So when I look back at the conversations I've had with you and with other listeners over the past few months, one thing that really stands out to me is just how well, just how tired all of us are feeling. We seem to have hit the proverbial wall. And I want to bring this up because if you have been sensing this, if you have been feeling slow or sluggish in your business, if you've been wondering why it's taking so long to gain momentum or see results, well, first I want you to know that you are not alone. And what's interesting to me is that this has been coming up in all aspects of my business. I've been hearing this from my private coaching clients, from my mastermind participants, from the members of the Coach with Clarity Collective. I've even heard it from my students inside my certification program and inside, from Couch to Coach. All of us are feeling tired. We feel like we keep putting out all sorts of content and information and it just feels exhausting. And sometimes it feels like we're screaming out into the void. If you have been feeling that at all, I just want you to know, first off, you are not alone. And I want to acknowledge just how demoralizing it can feel and how difficult it can be to continue to show up every day, to put one foot in front of the other, to make progress on your business when it feels like you are treading through jello. It's a feeling I know well and so I just want to call that out. I want to give voice to it. Because when we name things, when we shine a light on them, we reduce their power. We reduce any shame or anger or fear associated with it. And if anything, I want you to know that you belong. Even if you're feeling this way, even if you're feeling disillusioned or uninspired in your business, that's okay. We all go through periods of time where we feel that way. Myself included. I am absolutely including myself in this discussion. And this actually is one of the reasons why over the last month I have been so intentional about the episodes I've shared with you. So over the last several weeks, I have replayed three of my most popular episodes and I've shared a brand new interview with you. That was two weeks ago with my friend Mai-Kee Tsang. And in that interview, we talked about sustainable visibility. So not just what tactics we could or should be using in order to grow our influence and build our audiences, but more about how we can continue to support ourselves and to take care of ourselves so that we have the energy and the inspiration to keep doing this work, to keep showing up. For many of us, we really struggle with consistency, with building that momentum, because we're just plain tired. And so that's why I chose to replay one of my very favorite episodes called The Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle. It originally broadcast as Episode 87 and we replayed it a couple of weeks ago. And I find that when we are able to give a name to the patterns we see in our businesses, namely how we see all sorts of opportunity, we catch a wave and we start working on a project and then before we know it, we're feeling completely overwhelmed and stuck and paralyzed. If you have ever experienced that in your business, then my friend, you have experienced the Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle. It's something that happens to, I would say all of us from time to time. And so it is not a sign that you are doing anything wrong, but for better or for worse, and unfortunately, sometimes for worse, this is often what those of us who build coaching practices experience, especially those of us who are really focused on our online presence and connecting with people that way. It is not uncommon for us to ping pong between feeling excited and motivated and inspired and feeling burned out and drained. So I wanted to talk about that in the context of the Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle. 

And then the week after I replayed another episode about conducting a mid year review. Because I believe that when we acknowledge that there are patterns showing up in our business, in our relationship, in our lives, once we see those patterns for what they are, then we do owe it to ourselves to pause and reflect on how those cycles are influencing us and how we might want to change course. And that's why right now, there's no better time to conduct a mid year review. To take stock not just of what you've accomplished or what you've been working on or what you've not yet done, but also to really check in about how you are feeling while you are working and what we can do in order for you to feel like you are supported and that you have the external and internal resources you need to keep going. That's also why last week we rebroadcast my episode about how to create meaningful content without burning yourself out. Because so much of sustainable visibility that Mai-Kee and I talked about a few weeks ago is around creating and sharing our content in a way that yes, serves and supports our audience and allows us the opportunity to connect with them, but also to do so in a way that takes into account our resources, our energy, our time, and what we have to give. So all four of these episodes that we've shared over the last four weeks, the Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle, Conducting a Mid-Year Review, Sustainable Visibility, and Creating Content Without Burning Out, I see these four episodes really working together to help us decide when and how we want to show up and work in and on our businesses. And it's with that as a backdrop that today I want to talk about the difference between capability and capacity and how it might be informing your work inside your coaching practice. I've been thinking about this topic for a long time, actually. And it was really only within the last week or so that I was able to put words to it that I saw this as an issue of capacity and capability. 

