Ep. 184 - Capability, Capacity, Motivation: The Framework for Goals That Last

You don’t need more pressure or bigger resolutions this year. You need a smarter, kinder way to go after what you want. In this episode, you’re invited to pause, reset, and rethink how you approach goals, especially if you’re someone who starts strong but loses momentum along the way.

You’ll hear why willpower alone isn’t the problem, and how real, sustainable change comes from aligning three essential pillars: your capability, your capacity, and your motivation. This conversation gently helps you understand yourself better, instead of judging why you “can’t stick to things.”

Key takeaways you’ll love:

• Why losing motivation doesn’t mean you’re broken, it means your system needs adjusting
• How to protect your energy so goals don’t feel heavy or draining
• A simple framework to help you create momentum that actually lasts

If you’re ready to move into 2026 with clarity, self-trust, and a goal that feels meaningful (not exhausting), this episode will meet you exactly where you are, and help you take the next right step forward.

Loved this episode? Take the next step with The Confident Communicator — my monthly coaching program designed to help you apply what you’ve learned and finally build unshakable confidence in how you speak, lead, and show up. Inside, you’ll get the support and accountability you need to stop second-guessing yourself and start communicating with clarity and calm authority. Join now at rhiannonbush.com/join

Transcript

CAPABILITY, CAPACITY, MOTIVATION: THE FRAMEWORK FOR GOALS THAT LAST

EP #184

“Do I need a life coach?” You’re listening to Episode 184, with Rhiannon Bush

Welcome to the do I need a podcast. The podcast for professionals who are smart capable and tired of holding back here we dive into the real conversations real struggles and real coaching helps you find your voice and own your space and now here's your host Rhiannon Bush. 

