Episode #7 Raise Your Floor — Expand Your Capacity & Manifest the Life You Actually Want

Raise Your Floor — Expand Your Capacity & Manifest the Life You Actually Want

Hey friends, welcome back to Let’s Manifest Podcast— I’m so glad you’re here with me today because this episode? It’s going to change how you see your day-to-day life, your goals, and your energy.

We’re diving into a concept that I call “raising your floor”—and it’s a total game-changer when it comes to goal achievement and manifestation.

Now, this is about the real work—the personal responsibility and identity expansion that allows you to hold the reality you’re trying to manifest.

We’re also going to talk about capacity—your emotional, physical, and intellectual capacity—and how these three types of bandwidth determine what you can handle and sustain in life. Because here’s the truth:

"You don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
— James Clear

Today, I’m going to add a layer to that:

✨ You fall to the level of what you’re willing to tolerate from yourself.

Part 1: What Does It Mean to Raise Your Floor?

Let’s break this down.

We all have a “floor” and a “ceiling.” Your ceiling is your potential—your biggest dreams, the the next highest version of you, your fullest self-expression. The million-dollar version. The author, the entrepreneur, the thriving partner or parent, the changemaker.

But your floor is your current minimum standard—the least you allow from yourself. It’s what you are tolerating. It’s the level you drop to when things get hard, inconvenient, when you are low on energy or when you indulge in emotions. And let’s be real—that is the level most people actually operating from most days.

So when I say “raise your floor,” I’m talking about:

• The conversations you’re avoiding
  
  
• The routines you’ve dropped
• Your promises that you don’t honor, whether it is to yourself or others
• The things that we let slide and put off
• The excuses you allow because you’re “too tired” or “too busy”
• The way we don’t prioritize the important needle moving things that needs to be done rather doing things that bring us dopmaine hits, like snacking, scrolling on social or shopping. (this is called buf
  
  

It’s what you let yourself get away with—not because you're lazy, but because you haven't raised your identity to require more from yourself yet.

Being stuck, stagnant, living on autopilot, having that groundhog day to day experience keeps us living small lives in our comfort zone. It doesn’t propel us to live an extraordinary life of our dreams. It doesn’t challenge us to grow and to live into our purpose.

And here’s why this matters so much when we talk about manifestation:

Last episode we talked about how we manifest from our identity. 

 Dr. Benjamin Hardy and his book, Be Your Future Self Now "You are not your past. You are what you’re currently committed to" and  that "Your identity is what you are most committed to."

This commitment sets your floor.

Part 2: The Role of Capacity

I recently took a class by one of my coaches Stacy Boehman about expanding your capacity. I wanted to share with you some of what I've learned in that course. Capacity is  one of the biggest missing pieces in the manifestation conversation.  Your floor has a lot to do with your capacity. Your capacity is those decisions and choices that come every day, and your ability to live into them, to handle them, to show up for them mentally from the intellectual plane, emotionally, and energetically.

Manifestation isn’t just about dreaming. It’s about holding the frequency of that dream—and that requires space. Internal space. Nervous system space. Schedule space (we will call this time). Cognitive and emotional space.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy writes extensively about the concept of expanding your capacity to become your Future Self. He says:

“Your future self is not someone you discover—it’s someone you decide to be.”
— Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Deciding to be that person requires training your capacity to match the life you say you want.

So, let’s look at three kinds of capacity:

1. Emotional Capacity

This is your ability to hold uncomfortable emotions without checking out, lashing out or reacting to them.

 When a launch doesn’t go as planned…
When someone criticizes you…
When you get ghosted…
 

Do you spiral or do you self-regulate? 

Do you react or do you respond?

When your emotions are high your intelligence is low.  

There have been times in my life when I’ve recognized how I’ve been in an intense emotional state.  I look back on those tough moments and I’m really glad and proud of myself for saying I’m going to give it X time and redecide so that I’m not making decisions in a heightened emotional state.  It’s really easy to be caught up in your pain story and justify the emotional reaction. 

Your emotional floor shows up here. Do you default to fear, resentment, self-pity, anger, frustration, do you lash out verbally or physically, or do you disengage and sit in the energy of your anger, frustration —or do you ground yourself and move through it?

Finding where and why you are in resistance, learning how to process your emotions, to pause and pausing to figure out the source of the problem is a key piece to growing your emotional capacity.  

Almost always once the body has processed the emotion, the problem seems much smaller, or more manageable. 

2. Physical Capacity

This is your energy, your health, your stamina.
Can you hold long days, stretch outside your comfort zone, and prioritize your well-being so you’re not always in survival mode?

