The Self-Protective Mechanism of Being "All-In" vs. "Half In"

Automatically transcribed, so the wording is close but not exact.

Macie: Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of This Is Not Your Practice Life podcast. My name is Macie Thanks for joining me on the podcast today. So things have been a little crazy busy. As you can probably tell, we've missed some episodes, but don't worry, I'm gonna make it up to you. Things have been crazy. We had tax season, which as an entrepreneur, we dread every single year. think everybody in general hates tax season unless you're get money back if you're the kind of person that's probably gonna owe tax season, doing them, preparing them. It's just not the most fun season. And to add just craziness along with tax season was also my women's retreat in Miami, Florida. It was my first time going to Miami.

It was the first time all but one of my clients have ever been in Miami. And that's because she, lives about an hour away, but that retreat was just so ⁓ much fun. ⁓ will… probably talk about that at some point in the podcast, but I had a great time. It was exactly what I needed and couldn't have been at a more perfect timing wrapping up tax season and just the craziness of life that's kind of been transpiring behind the scenes. So today I want to dig into the topic. I don't know what I'm going to call it yet. So we'll see what the title ends up being, but I want to talk about this mentality of being half in versus fully in. like half invested into something versus fully invested into something.

Why this happens? Like what is it that keeps us from just being all in or deciding to let ourselves jump all the way into the waters, so to speak. So let's talk about this. I think this will be a short but sweet kind of episode because it's been coming up. in more ways than just one. And I think anytime that's happening in my business with my clients in my own life, I really like to zone in and find the teachable moment in it and then share it with you guys. So I want to do that today. I have been talking with a lot of my clients about this thing that our body does where we fear what an outcome may be. So There's something that you want or there's something that you know would be best if you were just all in.

If you could get yourself to, essentially the equivalent is like if you're in a boat, you know the benefit of jumping all the way into the waters, but there's some fear in jumping into the waters. There's a little bit of the unknown. There's a little bit of things that you may fear subconsciously, but you know that you're never gonna get to fully experience the entire experience unless you jump off the boat and you jump in. But what our system does, because remember that the brain's job is to keep us safe. What our system does is it kind of fails us ahead of time, which I've done an episode on that in the past where I talk about how when the brain is afraid of something, it will overthink and it will oftentimes overthink because it thinks if it can solve all of our problems ahead of time.

it can almost forewarn us for what we're going to feel or experience. So what happens is the brain makes up a bunch of scenarios in our mind first. And then a lot of times those made up stories end up impacting us in a way where we may never jump off the boat, so to speak, or we may never take action, or we may choose not to be all the way in. We'll kind of like dip our toe in as opposed to jump all the way in. but that is just failure ahead of time. So instead of jumping fully into the water and seeing if we sink or swim, like we never jump off of the boat. So we just, we're afraid of failure, but we really end up failing ahead of time. And if you're not watching this on YouTube, I'm doing that in quotes, failure ahead of time is still failing.

It's just failing before you've actually tried something. So in the same sense, when we are half, in or not all the way in. What this is, is the brain sneaky way of saying like, I want to protect you from what you will feel on the other side of something not working out. So for instance, let's say you are in a romantic relationship and let's say like in this romantic relationship, things are, we can call them good or we can even say that they're a little bit rocky. Let's say the reason that they're rocky is because maybe there have been some hurts of the past, even if it's not in that particular relationship, it could be like your previous marriages, your previous dating history, like you were hurt.

And so now in this new relationship, even though you're being treated maybe amazingly, you kind of self sabotage a little bit because you're always on edge that something could go wrong or you're kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop or you're trying to prepare yourself just in case it's too good to be true. that version of the relationship, then there could also be like, you know, maybe maybe things really are rocky because that particular person has hurt you in some way of the past. So let's say like in this relationship, you don't let yourself be all in on every single part of it. You're always like you notice yourself bracing for impact in some ways, like you know, maybe you have much more love to give.

Maybe you even know you have much more you can conversate about. You have topics you never bring up because you're a little worried. Like if I'm fully authentic, if I'm fully transparent, if I fully let myself be me, if I ask the hard questions, if I, you know, if I do anything that this other person that I love so much doesn't like, I fear it may just crash and burn. So it's that same kind of failure ahead of time, but this in this particular instance, it would be like you're half in because if you're not showing up 110 % authentically in your relationship, you're not asking all the hard questions. You're not having the hard conversations. You're avoiding things because you're afraid they're going to be upset or you're going to hurt them or they're going to have a bad reaction.