well hello my beautiful friends welcome back welcome to 2026. I hope you're ready. I have great vibes about 2026. I think it's gonna be an incredible year and look even if it's not. We have the resilience and all the things we need to cope with whatever is thrown at us. I hope we anyway my whole family right now is parked out at my and I'm very jealous. I've been there all week. I've come down with a little bit of a head cold but I am just really enjoying the summer and yeah, just really happy to be spending quality time with the family in places that I'm loving. I've actually ducked back home for a school reunion so we graduated in 2005 and it's now 2026. It's a 21 year reunion which is really exciting. It's just our year group. I'm really excited to see some people and hear about what they're up to and and how their lives are going people that I haven't seen in probably 26 years or close to 20. Let's call the 25 so yeah, super excited for that and then I will head straight back up to the shack because I really just want to be by the beach and with my kids and my beautiful partner and yeah things are absolutely great and I find like I've said a lot when I'm away from home I get a fresh perspective. I get new thoughts new ideas my head finally has the space. I think is what it is to really start to think about what I want and how I'm gonna get it so I hope that you've had that time to do that over the year break and if you haven't, I hope you give yourself that time to do that at whatever time in the year you might get some downtime because hopefully you're not 100% at every single time of the year if you are kudos to you but from clients worked with usually what happens in the instance ear people are on the hamster wheel and if they don't get off it then years go by and they don't kind of ever get a chance to stop and reset and imagine what it is that they want for themselves their lives their families their relationships at all their business or they're correct so I really hope you get the time to do that and to take a step back and enjoy that process. I love that process while I was doing this exact process for myself over the last few days. I've kind of come up with a few things of different people that I've listened to in different learnings that I've taken from them to come up with kind of a goal achievement triad and it's from a whole bunch of different people and resources that I've listened to as a coach over the years but basically there are three pillars to this triangle and I'm gonna teach it to you today. I think it will be highly beneficial if you are chasing a new goal whether it's a little tiny each week of a goal or it's a really transformative goal and you can extend it over whatever period you like. I do think that smarter goal stand up if you're working with smart or smarter goals that you work through those to be specific measurable achievable relevant time bound and then of course if you're doing the extended version adding the evaluation and the reevaluate or readjust to it I also stick another one on the end just to make it that little bit more complicated and detailed and that is to celebrate. I think it's so important that you celebrate along the way and that it's important to enjoy the journey so I do think smart goal stand-up if you are very very processed driven and you are very able to be disciplined in your headspace and not highly emotionally reactive. I'm a highly emotionally reactive person if I'm not doing what I'm doing and I lose motivation I will lose interest and I will not see the point because I'm all about enjoying the journey and also trying to get to the end result so I tend to balance those in a way that smarter goal sometimes work but sometimes don't so I kinda need other ways of achieving goals if that's what I'm looking to do and one of the ways that I've come up with doing that is this tryout so there are three pillars to this triad hence try like you'd imagine a three legged if one leg falls down or brakes or isn't there it's not going to stand up so you need all three of these pillars to achieve a goal. These more in more detail at the moment, but capability you have to be able to do the thing and the reason that it's a goal is because you can't do that thing right now otherwise you wouldn't even be a thought like it wouldn't even be a thing in your head because you'd be like well I can do that like whatever don't need to worry about it so if you're looking to level up or you're looking to improve your anything whether it's your life in fitness health career whatever whatever goal it is that you're trying to achieve you need a new capability right? It's so capabilities is the first pillar. The second pillar is capacity. You need the time in the space to be able to do that and the third pillar is motivation you've got to be motivated to get the thing that you're going to get like I was saying before I'm an emotionally reactive person so if I'm going after a goal and for too long it's stagnates or for too long. I get bored then I'm gonna lose interest very very quickly unless achieving that goal means something incredibly important to me that it outweigh my feelings in the moment and I think this can be said for the majority of people. The majority of the reasons we fall off our goals is because we get bored, our brain starts to play these games on us of like you know all this thing all that funny thing because we just we lose interest. It's like I went to a pump class at the gym recently and I don't know if any of you know pump Les Mills pump but it's a lot of repetition with the barbell and you change the weight throughout the class but it's like to music and you up and down and up and down and hour halfway up halfway down halfway up halfway down way up way down and I'm just like oh my god this is boring boring and I lose interest. My boxing class however changes every single time I do it and I love it. I've even recently lost motivation in a strength and conditioning class because it's the same all the time and for me to drag myself out of bed at 5:30 in the morning to get to a class at 6 to do that class at the same same same same same but I have to gamer five for myself. I'm not interested in fact I'm disinterested and at that point I turned around and did RPM instead which I hate but I did it because I needed to work out and I was just so sick of the same same same same so I know if either go just listening to me that I know exactly what they're gonna say Rhiannon but the goal you really wanna achieve the goal so you gotta focus on the goal and then the motivational come well guess what? Sometimes that doesn't happen it just doesn't so when that doesn't happen you need to understand yourself a little bit better and understanding that you might be or might not be an emotionally reactive person or you might be someone that's really happy doing the same task day and day and you take pride in perfecting that task and doing it to that standard go you but understanding yourself when it comes to goal setting is super super important so hence my tryout my goal achievement tryout ability. Let's talk about capability is the first pillar. Not only do you need the knowledge that is going to help you get to your goal and that knowledge may be theory from library textbooks YouTube clips you know on paper where you're learning like wrote learning like in school that might be the side of it also learning by doing is always going to be the most effective so sometimes you've just gotta do the thing you can't get fitter by reading a book. It's not going to work. You have to get in the gym. You have to get help in the gym and do the thing and then that is how you will start to get a result. The thing I find with most of my clients when it comes to fitness and getting themselves in the gym is that