So many of us live in survival mode day to day.  This is a physiological state in which the body is only really equipped to be in for short durations of time.  Staying in this state for extended periods of time takes a toll on our physical and mental health. 

Being in resistance takes away your energy. Where are you in resistance in your life in your work? Can you see how your brain is fighting you on something you it is saying it “has to do.” 

What if you tell yourself that you are 100% capable of doing this. That completing this project or task will give you a boost of energy, momentum, and endorphins.

Go back to your why. Why are you doing something?  Finding your desire can sometimes be helpful in overcoming the resistance, the short-term discomfort of doing something. Step into your capacity instead of the pain story that’s going on in your head of why you shouldn’t have to do this. 

The body is a vessel for your goals. If you’re constantly tired, burnt out, or depleted, you simply can’t access the level of performance that your vision requires.

I remember when I was going through chemo and my physical capacity wasn’t as abundant. I would plan things around the patterns that I experienced in my energy fluctuations each round of chemo. 

Now after doing capacity work I catch my brain when it says you didn’t sleep well last night you should just not do this and sit on the couch and watch some Netflix.  I tell it I have the capacity to get things done. 

I also know my body and my mind, and when I can push through and when no amount of caffeine or thought work will fix it and when I just need to nap. My mind will feel much more fresh and I’ll be 10x as productive.  That’s why when I was in grad school I wouldn’t stay up late at night cramming for a test. I knew for me I don’t learn well or can’t do tasks tha require a lot of mental focus when I’m tired. I would get up early and study in the morning.  That’s called your choronal type and using that to increase your physical capacity at your peak times that come naturally to you. 

3. Intellectual Capacity

This is your openness to learn, solve, and think strategically.
It’s your mindset under pressure.

I’m guessing that you’ve been in a situation in which you have felt overwhelmed and you feel your brain having those thoughts that you will never understand this so why bother or why pay attention. That’s your brain in resistance. 

This can happen when we need to expand our capacity to learn something new, such as new tech. I once took some investment lessons from a friend who was a financial advisor.  Although my brain really wanted to learn this stuff, I could feel my brain wandering and eyes glazing over.  Admittedly, this still happens to me in a French grammar class.  My brain tells me I’ll never understand it.  

What am I manifesting when it offers me that thought? More resistance more difficulty.  I observe these thoughts and most people struggle with learning the grammar in a foreign language and that’s ok. 

When we are in those circumstances, you have to work on your ability to stay curious and resourceful during those times instead of checking out. 

Expanding your intellectual capacity might look. Asking yourself how can I figure this out?  What would help me understand this? What’s the next step?  Sometimes, we don’t have the full solution but we may be able to find out what the next step is, or maybe we just commit to really learning one thing.  Sometimes I’ll really focus on learning one tense or one verb in my French studies because when I look at the big picture, it’s much easier to have thoughts of ovweherlm. 

I want you to have the thought that you can grow and cultivate your capacity. It can expand. And as it expands your abilities to do things in your life, in your work in your business get easier, more efficient more comfortable. This creates momentum and success. 

Part 3: The Link Between Identity, Standards, and Manifestation

Now let’s connect the dots.

Manifestation is not magic. It’s identity.

Your current results are a reflection of your current identity—and your current capacity.

This is why manifestation often doesn’t work for people. They’re visualizing the future while still identifying as someone who’s overwhelmed, inconsistent, or stuck in self-doubt.

And let’s be honest—if the version of you who already has the dream life - their behavior isn’t chaotic, reactive, and underperforming, or they wouldn't have that life.

So if your capacity is low and your floor is low, you’re not yet a match for the thing you’re calling in.

This is why I don’t teach “act as if” or “fake it til you make it.”
Because if you’re acting, you’re still not being.
And being is the energetic key.

Part 4: Practical Steps to Raise Your Floor and Expand Capacity

Let’s make this real. How do you actually raise your floor?

Step 1: Define Your Current Floor

Ask yourself:

• What am I currently tolerating from myself that I wouldn’t tolerate from others?
  
  
• Where do I consistently let myself off the hook?
  
  
• Where am I playing small and what excuses do I use to justify staying small?
• Where am I in resistance?
• Where am I not showing up?
• What am I putting off every day and say, well I’ll start tomorrow?  I bet we have all done that with a health goal.  We put off the workout, we disregard the nutrition advice and just go for immediate gratification of the cupcake, and say we will restart the diet tomorrow. 

Awareness is always the first step in transformation.

Step 2: Identify One Area to Upgrade

Pick one floor to raise this week. Maybe it’s:

• No longer snoozing your alarm
  
  
• Following through on one promise to yourself daily
  
  
• Managing your emotions better by pausing and responding rather than reacting.
  
