In a world that glorifies visibility, productivity, and constant sharing, what does it mean to rest…not just physically, but spiritually? In this episode, Betsy explores the radical act of reclaiming your privacy and stepping out of the performance of being “seen.” This is about choosing peace over proving, stillness over striving, and alignment over approval. You’ll learn how to recognize the subtle ways you’ve outsourced your worth to validation, how to create sacred boundaries around your energy, and how rest becomes a reclamation of self-trust. Betsy shares her own reflections on quieting the noise, finding comfort in solitude, and remembering that your life belongs to you—not to the algorithm, the audience, or anyone else’s expectations.

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Transcript:

Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big.

Hello, everyone. Hi. Welcome to the show today. I took out my Invisalign. I took out my Invisalign to be able to talk to you. I am almost done, you guys., I’m like three weeks out from getting these brackets off my teeth and getting to be done with Invisalign. , But it, it does make me sound a little lispy, so I am.

I’m proud of myself for remembering to take them out before I’m like halfway through this recording. So I’m excited that you’re here with me today, Invisalign free. I wanted to talk to you about something today and it’s been something I have been thinking about and I was really trying to think about like, [00:01:00] how do I explain this in a way that makes sense , and I’m gonna just be really honest.

It doesn’t make me, . I don’t wanna seem like there’s more self-importance in this topic than there needs to be. ’cause that’s not my intention. But I think the gist of it, you’re gonna get, because I think this is a universal, although the experience may be a smaller segment of the population that has experienced this, I think , the intent of it is something that’s universal.

Let me explain what it is that, I mean, so really what I wanna talk about , in the essence is about, is about rest and privacy and visibility. , And I think that I wanna talk about social media a little bit. I think that right now there’s so many things happening on social media and I think it can be so depleting.[00:02:00] 

I wanna talk about what happens when you are really seen on something like social media. You know, a few years ago I had a post that went viral. It, was a series of posts really. I had, I mean, a lot of posts over a million views, but I had one post in particular that I would say went mega viral. That’s how I would describe it.

Now, even as I say this, I’m like, you may have had a post that went more mega viral. , You may know people that have had way more mega viral posts than me, but I had, a, a lot of posts that were over a million views. And then I had one in particular that was 9 million, 8.9 million, so almost 9 million.

And it wasn’t something that I expected. It happened really fast when I started posting about the Navigate method and about women being unhappy in their [00:03:00] marriage and just trying so hard to make things happen. So I knew that it would resonate. I figured, I hoped that it would resonate. I didn’t expect it to resonate in the way that it did, and I didn’t expect the viralness and I, I didn’t try to to make that happen.

It just sort of caught fire. And in that one post I got, I think it was close to like 19,000 new followers essentially overnight. And I remember this really strange mix of emotions about it, like excitement. It was exciting. I remember one of the very first posts that I posted on this subject and it, I remember it was like at eight.

Thousand views and 9,000 views and 12,000 views. I remember it got to 13,000 views and I messaged with one of my friends and I was like, oh my God. This is [00:04:00] crazy. , It just keeps going and it’s wild. Now. That was just about two years ago. I get 13,000 views regularly in a day, so that doesn’t even phase me.

But I remember at the time having that creep up , , and feeling like excited and gratitude , , and if I’m being really honest, I think a level of overwhelm that I didn’t really know how to name at that point. It was. Beautiful and dizzying all at the same time. I was so, so happy with that. My message resonated, although simultaneously sad that it resonated because it was really about people being frustrated, extremely frustrated in their marriage and at their wits end.

But I was grateful that I helped people feel seen through that, you know. But what happened from there, I think was really something that I didn’t anticipate. And when that many people [00:05:00] suddenly have opinions about what you say and who they think you are, you know, it starts to change how you think. I started wondering what people might expect of me.

I felt like I had to keep showing up and explaining myself, and I felt like there was a lot of people in my real life who were unhappy or didn’t understand, but didn’t try to either, and I was living in this space , it was. It was kind of like being waterboarded by eyeballs as you, I mean, that’s the only way I can describe it.

So it was connection. Totally. And I felt seen because I was posting something real to me at the time, but it also had a underlying feeling of pressure. Right. You know, at first one hand it feels like a dream. I wanted my message to be seen. I wanted my message to reach people. [00:06:00] I loved the conversations that were happening.

