Build a Bigger Closet

I was talking with a new friend the other day when he made a comment that stuck with me.

“If you build a closet, you’ll fill it.”

What a simple but powerful insight. It’s really about capacity. When space expands, we naturally grow into it.

The same is true in leadership and personal growth. If you expand your capacity—your skills, your mindset, your willingness to take on more—you’ll eventually grow to fill that space.

But if your capacity stays small, your growth will too.

Small Closets and Small Expectations

I’m fortunate today to live in a home with spacious closets. At least they feel spacious to me.

But when I think back to the houses we lived in when I was a kid, the closets were tiny by today’s standards. At the time, though, I didn’t think anything of it. Those homes felt perfectly normal to me. I had no frame of reference for anything different.

Years later, when I revisited some of those houses, I was surprised by how small they seemed—especially the closets.

As our family’s circumstances improved, we moved into progressively nicer homes. We never got rich, but Mom and Dad were able to afford better places over time. The last house I lived in with them was newly built and much roomier than the others.

I remember one feature in particular: a large walk-in closet attached to my parents’ bedroom. That felt extravagant at the time.

Michelle and I have followed a similar trajectory. Over the years, our homes—and our closets—have gradually gotten bigger.

And something interesting happened along the way.

As the closets grew, so did the amount of stuff inside them.

Funny how that works.

Capacity Expands to Fill the Space

When we lived with small closets, we figured out how to live within those limits.

Now that we have bigger ones, we’ve expanded to fill them.

Our closets today—roomy as they are—are practically overflowing.

Leadership capacity works the same way.

If our mindset limits what we believe is possible for ourselves or our teams, we operate within those constraints. But when we intentionally grow our capabilities, our expectations rise with them.

What once seemed like a stretch starts to feel normal.

We build a bigger closet—and then we fill it.

A root-bound plant provides another helpful picture. When a plant grows in a pot that’s too small, its roots eventually wrap around themselves and stop expanding. Growth stalls because the environment won’t allow anything more.

But move that same plant into a larger pot, and it can begin growing again.

Our potential often works the same way.

Three Ways to Expand Your Leadership Capacity

Here are three ways I’ve found to build a bigger closet in my own life.

Take a Chance on a New Opportunity

I’ve never stayed in the same job for very long.

I don’t consider myself overly ambitious, but I’ve always been curious about what’s next. Could I handle the next role up the chain? What would it be like to work at the regional or national level instead of the local office?

Over the course of my federal career, I changed jobs or locations about a dozen times in 25 years.

Every change was uncomfortable.

Every change stretched me.

I met new people, faced new challenges, learned new skills—and those accumulated experiences shaped the leader I eventually became.

Growth often begins when we say yes to something that feels just a little bigger than we are.

Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

Those career changes came with plenty of uncomfortable moments.

As an introvert, meeting new people—especially in social settings—has never been easy for me. Yet over the years I’ve had to do it again and again.

Eventually something interesting happened.

It got easier.

Today, meeting new people is simply part of the job. As a consultant, it’s essential. The only reason I’m comfortable doing it now is because I kept pushing through the discomfort when I didn’t feel like it.

Growth rarely happens inside the comfort zone.

But every time we step outside it, our closet gets a little bigger.

Open Your Mind to New Ideas

This is a recurring theme for me, and for good reason.

A closed mind is one of the biggest barriers to growth.

If you’re convinced you already know everything you need to know, there’s very little anyone can do to help you. No class will inspire you. No mentor can guide you. No amount of experience will move you forward.

Growth requires humility.

It requires admitting there’s always more to learn.

Yet I regularly encounter leaders who act as though they’ve already arrived. If they’re not getting the results they want, they assume the problem must be the circumstances, the team, or the opportunity.

But sometimes the real issue is simpler.

What they need isn’t a different situation.

What they need is a different attitude toward learning.

Final Thoughts

The idea of building bigger closets resonates with me because I’ve seen it play out in my own life—both literally and figuratively.

The danger is how easily we become accustomed to smallness.

As a child, I didn’t realize how small those closets were because they were all I knew. In the same way, it’s easy to accept limits in our leadership without even noticing them.

If we’re not careful, we settle into small closets. Our growth stalls, and we wonder why we’re not seeing the results we want.

But if we’re willing to take chances, step outside our comfort zones, and stay open to learning, we can expand our capacity.

And when we do, something remarkable happens.

We grow into the space we’ve created.