High-achieving female attorneys often struggle with a severe Mental Capacity Leak that drains energy long before the workday ends. Host Carrie Fogliani sits down with executive performance strategist Angie Wisdom to explore why professional mothers run on empty. They break down the critical difference between time management and cognitive capacity, revealing how decision fatigue and perfectionism tax your bandwidth. Angie shares practical tools from her Start With You framework to help you audit your energy leaks and protect your prefrontal cortex. You’ll learn how setting proactive boundaries and removing daily ambiguity restores peace in your professional and personal life. Stop operating on an empty tank and start reclaiming control over your focus today.
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You Don’t Have A Time Problem—You Have A Capacity Problem: Choosing Yourself With Angie Wisdom
Every guest on this show wrestles with the same question. How do you keep going when you’re already running on empty? In this episode, I’m sharing something I don’t often talk about. There was a season where I was grinding through health law, raising my kids, building our firm, and slowly losing myself in the process. If you’ve been tuning in, you know guilt is in my DNA. I was achieving everything on the outside and collapsing on the inside. I did not need another productivity hack. I needed to come back to myself.
Cultivating Intentional Morning Mindset Habits
I did what I always do at my lowest. I went to my faith, and then I picked up a tool that changed everything. Ten minutes every morning before the emails, the lunches, or anyone else got a piece of me. That tool is a journal called Start With You. The woman who wrote it is sitting across from me. Angie Wisdom is a former Morgan Stanley Executive, bestselling author, ICF Master Certified Coach, Forbes coaching council member, and a mom of two young men. That means she has the one thing most of our guests are still building toward. The rearview mirror. She can see the whole road.
Understanding Time Versus Capacity
Angie created something called the Capacity Scorecard that reframes the conversation we’ve been having since episode one. Most of us think we have a time problem. We don’t. We have a capacity problem. The difference is between surviving your life and living it. Professional moms especially, we are operating way past our capacity and calling it dedication, saying yes to everything because we’re capable when what we should be doing is getting honest about what we can actually carry.
Identifying Hidden Capacity Leaks
Angie calls this the capacity leak. It’s decision fatigue, perfectionism, and people-pleasing. It’s the mental load that never turns off. We’ve talked about every one of those things on this show, and in this episode, we name the root cause. For me, Start With You was the on-ramp. Awareness, intentions, gratitude, and prayer. We dig deep into those themes and what we can do to start getting to know ourselves and create capacity to find more joy and success as mothers and professionals. Angie, I’m so grateful that you’re here. Let’s get into it.
Our guest is Angie Wisdom. She is sitting across from me as the author of many amazing tools that have survived me through motherhood and my professional career. We get a chance to learn a little more about Angie and what brought her to this point in her life. I also want to learn more about what drew you to a career that is so focused on helping other people achieve and succeed.
Also, how you’ve mapped that success in your own life. As we get started, I want to start in a place that is so exciting because we’ve never had the chance to sit down. Tell me about Angie and how your life started, where it started, how your career ideas began, and whether this is what you’ve envisioned for yourself way back when.
I forget that we haven’t talked like that before. As a coach, you’re taught from an ethics standpoint and credentialing that you don’t take up space. You’re the person asking the questions. I forget sometimes. When I sit down with somebody who’s been in my coaching seat, they’re like, “I don’t know anything about you. Who are you? You know all these things about me.”
I grew up in Florida. I moved out to California when I was twenty years old, chasing my boyfriend back then and husband now of 29 years. Before I was even 21, I moved out here with my fake ID so we could stop at Vegas on the way. It’s a funny story about how I got out here. I didn’t even know what a coach was, so it wasn’t like, “That’s what I was going to be.” I did want to be a psychologist when I was in high school.
I thought that was the path I was going to go down, and then I ended up going towards nursing school. I was working at Tri-City Hospital in Vista, California, doing my volunteer hours for school. I was working at the credit union. I’d come home every night, and I would cry to my husband. He finally said, “I don’t think you can do this for a career. You can not come home and be sad every single night.”
Stop blaming your schedule when your brain battery is empty. Focus on managing your capacity instead of forcing more hours into your day. Share on XIt would be the simplest thing, like, “This poor man couldn’t get out of bed. I saw how bad his wife felt for him, and he felt for his wife.” It wouldn’t even be anything major, and then I would be in tears. I then found out that empathy was my first strength. That took me away from that career. I don’t even know how I ended up picking the financial industry. I had been in banking for years. I loved the aspect of money because we had no money growing up at all. I liked that.
I don’t want to give you a long conversation, but I will tell you that this guy would come in, and I would do his loans for him. He was always buying a Corvette. Mind you, this was back in 1995. It was cool. I was like, “How is this guy buying Corvettes all the time?” I’d do his loans. One time, I was like, “What exactly is a stockbroker?” He told me what it was, and I was like, “I think I’m going to do that.”
That’s amazing, being that interested in someone else’s path to drive your own. I love that you were headed towards nursing because you have that helpful heart. I always think, especially in nursing, that they are so central to how to make someone’s life better who is in a very difficult place. That matches so well with my experience of you in a different way and a different context with people who are suffering with different problems. The Corvette guy inspired you towards finance. Where’d you go from there?
