Capacity is Earned, Optional

Think of your capacities as tools on a tool belt. While earning capacities like the teachable skill of leadership, physical strength, or conscious complexity are much less transactional than, say, buying a flashlight for your tool belt, the implications of how they can be used are still the same. After all, we know that putting a hundred pounds on your back squat one rep max is a much more involved process than swiping your credit card at a hardware store for a Maglite. The metaphor still works.

Just because you have a capacity, like a flashlight, doesn’t mean you need to use it. It can just stay on your tool belt ready for some power outage or dark cranny for you to deploy it in it’s illuminating glory.

While it may seem redundant, this is a one way street. You cannot enact capacities you don’t yet have. You cannot illuminate that dark cranny (or nook) if you don’t have the flashlight. Similarly, after you’ve earned a big deadlift after years of developing your capacity for strength, you are free to deploy this fancy skill if you ever bump into a heavy barbell. Of course, the opposite will never work. If you trip over a six hundred pound barbell one day, you won’t be able to pick it up if you haven’t earned the right to.

All too often, people justify avoiding the work to earn certain capacities for fear that it may consume them. Developing the ability to lead doesn’t force you into a corner of leadership. Earning undeniable strength doesn’t corral you into the category of “meathead”.  Pushing your consciousness to higher orders of reasoning doesn’t need to remove you from your roots. However, many of us end up unfit for our circumstances at one point or another and by then it’s too late.

My thought? Earn the best tool belt imaginable and bask in the notion that everything is still optional. That way your default  won’t always be being in over your head.

Logan Gelbrich   
@functionalcoach