if they lack motivation until that part changes which is the third pillar they're not getting in the gym. They're not gonna do the thing so that's why motivation is such an important pillar in this part sort of framework. I guess you call it so knowledge what existing knowledge do you have? What knowledge do you need in the second part? Is information so go and find the information if you're not getting in the gym and I'm just using this as an example as a client came to me about it recently saying they really want to change in 2026 so we're gonna start unpacking that I'm working with that. I'm gonna do my confident communicator program which will give them that hands-on help that they need to fix the motivation component and that's gonna get them in the gym so excited for them but it's also your ability to find the information and if the information you're seeking is not the right information it's going to be useless for instance you can look up all the fitness techniques in the world. You can download my fitness power. You can get all the exercises, but if you're motivation isn't there? Fitness is not gonna help you researching motivation is what you actually need and again I can hear coaches listening to this Rhiannon like fitness might be the thing that motivates them. We all get motivated flicking on our phones watching really sexy people workout thinking oh yeah we can be like that. We all get motivated. That's why they do it. Trust me on the Gold Coast. I went running. I saw some very very sexy people like them very motivating but very short-lived understanding your motivation levels and how your wire is and then hitting that momentum long enough sorry to create the momentum that is what's going to be a transformation for you not just the one off hit of right. I'm gonna go to the gym and I do it for a day or a week and then I'm gonna stop again right? We're looking for sustainable change transformation. This capability pillar also very much comes down to your ability to be resourceful so if you're researching something and you're not getting the answer what else can you do to find the answer? Do you give up or do you keep going? Do you persist? And how much do you persist? So your ability to work it out to find the answers to join the dots for yourself? Is a huge part of the capability triad piece because we can all Google stuff we can all AI stuff but turning that knowledge into something that gives you capability and that you can then embody and then action which is capability right because once it's theory once you've embodied didn't actually done the thing and used that knowledge to do something then you have capability. It might be terrible capability. It might be low level capability but capability nonetheless from there you can build you can't build from theory. You just build and build and build a bit and it just goes nowhere it's kind of really stagnant energy. If you think about it like that you can like stack it all your clothes in a suitcase and then you can sit on it to get it done but eventually it's gonna overflow and you're not gonna be able to get it done but it's also not gonna solve the problem of you packing and closing your suitcase right? So your resourcefulness your ability to find the right information to get the right Intel and then put that into activation energy to actually do something off the back of that is incredibly important as part of the capability part then obviously there's a skill development piece where you're using that theory. You're actually doing the thing you suck at the thing. Totally normal to suck at everything we try in the beginning and then you need to work harder at developing that skill overtime and the way we develop as humans a skill is repetition we do it and we do it and we do it. We get the lessons from sucking at it and then we do it even more and we like implement the lessons and then we go and go and go and the more we use the right muscles the more we use the right formula the more you do the right thing. The better the result we get doing the same thing over and over and over again and not getting the same result I think was Einstein's definition of crazy. I think it was. Don't quote on that anyway so after you've got the knowledge information the resourcefulness and then you put it into action and you develop the skills. Then the last part of it is to ask for help. If you're still not getting the result ask for help and that is your capability pillar. The second pillar is capacity capacity is pretty straightforward. Really It's time. When are you going to make these changes? So all of a sudden I want to go to the gym but you start work at 7 am. You get home at three. You've got commitments after work already or you like me. I don't like working out after work I'm exhausted after work. I'm not good at night time so the only option you have is to get up before work. Well you don't wanna get up at 5 am or 4 am but guess what you want the result of fitness so where are the excuses that you're coming up with? That are preventing you from getting what you want? And what do you want? More the comfort of sleeping in or the fitness only you can answer that and there's no vital wrong here but it's just something for you to think about so time not only though is finding the time to achieve your goal and do these new skills and do these new things are gonna get you a different result. It's efficiency. It's efficiency with the time you have. I've seen people go to the gym and do two hour workouts what were you doing at the gym for two hours? Two hours? That's crazy to me. I'm like getting in. Do a quick warmup. Hit the gym. It might be a different class. They might never actually asked them but two hours to me seem crazy and also I don't have two hours to spend in the gym if I did I probably would but I don't. So it's about your effectiveness with your time. Do you produce outputs? Do you move closer to your goal? Do you go hard when you're there? I also see people in the gym. She was a great example of this episode. Actually see people in the gym. Who are there to chat or there to strut these people in the gorgeous and they look incredible but they didn't get looking like that from strutting around the gym. They got looking like that because they worked their eyes off but I didn't see them work their arses off I see them stretching and I'm like what are you doing? I also have to go to our class with people that talk the whole way through the class. I have started moving to the other end of the room because I can't stand it when I'm in pain when I'm physically hurting I can't be around people that are doing this and not working hard put me around people to working hard and I work hard. I will also be the person that's kind of the leader in that I will work very very hard. I'm the one that's sweating and I'm grunting and I'm hot and sweaty yes just call me the Maria shower over of boxing. It's fine but I don't mind that I do that for me. I'm not there to make friends. I'm not there to look pretty on there at work and I wear my sweat like a badge of honour and it's disgusting but I do the more I sweat the proud I am. I come out of RPM soaked yeah disgusting but I do so it's about your efficiency with your time are you doing these ones? Are you strutting or are you getting to work? Putting your head down? Getting to work working out ahead of time? What muscle groups that work that day and just going? Hell leather at it? Time is also about what you're removing so you might not have capacity right now your life might be so chockablock cool but you're going to have to give something up to actually achieve your goal. You're going to have to create capacity to achieve your goal. I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that under motivation because it's a really important