I’ve spent a lot of time the last few years thinking about humans and their capacity. When I say capacity I mean capacity for everything and anything. We all have priorities and values but we don’t always have the capacity to be able to actually be in alignment with those priorities and values. I may value my family, friends, dogs, relationship, hobbies, education, work, and a lot of other things but I have to prioritize those things in a way that makes me feel most fulfilled and also makes surviving or living this life possible. Once I’ve prioritized my values, I then need to asses my capacity in that moment or in that week or month. Imagine each value or priority as empty cups sitting in front of us and our capacity being a pitcher of water sitting in front of us. There’s only so much water in that pitcher to go around in each moment we live our lives. Maybe one day I choose to pour more than I really want to into work or school because something needs to get done and when I do that, it doesn’t leave enough to pour into my relationship or friendships. Or let’s say I’m in a toxic relationship that requires a lot of capacity or a lot of the water that I have in my pitcher, I then don’t have enough capacity or water to pour into my friendships or family or hobbies or whatever it may be. On a more positive spin, maybe it’s Valentine’s Day – like last week – I want to spend a couple days on a trip with my partner away from everything else. I can decide to pour a whole lot of my pitcher into my relationship those days and also that doesn’t mean that I can’t spend some time around those days pouring a little extra into other things and little less into my relationship. It’s all about balance and figuring out what works best for each of us individually from a day to day or week to week basis.
I think that everyone has a different level of capacity too though. I’ve met people who can talk to so many humans each day and it isn’t exhausting for them. For me, that sounds absolutely miserable and I would have zero capacity left to put into anything or anyone else. Yes, relationships and friendships do have the ability to pour some of their water into our theoretical pitcher (which we all deserve to have and we love to have those people who pour right back into us) but, for me at least, most human interaction – positive or negative – is something that I need to recover from for a bit. Again, this isn’t something that only relates to human interaction. Capacity is all about everything going on in our lives.
Some people react to reaching their capacity by continuing to pour from an empty cup/pitcher until they hit some kind of wall that forces them to stop whether that’s falling into a freeze state, getting sick, engaging in risky behaviors, going into debt, etc. On top of that, we live in a world where there are so many people constantly living in survival mode that even thinking about their capacity to do things is overwhelming because there seems to be no choice other than constantly pouring from that empty pitcher. From what I’ve seen and experienced though for the most part, life has it’s way of stopping us whether we like it or not. It’s in those times that life throws us on our asses that we can decide to figure out what our priorities are, figure out how to make some changes in order to pour a little less into what’s draining us, and pour a little more into things that are giving us life.
I know I know… easier said than done but hey, that’s why there are people – friends or partners or therapists or coaches – to help us sort through those jumbled up thoughts and values and priorities. Sometimes it helps to have an outside perspective come in and help write out some of those things to do more of or do less of that could maybe make this life a little more bearable or really damn enjoyable (depending on where you’re starting from). This was one of my favorite things that I did with my clients while in my training to be a coach. Getting to watch people come up with their values and their priorities in life felt like an honor and then helping them organize those in a way that helped them take a couple steps toward their goals was really damn rewarding.
I honestly love thinking about human capacity. I love talking about it with people and I love hearing other people’s thoughts or opinion on it. So if you’re open to it, send me a message and let’s chat about it. Lastly, if you think a coaching session on values and priorities and/or figuring out your own capacity is something that you’d like to do with me, I’d love to hear from you as well.
Let’s talk soon,
Chelsea
CKB Coaching, LLC 