So for most of us, we are highly capable individuals. We are smart, we are talented, we are empathetic, we are empathic. We know how to show up and serve our people, to help them create the transformational change in their businesses and their relationships and in their lives. As coaches, that is our area of expertise. I would suggest that we are highly capable when it comes to this work. Our capability to do this is high. But the issue comes when our capability and our capacity are mismatched. So in my mind, capability has to do with whether or not I'm able to do something. Do I know how to do it? Do I have whatever skills or talents or tools are necessary to get the job done? Capacity, however, is not so much whether or not I have the ability to do something, but whether I have the bandwidth for it. Do I have the energy, the time, the desire, the motivation? Do I have the internal qualities I need to show up and get my work done without feeling overtaxed or burnt out or completely spent at the end of it? And what I have been noticing among my clients and some of my peers, my colleagues, even some of my friends and family, many of us struggle because our capability is great. There's very little we can't do when we put our minds to it. But our capability is currently exceeding our capacity. And that is a very painful place to be in when rationally, logically, you're saying to yourself, “I know I can do this. I know I can record a podcast, write a book chapter, create a Reel, go live. I know I can do these things. And yet for some reason I'm not able to.” It can feel so frustrating when we simply don't have the internal resources we need to take action, despite theoretically having the capability to do so. This is actually something that I saw come up quite a bit in the most recent round of From Couch to Coach, which is my live eight week group program designed to help you get your coaching practice up and running. And what I noticed was a sense of frustration from some of the members that things weren't happening as quickly as they would want and they felt like on some level they weren't doing enough. They were not putting themselves out there, not asking for clients, not creating new content. But when I would ask them to share, well, tell me about what this last week looked like for you. It was quite the opposite. They were doing so much. They were honing their audience and their approach. They were posting on social media, they were contacting friends and colleagues and networking and they were doing everything they were quote unquote, “supposed to do” in order to have a successful business. And yet on some level they felt like they weren't doing enough. And I suspect this is because I have the great fortune of working with people who are highly capable and yet because of the stressors of life and work living in this post pandemic era, we're all exhausted and so our capability exceeds our capacity. 

And when I talk about we and us, I really mean it. This issue of capability versus capacity is something that I have been sitting with for months. And admittedly, one of the reasons I rebroadcast the episode on The Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle was because I needed to hear it again. Over the last three or four months I've been presented with some really exciting opportunities both inside and outside my business and I have wanted to say yes to all of them. And initially I did. I created this beautiful schedule of how I was going to get this all done. And then two or three days into it I realized this schedule is not sustainable. And that if I am going to say yes to some of these new ideas that are really exciting and that are aligned with my values and light me up when I think about them, if I am going to say yes to these things, then there are going to be some things I have to say no to. I have to say no in order to be mindful and to respect my own capacity. That trying to do all of these things, even though technically I may be capable at all of them, doesn't mean that I can really do all of them at the same time. So I took a dose of my own medicine as I was rebroadcasting these episodes. I started with The Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle and took stock of how that was showing up in my business and in my life right now. And then I engaged in a mid-year review to reexamine and reflect on the goals that I had set up for myself for 2023 and to decide what still felt aligned and what maybe needed to be paused or even fully released moving forward so that I did not run myself right into the overwhelm part of the Opportunity Overwhelm Cycle. It was also a wonderful opportunity for me to reexamine what I feel passionate about and where I want to focus my limited time and energy. And on the heels of that review was my interview with Mai-Kee about sustainable visibility. And because so much of what I'm creating right now in my business centers around visibility, whether it's this podcast, whether it's my presence on social media, whether it's attending conferences and networking, the driver behind that is building my visibility and my credibility as a way of building my business. And so my discussion with Mai-Kee came at a perfect time because it offered an opportunity for me to reevaluate the ways in which I'm showing up and whether or not they are sustainable. And then the episode that followed the interview with Mai-Kee was all about creating meaningful content without burning yourself out. And that is all about acknowledging capability versus capacity and creating systems to support your creative process. So with all of this in mind, I have heavily revised my plans for the third and fourth quarter for 2023 and I've had to make some difficult yet necessary decisions inside my business and in my life in general in order to respect my current capacity while still building and growing and scaling a business I love. 

