Why Am I Doing Everything Right and Still Struggling?

Why Am I Doing Everything Right and Still Struggling?

You’re working hard. You’re responsible. You’ve accomplished things other people admire.

So why does life still feel harder than it should?

Why are you exhausted? Why do you keep hitting the same walls? Why are your relationships strained? Why can you be successful in one area of life and frustrated in another?

Maybe the problem isn’t that you need to work harder.

In Episode 6 of The Capacity Index, Dr. Lawrence Salone moves beyond motivation and explores the five capacities that influence how well you can actually carry the life you’re trying to build:

Identity → Emotional → Cognitive → Relational → Structural

Here’s the “so what”: when one of these areas cannot support what you’re asking of it, the symptoms can look like burnout, stress, frustration, procrastination, relationship problems, or simply feeling stuck.

You may not need more motivation. You may need to know where your capacity is breaking down.

📊 Take the Performance Capacity Snapshot
Discover what's holding you back

📕 Get The Performance Capacity Index on Amazon
Get the book

Stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
Start asking, “What capacity needs to change?”

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What do you do with your life when working hard is not enough? Because if I can see who I want to be, my emotions are great tools because they can tell me what I need to investigate as I'm going to be that person that I just said I was going to be. So many people are living their life in the dashboard, in their emotions. If you're not building your system, no, no, let me let me say it even more specific and more direct.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

