Capacity for Excellence
How are you feeling with respect to your personal capacity?
Do you feel that you have a lot of capacity and look forward to further opportunities and challenges?
Or, do you feel that you are at capacity and even small changes feel overwhelming?
Summary
When you build capacity on an inner level, you can meet the world with more clarity, ability to adapt and an agile mind. In this article, learn more about how to build capacity, and how working with me helps you to build capacity. In brief, in this article:
review the concept of capacity
understand how reduced capacity can lead to burnout
understand capacity on the 4 levels of optimal well being
reflect on how building capacity leads to excellence
understand how an athletic approach to mindfulness meditation builds capacity
Capacity: Definition and Usefulness
Perhaps, take a moment to notice what the term capacity means to you. You might ask yourself: “Where do I have capacity in my life, and where do I lack capacity"?” Notice where you are at the edge of capacity in your life.
Capacity is the amount of space we have to take on new concepts. We have physical capacity, emotional capacity, mental capacity and even spiritual capacity. If you have been following me for a while, you’ll recognize that I often speak to these four levels of wellness, as spoken of in the more time honoured Medicine Wheel, and as expressly described by the Canadian Medical Association as the organization began specifically researching wellness in order to try to solve burnout in doctors. These four levels are physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.
Why would you want to build capacity? Well, one reason is that, when you are at the edge of your capacity, you begin to feel like the next little thing could overwhelm you. Sound familiar? When you are this edge, your nervous system behaves different. An area in the brain called the amygdala is ready to fire. You might feel this as being irritable, on edge, slowed down, a vague fatigue or like you just need more time alone. Little things might set you off.
Also, when you are at the edge of capacity, you move into survival mode. In survival mode, you are on the defensive and in reaction mode, rather than in creative mode. Instead of feeling in charge of your life, you will feel like your life runs you. Or, you may feel that other things run you. You may doubt your personal power to create the kind of life you want to lead in the current situations and conditions that you find yourself in.
When you are at capacity or over capacity for your biological system, you will have less room in your mind to process information. Problem solving becomes more difficult. Stress and anxiety more easily cloud thinking. Subconscious information problem solving gets shut down by subconscious strong emotions. Strong emotions drive what you believe to be rational and logical, and these emotions may be based in beliefs that reduce abundance in your life, rather than helping you to create abundance in your life. In other words, limiting beliefs can be activated when you are at capacity or over capacity.
Emotionally, when you are at capacity or over capacity, you begin to be at risk for burnout. Burnout is characterized by a mental and emotional fatigue despite the ability to still do your job and function at home. There is more cynicism, irritability, tension and stress. When stress is chronic for three weeks or more, brain cells start to lose their branches. An area in the brain called the hippocampus, can shrink. The hippocampus is responsible for you memory, managing and calming your mood (called emotional regulation) and helps you think on your feet. So, when you are at emotional capacity, you become at risk for burnout or actually become burnt out.
When you want to build capacity, you have to understand how. When people ask me what I do, this is one of the things that I do in a very personalized manner. Each human brain is profoundly different, although sharing many pathways with other people. When I work individually with a client to grow capacity, we find the specific ways to shift lifestyle and belief systems to create more ease and abundance in the client’s life. When I give a talk or work with a company, we find the ways that the people in the company and think, and specifically how to approach the concepts that build capacity to allow for resilience, growth and positive mindsets to flourish in the company.
Four Levels of Capacity
In the next four sections, I briefly touch on the four levels of capacity, according to the definition of well being existing on these four levels. Behind the statements below is extensive scientific research, but I am saving the research information for my booklet, ebooks and potentially a book to come out in future. However, by reading below, you can take yourself through a consideration of capacity that can be useful to you building excellence in your life.
Capacity: The Athletic Example
Physical capacity is quite an obvious and measurable thing. The Guinness Book of World Records records the fastest sprint, the highest high jump and other areas of excellence that come from a person’s supreme capacity. In the Book of Records, capacity has a number and a measurement. For example, we can measure that a certain person had a faster speed in a race than another person, and so, that person with the fastest speed wins the race and receives the recognition in the Book of World Records. That winning person, has a great capacity for speed.