  
• Saying no when you mean no
• I’m working on being a little more organized this year.  So an example of this for that identity as an organized person is to return something to it’s spot when I’m done using it.  
• Not leaving the little tasks for tomorrow. 
• Last night I did all the dishes in the kitchen as we had a water issue and they piled up while we couldn’t use the dishwasher.  I was tired but I told myself I have the capacity to do this.  It was a nice feeling of going to bed with a clean kitchen and not starting the day off with a mess waiting for me. I even did my shoulder PT exercises after as I was inspired by friend who is currently doing PT for his knee.  He’s expanding his capacity and showing up 110%. He spends 2 hours 3x a week there as he’s approaching a window of expected limitation in range of motion.  After which if it’s not where it needs to be he’s facing another surgery to remove scar tissue.  He said well at least if I need surgery, I know it’s not from a lack of me trying on my part.  I think that’s an amazing way to approach this both physically and mentally. 

Raising your floor doesn’t mean doing everything at once. It means choosing one area and being consistent.

Those little changes change our identity over time and our trajectory as we talked about last episode. 

Step 3: Change your thoughts around that area - let go of the pain story, the excuses, the why me, the this isn’t fair. We have to transcend the stories in our heads.

• Believing it’s possible that you can do X or you can figure out y
• I’m ready now, I can do this
• The only time we have is now. I’m building my future from this present moment.
• This discomfort is temporary and normal and I will be stronger for having gone through this
• I have infinite capacity
• I know more than I think (we so often just see where we dont measure up or what’s missing, not what is there, what we have accomplished or the skills we have)
• I can do this because I want the results
• I deserve X result this is part of getting to that destination
• I’m ok; nothing has gone wrong
• It’s ok to have emotions about this and still show up to get it done. 

When you shift your brain to those thoughts vs the why me victim type thoughts, it changes the emotions you feel in your body. 

Now you are feeling hope, feeling capable, feeling aligned, challenged in a positive way, or maybe you feel powerful or invincible.  

Remember that your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings create your actions, which will then create your results.

By changing those thoughts, we are influencing our results, changing that trajectory changing our life. This is the importance of awareness and thought work. 

Step 4: Anchor Into the Future You Identity

This is your manifestation moment.

Ask yourself: 

• What does my future self not tolerate?
• Being lazy, procrastinating, sleeping in, paying their bills late, pushing off their to do list for something more immediately gratifying like shopping on line. 
  
  
• How do they speak to themselves?
  
  
• What do they say “yes” and “no” to?
  
  

You don’t have to be perfect. You just need to raise your minimums.
Because those minimums eventually become your new normal. And your normal becomes your identity. And your identity creates your results.

This work can pay dividends in a short amount of time.  Before you know it your new floor will seem easy and then it’s time to up level again.  It’s all part of the fun process of evolving to the next level of yourself, your next quantum leap, next big manifestation next big goal. 

Final Thoughts

You’re not just manifesting goals—you’re manifesting a version of you that can hold and sustain those goals.

And that version? She doesn’t settle.
She doesn’t excuse her way out of showing up.
She has boundaries with herself.
She’s clear. She’s grounded. She’s expanding.

“Your identity is whatever you are most committed to.”
— Dr. Benjamin Hardy

So the question is—what are you committed to now?
Not in theory. Not someday. But right now, in the choices you’re making today.

Your life rises to the level of your standards.
So raise your floor—and everything else will rise with it.

I’ve been working on my capacity.  

One of the things I heard one of my coaches say recently: who do you want to go to bed with every night? Who do you want to wake up with / or as.

She wasn’t talking about going to bed with a hot looking partner. But what is she means is when you go to bed at night are you proud of the person that you were that day.  

Yesterday I got some big things done, a lot of things in a short amount of time. I was proud of the me I was yesterday when I went to bed.  I closed my laptop at 6 and went out to dinner with my husband and enjoyed the time without feeling guilty of what I  still needed to do. I was the future self I need to be. 

When I wake up I ask myself who do I need to be today? Some days are a little easier than others to get into your flow state but the more you work on raising your capacity and raising your floor the easier your goals will be to manifest. 

If you’re ready to go deeper into this work, head over to The Modern Manifestation Academy. This is where we get real about who you’re becoming and how to build the habits, beliefs, energy, and aligned action to make it happen.

Also, be sure to get your free copy of 50  journaling prompts for manifestation they’re linked in the show notes and also available on my website at the make ithappen project.com 

Until next time, show up as your future self.
Raise your floor. Expand your capacity.
And go create the life that’s calling you.