If any of this is happening, you're kind of half in because being fully in would be being like fully in, right? All the way in. would be willing to, my coach calls this risk the relationship. And she hasn't said it in terms of, you know, romantic relationships per se, but in business, she would always say like on consult, she was fully willing to risk the relationship, which just meant that she was willing, even though they had never paid her a dime, to coach them so hard on the consult that she might risk the fact that they may never become a client. but she was willing to risk it all in the name of transformation for them or in the name of them getting to see something that maybe nobody else has helped them see.

So in the same way, it's like jumping all in. It's not tiptoeing on the consult, for instance, and like dipping a toe in from the boat, right? And being half in, it would be like, I'm going to jump all the way in for this person. And yes, the outcome may not be great in my favor. but I'm willing to do that. So in the same breath with the romantic relationship example, it's like when we are only half in as opposed to fully in, we miss the depth of what's available to us in the relationship, but we also miss everything that we can learn and every opportunity to grow. It's like if you're half doing something as opposed to fully committed to doing something, you never actually learn what you're made of.

or what you need to tweak or what you maybe can grow in or what you can change if you're only playing halfway, right? You've only dipped your toe half in. Now, the thing about this is the brain is doing this very intentionally for you, for us. It does this because it thinks I feel like if I go all the way in and I get an outcome that is not ideal or not what I want, what the brain is actually saying is I don't think that we're well prepared to handle the emotional crash of it all. I don't think that we hold the emotionally resilient skills in order to bounce back and be okay. And that my friends is the work of emotional intelligence. So when people are not well equipped in emotional intelligence, they will operate their life out of a lot of fear and they will play in their life half half in, I'm quoting, it will be half in as opposed to being fully in, jumping all the way off the boat into the waters.

There's so many ways that this shows up in our life. It's not just romantic relationship where you're kind of like easing into things or playing halfway because you're worried that maybe it might mean the relationship fails. Like that's just one way of many people also do this in business. It may be like I want to start a business and they'll start a business. but they're not posting as much as they know that they should be or can be. They're not showing up to, consistently with whatever it is that they've committed to, like emails or podcasting or, um, you know, meeting people out in the world, getting their name out, getting their branding out, um, doing the things that scare them because half in means that they still get to be the title in this, in this situation of business owner.

but they don't have to feel all of the rejection. They don't have to feel all of the potential failure if they're playing half in. And if they are half in and they're failing or not getting the results, what they actually subconsciously get to fall back on is like, well, but I didn't like really try. I didn't go all the way, but they also miss the depth of what's available to them as an entrepreneur and in building a business. being all in in my business, meaning like I don't have any kind of second career to fall back on. I'm still licensed as an occupational therapist, but I haven't practiced in since 2021, I guess. So it's been five years that I've been out in the field. And so not having a backup plan other than if I were to go get a job is being all in on my business, meaning that every single thing that I try, I'm all in on.

So when I'm doing social media, when I'm showing up to the podcast, when I'm sending emails, when I am launching a new program, when I'm enrolling for a new program, anything that I'm doing, I'm really being mindful of being all in. And there's still some of those business activities where I will notice myself wanting to be half in because I can see my brain wanting to protect me from how it might feel if something doesn't work. or if something fails. So we have to be paying attention to where we're playing halfway in our life because the only reason we do that is when we don't feel like we are emotionally equipped enough to quote survive or to work through what is on the other side emotionally.

So this is the power of emotional intelligence work, right? If there's nothing we're unwilling to feel, then there's nothing we are unable to cope with, to deal with, to navigate, to work through. Like what it takes to be all in and maybe fail or to not get the outcome we want is emotional resilience. Because all we're avoiding whenever we're not all in is feelings. We don't want to feel the feelings. We don't want to feel the feelings of embarrassment, of judgment, of someone seeing us fall and maybe having something to say about it. We don't want that. We don't want other people to be right about their projections, right? That relationships never going to work. That business is never going to work.