It was funny because I was like, “I think I’m going to do that.” I knew nothing about investing. Banking, for sure. I had done mortgage lending. I had done banking for years. I started in high school when I was sixteen in a work program so I could make money. When I went to get a job there, they said, “You have to have a four-year college degree.” I did not have that because I had gotten my two years, and then was working on my nursing that linked to the other two.
I showed up at this guy Chuck’s office in Carlsbad daily until he hired me out of exhaustion. He was like, “Fine. I will let you try it.” He probably thought, “If she is half as persistent as getting people to invest money with her as she is with me getting this job, we’re going to do well.” I forced myself into the industry. I loved helping people. I didn’t love investing the money. You can appreciate this because you’re a challenger. I don’t even mind the risk. I don’t like the uncontrollable. I like to have control. You can relate to that.
The market’s going to do what the market does. You can only do so much with it. It progressed. Long story short, I started coaching more brokers because I was great at bringing in money. I was great at making relationships. I started coaching more brokers. I fell into that seat. My husband and I went and started an investment firm in 2003, which I still am the CFO for. It goes back to the people. I love helping people understand. I shifted. I didn’t want to look for ROI on investments. I wanted to look for ROI in people.
It’s an enriching process. I love watching you do what you do, even with my friends, colleagues, or folks in different industries. I’m curious when you decided that you would be adding on this very intense aspect of your life, which I would assume is coaching human beings that are in so many different industries. That’s my impression.
When we go to these intentional events, there are people in these rooms that cross every industry and are all different personality types, from the Challenger Type A get-up-in-the-morning to like, “I’m not getting up until 10:00,” but they’re all still killing it. When you found this passion, what were your initial steps towards that? You were like, “I’m going to be a coach. I’m going to formalize this passion of helping people on the ROI of human capital.” What was that like?
When I decided this is what I wanted to do, I truly loved winning in that direction. You’re a challenger, too, so you know. I’ll compete at anything. I found that when I helped people win, it was a way I could 10X my winning. I was like, “I can win through people? This is so exciting.” There’s something so cool about that.
People who didn’t necessarily think they could win at something, didn’t have the right mindset, or didn’t have the right vision, whatever it may be, helping them extract that and winning through them was cool. I wanted to formalize it. I’m a certificate at a level setter. If you’re going to do something, you do it right. You could call yourself a coach. People do it all the time. I was like, “What’s the highest organization? What are the different levels?”
It’s intense. I’ve dabbled in exploring that. People should know what that training consists of. A lot of the people tuning in are not in that industry. Maybe they’ve had a coach who is certified or not. What is that training like, so people have an awareness of that?
There are different levels. The ICF has an ACC, a PCC, and an MCC. It’s Associate, Professional, Master. Each one of those levels requires a certain amount of coaching hours, requires evaluation, and requires testing. I set my sights on the MCC because that’s who I am. I want to go all the way to the top. That requires thousands of hours of coaching and documented recording of some of your calls with the client’s permission. It is so that the ICF can listen to them, critique them, and decide whether or not you’re qualified to do that.
That’s the process. There are so many schools out there to do it with. I knew that I had some abilities of naturally being empathetic, being a learner, and being a great communicator. I knew what I was gifted at, but I wanted formal education. People say all the time, “Do you think it matters?” I know it matters in my abilities, 100%.
It’s a hard skillset. I’ve dabbled and explored that for myself. There are other hard things for me, but sitting with someone who is asking you to help them and not just telling them what to do, I don’t have that skillset. That is not something that is easy. It takes so much training and learning to ask the right questions at the right time to avoid pushing them away. That’s the mix of the secret sauce. My experience with you as a coach in those environments blows me away. How do you acquire that?
It’s hard. I keep throwing this challenger out because you can relate to it, and I am that, too. If anyone’s a challenger out there reading this, you think you have all the answers. I won’t be the first one to say. Maybe you do. Also, people can have other answers. It was a hard thing for me to give up when I was going through that formal training because we’re not advice-givers. We’re coaches.
Real coaches ask great questions to extract the answers from people. Consultants and advice-givers give you answers. People are so much more likely to follow their own answer that they extract from themselves than they are something that somebody tells them directly. The biggest shift I had to make was that I do not have the answer. The answer is within them. My job is to ask, inquire, be a detective, and be nosy, snoopy, and all those things to get them to find that answer.
It’s such a skillset. You have mastered it. I love being able to ask the questions and being on the other end of this. I dabbled in exploring it. It’s so hard. The proof of that is in the support you give, the direction, and the piece that people acquire. I do want to shift to another known set of skills in motherhood. You’ve had such a successful career. Your credentials are amazing. You do go for the top of every industry you’ve explored. What was it like? When did you decide to become a mother?
I knew that I wanted to have kids. There was not this moment where I was like, “Let’s start trying to have kids. I’m ready.” It was like, “Within the next few years.” Apparently, the next few months were more in God’s mind. All of a sudden, it was like, “We’re doing this.”
Where were you professionally when that happened?
My oldest one was 22. I was coaching inside of a firm, not from an ICF perspective yet, but leading other brokers. My husband and I were still working at a company.
Together?
Yes. I had left Morgan Stanley and joined him at a company. We had our own business built inside of that, but working for a company. I got pregnant, and then we decided it would be a genius idea to start our own company.
