Your ability to meet the moment with healthy reserves and recover quickly relies on this dynamic duo
There is a growing trend underfoot right now. It is about pivoting away from making excuses about our bandwidth, our overwhelm and too much on our plates. We are being encouraged to step back from victimhood and get a strong grip on our personal agency instead. We are being taught the power of language, that words matter. That our self talk can be the change agent that pulls us back into caring about our full capacity and our remarkable resilience.
We’ve unconsciously succumbed to believing that we are overwhelmed, that there is never enough time, that we can’t keep up and the demands are too great. While the truth of the matter is that we have freely given away our time and attention and even our self-control. Just check your average screen time and you’ll find the proof.
On top of that, most of the time we spend on our phones does not leave us feeling calm, rested, restored and hopeful. Just the opposite. And by osmosis, we’ve picked up a lot of lingo and limiting beliefs. Empty calories that keep us feeling under-resourced and cynical.
We are no less resilient or able to maintain our mental and emotional capacity than prior generations. We are just far more distracted by devices, social media and 24-7 breaking news. We’ve trained ourselves to have short attention spans. The side effects of short attention spans are being short-patience, getting short-circuited and feeling a constant state of being drained dry.
Two of my favorite resources paired up to tackle this big social issue: Barry Scott Kaufman and RaQuel Hopkins. Barry wrote the book Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself and Realize Your Full Potential. RaQuel has become known as the Capacity Expert, offering workbooks and workshops about building and maintaining deep reservoirs of mental, emotional and relational capacity. Barry and RaQuel offer online joint workshops as well. They teamed up to link personal empowerment and capacity to strengthen our resilience. This dynamic duo is proof positive that we can take back our attention, time and self.-control.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. And you will be motivated like a rebellious teenager to defy algorithms and the confirmation biases dished up to you that are not serving you well.
Mark Manson has this one-liner that really hits the target when it comes to victimhood: “Who you blame, is who you give your power to.”
When you are in victimhood mode, you will blame others, your phone or the news for being on overload, for making you feel certain ways, for being so distracted and not able to get anything done.
The first giant step toward improved capacity and resilience is taking back your time and attention along with a much healthier media consumption. If in fact your phone and daily media is eating up your precious resources of time, energy and attention – please reclaim them. This will feel empowering – because it is.
You actually do get to decide how you will parcel out your time, attention and consumption of information.
A few years ago in her dynamic book, Peak Mind, Dr. Amisha Jha revealed to us that our time and attention was a rare earth commodity. One that was so valuable to tech bros and algorithms that our attention is actually traded in the futures market.
Who is getting the biggest return on our attention? Not us.
Take back your most precious commodity and invest your time, attention and energy in building both capacity and resilience. Barry’s book is a must read for anyone who finds it all too easy to blame others, the media or outside influences for feeling so overloaded, hopeless and self-defeated. Reclaim yourself by rising above that victimhood mindset. Take back your agency and empower yourself. It’s that mindset and the language that permeates our social media intake that is dragging you down.
RaQuel is waging her own revolution in the mental health space by calling our attention to language. The words we read and hear and then repeat over and over that seep right into our heads and make us feel like our mental health is far beyond our control. It is another layer of a victim mindset. Take some time to reflect on the familiar phrases we all use these days to “normalize” what is actually the normal range on a spectrum of our mental and emotional capacities.
We don’t go around so freely judging, talking and assessing each other’s physical capacity. But we toss around mental health jargon that hampers our ability to cope with life with real agency.
RaQuel makes it crystal clear that the way we talk to ourselves and others especially when it comes to today’s mental health terms, becomes our self-fulfilling prophecy. If we think we lack capacity, we will act that way.
If you think this isn’t happening with you and in your relationships, just take note throughout an ordinary day of how many times common current cultural phrases get tossed in our ecosystem:
- I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now
- You’re so ADHD
- It’s my PTSD
When we sling these mental health phrases around all too easily, it is like crying wolf. We minimize the real struggles people can have with neurodivergence and past traumas all while making excuses for the very work that would free us. We all have some childhood trauma, limiting beliefs and unprocessed emotional experiences to unearth and heal. RaQuel points out that the language keeps us trapped.
Our human capacity and our inner resilience are the complementary combo: Our capacity refers to the foundational skills, resources, and emotional stability needed to handle daily demands, while resilience is the ability to adapt, recover, and bounce back when those demands or disruptions occur.
We rarely give this combination of our capacity and our resilience a second thought.
What I can tell you from my vantage point at 74, is that my generation grew up with a steady diet of language that supported our building of capacity and resilience. We pushed through, powered through, put our big girl or boy britches on and found what we were made of. A common phrase was “what doesn’t kill you makes your stronger.”
To be clear – not all of those common terms were helpful especially in times of real adversity and emotional trauma. The pendulum often swings too far; we didn’t have it quite right back then – and we have gone too far in the opposite direction right now.
The good news is that across the full spectrum of our lives, humanity is coming to rest in the center. Being on the extremes is not serving us well. Brene Brown has long told us that the center will hold. Dr. Ellen Langer reminds us to factor in variability in modern day mindfulness and to recognize that somedays we are better resourced than others. Don’t blow it out of proportion – take it into account.
We’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. We took mental health out of the dark ages and brought it into the light. Then we used it as an excuse for not putting in the work, the reps and the healthy daily changes that would support us in managing our lives with agency, fully empowered — and getting more skillful with our attention, time, energy and emotional intelligence.
If you struggle with feelings of being under-resourced mentally, emotionally and cognitively, welcome to the club. You will love the leadership of Barry Scott Kaufman and RaQuel Hopkins to help you take back your precious rare earth commodities of time, attention and energy. Turn in your victim mindset and slip into a growth-mindset. Feel your agency and empowerment coming back online.
If we all work on building our capacity to handle life with more self-awareness, positive and empowering psychology and flexible relational tools, we will be making a giant leap forward for all of mankind.
Noteworthy Resources:
https://www.thecapacityexpert.com/
