Capacity Over Capability
An Inconvenient Truth
Listen — Image by Bernice Sambrano, 1987
This morning I woke with that familiar tension in my chest.
That quiet panic that whispers, You are not following through again.
From taking on too many projects, to saying yes to new opportunities, to promising myself that I will finally write and post three rich and juicy Substack pieces each week, I know this pattern well.
It always begins with intention. The want is genuine. The energy feels right. The ideas pour in. And then, somewhere between excitement and execution, I slip.
When I am in that creative part of myself, everything feels possible. Ideas move quickly. Vision is clear. I can see the work, the words, the future taking shape.
But then I leave that space, maybe I step back into the house, hear the dog, the washing machine, or one of my cubs calling, and another version of me steps forward.
The mother. The provider. The organiser. The one who keeps the world spinning.
She is extraordinary in her own way, but she doesn’t speak the same language as the creative one. What felt wide open just moments earlier suddenly feels impossible. Not wrong - just unreachable from here.
From The Archive, Andy and Jesse 2005
We all have these subpersonalities.
They are the invisible orchestra inside us. The creator, the protector, the carer, the visionary, the planner. Each with its own tempo and truth.
They cannot all lead at once.
One steps forward while another waits. And sometimes the one who has been waiting too long simply fades.
For me, the creative one thrives when I am alone, when space and silence allow her to breathe. She imagines, she builds, she dares. But when I return to the demands of life —the family, the work, the commitments —she disappears.
Not because she was never real, but because there is no room for her in that moment.
And this is where the friction begins. The overreach. The exhaustion. The cycle of committing to everything the creative one imagined, then realising that the practical one cannot deliver it all.
It isn’t laziness. It isn’t inconsistency.
It is forgetting to check which part of me has the capacity right now.
I overreach because I am capable. Because I know I can.
But capability is a clever liar. It convinces you that potential and capacity are the same thing.
They are not.
Capability is external. It is what you can do, what you can achieve, what you can carry.
Capacity is internal. It is what your body, mind, and heart can actually hold.
And they are not the same.