You’re not alone in this.
We bought a house, sold a house, and built a company while I was seven months pregnant.
You pulled it off. This is an amazing thing. You knew you could do it, but that is a lot. You’re seven months pregnant. You move, start a new company, and then you have this amazing child a few months later. How did that impact you? Was the move to create your own company and create more independence when you started to be a mom? What was the thinking behind that?
Honestly, no. This sounds weird, but it wasn’t something that we probably intentionally wanted to do. It wasn’t like, “We want to have our own company.” Where we were was not conducive to our growth trajectory. It was that you’re either going to have the ceiling, or you’re going to go out and do it on your own.
That was the time.
You go with it. You probably remember when you were pregnant. For me, anyway, I felt like Superwoman. I was like, “I can do anything. I can carry 60 pounds around.”
I don’t know if I want to start a new company at that moment, but that’s great. How did that transition work when you had your son?
Honestly, it was good because I had this flexibility. We had bought another house. We set up our company at our old house. I could have the crib over there. I could be at the desk. I could pop in and out. All of our staff was there. It worked out well. You forget all the sleepless nights.
Isn’t it amazing? For those moms out there that are still in it, it might shock you to know that there will be amnesia around sleepwalking and work walking. It’s insane to think back. Your play, even though it was a trajectory play, was probably a great maternal play at that moment.
It set us up for success. I decided to have another kid eighteen months later. They’re eighteen months apart.
I didn’t know they were that close. They’re very close in age. You kept rolling with it. How did that work out? You owned your own company. Were you able to share responsibility in that experience? Were you still predominantly overseeing all the mom-type of activities, or was your husband because you were in it together professionally? How did that work?
We had help. Shared responsibilities. Being honest and transparent, I like to work. I was never like, “I want to take a step back, not work, and raise kids.” That was not what was on my heart. What was interesting was that way before I was even in this coaching realm and I would think about having kids, I would say to my husband, “When we have kids, here are some non-negotiables. I will be able to drive my kids to school. I will be able to pick them up.” This is before I even had any work flexibility.
Reclaiming ten minutes every morning for self reflection changes how you navigate chaotic workdays and high pressure commitments. Share on XWhen I worked at a credit union from 9:00 to 5:00, I was like, “Someday, I will have a job where I get to drive them to school, and I get to pick them up. If there’s a field trip, I can drive, and I can go. Nobody’s going to tell me how much time I can take off.” I had all these ideas, which seemed crazy when you’re a 9:00 to 5:00 employee.
That’s incredible because you manifested that at that point. A lot of women, and it’s fascinating to me, think that far in advance. That wasn’t my jam. I was like, “What is going on here?” Having that intentionality behind your vision of what kind of mom you want to be and what the non-negotiables were is an incredibly helpful way. You brought it to life. You created that scheduling or approach that you wanted.
That’s the crazy thing. Your brain does it. That’s amazing. It’s the reticular activation system. You plant the seed, and then it’s like, “This is how it’s going to happen.” It so much depends on how you grow up. I did not have that as a child, so I knew the things that I wanted to make sure that I gave my kids what I didn’t get to have. It worked out.
I cruised a lot of their younger years as far as how I allocated my time and capacity. I didn’t even use that word back then. What I did in those moments when they were younger was a lot different. There were certain levels that I progressed through where I was like, “I can step on the gas a little bit more business-wise or I need to pull back a little bit because the home needs me a little bit more.” As your skills show here, it is balancing that.
It is a luxury to have that ability to balance in that way and know when you can push and pull back, and being in a place financially, but also personally. I also enjoy working. I probably am not as gung-ho. I never thought of it that way. I say I’m a domesticated professional. Not everybody likes that terminology, but I like that my home life piece is as strong as my professional piece. I’ve had a different balancing act because of that.
Before I came here, I made pasta sauce and a pie because I want that dinner. It is navigating that for yourself. I want to go back to the brainiac terminology you used as far as how you manifest that. For a lot of people that are in that zone that are not sure, like, “This is chaotic. I don’t feel like I’m succeeding as a mom or as a professional.” Can you go over again how they can visualize or plant those seeds for themselves to shift that?
Your reality is created by your thoughts. If you think about it, if you’re in this place every day where you’re like, “It is so chaotic. I have time for nothing. This is so stressful,” whatever it is. You’re going to see exactly that. The reticular activating system, which is part of your brain, takes information from the external world and filters it down to a very small amount that you can digest. It’s all related to what you believe. If you think about eleven million pieces of information coming at you, you can’t process that much, so your reticular activating system throws out 99.9% of it and gives you 40 to 50 pieces.
If you’re in this, “It’s so chaotic. I don’t know how I’m ever going to do this.” It’s going to show you everything that matches that. If you’re in a place and you say, “I can balance this. I’m going to be able to drive my kids to school. I’m going to be able to take time to make dinner,” and voice out everything. Your brain goes, “This is what we’re looking for. Let me show you 40 or 50 pieces of information, an opportunity to align with what you told me.” It’s amazing.
