You Can Do Anything, Not Everything

A short reminder about capacity

Welcome to Humans Leading, a space designed just for you by me, Dr. Jillian. As a busy physician, toddler mom, coach, and creative who has experienced and recovered from burnout, I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have any time for yourself. Via the Humans Leading community, you’ll find ways to live a less stressed, more satisfying life by making the most of the small pockets of time that you do have. This post may be packed too full of goodness to show up fully in your e-mail, so come on over to the webpage or Substack App to see the whole thing. Subscribe here to get future posts straight to your inbox:

✨ Last time: Tools for living through hard times- Read it here

✨ Today: A reminder about capacity

“I’m kind of a mess right now. It seems like I can’t do anything.”

I could hear the dejection in her voice as she spoke.

Just moments before, my coaching client had rattled off all of the things that she was currently juggling. From work, to kids, to a side hustle, to aging parents, to a desire to maintain her physical health, to her marriage, to trying to remain an active participant in the world, she couldn’t see all of the things that she was doing. She could only see what she wasn’t able to do.

And she, like many of us, was beating herself up about it.

It was then that I reminded her of one of the lessons I have spent years trying to remember for myself:

You can do anything not everything.

As ambitious people, we take on a lot of work. Instead of giving ourselves credit for all of the work we are doing, we often still feel like we are falling short. We feel like we should be capable of more than we are doing.

We feel like we should be able to do it all.

This feeling triggers our stress response which often leads to us trying to work 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 as a way of trying to control our situation.

Over time, this can lead to 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐭. That’s certainly what happened for me. And it is what was happening for my client.

Instead of trying to work our way through overwhelm and burnout, what we actually need is to do less as a way to help us recover.

In addition to doing less, we need to remember that our current capacity is not the same as our capability.

• Your capacity is what you can do if you are at 100% and only have a task or two to focus on.

• Your capability is what you can do with the circumstances that you’re in right now.

  • For my client, this meant:

    • considering what she was able to do in the context of having many competing priorities

    • beginning to give herself credit for what she was doing instead of always focusing on what she wasn’t doing

    • finding ways to do a little bit less in order to begin to work on her burnout

If you are feeling stretched and stressed, let that be a sign to you that it’s time to take a break. Even when you’re busy (especially when you’re busy), you need and deserve rest.

Your to-do list can wait.

If You Wait to Rest Until Your To-Do List is Done, You'll Never Take a Break

You Need Recovery Time Every Day

What will you do this week to care for yourself?

I’d love for you to share it in the comments so that we can keep supporting each other in this community. Even if you have a tiny breakthrough or idea, it all counts. If this resonated with you, feel free to click the heart icon to let me know. And if you fancy sharing this post using the restack button to help more people discover it, I’d really appreciate that too. See you next time!

xJillian