You’re Not Avoiding The Hard… You’re Choosing Which Hard.

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

Macie: Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of This Is Not Your Practice Life podcast. My name is Macie and I'm so excited to have you joining me today. Really quickly before we dive into today's topic, which will be a great one, we're going to talk about choosing your hard and what this really means. This is an episode I did way early on in the beginning of my podcast and I wanted to update it and make it fresh. before we do that, I want to let you know that this Wednesday and Thursday I am hosting my first freebie in quite some time. think it's been a little over a year and a half since I've held a freebie for women to participate in. And I can't wait to host this one. This one is going to be based on self-worth.

So if you ever struggle with your own worthiness, if you really shut down whenever you feel rejected, if you struggle with not enoughness, this is going to be a freebie for you. It's going to be two days. Again, Wednesday and Thursday, I think the dates are April 8th and 9th. You can sign up with the link in the show notes and you will get the email and there will be a downloadable workbook for you to use as well as hands on examples to really help this self worth teachings and coaching concepts stick. And this is what I love about coaching. I love being able to like challenge the mind in women, but also give them real tangible things that they can feel and hold and touch and visualize. so that the concepts stick way beyond the free training.

So that is what I wanna let you know of. And then also you can still enroll in the Immersion Collection if you're looking for the ultimate coaching experience, one year of really immersive work where you get to experience my core and signature EQ programs, the Immersion Collection is a great option and you can learn more about that on maceyaranae. com. Okay, you guys let's get into today's topic which is all about choosing our hard So here's the thing about life a lot of times we make our decisions based on What decision is going to give us most ⁓ Our brain does not really love Challenges, okay. We like simple like autopilot We like being able to just show up and really not have to use a lot of brain power to get something done.

So ease is what our brain is looking for. Pleasure is what our brain is looking for. If there's going to be any kind of pain involved or challenge involved or hard things involved, our brain does not want to engage with that. So you can… only imagine and I'm sure there are plenty of people who listen to this podcast that are going to have these experiences. You can only imagine that when you're faced with a decision or something that you have to decide between in your life, it feels really, really difficult to choose because it is going to feel hard. And the moment that it feels hard to your brain, the brain wants to shut down. So even if your current circumstances or your current situation is hard.

What the brain knows is I don't want the results of making this other decision or this other choice or changing something to also be hard or maybe even harder. And if it is, that really sucks. So I think I'll just stay here. But I want to just offer you the real truth bomb that we're always choosing our hard, always, always, always choosing our hard. So I'm gonna give you several examples of what choosing your hard looks like. I'm gonna give you the visual, which is silly and crazy as always, that I give my clients. And I'm gonna hopefully help you understand the real impact of being able to choose your hard. So here are just a few examples in life. And I'm gonna do it based off of clients that typically come to me.

with something that they are facing in their life. They want coaching to help them be able to move through it. And one of the things that they say to me whenever they realize maybe what they're going to have to do is that said thing is going to be hard. In which case I'm like, of course, we're always choosing a hard. So let me give you the first example. I do have a good amount of women that come to me and maybe they have been a stay at home mom for a long amount of time or they have been in a certain career. for a certain amount of time. And no matter what version you may be, maybe you're the stay at home mom, or maybe you're in ⁓ a career field that you've been in for a very long time, sometimes what happens is the stay at home mom is feeling a little bit lost, or maybe her kids are growing up and she wants to do something outside of the home.

She wants to be a contributor, she wants to be able to make her own money, she wants to be able to spend her money the way that she wants to, and the thought of Staying a stay at home mom kind of feels hard based on maybe where she's at in that journey. The thought of going out in the world and back to work after maybe not working for a long time is also hard. OK, so this ⁓ mother or, know, woman is up against two different hards The hard is, do I stay at home, which maybe isn't like fulfilling in the sense of like being a mother is super fulfilling. but not so much fulfilling in terms of like having my own money and being able to do more of what I want and being able to feel like a contributor to the household and be able to get out of the house and have something that lights my soul on fire outside and in addition to motherhood.

Okay, so that's something that women will go through. Another scenario here is one in which maybe there is a career woman ⁓ she loves it for the most part. but maybe she's looking for something else. She's been in this career path for a very long time. She's okay with it, but she's starting to feel herself burn out. There's other things that maybe she always wondered if she would be quote, good enough to do. And you know, and she's at that place where she can either jump ship or she can stay in the job. Now here's the common things that women will say to me when they're in this position. They might say something like, At this job, I've been here for a very long time. I know exactly how it works.