It’s so powerful. One, thank you, because in the hardest times for me, when it was chaotic and there was no hope. Angie has a tool called Start With You. Our family dynamic, the stress with kids, your career, and all the things were overwhelming. It’s the only thing that I consistently did for myself. We’ll talk about consistency, but I want to share it because I do encourage people. I give this out when people are struggling.
The first question is you’re getting awareness of where you’re at and where your feelings are, but you also have a chance to identify your intentions. What Angie shared, that was my first experience, which was identifying intentions around what I wanted. I wanted to pick my kid. I wanted to go on the field trip.
I wanted to have a quiet board game. It does work. Those things happen. I want to ask you about the development of this. I’ve always been curious about it because I do feel like there’s a lot to it. You’re intellectually so smart. What you focus on is amazing. How did you come up with this? How do you use it in your own life?
I want to answer all of that, but I also feel like we can’t run right over what you shared.
I’ve never gotten to tell you.
I’m sitting here across the table from you, watching your eyes and the emotion. First of all, this is why I do what I do. You’re going to make me emotional.
It’s amazing. I’m not the only one. When I reflect on those hard times, having someone ask me how I was feeling in person wasn’t happening because I had three kids, a husband, and work, but you did every day. It helped me process how to be a better me. I’m an Italian Catholic with guilt and a self-sacrificing mom. It wasn’t part of my makeup to know how to do this. That’s why I’m asking you how you knew how to do this. This is pretty amazing and groundbreaking. I encourage anyone to get this if they’re in a difficult spot or a great spot.
I want everyone to hear that. You’re saying, “You asked me.” I didn’t ask you. The journal asked you. Let’s reframe that for a second. This is so powerful. I want people to understand. The journal said, “How do you feel?” but you were asking yourself. That’s what people don’t do. The most important person in your life asked you, “How do you feel? What do you want?”
They wouldn’t even know.
Most people are trained to not even take a pulse on that. It’s all external. I don’t care how you grew up. The world conditions us to worry about everybody else. That is the way that I grew up. I was a people-pleaser. I cared a lot about what people thought. My whole motto was, “As long as everyone else is happy.” That left me in a place of worrying a lot, being angry a lot, trying to control everything, and being frustrated.
When you think that you have this control to make other people happy and to do everything for them, you aren’t living your life. I created this practice for me because I was like, “What do I even love? What do I even want in my life? What brings me joy?” I could coach the heck out of somebody from a performance perspective and get them to go from the $1 million to $2 million or whatever we are going for, but in the beginning, I did it without myself.
I did it with hustle, grind, and sacrifice. I realized that I did not want to live my life that way. That’s part of what put me into the real coaching aspect of not just goals, but going from a life perspective of, “What does this look like?” I was like, “The most important person in your life,” and I’m sorry. Some people will hate that I say this, “Outside of that is me.”
That’s the lesson in this.
Start with you.
All of it has come into fruition. I need to apologize because the first time you gave it to me, you said, “What do you think?” I’m like, “It should have a timer schedule of when you should do things or my three most important tasks.” You were like, “That’s not what this is.” I also love that at the end of every day, it forces you to go back and assess joy, which is my number one value. It was made for me. It’s interesting to hear you come into this. I bet it’s a powerful tool in how you can even help people more in your coaching role by doing this yourself as you enter those conversations and spaces.
I created it in 2020 or something.
They’re like diaries for me.
I am stacked up. I created the journal. Before then, I had a page that I would write on. I’ve been doing it for years, and I still do it every single day. The most important relationship you have is with yourself. The number one thing that people struggle with is a lack of self-trust and self-worth. You cannot have self-trust or self-worth if you don’t have a relationship with yourself.
You don’t know yourself 100%. That’s so amazing.
When you think about it, it’s like, “If I want to trust somebody, believe in somebody, and have a relationship with them, then what do I need to do? I got to spend time with them. I got to ask them questions. I got to know how they’re feeling. I got to know what they want.”
Every day. As a mom, when you’re changing three diapers a million times a day and trying to work on all these things, like. This is where we get to the consistency part of this. I drop off. I’m not consistent because I feel like, “I’m good. I’m back.” It doesn’t take a long time. It can be a 5-minute to 8-minute experience. It was proof that I cared about myself and was getting to know myself. Knowing that I do want to get more consistent, what would you say to me? What is the consistency block that’s preventing me from doing this on a regular basis?
You said it a second ago. Think about it. Our thoughts create our reality. You said, “I’m good.” That tells me that your thought process around this is that this is a practice for when things are not good. This is Tylenol for a headache. This is medicine for an ailment. When you treat it that way, then you’re going to come in and out of it only when you think you need it, versus it’s more like your daily supplements. It’s your proactive approach so you don’t ever get to that space. It’s the exercise for your health.
Operating in constant fight or flight shuts down strategic thinking. Regulating your nervous system is essential for professional clarity. Share on XI’m challenging myself.
You have to decide to do it.
It does feel better. It makes me feel more successful, more at peace, and more intentional on every level of my life. I laugh, not in a very funny way, but like, “Why am I not doing this every day? Why do I only grab this when I’m also going to church that morning to pray for whatever the heck has brought me down?” They go hand in hand. I pull out Angie Wisdom, and I go to mass. This is what I do.