You are building your system, you're building the life that you want.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome back, guys. Look, it's Dr. Lawrence here. For the last six weeks, we've been talking about performance. That's amazing. So, but I want to start with something. Okay. When I think of performance, I'm naturally, I'm a skeptic, right? I naturally say, so what? Why is this important? So today I want you to do something. I want you to close your eyes. Yeah, I want you to close your eyes. And if you're driving, don't get sued by nobody. If you're driving, close your close, close those internal eyes. But what I want you to do is imagine your ideal self. Okay. Imagine the life that you want, the person that you want to be. Now, I don't want you, what I don't want you doing is giving excuses. So here's some ground rules: no past, no obstacles, no considerations of money, not what they say, whoever they are. I want you to close your eyes and imagine your ideal self. Now, chances are, if you get other people out of your head, you're smiling. Okay. Why? Well, because you're not worrying about your your mistakes, you're not worrying about the divorce. You are doing what you were created to do, which is uh imagine. Now I want you to do something. Open your eyes. Typically, what happens when people open their eyes is they start thinking about why it can't happen instead of thinking about whatever I have to do to make this happen. Because that's what we were conditioned to do. Your dreams are possible, and that's why I wrote the performance capacity index. Um it answers the so what. Here's the thing when you get in an environment where you're not being judged, guess what happens? You come up with all kinds of creative, creative solutions. But from little kids into adulthood, we're told what we can't do. If you ever looked at a little kid and watched them um uh with their dreams on display, and what typically happens? Somebody comes in and slams a door on their dreams. Well, when that happens over and over again, you know, you you learn to shut off uh what's possible and you move into what's safe. One of my favorite scriptures that helped my helped me develop as a leader and as somebody that pours into other folks is Deuteronomy 818. And what that says is, Behold, I'm the Lord your God, I've given you the power to generate wealth. Well, let's replace wealth with the life that you just imagined. So if the creator of the universe gave you the power to create the life you just imagined, then it's possible. But how do we get there? And that's what frustrates people. If you feel like you're stuck, if you're tired, you don't know what to do, you accomplished, you're unbelievably successful, you have money, but you don't have relationships. Or you have relationships and you just you don't have no money. Okay, you know, both suck. Well, that's why I wrote this book. See, when I work with people, no, no, let me let me let me make it personal. When I've been stuck, when I've accomplished my goals and didn't know what was left, I applied the very things that I coached other people to do, that I've worked with successful people to do, and it starts with an imagination. It starts with me closing my eyes and envisioning myself debt-free, envisioning myself happy, having that relationship with my kid. Guys, it's not it's not therapy we're talking about, it's not medicine, that's not the latest great self-help book. Those are great, all great tools. But if that was enough, we'd have our goals right now, and we don't. Look, the feedback that I've gotten since we launched the book, the feedback I've gotten as we've gone through these series talking about each of the the domains, the areas that we can go and and and increase our capacity lets me know that I'm hitting a nerve. Why? We need answers. You need answers, I need answers. Well, this is the roadmap to do that. The very first capacity, the very first area that we can expand is our identity. That's why I started with closing your eyes. Shut the noise off. Who is it that I say that I want to be? Because when you do, when you're in that space, if you're in debt, the bill collectors can't be in that space. If your relationships suck, guess what? That person that you imagine, you're not going to imagine what you live in every day. You're going to go into a place where you can go and say, hey, I can be better. But see, that's where we switch our belief systems, right? When we start looking at our emotions, here's what's funny about emotions. They're real, they're very real. But imagine driving in traffic at five o'clock, right? And you just looking at your dashboard. Or some people just be looking at their cell phone. Yeah, okay. Same thing, but you looking at your dashboard, it ain't telling you nothing. Maybe a light pops on, then bow, you hit something. Oh, what happened? You hit somebody. That's what happened. Why? Because you were here instead of looking at where you're supposed to be. Because if I can see who I want to be, my emotions are great tools because they can tell me what I need to investigate as I'm going to be that person that I just said I was going to be. Hmm. So many people are living their life in the dashboard, in their emotions. They're controlled by what other people say and do and feel. That is a miserable place to be. I don't care how successful you are. If you have other people inside of your head, um the room gets really crowded really quickly. And then we we started talking about our thinking. Can you step outside of your thoughts long enough to evaluate? You see, it all starts with the identity. Your emotions help feather tap you where you gotta go. But then your thoughts are important because the biggest question is Is this thought in line with who I say I want to be? And chances are, more often than not, that answer is no. What do we do there? You gotta own your thoughts, they own you. You gotta bring them under the goal that you say you're gonna be. Uh if I were talking to some of my faith people, I would say, bring it under under every thought, under what God says about you. How about that? That's why you don't lose. So if my thoughts, the powerful thing about thoughts is is you know, they shape our actions, they channel our behaviors. Because you could tell me anything, Lawrence. I like you. Okay, well, how come every time I call you, you don't answer the phone, right? Your behaviors tell me something different, and that's the power of your thoughts, because your thoughts, your emotions influence your thoughts, and then your thoughts influence your behaviors. And and if we can regulate our thoughts, can we get one step closer to that person we imagine when we close our eyes? Chances are yes, it's difficult to do. It is difficult to do when everybody tells you that it's not your fault. I gained a lot of weight because Krispy Kreme donuts or whatever favorite donuts in your area, you know, they're so delicious. No, you had an ability to stop. You decided to go and do that. Okay, if you don't control your thoughts, your thoughts are going to control you. And chances are it creates this chasm between who you want to be. But once the decision is made that I'm gonna get in shape, you could bring any donut you want, you could bring any temptation you want, you can bring anything from my past. I'm over here, baby. That's where we're going, right? That's that's the power of your thoughts. Now, all those things are internal. Who I say I'm gonna be, how I feel about this thing, okay, where I'm going. Uh uh uh rather, what am I thinking about? Am I contributing to this? All those things are internal. Where does it become on display? In every relationship that you have. So if your emotions are dashboard indicators telling you how you should feel about this, or there's something that you should look at, your relationships are just mirrors telling you how well you're doing with that. So let me ask you this. How do you how do you turn that around? How do you expand your capacity? Dr. Lawrence, so what? You talked about that for six weeks. Cool idea. So I'm gonna bring it back. So so the so what is you you can you own the relationship, you own the engagement. Well, what does that mean? Great. I'm glad you asked me. Y'all asked some great questions today. What did that mean? What that means is before I go and have this meeting with my spouse, what do what is it that I want to come out of this? What is the experience that I want to have? You see, there are a lot of people living life without regard for how other people experience them. And that's a that's okay occasionally, but the reality of it is, is if your relationships suck, or you want to improve your relationships at your house or with your coworkers, or even with the goal that you establish, how are these people going to experience me? Are they gonna leave out of this engagement or this environment beat up? That's what we've typically been done. Uh, that's why we're here, that's why this relationship's up. So are they gonna leave beat up? Or are they gonna see this person that I envision? How that person handles it. See, that's the power of vision. You know, it's it's almost like a roadmap. You get to look at you know how this happens. You know, we all have our favorite superheroes. You know, Clark Kent, he doesn't get the ladies, he kind of sucks, people push him around, he's a little nerdy guy. Then he turns into Superman, everybody like, oh man, you know, up, up in the way, and all that fantastic stuff, you know, cool, right? Well, well, if you feel like Clark Kent and you just saw yourself as Superman, guess what you do? Now you can imagine how does Superman handle this? And over time, you've taught yourself faith comes by hearing, faith is a belief system. So, so how does that relationship work? You gotta get very intentional about what that outcome is going to be before you have it. The decision has to be made before you have the conversation. Wrap it up with this structure. No matter how successful you are, the internal work that we talked about, the external display with our relationships, if you don't have the framework, um I say it this way: build your system. If you're not building your system, no, no, let me let me say it even more specific and more direct.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