When it comes down to it, in my business at least, there are two aspects that really inspire me and make me feel motivated and give me a sense of purpose. And the first has to do with helping people become powerful coaches. That's both the skill side of coaching and the business side. Because I do believe, especially for those of us who are in business for ourselves, we need both. We need to have a strong business infrastructure to support our work and we need to know how to show up and serve our clients powerfully. If we only have one and not the other, then I don't think we have a particularly sustainable coaching practice. So we need both. We need the skill side and we need the business side. And so my first passion is teaching and educating and coaching people around their skill set and their business savvy when it comes to their coaching practices. So that's the first thing that I feel really passionate about and I love doing that through my one on one work, through my hybrid Masterminds, which are a mix of one on one and group support. I love doing that through the Coach with Clarity Collective and certainly through my small group programs like From Couch to Coach. The second thing that I feel really passionate about is the role of spirituality and intuition, certainly in our businesses, but really in our general lives. And over the last several months, I have been exploring my own gifts as a spiritual practitioner and looking at ways that I can pull them into my coaching work, yes, but also into my everyday life and how I acknowledge and find meaning in what I consider to be the everyday sacred. And it's this piece that has been particularly engaging for me lately. And about a month and a half ago, I made the decision that I was going to start writing my next book, and that my book was going to examine the intersection between spirituality and creativity and how cultivating our own spiritual connection with Source, universe. God, whatever name you choose for me, I'm going to be talking about it as Source. But when we have a strong connection with Source, that in turn influences our creative capacity and our creative capabilities. And so I have started working on a book proposal around this topic. And let me tell you, I've never written a book proposal before. 

When I wrote my first book, ACT On Your Business, I had a working outline. But I went right into writing the book, which was totally appropriate because I always knew I was going to self publish that book. And so I didn't necessarily need to have an agent or an editor approve what I was going to write about or say that, yes, they would take me on as a client because I was self publishing. I didn't need that. But for the book I'm working on now, I want to leave open the option of working with a traditional publisher. And so in order to do that, because this is a nonfiction book, I'm writing a book proposal. And let me tell you, writing a book proposal is the hardest writing work I've ever done. It's far more difficult than actually writing the book. A typical book proposal includes an overview of the book. It includes a few sample chapters. It includes chapter abstracts for any chapters that are not included in the proposal. It has a market analysis, a competitive analysis. So looking at other books that have been published in a similar genre, it includes a marketing plan. I mean, it is a really robust document. And working on this document has been incredibly challenging in the best way possible. And I'm maybe a quarter of the way through the writing process. I have a strong outline. I know where I'm headed. But writing those chapter abstracts, it has been such an intellectual endeavor that I spend 90 minutes writing a 500 or 600 word chapter abstract, and I feel like a wrung out towel at the end of it. I am completely spent. This is engaging me intellectually in a way that I have not done probably since grad school. And let me be clear, I have no regrets about this. I'm enjoying the work, and I believe in this book and what it will become. But as I've been working on this book proposal, it's become clear to me that in order to say yes to the proposal and yes to eventually writing and publishing the book, whether with a traditional publisher or on my own, I have to scale back in other areas. I have to learn where to say no, so that I can say yes to this book. Otherwise, I'm going to find myself in that place where my capability exceeds my capacity, and that's going to lead me straight to burnout. 