Think about it. I want to challenge you to have a new belief around it. Unless you change your belief around it, you’ll keep running into the consistency problem. You even said a second ago, “It makes me feel more successful.” If you feel successful, then why are you going to pick it up? If you’re like, “I feel so grounded,” if you feel grounded, then you’re not going to go for it. What is your belief about this journal? You may not have an answer, but what’s the why?
It’s a growth tool. If I look at it differently than Advil as a trajectory build, that will shift. That will shift and make it easier to take the time to do it. We’ll get to this. A lot of people on this show share that they are out of time and that they are empty. They’re empty tanks with no time left to do anything else. You’ve come up with something so brilliant to shift our thinking. I want you to share about how that also came to be and to help the audience understand how they should be thinking a little differently about that as well.
Time is finite. We can’t change that. Going back to what I told you about the investment days, I like to work with things I can control. I can’t control time. We’re going to have the same 24 hours every single day. If we focus on that as the problem, it’s like ramming into a brick wall every single day. You can’t change that. What we have to look at is how we use our time, which is capacity.
We have so much mental bandwidth, a brain battery from our prefrontal cortex that says, “You have so much capacity,” that you get to use every single day. You will run out. We didn’t use to, long ago. We didn’t have so much pulling at it. You will run out, so you have to decide how to use it. People feel like they don’t have time, but unfortunately, they’re deploying their capacity in areas where there’s no ROI. We’re giving away that time, but it’s in the form of capacity.
How do you control it? You refer to it as a leak, which I love. How do you control the leak? How do you siphon it off? It comes at us from every angle. Are there tools, tricks, or things that we should be thinking about?
Sometimes, it’s that awareness. If you’re doing this practice, the Morning Mindset Journal, part of that practice is helping you be self-aware. How do you feel? What are you thinking? If you have that awareness, then you’re more likely to catch these leaks. It’s about choice. You make choices all day long around certain things.
One hundred times a day.
Usually, people say, “I’m good at choices when it’s high stakes.” When you think about your capacity, that is high stakes. You only have so much a day. If you want the life that you want, the success that you want, or whatever it is, then you have to choose how to allocate that. When you think about some of the buckets that I say we see these leaks in, these are the mental, emotional, and nervous system. Take emotional, for example. People-pleasing, worrying, fearfulness, annoyance, and frustration. It’s the emotions that you feel.
If you’re driving here on the way to this show and somebody cuts you off, and you’re like, “Mothertrucker. I can’t believe this guy.” You’re shelling out capacity. There is money attached to that. People think that we have this endless amount of emotion or mental bandwidth to give. We don’t. You have to be aware that your frustration or annoyance is taxing you.
It’s emotional spend. It resonates, you know.
There’s a tax. I call it capacity tax from the perspective of if you had a brief to work on or a case that you had to dial up right or get in order, and you’re like, “This is going to take me two weeks,” there’s so much time that it’s going to take you. That’s capacity, right, in a sense. If then you’re like, “This is so annoying. This is so frustrating. How am I ever going to get this done?”
You’ve taxed. You’re paying twice for that. What people don’t understand is that you’re using the exact thing you need to get the thing done. You’re using it on emotion, rumination, overanalyzing, and worrying. You’re using it on all these mental and emotional buckets that give you no ROI. Think about that.
Once you’re in the know, maybe that will stop the disbursement of your emotional capacity, like, “I’m holding that. I don’t want to spend it on that. I want to put out something that brings me joy and will help me do it more efficiently.” I do want to get into the nervous system piece because that is something that we’re all learning more about. I’m in my 50s and figuring out when my nervous system is off. I never attributed different characteristics of my physical well-being to that. How does that work when you’re talking about capacity?
Your nervous system uses your capacity. If you think about it, if you are high-functioning, always on, never resting, and your cortisol spikes. It takes your prefrontal cortex offline, and your amygdala, which is like the guard dog center in your brain that senses fear, worry and evaluates things, gets in the driver’s position.
Rebalancing The Nervous System To Restore Focus
When your prefrontal cortex is offline because your nervous system is so off the charts, you don’t have capacity. You have lost your ability to have capacity. When you think about it, and someone goes, “I can’t even make a decision. I can’t stop worrying. This is on my mind. I have thought about this 5,000 times,” and they’ve done nothing, that is a perfect indication that their nervous system hijacked them.
You can’t function. I had a situation with my son. I got five hours in the ER to think through my life with no computer and a dying phone. I would not wish it on anybody. I learned a lot in that couple of hours. When I left, my nervous system was on fire. I had a ton of work to do that I didn’t do. I woke up, and this is so not me, but I was like, “I’m off.” I got in a bath with salt for fifteen minutes. I went to the gym, had lunch with my sisters, and then worked. I couldn’t have functioned. I couldn’t have done the work.
What you’re saying is so powerful. I didn’t have all the science behind my awareness and behavior, but giving yourself permission to care for that nervous system breakdown is a way to be more productive and to use your capacity in a way that will be helpful to your life and career choices. It’s a tricky thing for people who are in the jobs that we’re in because we don’t think through or even give ourselves awareness of our ailments or what’s bothering us.
I was starting to listen to a conversation you had with a naturopath. I would encourage every working mom to go listen to this. I’m not finished with it yet, but if you have any highlights to share. I can already tell you that I’ve learned so much in the amount of time I’ve been able to listen. I’m going to create more capacity, so I can finish it because it was so impactful to be aware of it.