It felt like real impact. And I had been in my business for a long, long, long, long time, like a decade, more than a decade before this post. So it felt like, oh, I’m, the hard work and the hard and the good work that we do is finally getting access to have a real impact. And over time I started. To realize how easy it was to kind of get caught in the performance of being helpful, you know, and to start creating from an expectation of, I’ve gotta have another big post instead of just from my intuition.

You know, during that time where things were really getting hectic , and people were really seeing my posts, it was a good like 10 months probably, where this was like ramping up sort of, I guess you could say. And I noticed , I would wake up sometime in the [00:07:00] middle of the night just to check messages.

It got, my nervous system was really activated from it. I checked notifications before I checked in with myself, and sometimes I would rewrite posts and I would think about all the different ways people could take this the wrong way and then try to rewrite so that it would land perfectly right? And little by little I started to lose track of what was mine and what was sacred and private and what had become part of this.

Exposure or this show. And it’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just what happens when you have like a piece of your life that becomes visible, right? So maybe you haven’t gone viral online, but maybe you know this feeling right? It’s this feeling of being needed everywhere by everyone all the time. It’s the same energy.

So you give and you give and you give until you [00:08:00] don’t know how to stop. Then, you know, for me, I was posting all this stuff. I mean, a year goes by, right? I had my own life that shifted. I went through my own divorce. So, you know, as divorce is like a, a really, really hard thing combined with a ton of relief, you know, and honestly, this changed me in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.

It gave me access to healing that I didn’t even know that I needed. And over the past year. I have learned and grown and become quite a different person than I was when I posted those very first viral posts several years ago. You know, this last season, my daughter has been struggling with her mental health, and if you’ve been here for , a long while, you know we’ve talked about this.

She and I have talked about it on the show. She’s an adult. [00:09:00] This particular season has been a long, ongoing season, and I have been helping her and fighting through this. Well, we try to hold other things together and that has also changed me, and what I realized was that. I started caring less about being understood and more about being grounded, less about how something looked and more about how something felt.

I didn’t wanna keep explaining my life to strangers online. I wanted to live it quietly. For me and for people who really know me. And there’s something really humbling about that. You know, when life hits you really hard and you stop caring about optics, and you start caring, , caring about energy, about peace and the things that actually sustain you.

So here’s what I wanted to bring to you because for sure you’ve had these seasons too. [00:10:00] And what I found myself asking is what’s actually important. Where does my energy go? Who actually gets access to me? And I realized that I’ve been pouring from an empty cup, you know, for a long time as we do as women.

Like my story isn’t unique , and it’s, it’s manageable, right? And I think that’s what happens is it’s manageable, so you just keep going. But we can’t keep pouring from an empty cup. And when you’ve built a rhythm around being productive or being available, slowing down feels a little bit like betrayal and you probably know that too, right?

You’re juggling work, you’re drug juggling, family, emotions, responsibilities, right? And it all feels like if you stop, everything’s just gonna fall apart. So you keep on running, right? Even though you’re tired. Even though you’re exhausted and you tell yourself, [00:11:00] I’m gonna rest later, like this weekend, maybe I’ll have a chance to slow down.

But then that never really happens, right? Because somebody needs you or something happens, and underneath it all is this quiet question that’s asking you, how long can you really keep this up? So for me, somewhere along the line I realized I didn’t want to disappear. Like I don’t want to just opt out and run away, but I do want to be intentional about living differently.

I wanna stay connected to my purpose. The work we do at the Navigate Method is so impactful and I see so many women. Say to me like, my life is different than I ever would. And , I will tell you that is the, that brings me more joy than I could possibly even tell you here. Like just, , it’s the greatest thing.

It, the navigate method [00:12:00] comes from years and years of, my own healing and work. And so to see , that was. Something that created change, not only for myself, but somebody else is really fulfilling. So it’s great, and I wanted to stay connected to that, but I also wanted to have a level of peace, and so little by little I was pulling back, not disappearing, but just being way more intentional and taking time to listen instead of perform and to rest instead of explain.

I used to think that my success was all about reach, like how many people heard my message, and now I think it’s about depth. It’s about how true can I be in what I share. Even if fewer people see it, I still wanna help people. I still wanna speak truth, but I wanna do it in a way that’s authentic and [00:13:00] sustainable, where I’m allowed to grow and change and to make different decisions, right?