I can ask off whenever I need to ask off and my boss really doesn't care. So if the kids are sick or we want to do vacation time, I really don't get a lot of pushback on that. Maybe they can work from home a couple days a week. And so that's very convenient. Their benefits are pretty good. The pay is okay. Maybe not exactly worth what they want it to be, but it's okay. Then there's the option for them to jump ship, to try something completely different, to learn a new set of skills. And again, the number one thing that they'll come to me and say is, but what if when I leap, my benefits aren't as good, the pay isn't as good, I don't have as flexible of people that are willing to let me. you know, be as flexible in my schedule with my kids if they're sick or if I need to work from home.

What if there's not even the option to work from home? So this woman is also in a choose her hard situation. She can stay where she's comfortable, but not 100 % satisfied or she can leap and take the risk. But there's a lot of unknowns. Both situations are hard. So let me move on to another scenario that I see quite often relationship wise. I have a good amount of women that come to me that are maybe not in the most loving, respectful relationship with their partner. And that can range. It could be from little, little things that just need to be tweaked if the partner is willing to do that. And if the woman in that relationship is willing to work on herself and what her part is. And then there's the more severe side.

And the more severe side is maybe they have experienced some infidelity, Maybe they're going through some mental, emotional, I've even had women in physical abuse situations. There have been a lot of different scenarios in the romantic relationship department that have not necessarily been ideal for the women that are in them. And they will come to me and they will share these things because a lot of times their self-worth is low. They don't really believe in themselves. They don't really trust themselves. They have spent a lot of years lying to themselves, it appear better than maybe it is because of the choose your hard situation. Because what they're up against is do I stay in this relationship where internally in my gut, I know that I deserve to be treated better.

I know that this is wrong. I know that I'm not happy. I know that my kids are seeing things that I would never want them to see or ever want them to put up with or ever want them to stay in. But the alternative is that if I leave, maybe I don't have any income to support us. I don't know how I'm going to keep a roof over our head. I don't know how the childcare is going to work. I don't know what the divorce process is going to look like. I don't know if I'm going to be fought for custody. don't know. There's so many unknowns, right? I don't know how that partner is going to respond. I don't know all of these things. They can just list a bunch of unknowns in that situation. I don't know how my kids will respond.

I don't know if my kids will take sides and if they'll hate me and whatever it may be. And every single time I'm like, you're right. Those are some hard situations because it's hard to be in a relationship where you feel unfulfilled or you're not being treated with respect or you're being taken advantage of or you're being abused in some sort of way. or you're just simply unsatisfied in that relationship and the partner is not also willing to work on it. Maybe you've begged them for years to go to therapy, begged for years that you do something to save it and they're just not willing and they keep going about life. That's really, really hard to feel like maybe you're the only one putting forth the effort or you're the one that really wants it or you've wanted it to work and you've tried to change yourself to make it better.

That's a hard situation. walking away is also a hard situation, especially with so many unknowns. So these are just a couple of examples. I'll give another one because this was a situation I was in. I was in the situation where I went to school. got two degrees, actually my bachelor's in health science, my master's in occupational therapy, went out in the career field, did it for almost seven years and ⁓ in my knew it wasn't what I wanted to do forever. but I had $85,000 worth of student loan debt. was barely making 40K a year. think on most years I made about $35,000 after spending so much money and time on school. And I just wasn't really fulfilled. And then I met my coach. I loved coaching.

I coached with my coach for two years without ever, ever thinking that it would be something that I ended up doing or wanting to do. And two years in, finally, my gut just had this huge whisper and this big yearning for, want to be a coach and I want to help women be able to do this work. I want to teach them this work. This is what I want to do. And it scared me to death. And I was up against two hards as well. The hard was staying a career path that is decently fine and that I enjoy most days for a certain amount of reasons. There's also many reasons I don't and I could stay here. see my life as being bigger and I have big dreams and I have things I want to accomplish and things I want to do and I don't see that that would happen here.

Right. So that was really hard. But then there was the hard of potentially being an entrepreneur. You don't have consistent income. You don't have like a lot of help if any. You working and putting yourself out into the world to be judged and to be misunderstood and never know if someone is actually going to support you or buy from you. There were a lot of unknowns. were a lot of ⁓ scary things in that process. So it was the choose my hard of, ⁓ stay where I'm at, where I'm comfortably uncomfortable, or do I take a leap and risk it all and figure out where I land? ⁓ These are just a couple of examples of maybe a choose your hard situation that you might be experiencing. And trust me, there are many others.

One more example, I keep thinking of some another another choose your hard could be feeling some tension in a relationship that you want to speak up about. Maybe it's a friendship. Maybe it's a co-working relationship. Maybe it's a romantic partnership. Maybe it's a family dynamic of some sort. You feel a tension and you want to speak up. but you know you can't control the other person's response. So you're in a choose your hard situation. You either speak up and you're authentic and you're truthful and you try to conversate and come to a middle ground or at least be heard in what you have to say. And the thought of that feels very scary, but feels like maybe you would get some relief. But then there's the alternative maybe that person ⁓ rejects it.

Maybe they reject you. Maybe they don't want to hear it. Maybe it creates a huge fight and argument. Maybe it ends up being something that you never wanted it to be. And so that is also hard. So suppressing your truth is hard. Speaking your truth is hard. You know, getting a great reaction from someone would be great, but you don't know that you can't guarantee that. the risk of what will happen is hard in that situation. So we're We're always coming up against this hard, no matter what we're really in. If there's something we're not 100 % satisfied in, that is hard. And the alternative is also hard. So always choosing a hard. So here is the example that I gave my clients years ago. It's still my favorite way to kind of work through this concept, but I would tell them choosing your hard is kind of like being on an airplane, okay?

You're up as high as you can be in the air. And you only have two options. The first option is that you have to sit on thumbtacks or pushpins, the side up that would really, really hurt. You have to sit on those pushpins the entire flight. You cannot get up. You're not gonna get a break from the pain of that. You have to sit on pushpins the entire flight. That would be really uncomfortable and really hard. Choice number two is that you can jump out of the airplane. You have a parachute, but you don't know where it's going to land and you don't know when your parachute is actually going to open. OK, that is another hard. Both are hard because on the one hand, if you were going to be on a flight for 20 hours, but you're you're guaranteed to make it except you have to.

survive sitting on pushpins in a very uncomfortable way, you're going to say, that's going to be a really hard 20 hours. I don't want to sit on pushpins for 20 hours. That's a really hard thing to do. But then the alternative is, but I've got to jump out of the plane and I don't know if my parachute is going to open or when it's going to open or where in the world I'm going to land. Am I going to land on land? Am I going to land on water? Am I going to break my arm? Am I going to land safely? Am I going to have resources? Like, what does that look like? Both options are hard, but we're always choosing one. We're always, always choosing one. It's not somewhere in the middle. You're always choosing a hard.

And what the brain does is it will choose the hard that is just a little tiny bit easier at that time. Okay. So when people come to me for coaching, a lot of times they come to me because the situation that they are in feels hard. So, I'm not happy in my marriage. That's really hard. I'm not so happy in my career. That's hard. I need more fulfillment in my life. That's hard. All hard, okay? But the alternative, you haven't walked yourself to because that feels a little bit harder or a lot harder. And you're okay. For now, living in the one that feels just a little bit easier, we always choose the hard that feels a little tiny bit easier. So for a very long time, I stuck with the occupational therapy career because that felt a little bit easier than leaping out of the airplane and taking a risk on myself as an entrepreneur and businesswoman, nothing, knowing absolutely nothing, knowing I would have to teach myself everything on the way down.

knowing I would have to fail a million times, knowing that I could do all of the work and never get a single client, never get a single podcast listener, never get anything out of it other than the lessons that I would learn along the way. So those two things stay in the career or jump and, risk everything to see what I'm made of. Those were both hard, but for a very long time, I chose the one that was just a little bit easier. And that was being an occupational therapist. But here's what's interesting. At some point, the hard that you're currently choosing eventually becomes unbearable. Like it just becomes something that you almost you can't handle it anymore. And when that switch flips in your mind, suddenly it's harder to be in the situation that you're in.

versus the risk of it all. There does come a day for a lot of us where it's our draw our line in the sand kind of day and we're like, you know what? Staying in an abusive relationship feels way harder all of a sudden than just being out on my own with my kids and figuring it out. There comes a day where women will get to that point when they've had enough. Okay, it's like for a very long time, it could be years that they're like, ⁓ I know my relationship is a little chaotic and I'm not happy and I know that all of it is a cluster. But right now it's just easier because I don't know what the alternative is. There will be a day for every single woman where the situation of now is harder all of a sudden than the alternative.

So even though the alternative of walking away, not maybe knowing how you're going to financially do it, not knowing how your kids are going to respond or how that's going to impact them, not knowing how your ex-partner is going to respond, suddenly that one feels a little bit easier than maybe the hell that you're enduring. And when that happens, you will choose the different hard. Just like for me, when I was an OT, I got to my day, My day of drawing my line in the sand was when my husband and I decided that we were going to move to Las Vegas. And I knew that in order to continue practicing as an OT in Las Vegas, that I was going to have to go through the state and I was going to have to, you know, pay for a licensure there.

