Many years ago I worked with a woman who’d just written a book. She had an incredible personal story to tell and even her publishers knew it was going to blow the F up when it was released. “Marguerite” had one problem though… 

She kept holding back the book launch. First, it was another round of edits. Then, it was endlessly nitpicking the cover. Another time she avoided responding to the publisher’s emails for weeks.

She booked a Capacity Intensive with me because she just couldn’t figure out why she was so resistant to putting this book out there, even when she’d worked so hard to get this book into people’s hands. 

Y’all have probably heard me say this a million times because it’s one of my “Lisa-isms” my clients constantly quote back to me after hearing me say it on our calls…but here it is again:

Sometimes your resistance is wisdom.

When I told Marguerite we were going to treat her resistance like wisdom and get curious about it, she looked at me like I had four heads. Aren’t you supposed to fight and push past resistance? Isn’t that what all the “success experts” say?

In some cases, maybe. But resistance often shows up to wisely slow you down because something is out of alignment. Resistance can sometimes be a warning.

That DOESN’T mean your resistance means you shouldn’t put yourself out there or do the thing. This is the most common way I see people misinterpret resistance. It DOES mean “take a second look and make sure you have the CAPACITY to handle what you’re pushing for.”

I told Marguerite, “you can have “wise resistance” pop up because you have capacity deficits in any of these six areas:

• Boundary Capacity: you haven’t set the right boundaries to be able to handle having a bigger audience exposed to you and your work.

• Structural Capacity: you haven’t yet curated the right team and environment you need to support you at the next level you’re about to step into.

• Embodiment Capacity: you haven’t sufficiently built the confidence and inner stability you need to handle being exposed to bigger audiences, push back or even praise without getting knocked off your inner throne.

• Visibility Capacity: you haven’t taken the time to clearly and succinctly express what you do. Your website language and marketing is a bit vague and confusing and you know if a large audience gets exposed to your work, you might not retain them because you’re hiding behind obtuse branding. 

• Money Capacity: you haven’t set up the right plan to make sure you manage your money well before you get that huge influx of sales.

• Purpose Capacity: you’re about to become widely known for one thing, and it’s actually not what you really want to be doing.

In all cases, your resistance is popping up to make sure you’ve set yourself to be able to hold, handle and receive the next level of your success. It’s asking you to make sure you have the CAPACITY for what you want to happen with your book before you launch yourself out there unprepared.”

This was a huge breakthrough for Marguerite. Over the next three hours, we looked at every one of her capacity areas and plugged up any little holes that might make the proverbial dam give way in any of her capacities.

The biggest capacity deficit was in her Structural Capacity™.  It was very important for her to have dinner in person with her family at least three times a week. While she was excited for the publicity tour her publisher was already planning, she was worried it would pull her away from her important family dinner nights.

BINGO! That’s why the resistance to releasing the book kept popping up! We created an aligned, feel-good plan to make sure she had twelve non-negotiable dinner dates on her calendar every month. 

And then we shored up her Boundary Capacity™ by helping her write a letter to her publisher, letting them know she would NOT be available for interviews or travel on those specific dates. Her publisher agreed to her terms.

Guess what? Her resistance was gone! Now she was comfortable being visible and stopped delaying the book, the book came out, and it was a huge success, just as we’d all expected. 

So many of you express fear you’re going to be “swept away” by all the attention you get when you or your work gets the exposure you want. And that’s why you hide, sabotage your progress, keep yourself small, relentlessly “edit” your next offering before releasing it or avoid visibility opportunities.

The thing to remember is, you always have A CHOICE. 

But when you have capacity deficits, those choices seem non-existent, and you feel like you’re going to become a victim to your success. Your resistance then pops up because it’s trying to protect you from that danger.

But when you take a moment to dive deep into the capacity areas your resistance is trying to tell you to strengthen and you work on them, the resistance goes away. Where there seem to be no choices, myriad choices appear.

That’s the power of working on your capacity.