Increase Your Capacity for Deeper Recovery

How Much Capacity Do You Have Available?

In the last article, I wrote about automatic internal reactions and how much energy it can take to control them. Something happens, you have a strong reaction, and suddenly a lot of your attention is focused on managing what you're feeling, thinking, and wanting to do. The more energy you use managing yourself, the less you have available to respond to everything else life is offering.

I use the word capacity to describe your ability to meet what life offers in a resourced way that reflects who you are at your best. When you have plenty of capacity, you're more able to be present, think clearly, and respond intentionally. When capacity gets depleted, life gets harder. Things that usually seem manageable can feel overwhelming, and accessing the best of who you are becomes more difficult.

Capacity isn't fixed. It changes throughout the day. You might wake up feeling rested and fully available, then notice that by midafternoon you're running on fumes. On another day, you may wake up depleted before the day even begins. Most of us experience these changes without paying much attention to them.

What happens when you start paying attention?

Think of Capacity Like a Battery

Imagine that you have a battery indicator with five bars. Five bars means you're fully charged and have plenty of capacity available. One bar means you're running very low.

You don't need a precise definition of what each bar means. Let your own experience teach you that. You already know the difference between feeling resourced and feeling depleted. The five-bar battery charge indicator simply gives you an easy way to begin paying attention.

When you wake up tomorrow morning, notice how much capacity you have. Maybe you're at five bars. Maybe you only have three.

Check again later. How much capacity do you have around lunchtime? What about later in the day? If you notice a significant change at any point, check your battery again.

You're beginning to collect information about yourself.

Low Capacity Is Information

When you notice that your capacity has dropped, get curious about what was happening around the change. What happened before the drop? What's happening inside you now? What happens afterward that seems to restore some capacity?

Don't immediately try to fix anything. Low capacity is data.

For example, you may discover that you consistently have less capacity when you haven't slept enough, when you've skipped a meal, or when you've let an important concern go unaddressed. You may discover that connection with someone you care about, some time outside, or exercise restores some of what you've lost.

Those are examples, not a list of what you should do. Your job is to discover what depletes and restores your capacity.

That's why noticing is more useful than someone else telling you how to take care of yourself. You're studying your own experience and beginning to understand how your capacity actually works.

Capacity Affects Your Access to Your Best Resources

There's another reason to pay attention to capacity. Your available capacity is connected to your access to CORE-Energy and the inner resources it supports.

CORE-Energy is the energy that emanates from your core essence. When you have access to it, resources like wisdom, discernment, and curiosity are easier to access. You're more able to meet life from who you are at your best.

When capacity gets depleted, access to those resources gets depleted too. You don't suddenly lose your wisdom or your ability to be curious. They're still there, but they're harder to access. When you're exhausted, overwhelmed, or consumed with managing an internal reaction, you simply have fewer inner resources available.

That's one reason life can seem so much harder at some times than at others. The circumstances may not have changed very much. Your capacity to meet them has.

Greater capacity gives you greater access to the resources that support deeper recovery.

Awareness Can Change What Happens

There's a relationship between awareness and choice. The more aware you become of your experience, the more space you create inside. Inside that space, you have more choice. When there's very little awareness, there's very little space between what happens and how you respond.

You may begin noticing cause and effect without doing anything about it. You notice what happens when you don't get enough sleep. You notice the difference after spending time with someone you enjoy. You notice that an unresolved concern has been draining you for three days.

Then something interesting can happen. Your choices may begin to change without having to force them.

You don't have to make a rule that says you must do more of this or stop doing that. Awareness itself begins giving you information that influences your choices. Rather than trying to manage or control yourself, you see more clearly, and different choices can emerge from what you see.

Try an Experiment

For three to seven days, become a scientist studying your own capacity. Don't deliberately change anything. You're establishing a baseline, so live your life the way you normally do and observe what happens.

Use the five-bar battery to check your capacity several times during the day and whenever you notice a significant shift. Pay attention to the circumstances and conditions around those changes. You're looking for patterns, not trying to produce a particular result.

At the end of those few days, you should be able to make a rough estimate:

I usually wake up with _____ bars.

By lunchtime, I'm usually at _____ bars.

By dinner, I'm usually at _____ bars.

By bedtime, I'm usually at _____ bars.

You'll probably also know more about what tends to deplete your capacity and what tends to restore it.

Then stop formally tracking. For the next month, just live your life. You'll probably continue noticing capacity because now you're aware of it, but don't turn it into a project. Watch what happens. Pay attention. Let awareness do its work.

After about a month, repeat the three-to-seven-day experiment and establish another baseline. Compare it with the first one. Are you starting the day with the same amount of capacity? Are you maintaining capacity longer? Are you recovering capacity differently when it drops?

Most importantly, notice whether anything changed because you stopped trying to manage yourself and simply became more aware.

Awareness Gives You More Agency

You aren't completely at the mercy of however much capacity happens to be available. At the same time, you don't have to tightly manage your life in an attempt to keep your battery at five bars.

There's another option. You can become more aware.

Notice what depletes you. Notice what restores you. Notice what begins to change once you can see the relationship between your choices, your circumstances, and your available capacity.

Greater awareness creates more choice. Greater capacity gives you greater access to CORE-Energy and the inner resources that help you meet life from who you are at your best.

That's one way recovery becomes deeper. Instead of putting more effort into managing yourself, you become increasingly aware of yourself. And from that awareness, a different way of living can begin to emerge.