One Degree to Victory is a podcast about change—why we want it, why we struggle with it, and what helps us move forward.
Hosted by Dr. Nelieta Hollis, each episode begins with a question and follows it through lived experience, thoughtful reflection, and the patterns that shape how we respond to life.
From worry, anxiety, stress, procrastination, and stagnation to the moments when we find ourselves waiting, avoiding, beginning again, or becoming something new, these conversations explore what happens between wanting change and knowing how to move toward it.
This is not motivation for motivation’s sake. It is a space to notice what is shaping you, understand the responses you have learned, and discover new possibilities for what comes next.
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Your life can be on fire, and you can still be capable. That’s the tension we sit with as Dr. Hollis shares the real distance between a hotel room season and a doctoral graduation stage, and why the story isn’t about pushing harder. It’s about understanding what blocks movement when you genuinely want change, can imagine change, and even have opportunities in front of you.
We break down WASPS, worry, anxiety, stress, procrastination, and stagnation, not as a tidy sequence, but as five patterns that can interfere with the very things you need to move: clear thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, recovery, and the ability to take the next step. Dr. Hollis puts language to what so many people feel but can’t name: human capacity. When capacity gets squeezed, your world shrinks, not because you’re lazy or broken, but because too many demands are pulling on you at the same time.
The metaphor is simple and painfully accurate: like an iPhone running too many apps, we overheat under pressure and certain functions temporarily shut down. That’s why “I can’t do it right now” can be an act of self-awareness rather than a character flaw. We talk through how to spot what this moment requires, how to let something else wait without guilt, and how small, realistic choices can carry you through a hard season.
If you’ve been confusing your current limits with your future potential, press play. Subscribe for more, share this with someone in transition, and leave a review with the phrase you needed to hear most.
One Degree to Victory is the podcast of the NM Hollis Institute, where we explore the science and practice of building human capacity. Through practical frameworks, meaningful reflection, and real-life stories, each episode helps you think more clearly, respond more intentionally, and move forward one degree at a time.
Until next time, Constant Listener, I love ya'll. 💙
Constant listener, here's what I want you to take away from this series. Wasps isn't five random bad things, nor is it an explanation of progression, marching you to your inevitable doom. It is, however, building awareness for how wasps worry, anxiety, stress, procrastination, and stagnation interferes with your ability to access, use, and grow your capacity.
In May, I was getting ready to graduate. In all of the excitement and a little bit of disbelief, I started thinking about how I got to this point, planning for my doctoral graduation, the fulfilling of a lifelong dream. A few years earlier, I wasn't preparing to walk across the stage and receive a doctorate. I was living out of a hotel room a thousand miles away from this moment. And let me tell you, there is a whole lot of life between that hotel room and that graduation stage. There was homelessness, starting completely from square one while trying to maintain the well-being of my kids. I changed job titles a few times. I've driven trucks across the country and back again. I've been a hospitality worker and a systems navigator. And in the middle of all of that, I had to keep making decisions. I had to keep seeing what is possible and make decisions about what came next. The moment of graduation was more than the degree and the responsibilities that come along with holding a doctorate. I was thinking about movement. How did I get from there, homeless mama, to here? Oh doctor Nalita Manoi Hollis. I know I wasn't the only woman who had ever sat in a hotel room wanting something different for her life, because I'd met those same women there, in both the hotel where I'd stayed and
the hotel where I'd eventually end up working. And those ladies wanted something different too. I've been working with youth inside systems, encountering families and teaching for the better part of twenty years, and I kept encountering versions of the same thing. People wanting change. People who could imagine change. People who were being given opportunities for change, but constant listener wanting to move and being able to move are not always the same thing. And that made me start looking back at my own life differently. I recall the times when I didn't move because I absolutely could not move. There were opportunities I worried about, decisions I became anxious about, moments when the stress of everything I was carrying made one more decision feel like my breaking point. There were seasons when I stayed somewhere physically, mentally, and professionally. In my reflection, I noticed five patterns repeated across my journey worry, anxiety, stress, procrastination, and stagnation. Wasps. Again, care is warranted here because I don't want you to hear that list and think I'm telling you that one automatically causes the next. I am not. And life isn't that neat. You can procrastinate without being anxious. You can be stressed and still move. You can worry about something and never become stagnant. But what I began to recognize was that every one of these things, every one of these conditions had the ability to interfere with something I needed in order to move. And this interference influenced my ability to think clearly, to make decisions, to adapt, to solve a problem, to recover, to take the next step. Eventually, I found the language for what I had experienced and witnessed others' experience. And that is human capacity.