So that was the backdrop for me making several key decisions for Coach with Clarity, and I want to share some of those decisions with you today. The first decision I've made is that the Coach with Clarity Collective will no longer be open enrollment. Previously, if you wanted to join the Collective, you could do so at any time. By going to coachwithclarity.com/collective, you could sign up, you could join. It was great. What I find, though, is that when I have an always open program, when enrollment is always a possibility, it means I am always marketing it, always selling it, always trying to launch it and welcome people in. And that is a huge, energetic expenditure, and I simply don't have that energy right now as I'm working on the book. So I've made the decision that for the time being, enrollment for the Collective is closed. I anticipate reopening enrollment probably in August or September of 2023, which is why when you go to the Collective page right now, you are going to see an option to sign up for the waiting list because enrollment is simply not open. Now, between you and me, because you are a podcast listener, I'm going to tell you that if you are not yet a member of the Collective and you want to join, send me an email. Even if we are outside of open enrollment, if this is something you are feeling called to join and now is the right time, I'm pretty sure an exception can be made. I do know the boss, after all. But by having an open cart/closed cart period for the Collective, it takes a lot of pressure off of feeling like I always have to market and sell it. So the first decision I made was to close enrollment to the Collective at the end of May, and I will reopen it publicly later on this year, likely August or September. 

The second decision I made, and this was a really interesting one, and in many ways, this might have been the hardest decision. A few weeks ago, I was approached by a colleague of mine who I really respect, who has a wonderful program, and she invited me to consider being an internal coach inside her program so she would still be teaching the content and supporting her students. And I would be there as a mindset coach to help them navigate any issues they were experiencing as they were implementing her program and growing their businesses. This idea was really appealing to me because at my heart, I am a coach. I love coaching, and I particularly love one on one coaching. So the idea of being an internal coach in someone else's program where I would be able to focus on mindset work and providing that high level of support, I was really interested. And I thought about it for a while, and I realized that if I said yes to this, it was going to require more time and more energy. And the only way I was going to be able to source that time and energy would be to say no to things in my business, like my book proposal. And so I made the difficult decision to decline the offer in order to say yes to my commitment to the book and to my commitments to my business for the rest of the year, it is always really hard to say no. At least it is for me. And it's especially hard to say no when it's something I love doing and when it is a friend or colleague who's extended the offer because I don't want to disappoint them. And yet I also knew that in many ways, this was a test. If I was going to be all in on writing this book, it almost felt like the universe was saying, “Are you sure Lee? Are you sure? We're going to test this a little bit. We're going to give you another opportunity here. Let's see how committed you are to this book.” Now, maybe that's not fair, I don't know, but that's certainly what it felt like. And I will tell you that even though it was difficult to make the decision to say no, after I communicated my decision with the person who invited me to be a part of her program, I felt so good about it. I felt proud of myself that I had not only set, but I had maintained a boundary with myself that I said, “I am going to do this. I'm committing to this process for the next few months, this is going to be my priority.” And then I made sure that my decisions and my actions were in alignment with that priority. So while it was difficult, it was also incredibly rewarding to say no. 