What gives a person the capacity to be profoundly athletic, yet not falter, not fall down mid game, but instead thrive and reach a top speed?
Well, logically and practically, physical capacity comes from:
physical health with a strong heart, strong lungs, and well kept muscles
good physical stewardship of the body
practice with excellent coaching
a good recovery care plan for muscles and more
natural talent
pacing and specific training scheduling design
visualization practices
People with athletic capacity have a specific approach that leads to excellence. In a review of what creates physical capacity, you can see that there are several elements. As a former professional dancer, where we performed physical feats including being in running shoes en pointe, I learned how to build athletic capacity through a variety of methods. I now apply parallel methods with my clients in lifestyle design and coaching meditation for excellence in the client’s specific goals. I enjoy how consideration of physical capacity brings clients to a place of having good stewardship of their bodies - learning how to care for their physical form with greater ease and specific commitment to specific habits that work for them.
Think about it, when your body is uncomfortable, in pain or digestion is off, how easy is it to meditate? A body that is at or over capacity creates an obstacle to meditation. When meditation can be a key to success, the fact that the body needs to be in good shape within the parameters of the body that you have been given, becomes self evident.
Capacity: The Emotional Example
Emotional capacity is seen in a person’s ability to handle stressful and challenging situations. Especially in the last twenty years, there has been increased research on resilience. Resilience is defined, in part, as the capacity to handle emotionally stressful situations. The scientific literature on compassion fatigue has shown, profoundly, the impact that a self compassion practice can have on increasing resilience. A self compassion practice also reduces stress, emotional fatigue and compassion fatigue.
An example of emotional resilience is a monk, watching a video of impoverished children who were suffering, having a different response when using empathy versus using compassion. A scientific study showed that when monks empathetically put themselves in the shoes of those who are suffering, and focus on feeling their pain, they end up feeling worn out and exhausted and sad. However, when practicing a compassion and kindness practice as they observe those suffering, the monks felt inspired to know what they can do to take action and help alleviate the suffering, instead of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Compassion activated inspiration and motivation.
What gives a person the capacity to be calmly compassionate in the face of others’ distress, instead of being drained and exhausted from sadness, or reacting by appointing blame, rising up in anger or divisiveness against others, or even resorting to feelings and expressions of hate? Can this capacity be measured as easily as you might measure the speed of a runner in a race - in other words, as you might measure physical capacity?
Well, the answer to these questions is also logical and practical. Emotional capacity can be measured, with newer technologies. When you work with me, we can work with these technologies if measuring your emotional capacity interests you. You can also measure emotional capacity when you notice, and others notice, how often you can remain calm even though the atmosphere around you may be turbulent and chaotic emotionally.
Emotional capacity comes from
a settled amygdala, the emotional centre in your brain
regrowing your hippocampus, the “ameliorating” centre in your brain
a self compassion practice
a consistent and dedicated meditation practice
a good recovery plan for emotional stress
pacing high emotional stress exposure
letting go of judgment while maintaining discernment
emotional intelligence
People with emotional capacity tend to demonstrate strong leadership and engender trust. When I work with you, I help you learn how to build your emotional capacity for greater ability to take leadership, reduce emotional overwhelm, and use meditation athletically to build capacity for greater inner calm. When you build emotional capacity in this way, you have an inner centre of gravity that allow you to stay more even keel as you weather the emotional storms that life can present.
Capacity: The Mental Example
Mental capacity becomes apparent in a person’s capacity to take in new information, make sense of it and then analyze, problem solve and create using thought. Mental capacity has an alertness, a quickness and an agility that allows you to navigate through life’s challenges with greater ease.
A colleague of yours with high mental capacity will perform on the job with efficiency, accuracy and have a calm and smooth way about them as they move through the work day. They will adapt to new information with ease, and with very little emotional reactivity. Problem solving will come quickly and easily to a person with high mental capacity.