Because we are multifaceted people, we have angles and layers and seasons, and we all evolve, like we should all be allowed to evolve. So if you’re listening to this, maybe you are in your own redefinition right now, so maybe the life that you have built doesn’t quite fit anymore. Maybe the goals that you once felt really motivated by just don’t even feel aligned anymore, and that can feel really disorienting.

And I also think it’s a really powerful piece of evolution. When I first stumbled upon this feeling and had to get true with myself, there was a feeling of being crushed. Like everything that I thought isn’t what I thought, but now I realize it’s actually an opening. It’s actually better. And I [00:14:00] started asking myself this question, and it might be worth asking yourself too, but it is, what is it that you truly want right now?

And I’m gonna explain a little more about this because I, I don’t want you to ask yourself like what you’re supposed to want, not what once made sense, but in this season right now, what matters in the navigate method? Lots of times I’ll tell women, put your hand on your heart and just say, if, if nobody got hurt and money didn’t matter, what would I choose right now?

About any decision you could do this with any decision, try it. Put your hand on your heart. If nobody got hurt and money didn’t matter, what would I choose? And when you strip away the audience and the approval and the pressure, what’s left is your truth, and that’s your compass. So what do I want right now?

Maybe it’s [00:15:00] not to be seen by 9 million people, but it is to be known. Not to be everywhere, but to be home. And for me, that means peace. It means being present with my daughter. It means work that feels honest. It means having a smaller circle, but a deeper one. It means knowing where I have the bandwidth and where I don’t, and being able to say no and surrounding myself with people who honor that.

It means quiet mornings, giving myself extra time, going for walks. Having deep conversations that don’t have to go anywhere. So success for me, how I’m defining it, is aliveness. I feel an expansion in my chest, and that’s how I know that I’m there. It’s not a rush from eyeballs or attention, but it’s the calm of alignment.

[00:16:00] Maybe this is where you are too, right? Maybe you have given so much of yourself that you feel depleted, you can’t stop, but you don’t wanna keep going like this either. And so I wanna just offer you an invitation to pause. We don’t have to exit our lives. A girlfriend reached out to me from home and said, how are you doing?

Can I do anything for you? Just knowing what a hard season I was in and I said, can you help me fake my death and we can move to the beach? And she said, I’m sure there’s a way to do that. And when she said that, it almost was like the permission and it made me realize that’s not really what I want. But I do want to check in.

I do want to pause. I wanna ask myself, where does this end? And so I wanna ask [00:17:00] you, maybe more importantly, where could it begin again, but differently. Slowing down or stopping doesn’t mean you failed. It means you’re listening. It means you’re evolving. It means you’re making room for what’s next. You’re allowed to change your mind.

You’re allowed to want peace to want less noise. You’re allowed to build a life that fits the person you’ve really become. When I think now about the things that I post online, if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll notice the post might feel a little different. I’m really leaning into what feels good to post, like what’s authentic.

And if you notice in my stories, I’ll post my outfit with my good things. That’s like one of my most favorite things to do. It gives me that feeling of expansion in my chest and I get so many messages about it. And so I know when we are in alignment, that’s what reaches people. [00:18:00] That’s what was reaching people.

Several years ago when I finally was posting my truth on online, I used to think that my power lived in how people saw me. But now I know in a visceral way that my power lives in how deeply I see myself. And so if you’re tired of performing or explaining or keeping everything afloat, I wanna give you a permission slip just to rest, to be private, to let life belong to you.

Again, you don’t owe the world constantly. Any part of you, you owe yourself. Your own presence to take a deep breath and to exhale and to be home. And I think when you can do that, that is how you live a big life. Thank you so much for being here with me. [00:19:00] I love you so much. If you know somebody that needs a permission slip to rest that has been doing everything and juggling all the things, has too many balls in the air and they just want a moment.

To decompress. Send them, send them this episode. It is your permission slip, permission slip to finally settle and to rest. All right, my cat is calling. I’ll see you guys next week. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger.Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at betsy pa and on my YouTube channel. Remember, the world is vast. Your potential is endless, and your life, it’s yours to shape. Until next time, keep [00:20:00] reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.