So that was the second thing that I said no to. So the first was saying no to always open enrollment for the collective. The second thing was saying no to this job offer. And then the third thing that I didn't say no to, but I'm making some significant modifications to: is this very podcast. I love making this podcast for you and with you, and it requires a lot of resources, time, money, energy. And so I've made the decision that for the foreseeable future, the Coach with Clarity podcast will be moving to twice monthly episodes. Now, this was a really hard decision for me because I have been releasing episodes pretty much every week for the last three years. And there was a part of me that felt that I was failing or that I was somehow going to ruin my podcast if I decided to cut back, if I decided to publish two episodes a month instead of four, or some months, five. But here's the thing. I would much rather share two episodes a month with you, episodes that I feel strongly about, that I know are high quality content that will serve you in your practice, where I am excited and engaged. I would much rather do that twice a month than struggle to create four to five episodes a month and feel that the content or energy is compromised. I also had to come to terms with a very old limiting belief that has plagued me for decades. And it's this false belief that on some level I don't follow through with things or I'm inconsistent, or I say I'm going to do something and then I don't see it through to the end. I start things, but I don't complete them. And the tricky thing about this particular belief is that there's a ton of evidence in my life that refutes it. There are so many things that I have successfully finished that I've seen through to the end. But yet this is an old story that I have told myself since childhood that for some reason I'm not someone who follows through on things. And so when I even first started thinking about changing the flow of the podcast and moving from weekly episodes to twice monthly episodes, my initial response was, “See, there you go. You can't hack it. You can't see this through, you're inconsistent.” And what an unfair way to treat myself, because it's not true. I think you and I could both look at this and say, “Just because you're moving from four episodes to two episodes a month doesn't mean that you're not following through on things. Like, we know that that's not true,” But it's also not kind to beat myself up for scaling back and making decisions that I know will ultimately benefit the health of my business and my own personal health as well. But I had to do some work around that old story, that old belief, and I had to give myself permission to say, at least for now, this is what I need and this is what my business needs in order to respect my capacity. So that's my way of letting you know that moving forward for the foreseeable future. The Coach with Clarity podcast will be released twice a month. I anticipate that one of those episodes will be a solo episode with just me on the mic like this one. And then one of those episodes will be a guest interview. And those are often interviews of the people I am featuring as the guest expert inside the Coach with Clarity Collective for that month. So we're still going to have solo and interview episodes because I've heard from so many of you that you really enjoy that variety. So we're going to continue to do that. It's just going to be every other week, give or take, rather than every week. 

And so I want to thank you for your support and your understanding in advance and let you know that if you need a Coach with Clarity fix, fortunately, we have 165 episodes in the archives. So you are always welcome to go back in time and find an episode that speaks to you. And in fact, if you would like a personal recommendation, all you have to do is email me, send me a message, info@coachwithclarity.com, or find me on social media @CoachWithClarity and let me know the question or topic that you want to dive into and I'll see if I don't have an episode in my archives that might be just what you need to hear right now. And if I don't, then you may have just given me an idea for a future episode moving forward. So please feel free to reach out because I'm here to support you. I believe in you, I believe in your business, and I want to see you thrive. And even though the podcast is now moving to twice a month, I'm still here for you. I'm cheering you on, and I'm in your corner. I'm also working on a few ways that we can stay connected outside of this podcast, and they're still in development, and I'm being really mindful again of my own capacity. So I'm not rushing in to creating something brand new, but I do have something in the works, so you can expect to hear more about that in the coming weeks as well. But for now, we're still going to connect with each other twice a month right here on the Coach with Clarity podcast. 

I hope today's discussion of capability versus capacity has been helpful, and I hope walking through some of my own personal decisions as a result of my exploration of capability versus capacity has been helpful. If anything, I hope this gives you permission to reexamine the ways you've been showing up in your business with the people you care about for yourself, take a really good look at how you've been showing up and ask yourself, are there areas where I need to pull back? Are there things in my business or my life that I need to say no to, at least for now, in order to create the space and time to invest in where I'm feeling called to grow and expand? And my friend, you do not need my permission. But if it's helpful, consider this episode to be your permission slip. That it's okay to say no to some things, it's okay to scale back, it's okay to end things as well. And even though this podcast is not ending, if there's something in your life that has come to its natural conclusion or it's simply no longer serving you, it is okay to pause or flat out stop doing it. And if this resonates with you, I would love to hear about it. Send me an email or DM me and let me know what you are saying no to in order to create the time and space to really invest in what lights you up. I would love to know more about it, and I would love to support you in the process. Well, my friend, I still have another four chapter abstracts to write for my proposal, and then I've got a sample chapter to write, so this feels like a good place to end this week's of the Coach with Clarity podcast, and I will be back in your feed in two weeks. Feels a little weird to say that, but I'll get used to it. I'll be back in your feed in two weeks with another brand new episode. So until then, my name is Lee Chaix McDonough, reminding you to get out there and show the world what it means to be a Coach with Clarity.