You’re saying the word aware again and again because that’s what we need. The awareness. When we know differently, then at least we bring in this opportunity to choose differently. I always say, “You can choose what you want. Make sure you choose it. If you want to be frustrated or over push yourself, sit there, and ruminate, have at it.” Make sure you say, “I’m choosing. I’m going to choose to sit here, freak out, and ruminate over this.” When you say something like that, you’re going to be like, “I don’t think I am.” Most of those leaks are passive. You don’t even know. You don’t want to.
I was talking to a dear friend of mine once when I was in a place where I was pretty angry about a terrible situation. He said the best thing. He was like, “You can go sit in the angry chair for a little bit, but I wouldn’t sit there for a long time.” If it was me choosing to go sit and be mad, he was like, “Go for it.” What you’re saying is so great. When you articulate that, it is a pausing moment of how you want to choose what to do with your time. It’s very powerful.
I’ve done it many times where I’m like, “I am mad. I’m going to set the timer on my phone, and I’m going to be mad for two minutes. I’m going to sit with it, and then I’m done.” I’m not advocating for pushing all the emotion out, but it’s taking responsibility for it and having choice. Back to your conversation with Dr. Anna Marie Frank, she’s amazing because she’s bringing in what I love.
I get excited about the cues. Your body tells you things all the time. You even said it earlier. I remember going to get a massage years ago. He was like, “Any trouble spots? Anything hurting?” I’m like, “Not at all. I feel great.” He was like, “Your back is like a gravel road. Do you feel these bumps?” I’m like, “They don’t bother me.” He’s like, “That’s even worse.”
We get used to operating. know. That’s the sneaky thing about the nervous system. You don’t know it. You know when you’re people-pleasing. You know when you’re angry. You know when you’re worried. When your nervous system is jacked up and off the charts, you’re like, “I’ve adjusted that back ache.” You’re high-functioning. We used to get badges of honor for that. It’s like, “I pulled an all-nighter. I did this.”
There’s a generational gap. A lot of women, especially those who became lawyers, are giving up everything for the job. Showing that was like, “We’re going to employ you then. You won. You get the job. You also lose your life in some ways.” That’s less of a trend. There are other ways to achieve success than pulling all-nighters and approaching life like that, but it’s a real adjustment for those of us who were raised in that.
Can I share something that will hopefully flip people’s minds on this? We no longer live in a world where that works. You and I are the same age, so we can go back 30 years. We could pull all-nighters then because we had a lot less of our capacity. We were twenty years old. We left to go to work, or whatever we were doing, or college. You pretty much only had exposure to things when you were out and about.
Maybe even go back 25 years. We all weren’t walking around with cell phones. We didn’t have social media. We didn’t have YouTube. We didn’t have all of these things that were constantly pulling at our capacity. If you think about your brain battery, and you walk out the door in the morning, and you’ve got a whole battery of capacity. Most of the time, years ago, people came back with capacity at the end of the night.
If you were like, “I’m going to pull an all-nighter. I’m going to work a couple extra hours. I’m going to grind this out.” Your brain was like, “We got some juice left.” Now, most people, as soon as their feet hit the floor in the morning, are thinking about what’s going on. They’re checking their phone. They’re on social. They’re on emails. They’re on the news. Capacity has gone way before your day ever ends.
That’s amazing.
When you’re like, “I got to get this project or this deadline done. I got to get back to this client,” you are trying to run off of an empty tank. Your results are going to suck. You’re going to feel horrible. You’re trying to pull from something that you don’t have any of, which is that capacity. What used to work for us now breaks the system further. It’s wild.
How are you going to help us through this? What do we do? Everything you’re saying resonates 1000%. I know I’m not alone in that. When we’re sitting there with the empty tank, trying to do important and big things, quite honestly, how can we start the next day differently? I know that there’s a Capacity Scorecard and auditing of yourself to see where you’re at. That’s a good place to start. For the audience, how do we shake ourselves out of this? That is what I’m hoping for.
I posted something. I don’t know if you saw my story. I had said I went to the gym for a second session to get on the StairMaster. I was telling people, “This sounds counterintuitive. My capacity is being maxed out right now. There’s a lot on my plate, so I’m going to go to the gym and take more time to work out. When I do that, my cortisol levels are going to come down. My prefrontal cortex is going to come back online. I’m going to have more capacity to deal with things.”
We have to understand the things that drain and the things that fuel. The simplest things for people to do are look at what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, how much you’re sleeping, and how you’re moving. Those four, without even getting into the mindset or mental and emotional, affect your capacity so much, whether you’re drinking water or going to the gym.
Hopefully, by the time this is airing, I’m still doing it. I started 75 Hard. That’s a controlled environment for me. That makes me recharge intellectually and physically. People are like, “You don’t have time for that.” I’m like, “I don’t have time for it, but it’s so rejuvenating for me and creates capacity.” In the midday, I’m doing another walk when I have probably three more hours of work to do. It has shifted me. It’s only day five, so let’s not get too excited. For me, it works as a framework to target what you’re talking about, which are those four things. It helps.