You are building your system, you're building the life that you want.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

The improper relationships, the bad thoughts, the poor health, you're building that relationship. Do you see yourself as a success or do you see yourself as an epic failure? You're building that. So the whole point of the performance capacity uh snapshot, the whole point of why we've been talking and walking through this over the last two months is to go and allow you the framework to build a better system. Build your system if you want to get in shape, you have to build an environment that's going to be conducive to you building uh uh stronger muscles as possible. So what am I asking you to do? What am I telling you to do? What am I suggesting that you do? If any of this resonated with you today, or any of the videos that you've seen over the last two months, I want you to make the decision to start because that person that you saw when you closed your eyes is possible, right? You now have a roadmap to do that. Do you suck in all five areas? Nah, nobody does. Okay. But if you know where you are, if you know what you're great at, cool. Sustain that, stay there, keep doing that. And if you know where you have to improve, do the work. I read a book uh early in my career, uh Strength Finders. Great book, great read, but the notion was that uh the interpretation that was conveyed to us uh when it was rolled out to us was that um you you live in your strengths and and and augment yourself with with the people that are stronger in the areas that you that you're stuck in. And I can get on board with that to some degree, but the reality of it is you have successes that you want. You have these these dreams that you have. Want to start over in your 40s after the divorce. Okay if you just focus on your strength, you're gonna get the same stuff that you did. Sometimes you have to evolve and grow. Um, you want to get stronger, you go to the gym and you lift weights. That's resistance training. This is what we're talking about accomplishing our goals. So you maintain your strengths. If if what's stopping you from being the world's greatest dad is you don't know how to handle your emotions, let's live in that. You see, you know, I talked to guys, I talked to a lot of guys. We were told, and ladies, um, please understand I'm not I'm not saying anything against you, but but I'm a guy, so I'm gonna talk from that lens. You're told to work harder. Well, I got good at working hard, I got good at making money, but that wasn't enough. What do you do with your life when working hard is not enough? Make money, don't be poor, don't be broke. Okay, cool, got it, got it, got it, boss. Who are you gonna spend the money with? Oh, see, so nobody has anything for that. You can take these assessments, and that's great. You can know your personality traits are, and that's fantastic. Done it. I've taken them all, but none of that was important when I needed to go and restore a relationship. None of that was important when I needed to go and put a plan together to get out of debt. That none of that was important when I needed to understand this juncture in my life when I don't know what makes me happy anymore. Oh, we'll take another personality test. No, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about answers here. The feedback that I get from everybody that's been gracious enough to contact me, uh, social media and figure out ways to get in touch with me is that they're appreciative of the roadmap and of the answers. So that's what I'm asking you to do. If you truly believe when you close your eyes, that that person, that dream, that goal is possible, then do the work. Get the book, read the book, take the assessment, take the snapshot, it's gonna tell you where you are today. Your feet cannot go where your eyes have not been. That's the so what? Is it difficult? Most likely. Because if if if you would have figured it out, baby, you wouldn't be listening to me. But it is possible. If I told you, if you needed a million dollars, if you needed a million dollars to pay all your bills and all your debts, and you didn't know how to do, well, that creates stress and that creates frustration and that in some cases anger, right? But if you needed a million dollars and I told you, well, all you got to do is sell five of these things over here, they go for $200,000 each. And oh, by the way, my man over here wants to buy them from you. So if you can just get them from here to here by three o'clock, your problem is solved by three o'clock. So that's the power of having a roadmap. You still gotta do the work, you still gotta get those those five things over there to the guy that wants to buy it. So your dreams are possible. What we're talking about now is a roadmap. The beauty of it is you ain't doing it by yourself. I'm here with you. So get the book, take this, take the snapshot, figure out where you are. You're not by yourself, I'm here with you. Because that's that's what my life's work's been about. Helping people get from where they are to where they want to go without judgment, just answers. See, I believe you want to do the work. Watching me this long, your behaviors say that you want to do the work. Everybody that made that book launch successful, and it was it was successful. The behaviors say otherwise. Those those communications help me know and entrench my belief that this work is more than selling a book, it's more than uh the snapshot of a movement to finally give people a tool where they can go and accomplish their goals. Now, all that other stuff that we've talked about, therapy and and the and the and the personality assessments, all of that is important and it's necessary, it's icing on the cake, but it has to start with the engine that's needed to perform at the level and to build the life that you want to build. That's all I have for today. I thank you for watching me. I thank you for supporting me. I thank you for giving me your ear. And I'm leaving you with this everybody's performing, but not everybody's performing well. But that changes today, and I'm here for the journey. So until next time, thank you for watching Dr. Lawrence Empowerment with Dr. Lawrence.