Based in what we know about neuroscience, mental capacity comes from
well tuned physical and emotional capacity
a mindfulness meditation practice
a healthy nervous system, brain and heart
a positive response to stress
pacing mental tasks
experience and knowledge
People with high mental capacity tend to navigate with ease through various challenges, prioritizing where to focus and where to put energy and time into things. A person with high mental capacity sees what needs to be done, is non-judgmental but decisive, able to take in many perspectives and has high mental processing speed.
In my work, people often come to me to improve their mental capacity. Often, life has become so busy and work-life balance so challenging that mental capacity is low - the person no longer feels that they can create the kind of life they want to create. In my coaching programs, I coach people to get back in charge of their life by expanding their mental capacity through a variety of tools from my extensive training and experience in mental peak performance. The work that you do when working with me has an athletic feel - you have to practice, you learn how to visualize, and you follow a training schedule to improve your mental capacity with measurable results.
Capacity: The Spiritual Example
Spiritual capacity is noticeable in a person’s ability to act according to their own values. Also, there are more universal values that tend to create harmony, unity and a cohesive society when upheld by a group of people. Spiritual capacity may be recognized as your capacity for inner peace, love, compassion, kindness, caring without martyrdom, personal power without dominance or force, and intuitive knowing.
Someone with spiritual capacity can set the tone in the room, see the bigger picture, bring people together with respect and kindness for each other, and more.
Spiritual capacity comes from
knowing what is meaningful to you
identifying your values
living by your values
being honest with yourself
learning the art of graceful honesty with others
inner experiences of profound magic
inner knowing of states of replenishment
A person with high spiritual capacity is congruent in the values they speak of and the actions that they take. People with spiritual capacity are able to bring people together in kindness, companionship and with a sense of worth. Also, people with spiritual capacity tend to be able to consider the bigger picture, and have a sense of how to create harmony on earth and peace with animals and each other. Instead of promoting chaos, people with spiritual capacity tend to be able to bring people together in peacefulness.
Mindfulness Meditation to Create Capacity: an Athletic Approach
When I work with clients, whether individually, in groups or with corporate groups, I take an athletic approach to building capacity. Meditation is challenging, so an athletic approach to meditation makes sense. To reap the benefits from meditation, you need to be training with commitment, determination and coaching. There are specific tasks that achieve specific outcomes to leverage your meditation for greater inner replenishment, better nervous system and brain repair and greater excellence in navigating through the challenges that life presents. As you build capacity in training with me, just as you would as an athlete, you have a specific schedule to help your specific brain and nervous system build capacity. In addition to physical and mental tasks, you build emotional intelligence according to your areas of weakness and strengths. We use your strengths to leverage your confidence and time management, so that we can address your weakness to grow you in those areas where you are weak, so that you overall achieve more balance.
With my clients, this results in better work life balance, more success at work, and greater relationship satisfaction in their personal lives. A cornerstone to these changes is the kind of mindfulness meditation training that I take you through, to build your overall greater well being. In this way, I add significant value to your life, and the feedback has been that this value lasts a lifetime. I still have clients contacting me saying, “I want to say hi and part of me wants another session but I’[m actually just doing so well. Everything you taught me still works, and if I eve get off balance, I review my plan that we created and notice where I let go of something, then bring it back in and then return to balance.”
The beauty of the innovative approach to meditation that I train you with, and that I also tailor to your specific lifestyle, is that it creates capacity. In your training, you learn a meditation style that is easily accessible to you. As you slow and deepen the breath in a way that works for you, you give your brain and nervous system a break so that they can recharge, restore and refresh. As you bring your focus to the same thing over and over again, you calm and settle the brainwaves of the mind. As you learn how to work with positive emotions and the scientific relevance of this specific practice, you access more and more positive states of being. As you practice your personalized meditation technique, your entire system starts to create more capacity as it harmonizes and settles. The value of the technique that I offer, and tailor individually to each client, is that you now have a practice for a lifetime. You understand how you best create capacity, and use this to create a more resilient platform for your future.
Curious to learn more?
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