point and it's one of the hardest I think when it comes to goal achievement to recognise under the capacity pillar as well is your recovery after a failure so how quickly do you brush yourself off and get back up. It's okay to fall down in a heap and cry and have a tantrum totally fine but how quickly do you bounce? How quickly do you get back up? How quickly do you go for that sucked and I'm back on the horse I'm still going. That is still important to me. Let's go. Let's find another way so also that's about pivoting. How long do you stay? Trying something before you go? This is not working and then you pivot you. Try something different. You try something new to get the outcome that you're looking to get. How long do you stick with it to know that that is actually not going to work versus pivoting to go right yet? That really didn't work. I'm gonna try something else also in terms of capacity is when are you strategic? When do you take a step back and go right? What do I need to do? I'm about 20% to my goal where I thought I'd be where I wanna be. Where else can I go? How else do I get there versus? I'm doing it I'm doing it. I'm doing it because I gotta get there. I've got an output. I've gotta move forward. I gotta do the thing giving the weight loss example it's how often do you weigh yourself? Do a fat pinch test or whatever it is doing BMI being a terrible metric but you know what I mean? How often do you check your metrics to go? Yes I am achieving what I wanna achieve and I'm about 50% of the way there versus just getting in the gym so how often are you strategic coming in going right? Where am I at calibrate and now do I need to pivot? Do I need to stay where I am? Am I doing well? Am I not do? I need to do I need to back off a bit versus just doing the thing to get there really really K question. I think it would be the same as all the time they're in it. They're in it. They're in it there in it it and then someone else comes along and goes oh if you thought about and all of a sudden on it and they go oh yeah I can see that I need that by the way have you thought about… No I've been too busy working in the business to work on the business, it's a really easy hold to fall in as a business owner. Capacity last pillar motivation the key to all of it. None of this works without motivation. It is your energy level to achieve your goal. How you stay motivated because motivation is fleeting. It's here and then it's gone and it can be moment to moment day-to-day week a week so your motivation levels your energy your focus how focused are you? How do you focus? I know for me to start every day. If I go over what it is I want to achieve and then go into that layer of what am I doing today to actually achieve that thing that keeps my activating system focused on it all day? If I skip that? If I don't do that in the morning? I forget all about it. It's amazing. I just go back to living life the way I've lived it so refocusing every single morning really helps me to stay focused to stay achieving it to keep going and stay motivated remembering why you want the goal. Why is it important to you? Your energy around your goal? Attainment is everything your energy is about cutting things out that won't help you achieve it cutting people out cutting relationships out cutting work and tasks out that will not help you achieve your goal. Your motivation is everything and if you let things infiltrate and affect your motivation your goal achievement is going to be that much more than that much more difficult. You must protect your energy. You must protect your motivation and remind yourself constantly of why you want to achieve it. Eating is probably the best example I have of this you write yourself out a meal plan you do all your meal prep you stick to it and then one afternoon you come home. You've had a bad day. That's on your mind. You stick something in your mouth and you go. I wasn't gonna do that but in that moment because you are so distracted you have completely forgotten about your goal and you've just gone back to old habits of stuff and something in your face and then you go dammit dammit I wasn't gonna do that. Our brains are designed to be efficient they shortcut things over overtime repetition to make sure that we do what we need to do and our days are as easy as possible so when we achieve our goal it's coming from our prefrontal cortex with our higher order thinking and we must keep our entire brain focused on what it is we're wanting to achieve and why that way we stay focused even in the difficult moments in the difficult moments when we're just running on autopilot because we're just in survival mode because 1000 other things have taken over. Our brain will remind us no keep going for me through the massive one. I will start stopping stuff in my mouth especially when I'm preparing the kids meals and then I'll go. I wasn't gonna do that and it's also like I'll go to eat when actually I'm thirsty if I just had a massive drink of water my hunger is gone and I no longer need to eat. It's quite amazing but if I've done the work on right I'm raining in my eating. I'm going to be better. I'm just sticking with my three meals a day in my coffee. If I can do that at the start of my day and just remind myself that is usually enough to get me through motivations also about your resilience so that coming back after a setback so how many failures can you can you have before you go? Oh I'm done and I'm not doing this any more. Can you take it one day at a time day by day? Problem by problem and overcome and overcome and overcome how about changes? How many changes can you experience before you're so uncomfortable that you give up? How resilient are you when you're back in a corner? What do you do? Do you sink down to the ground or do you come out fighting and when after how many setbacks after how many changes how resilient are you and that's all about the importance of the goal you've set and how badly you want it and why why it means anything to you which is entirely personal and whatever yours is is totally okay. The thing about human beings is that we do not fear change we fear loss and our brain will throw tantrums over and over and over again. If it thinks we're going to lose something it will fight for the same thing over and over again because it's familiar even if it's bad for us also in terms of your motivation are you willing to do things that you're not necessarily wanting to do? Just how far are you willing to take that? What will you give up to have what you wanna have knowing that your brain is gonna put obstacles in your path at every level because your brain does not want loss what do you want in 2026? Why do you want to do some work around that and then use this goal achieving triad to help you get it understand it intimately listen to this over and over again and if you need additional support come and join the confident communicator. I will be right there holding your hand helping you every step of the way to get what it is you want in 2026? I can't wait to hear about everything that's going on for you. The challenges you experience the resilience you show overcoming them and the things that you set out to achieve yourself in 2026. Please see me please share them because I absolutely want to hear about it even if it's just to send me the message and hold yourself accountable because you've told me I will see you next week 

If you've been nodding along episode you have to come check out The Confident Communicator. It's my monthly coaching program where we don't just talk about these ideas. We apply them. We practice them and we take your confidence to the next level during the Rhiannon bush.com/join I'd love to see you inside and work with you personally join me there.

Please note, this transcription may not be exact.