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“Capacity breeds hope because it creates space, allowing us to see things differently. And it starts with feeling your feelings.”
What do we do when the world feels overwhelming and increasingly difficult to make sense of? When everything coming at us makes our nervous system want to shut down, leading us to numb out or scroll away? In this episode, I’m talking about how to have and cultivate hope when it feels like the world is ending, and why hope starts with something much more personal than optimism. It starts with building our capacity to feel our feelings without immediately turning them into stories that send us spiraling. We’ll talk about how to separate what’s actually happening from the interpretations we layer onto it, how to transmute fear, anger, grief, and overwhelm into action, and why understanding systems can help us see possibility where we once saw only chaos and uncertainty. You don’t have to solve everything. You have to find what matters most to you, build the capacity to stay present with it, and take the next step that’s within your reach.
Join me for our upcoming workshops here!
What to listen for:
- Constantly saying “we’re cooked” is a symptom of lacking personal capacity
- Why so many are struggling to simply bear witness to what’s happening
- The first part of having and cultivating hope is feeling your feelings
“The way that we have been operating in the world and the way that we have been consuming and creating content has been detrimental to our brains and our personal capacity.”
- Even if circumstances are hard, there are simple ways to build capacity
- Small adjustments in capacity build day over day, week over week
- Understanding that the stories you tell keep limiting you
“It’s not that we become immune to stress, but when you notice the stories, that’s what spins us out. The story is where we go wrong because the story is not true.”
- A simple practice anyone can incorporate to expand their personal capacity
- What you don’t feel doesn’t disappear; it gets stored in your body
- Transmuting our emotions into productive, meaningful actions
“We don’t skip our feelings and just move into action. We feel our feelings because our feelings have information. They tell us what we care about. They tell us what we’re scared about. They tell us what is unjust and not right in the world.”
- The more of us that show up and act, the more likely things are to change
- You don’t have to solve everything; just focus on what’s heavy on your heart
- How understanding systems helps us feel more hopeful and in control
Episode resources:
Connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Text ResistBot to start taking action on what you care about.
Grab a copy of my book, What Really Happened?, or contact us for a free ebook copy here.
Listen to the “Working With Our Emotions and Dropping Through the Void” episode.
Read our article on Forward Compatibility for Personal Resiliency and Professional Relevance.
Join me in my upcoming workshops on building personal capacity, transmuting what’s hard and what hurts, and becoming a forward-compatible leader by registering here.
About your host:
Stephenie Zamora is the Founder and Head Change Agent at Choose Your Calling, a new revolution in purpose, contribution, and creative solutions for systemic and social justice issues. She’s a Forward Compatibility Consultant and Mentor who has worked for the past two decades at the intersection of purpose, business, and systemic change, helping individuals, thought leaders, and organizations design lives and businesses that actually hold up in the world we’re moving into. Through her mentorship and consulting work, she partners with founders, social innovators, and visionaries who are designing bodies of work that disrupt systems of harm while actively building what the world needs next. Learn more at www.chooseyourcalling.com.