Do you sometimes feel like you just do not have the capacity to deal with all the stuff coming at you fast and furiously? Try as you may, you can’t stay charged for very long. Your energy is drained, your ability to stay emotionally balanced is tricky and your brain feels foggy.
Why do we feel like it’s impossible to have enough capacity to meet the demands of life?
Maybe it is because we were never taught what actually comprises healthy, sustainable capacity.
May I introduce you to RaQuel Hopkins, known online as “the capacity expert”. RaQuel explains that our capacity to handle our life with greater ease is accomplished by proactively pouring into three buckets: mental, emotional, and relational.
RaQuel brilliantly points out that traditional coping strategies failed us. We can’t build capacity if all we are doing is coping, or powering through. No wonder we feel like we have energy leaks everywhere. Coping strategies do not build capacity.
If you are spending any time on personal growth and self development, then you are well aware that letting go of habitual behavioral patterns that no longer work is a giant step in the right direction. Look closely at the coping strategies that go hand in hand with those problematic behavioral patterns and you will see the source of your leaky capacity problem.
If you are a people pleaser or conflict avoider, all the gyrations you go through to try to avoid confrontation, require a lot of mental and emotional energy. If you are a bull in a china shop, charging headfirst with all your demands, you are expending a lot of physical and mental energy from the get go; you may find yourself out of steam quickly and unable to deal with the mess you’ve made.
The bottom line is this. If you are feeling like you simply don’t have the capacity to deal with life, you are probably coping more than you realize.
RaQuel wants you to stop coping and powering through. Obviously, this is not sustainable.
Instead, get proactive about building your capacity in those three buckets: mental, emotional and relational.
Here’s what she offers in her workbook:
Mental Capacity is not about having more thoughts. It is about having more clarity around the thoughts you already have. Because the truth is, your mind is always thinking. But when your mental bandwidth is maxed out, even simple decisions feel overwhelming.
Emotional Capacity is your ability to hold emotional experiences honestly, without needing to defend, perform, numb or run. Most people focus on controlling emotions. Fewer people focus on relating to them. Even fewer are building the capacity to be changed by their emotions without losing themselves.
Relational Capacity is rooted in self-trust. Self trust is presence. It’s alignment with your values. It’s that quiet knowing. If emotional capacity is how you hold your feelings, and mental capacity is how you organize your thoughts, self-trust is how you make decisions rooted in who you truly are.
Take a few minutes to be really honest with yourself about those three buckets that compromise your capacity to handle life.
This simple review is like having a professional energy assessment done in your home. If you wonder why your electric and heating bill is so high, you can do a little analysis and make some rather simple changes to reduce the costs. Maybe your home needs some better insulation; clean filters make a difference; turning off excess lights and other electrical power drains is a cost-saver. Do the cost/benefit analysis and make changes.
RaQuel walks us through our own personal energy and capacity assessment:
The Mental Survival Loop: Overthinking, Reactive Doing = Stuck
The Mental Capacity Loop: Assessing, Centering = Leading
The Emotional Survival Loop: Naming, Feeling = Reacting
The Emotional Capacity Loop: Naming, Processing = Building
The Self-Trust Loop: Spot the Stretch, Identify the Safety Behavior, Center the Anchor, Move (Behave, Respond) from Alignment, Debrief the Moment
Let’s be honest – we were never taught how to build and maintain healthy capacity to meet all the challenges of our lives.
But we were programmed to buy in to feeling like a hero if we could power through adversity, even if we collapsed on the other side of it like an Olympic athlete who gave his all after a grueling race. We were conditioned to believe that multi-tasking was the equivalent of a triathlon times ten – living proof that we had Herculean talents and could never admit defeat. And of course, we thought it was our job to keep everyone happy.
RaQuel Hopkins has not only shattered that myth – she brings clarity and skills sets to proactively build tri-fold capacity. Mental, emotional and relational capacity are the three buckets we can fill, and refill continuously.
There is no doubt that we are at a really dynamic inflection point in our human evolution. Across many fields and genres, we are being given concrete evidence that our thoughts, emotions and behaviors work together. They can work in a dynamic, harmonic and generative way (as evidenced by Raquel’s “capacity” loop).
Or we can stay stuck in the old ways that leave us feeling drained, trapped and leaky.
Noteworthy Resources:
Follow Raquel on Instagram @ raquel_the_capacity_expert
Listen to her on this podcast episode with Adam Grant: How to Improve Your Mental Health
