Today’s post is all about what happens when you hit max capacity in your life, and it’s not just a random fucking idea—this is inspired by the fact that January was a HUGE fucking month for me.

So much good stuff happened, and I want to tell you about my experience with that. Not to just be like oh my God, my life is so amazing—even though it is—but to tell you how I navigated that.

People will tell you how to navigate really difficult things. Everyone knows that’s challenging, and they’ll help you build your max capacity to hold more so that you don’t fucking spin out, but no one really talks about what happens when so much good shit happens that you get totally overwhelmed and start self-sabotaging. What happens when so much good shit happens to you and then you’re like, ah, oh my god, fuck. Right? And this is where self-sabotage happens. So let’s get into it.

A Life Update

I want to start by telling you what the fuck happened in the past couple of months, because it’s really fucking cool.

As you guys know, in December I bought a Range Rover, which is my dream car. Then in January, my partner Drew moved in, and I had my highest cash month ever. I had a 70K cash month, which is fucking crazy to me. I don’t know if I mentioned this in this space yet, but we were going to move to Thailand for three to six months because we couldn’t find a place in the Gold Coast where we wanted to live, but we kept looking at the real estate website to see if anything popped up. And wouldn’t you know it, out of nowhere we found this incredible home. We ended up applying for it; we went to go see it this past weekend, and it was beautiful.

On top of all that, something truly funny happened. I have really been wanting a ragdoll kitten. I just think they’re so smooshy and cute, and I grew up with cats, so I’m more of a cat person than a dog person. (I know, I know. Don’t come for me.) So I’ve been really wanting to get a ragdoll kitten, but it was kind of on the back burner. We haven’t looked, we haven’t asked anyone, nothing. And then while speaking to this real estate lady, she asked if we had any pets, and Drew said, “No, but my partner really wants to get a ragdoll kitten.”

And do you know what she said? “Oh, I’m actually selling ragdoll kittens.” Like, talk about fucking synchronicity.

I also recently invested 50K into my one-to-one mentor, and I invested 80K into another year in a mastermind with another mentor. I invested another 6K to work with my somatic practitioner. I just made a lot of really, really big financial moves that are necessary for the next step for me. But oh my God, it was a lot.

So much happened, and I could notice the dysregulation in my body. I could notice how my anxiety started to increase. I started to notice my heart was racing. I just felt a little bit more on edge and testy; things that I would normally feel very neutral around were suddenly setting me off, and I was like, “Okay, what the fuck is happening?”

You know what was happening? I’d hit max capacity for receiving good things.

Hitting Max Capacity

Now, I’ve heard people speak about hitting our limit and being at max capacity before, but I never understood what that meant in a positive sense.

I knew what it felt like in a negative sense, when a lot of rough shit is happening and you hit your limit for holding those things, but I’ve never actually experienced it with something positive.

Everyone’s max capacity is different. That 70K month in January was overwhelming to me, but my mentor had a million-dollar month in January. My max capacity for money used to be a thousand dollars a month. I just could not receive more than that. Anytime that I got close, even if I did get a client, they would leave or they wouldn’t pay the bill. Something would happen where I wouldn’t get that money.

I have built my max capacity since then, and this is what we have to do. Even in relationships, my max capacity to receive a decade ago was abysmal. I remember a decade ago, I was with a man and he said, “I want us to look each other in the eyes when we’re making love.” And that freaked me the fuck out. I was like, “Ew, no.” I was so freaked out by intimacy, and that reaction was me reaching my max capacity.

This is what happens in relationships with a lot of people. Consciously, you want the healthy relationship. You want the man who fucking adores you. You want the man who cherishes you and has you as one of his top priorities.

Or maybe, consciously, you want a business that is fucking thriving. You want to be making 10K months, 50K months, 100K months, but your internal max capacity is not there yet.

What happens is a lot of people either will continue to attract unhealthy dynamics, even though they want a healthy dynamic…or they’ll attract a healthy dynamic and then fucking sabotage it because it feels too good.