Eliminating Search Friction Through Advance Decisions
It works for a few reasons. Let’s say that you are going to be still on it. There’s no hope. There’s no try. It just is. You did two things. 1) You are creating capacity by leaning into those four things. 2) You took a great deal of decision-making away from you. Ambiguity and indecisiveness are one of the biggest capacity killers. Think about it.
I’m not saying this judgmentally, but if you’re like, “I’m going to work out,” and you don’t figure that out, and you’re like, “The morning got away from me. Maybe I’ll go get lunch. Maybe I’ll go in the evening.” That pop-up of indecision has come up like whack-a-mole and has taxed you again and again and is draining your capacity from indecision alone.
I don’t have a choice. It had to happen at this time. There’s a time period. That’s a very good aspect of it that I never gave enough attention to, taking decisions away. There’s no ambiguity. This is a plan. I love it because I get the support of my family when I do it. Shane will be like, “Do you have to do your walk tonight?” My husband’s like, “When will you get on the Peloton?”
Sometimes, that’s annoying, but sometimes, I appreciate it, in all fairness. He’s like, “Are we doing this?” I’m like, “We’re doing this.” Figuring out that framework for you individually is so important. Accountability, taking decisions away, and recognizing that those things create capacity is a huge shift that you articulated that makes so much sense to me in my own experience. I love that.
It’s major because when we have decisions made, they move over to commitment and no longer cost us capacity. When we don’t, we get what’s called search friction. Our brain is constantly searching. It’s like, “Is now the time to work out? Should I eat lunch? Do I have time?” You are constantly searching for answers, and that burns through capacity.
It’s amazing. I find this so helpful and fascinating at the same time. I have a lot of the tools that you shared. I want to be sensitive as we’re sitting with readers who are moms of all ages and some dads that have come in to say, “How can I do this better?” Looking back, you’re in a great position. You have two amazing sons who are doing great things in the world.
You have success professionally all over the place or trajectory. I’m sure there’s still more for you to do, knowing you, but you’ve done so much to be very proud of. Looking back at you in that 20 or 30 period age-wise. What would you tell yourself to give you hope, peace for the journey, and what to do to get it?
I would have chosen myself sooner. Thank you so much for the recognition, acknowledgement, and gratitude. When I look at what I’ve done and what I will still do, the biggest catalyst to all of that is I chose myself. It was choosing myself in the morning. It was choosing what brought me joy. It was choosing what I didn’t want in my life. It starts with that. That’s the first place anyone should start. It can be one micro thing. I don’t want to skip the question that you gave me earlier of how we can do this. How do we change in capacity? Can we give a couple of things out for people?
Yes.
One is awareness. I’ll give you that capacity audit. People first create awareness. Where are you leaking that capacity mentally and emotionally from a nervous system, from physical? It is having that awareness and picking one thing. It’s like, “If I stopped worrying, if I quit people-pleasing so much, if I give up some of that frustration, impatience, or annoyance, that’s going to give me some capacity.” That’s one aspect of it.
Proactively make your decisions. I take my workout clothes and stack them up for the whole entire week on a Sunday. I don’t have to make a decision about what I’m going to wear to the gym. It can be the littlest things. People do it by what you are going to have for dinner all week. In the Morning Mindset Journal, you make a bunch of decisions first thing in the morning so you don’t have to think about it all day long. Think about the decisions that constantly plague you and that pop up, and then decide.
Decide in advance.
Something else I would say to people is, “If it’s not something you can decide right now, schedule the decision later because that’s going to free up capacity for you, too.” Whether you’re like, “This is decided now. I’m going to work out at 6:30 tonight,” or you’re like, “I can’t make this decision. I need more data. I need input. I need whatever it is.”
I want you to physically put that in your calendar for when you can make it. Even though you haven’t made the decision, you made the decision to move it. Your brain recognizes that. It’s not going to be like, “Excuse me. Have we decided yet? What are we doing?” It’s not going to be hitting you up all the time.
What about the unpredictability factor with kids, though? I can have the best of intentions. My kids are older, so I can leave the house to go for my walk at night. I make sure that I make the decision at that later date, but someone can be coming in. Someone needs this or needs that. Do you have any advice from your experience or from your coaching to quiet that aspect of it or address the unpredictability?
Proactive involvement. Even when my kids were younger, it was letting them know, “This is something I’m going to be doing for the next ten minutes. This is something that I’m working on.” I used to be a yeller, believe it or not. I would be like, “I’m working on trying to be more peaceful. I’m working on this.”
That’s so good.
Proactive Communication To Manage Expectations
This is in the workplace. This is at home. As you do with 75 Hard, your family knows you’re doing it, so they’re supportive. They’re going to help you versus if you didn’t say anything about it. In the back of your mind, you have what I call silent expectations. You’re like, “I’ve got to get out of here for my walk, and these kids and my husband.” The silent expectations are what cramp the plans. It depends on the kid’s age. It teaches them so much.
My kids are older now, but several years ago, these conversations could have happened. Teaching your kids to have a relationship with themselves also at a young age is so powerful. I’m witnessing it. I have a twelve-year-old daughter who knows herself extra well in a way that I’m jealous of sometimes. I’m like, “This can happen.” It’s a great skillset. Proactive involvement and then no silent expectations is an excellent framework to help navigate that unpredictability because it’s not going away.
