Hello beautiful people of Expansive Capacity!

It’s time once again for Superpower Sunday! 🙂

As always, this is all about how we can implement wee changes that may turbocharge our *existing* superpowers so that we don’t dim our own lights due to inertia, stress, or any other upper-limit problem that reveals itself along our path.

In this month’s Superpower Sunday, in support of our deep dive on “Your Relationship with Desire,” we’re gonna look at the ways in which we STAY committed to something long after we no longer want it (even if we never really wanted it) because we’ve spent money on it.

Here’s a concrete example of what I mean: Once upon a time, Keith worked for the likes of AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google, and as a part of one of those sweet corporate tech gigs, he scored a $17/mo. gym membership for each of us.

Long after his freelance time with them was over with, we both still had these memberships at 24 Hour Fitness, a gym less than 4 miles away from us WITH A POOL… and we probably went a half-dozen times a year. Maybe. But we kept paying the $408/yr. because OMG it’s a gym membership for seventeen bucks a month!!

Thing is.

This was a time in our life when $408/yr. was a very big deal. And we simply were not going to the gym. Pretty much ever. There’d be one week a year when we’d get a wild hair for reconnecting with our fitness. We’d convince ourselves that 2am was a fabulous time to go to the gym so no one else would be there and we could be sure to have two bikes or two treadmills next to one another and we could swim without having to throw elbows to claim space in the lanes. No overly sweaty bro-dudes or overly perfumed gym bunnies in full makeup. No glitter on the equipment. No loud-talkers boasting about their gains.

This enthusiasm for middle-of-the-night workouts would wane quickly and once again we’d stop going but keep paying because when were we EVER going to get such a cheap gym membership ever again, right?

Yeah, but $408/yr. invested ANYWHERE else in our lives at this time in our lives — for YEARS — could’ve made a difference in our business. In our lives. In our ability to exhale when we were constantly concerned about money. And yet, we didn’t cancel. For years.

This is what’s called “sunk costs.”

My favorite example of this came from Tara McMullin, who described being given the wrong coffee (she had ordered decaf) and not realizing it in time. She was long gone from the coffee shop, realizing she was getting a big hit of caffeine late in the day. KNOWING she would not be able to go to sleep that night, she kept drinking the coffee! Because she had already paid for it.

Rather than investing in SLEEP she knew she needed, she allowed her commitment to the wrong thing to be more important than the right thing.

Same with us paying for gym memberships we weren’t using for years.

Why do we do this?

Welp, money is sticky. And this isn’t a Superpower Sunday about money. It’s about continuing to invest — monetarily, energetically, whatever — in things we may have never even wanted.

I didn’t *want* a gym membership. I never sought out a gym membership. When — a few years after we finally DID cancel that $408/yr. payment — I chose a workout I would end up being ridiculously passionate about for YEARS, it was pole fitness, which couldn’t have happened with a gym membership of any kind.

When we invest in things we never even desired… um… what are we teaching our brains about the value of our desires (especially the ones we DON’T invest in)?

We hang onto things we never even wanted because we so rarely allow ourselves the things we actually DO want. Heck, we rarely even allow ourselves to KNOW the things we desire, much less allow ourselves to CLAIM them.

As we continue forward into "Your Relationship with Receiving," what can you do to start showing your desires that you not only allow them to exist, but you'll allow them to be met?

Just more to think about as we wrap up this impactful month!

I’m so freakin’ proud of you all for the deep work happening in the dojo. Wow. I mean. This is some next-level transformation going on. Congratulations on being your own fucking ally right now and from here on out.

So much love flowing your way,

Enoughness is an inside job… and sometimes you need a guide to find your way there. Let Bonnie Gillespie get you started.