Constant listener, think about your phone and everything we've come to expect and demand from them. We communicate in so many forms from calls to text to video chat. We stream and download music. We watch videos and television and movies. We play games, we hold meetings, we create and store files, we navigate, we film, we photograph, we connect. And if you're anything like me, you've left 20 applications running in the background while you're working, communicating, watching, gaming on the present one. Eventually your phone begins to overheat. At least that's what mine does. One time my phone got so hot that it shut off. The message read, iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it. Everything that that phone was meant to do had been temporarily restricted until it got to a safe operating temperature.
Constant listener, that's what I want us to think about when we talk about stress. Change comes quickly. It's the transitions both before and after that require the most capacity. We have to navigate what is while trying to move toward what can be. We, at least those of us in the middle of change, aren't ever only doing one thing. I was working, parenting, grieving loss, making decisions about money and housing daily, changing careers, learning new things, trying things that didn't work, starting over when I needed to start over. And yes, eventually driving a truck across the country while working toward a doctorate. Do you know I started the podcast about almost three to four years ago while driving? I started the podcast one degree to victory the very year I started school. Every one of those decisions and movements required capacity through completion. Sometimes when we say I can't handle this, what we really mean is I have too many things requiring something from me at the same time. In the hotel room, in the hotel room, I only had the capacity for three essentials: work, pay for the hotel room, and keep my kids fed. I could do that for the month that they had left to finish school, but everything else in my life have been temporarily restricted. And that's where I've had to change the way I think about stress. We're never going to eliminate demands from our lives unless you plan on moving to an island where somebody caters to your every need. And even then, I imagine something is going to require your slight attention. But when you're going through significant change, the demands can multiply before you've had a chance to adjust to the last one. So the goal can't be to build a life where nothing ever demands anything from our capacity.
Rather, it is to recognize what the moment requires and give yourself permission to let something else wait. Then I can't do it right now takes on a different meaning. It doesn't automatically mean I'm lazy, it doesn't mean I'm incapable or that I don't have the skills. That phrase, I can't do it right now, becomes an act of self-awareness, recognizing what this moment is already requiring and making a decision about where available capacity needs to go. Now, when I look back at how I got from that hotel room to graduation, I can see moments when I did exactly that. When I finally settled on relocating, I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure of a full-time job. So I looked for something part-time, and quite frankly, something that wasn't human-facing. That's how I ended up housekeeping in the hospitality service industry. And while I wasn't looking for much from that job, it turned out to be a golden opportunity. Out of it came friendships, experiences, and eventually a whole new way of thinking about how I could use my degree. Sister girl, I didn't know where that housekeeping job was going to lead. I didn't know it was going to lead this far. I just knew what I had capacity for during that season. And that's part of how I got from that hotel room to walking across the stage. I didn't have the capacity for the whole
journey at once. I had the capacity for each next part. Sister Girl, constant listener, stress may restrict what you have access to in a particular moment. But hear me good. Don't confuse what you can't do right now with what you are capable of becoming. Let me say that one more time. Don't confuse what you can't do right now with what you are capable of. I'm Dr. Hollis. Thank you for sharing your space with me on One Degree Divicing. Until next time, I love you.