That career is never going to work. You're never going to get that promotion. So we'll play, we'll tiptoe around life as opposed to just being all in. Now, again, the thing about being all in is that when you jump all the way in the water and it's sink or swim, no matter what it is, all in in the relationship. all in in the business, all in in your career, all in and shooting your shot and something you learn at hyper speed. Because when you're all in and it's quote, sink or swim, whenever you are getting feedback or results that you are not happy with, guess what also gets activated in your brain? Problem solving skills that you are building in real time. You can't learn how to be resilient in failure.

or rejection or disappointment if you're never allowing yourself to feel those things. Part of what helps you become very resilient and feeling those things is putting yourself in positions to feel them. So if you're always playing halfway and not going all the way in and you never get to experience those feelings, you also are missing out on the depths of what's available for you in life, which could be depths of joy and depths of pain. which could be depths of acceptance and depths of rejection. But the point of the matter is, is that if you decide in any given moment, you're going to be all in on whatever, whatever it is, you get to experience all of it. So when it works, it's the best it can be.

And when it doesn't work, it's the greatest lessons you will ever learn so that you can tweak what didn't work and you can do it differently next time you learn. ⁓ hyper speed when you just let yourself be all in. So that is today's message. Like where are you playing halfway? Where are you dipping your toe into something? Because you think that that is going to protect you somehow from feeling feelings. The thing about it is, is what if you just allowed yourself to get really good at building the skill of that emotional resilience of knowing and trusting you will be okay. You will about bounce back, you will be able to recover. And if you don't feel like you're in that place, that is what emotional intelligence coaching is for.

It's built to help you understand how to lean in and feel every emotion that is possible on the human spectrum of emotions. Because as humans, we're never going to actually be able to escape emotion, no matter how safe we're playing it in life. Like a lot of times, here's what happens. We think playing it safe will actually protect us from ever having to feel certain emotions. And what you will find is that sometimes even in playing it safe and not being all in, you will still end up feeling emotions you had hoped you would never have to feel. So a perfect example would be like if you've been hurt many times in the past in a romantic relationship and you're just dreading ever, ever, ever feeling that again, you're like, I can't deal with it.

hate the emotions that come with that. can't deal with it. If that's where you are and then you enter a relationship where things are going really, really good, but you're feeling your nervous system just not support you in it being good because you're so afraid. So you don't ask the hard questions. You don't have the hard conversations. You don't let yourself be fully lovey-dovey or, you know, offer as much love as you know you can give because you're just afraid. Like, what if it's rejected? What if they cheat on me? What if I'm in pain? What if I find something out that I don't like? What if I'm hurt again? And here's the thing. If any of those things were to happen that you hope don't happen, guess what?

You're still going to feel all of the feelings that you think you're preparing yourself for by being half in, half invested. you're not actually going to get to avoid the feelings. So if you can never avoid the feelings, even by playing it safe, okay, even by being half in, you can't avoid the feelings because guess what? Even if you play it safe and you think, ⁓ they're going to hurt me and it's not going to be that big of a deal because I was only half in, it doesn't work like that. I've watched that with clients. They think that being half in is going to protect them somehow. Like, ⁓ I expected them to cheat on me or I expected them to hurt me. So I'm not hurt. No. They still come absolutely wrecked and absolutely devastated no matter how it happened.

So protecting quote protecting themselves, you know, being quote half in doesn't work. It doesn't actually protect you from anything. You're still a human being and being a human being means you can never escape emotion. So if you're going to feel it anyways, when you're half in, you might as well just decide today to be all in. Because what you're going to take away from being all in is more enriching when it's good and better lessons when it's not so good, better growth when it's not so good, more amazing takeaways when it's not so good. So let this be a reminder that if at any part of your life you're playing halfway, you're not going for the promotion, you're not asking for the raise, you're not starting or being fully invested in the entrepreneurship that you've committed to.

You're not loving as deeply as you can love in your relationship because you're afraid it's going to come back and bite you in the ass because it always has in the past quote, quote, right? Whatever it may be, whatever it may be, I'm sure there's a million examples I can't even think of right now. Just commit to letting yourself be all in because what you will take away from it will be well worth it. All right. I hope you have an amazing week. Hope this was helpful for you. And if I can support you in any way, if you're wondering if coaching is for you, if I'm the person to help you with it, then just feel free to go on macierenae. com, M-A-C-I-E-R-E-N-A-E. com and sign up for a free consult.

And we will talk about how coaching may be the best fit for you and what may be the best fit for you. And guess what? If it's not that's okay too. It's okay. All right, there's nothing to lose. ⁓ So I see you guys next week for another episode of This Is Not Your Practice Life. Have a great week.