When something feels too outside of what you are familiar with, even when it’s good, it feels unsafe to the nervous system. So when you’ve been in unhealthy relationship dynamics your entire life, that feels safe on some level to your unconscious mind.

But if you get into a healthy dynamic, if an unhealthy relationship is your blueprint, that healthy dynamic is actually going to feel unsafe to your unconscious mind, so you are going to try to sabotage it by shutting down or being passive aggressive or pushing them away. Whatever it is, you do it because you are at your max capacity with what you can receive.

In myself, I noticed that when I had all this incredible stuff happening, the part of me that wanted to lean out from my business and wanted to lean out from my relationship turned on, and it actually required conscious effort for me to stay plugged in. It actually required me to sit in observation of how I was reacting and how I was showing up in my relationship and my business…and with myself.

I noticed that I wanted to eat more. I wanted to watch Netflix. I started scrolling a little bit more. I just had this energy of wanting to lean out.

Now, I don’t want you to feel like you have to be this super fucking regulated human who never leans out or never gets reactive. Because full transparency, y’all? I ain’t there yet. I still have to put in that conscious effort to stay plugged in sometimes.

Respond to Reaction

Ultimately, it’s not about how you react; it’s how you respond to the reaction.

So if I notice that I’ve leaned out, and I throw myself straight into a shame pit and start scolding myself for it, that’s not fucking helpful. Instead, I can notice that I’m leaning out from my business, and I can sit for a moment and observe that. I can start asking myself how I can lean back in, or I can get curious about why I’m feeling the need to lean out.

Once I realize I’m at max capacity, I can stop and ask, “What do I need to do to actually fucking take care of myself?”

Here’s an example: I have a call on Wednesday nights with my mentor, and normally I’m there every single week.

But this time, when I realized I was at max capacity, I messaged my mentor and let her know I wouldn’t be there. Instead, I went to the sauna, and I just fucking cried for like an hour straight.

That was what I needed to actually build my max capacity. I needed to let some steam out. In a way, that was a healthy dynamic, because if I didn’t do that, then I might’ve ended up snapping at my partner or something.

Internal to External

So all that happened at once, and when I told my mentor about it, she reflected something to me that I just thought was so potent and powerful: she said, “Yeah, Michelle, your external reality is starting to catch up to your internal reality.” And she was so fucking right, because I’ve been doing the work on myself for years now. And if I’m super honest, I feel like I’ve truly been doing the work for the last nine months, to the point where I’m staying very, very plugged in to remaining in an observational energy, to being compassionate, to knowing myself rather than pushing myself to do more work, to change more things, to make everything different.

This is why when it looks like nothing is working, when it looks like nothing is changing, we need to stay consistent.

You may have heard this metaphor before, but let’s consider the metaphor of growing a plant.

You plant a seed in the soil, and then every day you’re fucking checking on it. Has it grown? Has it grown? Has it grown? Has it grown? And when no little sprouts make an appearance, you write it off. Nothing’s growing. It’s a fucking dud seed.

So what do we do then? We stop watering it. It stops getting sun. We stop being consistent in our care.

The reason this is a problem? The seed is actually growing, but it’s growing under the surface. So you’re nourishing it, and it’s growing, but when you look at the top of the soil, when you look at the surface, nothing’s happening. Yet so much is happening underneath the surface that you can’t see.

All of this good shit has been growing under the surface, bit by bit, and now it’s finally sprouting. And even though it’s all good, it’s still requiring me to do some growing myself. And that’s all right—I can take it.

WORK WITH MICHELLE:

Join Relationship Revival, a 2-day workshop all about my and my partner’s monthly relationship check-in: https://courses.michellepanning.com/offers/9i9UX4h2/checkout

Join Brat School, an emotional intelligence school for bratty bitches: https://michellepanning.thrivecart.com/brat-school/

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com