Also, modify.
We could use some flexibility in there.
Sometimes, what we want is much bigger than what we can have in that moment. You may have thought, “I have an hour of alone time. I’m going to read this book.” You’re getting your values in, and then something else comes up. I say this specifically because I remember it. I was like, “I’ve got to go to the bathroom. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I was like, “I’m going to go sit in the bathroom and read for five minutes.” You’re still keeping a little bit of that commitment and integrity with yourself. You’re still getting that goodness, but you know you have to modify. As a parent, that was probably one of my biggest things. I used to do CrossFit. This is my biggest lesson from CrossFit. I don’t know if you’ve ever done it.
I’ve never done it.
Modifying Standards Without Abandoning Commitments
They would write a WOD, the Workout Of the Day, on the board. There was what’s called the WOD and then the RX, the prescribed version, like, “You’re supposed to do this.” If you couldn’t do that, you always had to modify and scale it. If I couldn’t do 50 strict pull-ups, I moved to kipping, or I moved to banded. That has stuck with me forever about thinking about scaling it and modifying it. Do it in a way that you can. You may not have your alone time, your hour of exercise, or twenty minutes for journaling, but if you can, get to it. A lot of people are all or none.
I agree. There are days that you can look back from years past when my kids were very young that this whole thing’s not filled out. I didn’t get to the prayer, but I made the effort, and I got in as what was most important at the moment. The modification and prioritization piece is a helpful tool. The whole point of all of these things is to feel better.
If you’re doing these things and feeling worse about yourself, that’s not the plan here. That’s not why they exist. It is a call to action to care for yourself and also to model that behavior for the people that you’re caring for. That’s the double benefit of what you’ve instilled in me, and I’m going to be going forward as we continue to be the people that we want to be. That’s so important.
You’ve already done it. You said your daughter was like that.
I know she was born like that, but I love her authenticity. She is like, “This is who I am.” It’s amazing to watch. I feel very blessed. I tell her, “You are inspiring me to be more authentically myself,” because she’s very comfortable with who she is on the planet.
That’s amazing. You should pat yourself on the back for that because there’s parenting involved in that.
Is there?
Absolutely.
Perfectionism is the ultimate momentum killer. Scale back your habits on crazy days rather than abandoning them completely. Share on XI’ll say one funny story about her. We went to the doctor. The woman was explaining, “As you grow and mature, during this time period, your mom may need to serve as your frontal cortex.” She, without hesitating, goes, “I’m her frontal cortex.”
That is hysterical.
The doctor looked at me, and I’m like, “It is true.” That’s who she is on the planet. I loved it. We’re learning together, quite honestly. Encouraging our kids to start with themselves is the first step. Your legacy is rolling. I’m so happy that I could share that with you. You shared so much wisdom with us here. I do want to give you the floor.
I don’t even know what time it is. It’s been so wonderful to have this time to connect in this way. I do want to give you a chance if there’s any other kind of advice or sharing that you would have wanted to tell your younger self. What do you think that people in this age need to know to navigate their journey in a way that starts with them and addresses that capacity issue?
There are so many. I have a book out. Not to plug that, but it lays all of this out. It’s titled The Non-Negotiable You. It was my journey of going, “How do I become non-negotiable with what I want and who I am?” That was getting back to myself and trusting myself. One of the biggest things was understanding to start with yourself, but knowing what fills you up. Part of that capacity comes from doing the things that you love.
For anyone who is out there in a profession or is a parent, you’re probably well aware that those fade away. We’re taught that those things that you love are rewards. They are there after you reach a certain level, after you do so much, or if you have time left over. It is the biggest lie out there. If you live a life where you have to get the things that you love only after you achieve or only when you deserve them, and you are worthy. You will not live your best life.
You will question at some point in time. Understand that those values are a precursor to your success. There’s a reason why we naturally gravitate to them when we’re kids, and we do the things that fill us up because that’s part of our being. If we can tune into that, even at our age of 50, 30, or wherever you’re at, everything is going to look different to you. You will create so much more success than you ever even thought was possible.
I love that. I’m taking all of this to heart. I know so many others will. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here and sharing so much. I want to thank you for being such a great supporter and component, honestly, with all of your wisdom on my journey and the journey of so many others. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I loved being here with you.
Important Links
- Angie Wisdom
- Start With You
- The Non-Negotiable You
- Episode One – Finding Your Village & Getting Over Guilt With The “Get To” Approach With Jeannine Taylor
About Angie Wisdom
Angie Wisdom is a bestselling author, executive performance strategist, and ICF Master Certified Coach who helps high-achieving leaders expand their capacity, sharpen their focus, and perform at their highest level. A former Morgan Stanley executive, Angie launched an investment firm with her husband while seven months pregnant with their first son and continues to serve as its CFO.
She is also a Forbes Coaching Council member, author of The Non-Negotiable You: Mindset Mastery for Daily Success, creator of the Morning Mindset Journal, and host of the Sharing Wisdom podcast, and the mother of two young men whom she raised while building her businesses and career.
Through her practical, results-driven approach, Angie teaches people how to quiet the noise, reconnect with what matters most, and build success without sacrificing themselves in the process.
