Today we continue with our Capacity on the Field Series. There will be a new post every M, W, F this month, exploring what factors into your capacity on the field. You can find the previously published posts in this series here.

---

In the world of mental and physical health, there is a theory about spoons and capacity. 

This theory is a flexible illustration that can be used and applied in many ways, especially in global work. It’s a theory that can be played with and explained as we dig into the idea of capacity on the field.

As a reminder, Global Trellis is here to enlarge the capacity of Great Commission cross-cultural workers. We believe that you can have a tended soul and an expanding skill set.

We’re here to equip, help, inform, and engage while we provide safe places to tend your soul and expand your skills.

Yet, we can’t continue the full conversation about enlarging capacity until we learn about capacity in general. 

We can’t know what we’re tending, expanding or enlarging without first taking an honest look at what we have to work with on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, capacity isn’t something that you can sustainably ignore. It isn’t something that grows just because you want it to grow. Capacity isn’t guaranteed to expand just because you gain new skills or get asked to take a bigger role in your work. 

In fact, capacity can shrink. As it diminishes, it’s sending off alarm bells and warning signs in a myriad of ways. Even more, living outside of capacity for extended periods of time will cause incredible damage to your whole self.

Which brings us back to the idea of spoons.

“The origin of the spoon theory is traced to blogger Christine Miserandino. Miserandino, who lives with lupus, created the spoon theory in 2003 over dinner while trying to explain to her companion in simplified terms how people with chronic conditions wake up each day with limited energy (spoons) to spend on tasks… Why spoons? They were at the table when Miserandino was searching for a way to translate her experience to her friend. Since then, the spoon theory has been used to explain the complex choices in expending energy people living with chronic illness and disability make each day.” – Very Well Health

Spoons are a way to explain the complex choices that people make every day in expending energy. 

Spoonfuls can measure energy, capacity, ability, margin, mental space, and physical strength. Spoons can help you understand how much you have in the morning, what impacts your spoons throughout the day and how many you have left by bedtime, if any.

To take that further, spoons can explain the complex nature of global work, overseas life, travel, fund-raising, health challenges in other countries, raising TCKs, navigating team relationships and all the other complex choices and conversations that take place in just one day in the life of a global worker.

Spoon theory can help workers explain the spoonfuls of capacity that are required to pay a bill, find a needed grocery item, get through an important meeting in another language, sweat for hours in a faraway location, help your kids through another transition, or drive a car through a dangerous part of town.

Are you counting the needed spoons yet?

For those of us nodding our heads at these few examples, we know that they are just tiny samples of how many spoonfuls of capacity are truly required to stay in global work.

The needed capacity is unbelievably high just to get through a day let alone to move to another country, take a child to college on the other side of the ocean or deal with chronic health issues where medical care is hard to find.

We like to think that we have spoons for it all. We might require endless spoons from ourselves or be in a situation where leadership assumes extra spoons or demands extra spoons. Yet, in our humanness, our very real capacity is not infinite. 

We only have so much capacity. There is only so much time and energy to expend in a day.

We only have so many spoons.

So, how do we spend spoons? How do we lose spoons? How can we gain spoons? What if we overspend our spoons? 

Then, we must factor in climate, children, health, location, safety, family size, and financial situation. We have to remember that there are outside things impacting our spoons.

We have to understand that not everyone is in the same situation with the same amount of spoons.

I hope that in reading this, you’re taking a moment to think about your own personal story, your own situation, your own spoons.

What is the status of your spoons?

Sit with that thought for a minute. If we were in a coaching session, I’d be drawing out all the spoons on a whiteboard, and you’d be journaling and taking a realistic look at your spoons.

What outside factors are a part of your situation?

What is the reality of how many spoons you have each day?

Are you living outside of that capacity?

How do you grow capacity and gain more spoons?

How do you save spoons?

To answer some of these questions, let’s play with the word SPOONS.

S – You need to give yourself some space to think about spoons. You need to be sympathetic and honest with yourself about your reality. You might need outside support to gain clarity. I like to call this your healing team. You might need to surrender what people think, what people want, what you expect, what the task list is requiring of you… do a full audit of your time, energy, and capacity. Think sticky notes, journals, white boards or whatever else helps you actually look at your spoons.

P – You will need to evaluate your current path and your daily patterns.

O – You will need to get vulnerable and start being open about what you need, what you can do, what you have spoons for and then, be obedient to these new boundaries.

O – This process is going to take being observant and objective of yourself, your family, your workload, your expectations, your understanding, and your actual physical or mental ability. It means observing the signs that your body is giving you about energy, stress, capacity, ability, and reality.

N – As you start to notice your spoons each day, you’ll begin the process of nurturing and nourishing your body, mind, soul and strength. 

S – In this new normal, self-care and soul-care will become part of the structure of your days and the new spoon theory vocabulary will become part of how you explain your expenditure of energy or your real capacity. You’ll experience a new inner strength as you listen to your body, understand your spoons and start spending them wisely. 

How do I know?

I’ve been guilty of living outside of my human capacity. I’ve lived far too long spending way too many spoons. I’ve felt the pressure of pretending to have endless amounts of capacity with no margins and no boundaries. I’ve experienced the burnout, physical sickness, chronic fatigue, and mental exhaustion of not recognizing my reality and not obeying the warning signs. 

I had to find the courage to ask for help, audit my spoons, live in this new vocabulary, and start a process of healing.

For me, it meant learning more about boundaries, saying no, living in my reality, learning new lessons of grace and compassion for myself, and letting go of what people think, want, and say.

It meant living within my capacity for an audience of One.

It meant soul-tending, heart-healing, and lots of skill-learning.

Learning about spoons, living in capacity, and understanding reality is quiet, necessary God work that takes some time but is worth every effort.

What difference will this make?

We honestly evaluate spoons because of the difference it makes to our soul, health, sustainability, longevity, and peace.

We can enlarge our capacity as we tend to our spoons and gain skill sets that help us steward our whole selves well.

What’s next? Accept these three invitations:

1. Think about your spoons and use the above questions to conduct a spoons audit.

2. Start encorporating this vocabulary to help you understand how you are spending your time and your capacity.

3. One a scale of 1-10 (1= horribly, 10=awesomely), how are you doing living with your current spoons?

---

This is only the start of the conversation, so if you’d like to work through this more with a life coach who knows and understands, leave a comment below or send me an email. I’d love to be a part of your healing team as you work through your spoons. In my next post, we’ll take a closer look at what impacts your spoons. I look forward to continuing this conversation.

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash