stories that are keeping them small. Not able to handle all the good stuff that comes their way because they didn’t take the time to expand their capacity. Wondering why they plateau’d after so much success.

I have seen thousands of these moments in conversations with womxn who want to join my programs by now. Nine years in, I’ve seen every excuse and fear in the book. I myself had many of them too. Until I stopped letting those ego thoughts rule my decisions.  

In those moments, all I can do is hold space and pray that you will choose yourself and stop letting your old stories win. Pray that you will finally commit to expanding your capacity. I can’t make you do it. But I’m there with arms open if you’re ready to truly go to the next level of your way of being in the world.

As far as my old stories that I used to wallow in on the couch…. because of working on MY capacity, now when these old stories from childhood come up, I have built my mental & emotional capacity up so that I can stop myself and say “hey! Redirect!“ And I immediately get off my couch and put my energy into booking the speaking gig, getting the agent, or expanding my work in the world. It has accelerated my success significantly and gotten rid of so much drama in my mind.

Your time is precious — funnel all of your energy and time into the pursuit of your dreams. Don’t waste precious time with trains of thought that have never served you and never will. Don’t let those trains of thought influence your decisions and cause you to act smaller than you actually are.

REDIRECT.

In love and capacity,