And I was going to have to learn the area and I, you know, there was just going to be all of these steps. And for the first time, I thought, what if I just didn't even allow myself an exit plan. What if I didn't allow myself a plan B? Because I knew I couldn't work as an OT unless I did all of those things. And I just took it off the table, even though that was hard. And I chose the hard of believing in myself. And it did not come without challenges. And it did not come without getting down to the wire and feeling flames up under my bum to get myself in the place that I am in now. But man, was it worth every single thing that being an OT just at one point became harder than any risks that entrepreneurship could bring.

And the same is true for you in your career. When you're in your career, if once you've had enough, you've had enough. And eventually you will hit that day where you draw your line in the sand and you go, you know what? Even though I don't know if the next job is going to have better benefits, better pay, the same flexibility, if I'm going to like the people, it's harder to stay at this job that I'm not satisfied with knowing life is short compared to the risk or for the stay at home mom. You know, at one point it might become much harder for her to stay at home if she's like, I need fulfillment and purpose. In addition to my children, I need like some sort of career focus purpose. And when it gets hard enough to stay at home without it, then she will flip the switch and she will go out into the world and find what that fulfillment is for her.

We're always choosing a hard. It's just which one are we choosing for now? And again, we choose the one currently that is just a little bit easier, just a hair easier until one day we can't and we're willing to risk it all for the other hard. And a lot of times to get to that place, if you were someone listening right now and you're like, man, I really wish that I was at a place where I was ready for the alternative because I am actually very miserable with where I am. A lot of this comes back to self worth work. You really have to believe in yourself. You have to trust yourself. And a part of believing in yourself and believing you're worthy of those things that you want in your life, the things you want to accomplish, the things that you want to do, the things you want to have, who you want to be, to get there, you have to have the emotional ⁓ the mindset skills to do it.

And emotional intelligence is a huge piece of our own self-worth. So before we've built up our self-worth, it's really hard to draw that line in the sand and choose something different because when you choose the other thing, you have to be willing to catch yourself in the fall. And in the beginning, a lot of times it does feel like a fall. When you've been on a familiar path for a very long time, whether that is with your romantic partner, a certain career, certain routines, certain expectations, certain schedules, no matter what it is. When you've been used to a certain path, anytime you change course, it's going to feel like a fall in the beginning because it's unfamiliarity. It's exactly what your brain fights so hard against.

Your brain likes autopilot. Your brain loves things to be predictable. So as soon as you put your brain in a situation of unpredictability, you have to be able to trust yourself. You have to believe in your worthiness. have to be able to show up for yourself and emotionally regulate your entire emotional well-being and your nervous system in order to make it through that change. And that is what coaching will help with. So women come to me and they'll say that they're ready, but I know they're not actually ready, ready where they would have already chosen the other hard. So my job as a coach is to figure out what's keeping them from choosing the hard that they're telling me that they want. and then building the EQ skills, the mindset skills, the self-worth skills to make sure that when they make that decision, if they actually do, that they can fully trust themselves, that they fully believe in themselves to land and to catch themselves at the same time and to navigate whatever challenges arise.

There's so many pieces to it. So if you're in that situation where you're ready to choose a different hard or you can clearly see I'm up against one hard versus another. And I really can't even imagine getting to the other, but my God, my life would be just so awesome if I was able to do that for myself. Then reach out for a 60 minute free consult. Let's talk about if coaching is something that could really help you. And if we're jiving and if there's some sort of program or opportunity to work with me, that really feels good to you. because I've walked a lot of women through choosing their hard and I know that I can help you do that as well. And in the meantime, don't forget that this week, if you're listening to this episode right now, go to the show notes in the bio of this podcast episode and click the link to join the freebie, the self worth masterclass.

It's happening Wednesday and Thursday, 8pm Eastern standard time on zoom. You will get a downloadable workbook via email. So just make sure you check junk and spam and all of that good stuff. to make sure you don't miss it. I'm gonna be sending out the first ⁓ workbook link on Monday. So if you happen to sign up Tuesday or you even happen to sign up Wednesday a couple hours before we're getting ready to get started, just make sure you're checking your emails so that you get the workbook. And there's going to be hands-on activities with this. Like it's going to be really, really great if you have ever struggled with your self-worth. And especially if this episode today, hits home in some way.

Sign up for the freebie. I don't do freebies often, but I love doing them and I love being able to coach you for free. then if for some reason you love your experience and you decide you want to keep going, then we can talk about what that looks like. You can do a 60 minute free consult and we can go from there. So anyways, my I hope you all have a wonderful week. I hope you had a great Easter if you celebrate and I will see you next week.