The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo

Episode #536: Capacity and Capability
Released: September 4, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Brooke Castillo explores the nuanced difference between capacity and capability, and why understanding—and intentionally developing—both is essential for creating a bigger, richer life. Drawing on personal anecdotes, coaching experiences, and practical frameworks, Brooke encourages listeners to evaluate their willingness and ability to “hold more” in life, whether it’s money, love, clients, stress, or success. The episode offers a deep dive into how self-imposed limitations on capacity often stunt growth, and lays out steps to systematically expand both capacity and capability.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Capacity and Capability

• Capacity: The amount you’re able or willing to “hold” in your life—analogized to the volume a glass can hold.
• Capability: The skill or ability required to manage increased capacity.
  • “Capability is your ability, your skill to handle the increased capacity... as your capacity is increased... you have to increase your capability to keep up with it.” (05:18)
• Unlike physical objects, human capacity is not fixed; it can always be expanded with intention.

2. Why Most People Don’t Use or Expand Their Capacity

• Many settle for smaller “containers” in life out of fear, self-doubt, or a history of self-sabotage.
• Example: Coaching clients who earn more money but can’t hold onto it (they spend it quickly or feel overwhelmed by having it).

3. The Interaction of Capacity and Capability

• Growth in skill (capability) without a corresponding growth in capacity leads to overwhelm and sabotage.
• “If your capability increases and you can't handle it, then it doesn't even matter that you have the skill.” (14:02)

4. The Steps to Expanding Capacity

i. Ask Yourself: “How Much Am I Willing to Handle?”

• Self-inquiry is vital. Many unconsciously avoid growth to avoid overwhelm or losing social acceptance.
• Personal story: Early in her coaching career, Brooke feared becoming too successful would make her lose friends—a “capacity block.” (19:43)
• She realized, “If I'm not as big as I could possibly be, then any friends I do have aren't really my friends, because they don't even understand who I really am inside.” (21:15)

ii. Make a Deliberate Decision to Be, Do, and Have More

• Growth requires intention. Actively choose to increase your mental, emotional, and behavioral capacity.
• Decision-making itself can be understood as a capacity question—do you have the mental capacity to choose growth?

iii. Practice and Live Out That Decision—Take Massive Action and Embrace Failure

• Increased capacity is built by experiencing and withstanding larger emotions, stress, and challenges.
• “Everyone wants to know exactly how do you do something that will prevent you from failing. But if you approach your own capacity growth with... I'm going to get better at failing...” (32:10)
• Avoiding stress and big emotions shrinks capacity; embracing them grows it.

5. Expanding Capability

• Capability increases through trying, failing, learning, and persevering.
• This includes developing emotional resilience, the ability to tolerate stress, and managing bigger goals.
• Skill-building in handling intense experiences is as important as accumulating technical skills.

6. The Cycle of Capacity, Capability, and Sabotage

• Many experience success but self-sabotage because their internal capacity hasn't caught up.
• “The reason why we’re sabotaging is our capacity hasn’t caught up with our capability. We’re able to make the money, but we don’t have the capacity to have it.” (45:32)
• Examples: Relationship self-sabotage, struggling to relax at a healthy weight, blowing money quickly, fear of vulnerability in relationships.

7. Capacity and Capability in Practice:

• These aren’t about numbers (clients, dollars, friends), but about the quality and intensity of life you can hold.
• Higher capacity allows a richer experience of friendships, love, work, and challenge.
• “Is your capacity where it wants to be?” (56:03)

Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• On Human Growth:
  “With humans, that isn’t true. We’re not fixed. We can increase our capacity to open up to a bigger life, to more of everything that we want.” (06:24)

• On Limiting Beliefs:
  “I had this sense that if I became too successful... nobody would like me and I would have no friends. And I really struggled with this thought. And I can see now that it was capacity blocking.” (19:43)

• On Embracing Emotions:
  “If you open up to ‘I want more’—I want more overwhelm, I want more stress, I want more pain, because I can handle it—then all of a sudden, your options become bigger, your opportunities become bigger.” (35:15)

• On Increasing Capability:
  “Increasing capability is trying something, failing, learning from it, moving on. That's it. That's the simple ingredients to a huge, gorgeous life.” (01:01:10)

• On Life Coach Work:
  “Developing the capacity is what we do in life coaching... when we question what is limiting us, when we question what we can actually handle.” (48:52)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00-06:24 — Introduction; framing the difference between capacity and capability
• 06:24-14:02 — How human capacity differs from inanimate objects; the potential for personal expansion
• 14:02-19:43 — Why capability without capacity leads to failure and self-sabotage
• 19:43-21:15 — Brooke’s personal struggle with “capacity blocking” beliefs
• 21:15-32:10 — Action steps: Asking willingness, making decisions, the value of decision-making capacity
• 32:10-39:30 — The necessity of practicing and embracing failure to expand both capacity and capability
• 39:30-48:52 — Emotional skill-building: stress, overwhelm, and how to intentionally get better at managing both
• 48:52-56:03 — The interplay of self-sabotage, success, and growth; practical examples
• 56:03-01:01:10 — Applying the concepts to coaching clients and one’s own life; living a high-capacity, high-capability life

Actionable Steps from Brooke

1. Increase awareness of limiting thoughts
2. Regularly ask: “How much am I willing to handle?”
3. Deliberately decide to expand what you be, do, and have
4. Commit to practicing your decision—take action and be willing to fail
5. Focus as much on growing your capacity as increasing your technical skills

Episode Closing & Next Steps

Brooke shares she is expanding her own capacity—enjoying a full house of friends and family over the summer—and teases the launch of a new program and upcoming podcast series. Her core wish:
“Let’s work on increasing our capability and our capacity. Have a beautiful rest of your day, everyone.” (01:02:30)