Change? Have you SEEN my life?

Oh love, I know.

The idea of changing your life when you're already stretched to capacity can make you want to curl up and take a nap.

“I know something needs to change, but I'm already overwhelmed. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to change it.”

God, I get it. Because when we imagine change, we rarely imagine changing one tiny thing, do we? We imagine the whole bloody hill.

Leaving the relationship, finding somewhere to live, sorting the money and telling the kids.

Changing jobs, retraining, lose of income and starting again.

Starting the business, building the website, finding clients – all while still doing an actual job and secretly wondering who the hell you think you are doing this anyway?!

Even looking after ourselves becomes the gym, meal planning, meditation, eight hours sleep, 10,000 steps, and apparently getting up at 5am.

Christ, no wonder you need a lie down!

The women I know aren't generally sitting around wondering what to do with ALL their spare time and energy. 😊

They're already FULL to the brim!

And here's the horrible bind.

You're waiting for the life that's exhausting you, to leave you enough energy to change the life that's exhausting you.

Sigh. You can see the problem, right?

So you wait for a gap. “After this deadline, when Mum's better, when the kids need me less. After Christmas, when work settles down, when I feel stronger.”

And sometimes that absolutely IS the right thing to do.

But sometimes “I don't have the capacity right now” quietly becomes five years of not having the capacity. The gap doesn’t come.

And then another voice creeps in “God, have I left it too late now?” To start again, change career, leave a 20-year marriage. Build something completely different.

And THAT brings its own kind of pressure.

Gah! I really don't want that for us.

So perhaps we need a different question.

What if you don't need to wait for more capacity?

What if you need to get much more honest about the capacity you actually have AAAAAND much more intentional about what gets to have it?

Because this is where it gets painful. It's not that you don't know what matters to you.

You DO know.

You've probably known for a while.

I need to have that conversation.

I want to do something different with my work.

I can't keep putting my health at the bottom of the list.

I want more than THIS.

And still, somehow, everyone else gets the same access to you - work gets 110%, everything already in the diary gets first dibs, and the thing you say matters has to survive on the scraps.

No blame here. I've done this a MILLION times.

But every time the thing you say matters gets pushed back to “when there's more room”, you're practising putting it off again.

And that's what I want to help us interrupt.

I sometimes ask clients “what are you willing to put down, stop, reduce, delegate or postpone – at least for now – to create some room for the life you say you want?

And I can almost hear it “Nothing! Have you SEEN my life?”

Fair!

Some things genuinely can’t be put down, while others feel impossible to put down because putting them down has consequences.

THAT’s the bit I'm interested in.

Could work get 90% instead of 110%?

Could someone be mildly disappointed because you're less available?

Could you ask for help, even though they'll probably do it wrong? (obviously)

And of course, capacity isn't just hours in the diary, change takes emotional capacity too.

Even “I’ll just stop pretending I’m fine” has a cost, because then you might have to have the bloody conversation!

And perhaps you genuinely don't have the emotional capacity for that conversation right now.

Maybe you don't have enough energy to change your whole life, but that doesn't mean you can't begin.

But what DO you have enough for?

Don't dismiss something because it looks tiny, my friend. Tiny things CHANGE things.

One honest conversation can change the trajectory of a relationship.

One ‘no’ can free up a Friday afternoon for several weeks. (Oh, the possibilities!)

One thing done “good enough” can make room for something else that matters to you

That's how we start tunnelling our way out.

One move creates a little room for the next - a bit more capacity, a bit more courage, a bit more evidence that you can actually change things.

And suddenly you're not just thinking about changing your life.

You're changing it!

(And there’s nothing like the feeling of having your hands back on the wheel of your own life.)

And if you're reading this thinking, “Actually Deborah, I AM ready. I've got the energy. I know what I want. I want to make the big change” – brilliant!

I'm not talking you back into a baby step. The point isn't to make the change small, it's to make the change fit the capacity you actually have.

If you've got 10%, take a 10% step. If you've got 80%, for God's sake, let's not pretend you've only got 10.

Small isn't better. Movement is the point.

Now I’m guessing, reading this on a Sunday and thinking “YES! That's what I'm going to do” is one thing.

But doing it on Tuesday when work is manic, someone needs you and all the old reasons for putting it off suddenly sound completely reasonable again is another.

That's the gap. And it's why knowing all this isn't enough.

You have to learn to catch yourself in that moment – before another week, month or year disappears into “when there's more room.”

So what's the next honest thing your actual capacity allows?

Sometimes it's a tiny move that starts tunnelling you out. Sometimes it's the big bloody thing.

And sometimes it isn't doing more at all. It's making room.

We'll start there.

Deborah x PS photo is actual footage of me and my lovely Whitespace team after one of our busiest open days.

I'm absolutely shattered.

And somewhere in the background of my life at the time were a marriage I knew I needed to look at, a work conversation I REALLY didn't fancy having, a business I was working far too hard in and probably several boundaries I knew I needed to set.

Excellent. Shall we tackle those now then? 😂