On todays episode Betsy talks about a big idea that could radically change the way you view everything in your life. Listen in and learn more about creating opportunities and miracles around every corner.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, 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, fellow Adventure.

Hi everyone. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. I have a couple thoughts. Well, I have a couple things I wanna tell you before we start and then I have some thoughts, things for you to think about as you kind of go throughout your week. So before I forget, did you know if, if you follow me on Instagram, then you know, but did you know that I started.

YouTube, I’ve had this YouTube channel. I, I’ll say that I’ve had a YouTube channel and what I’ve done historically, like years ago I used to do Facebook Lives and then I would put the Facebook Lives on the YouTube channel. So there was never any intention with it. It, [00:01:00] you know, there was never any. Real plan for a long time.

We had the podcasts automatically put out anyway. I just was like, I wanna do something on YouTube that feels more intentional and more meaningful. And so one of the things that I felt was a little bit of a missing link and also something that I really wanted to share was what’s happening inside the Navigate method.

You know, many of you are probably listening to me ’cause you found me on Instagram or you found the Navigate method and you hear me talk about all the things that I think about relationships and, and women and how we show up and how we’ve been encouraged to show up throughout our lives. And a shift, a really big shift that I think is happening right now in the world.

But. I never really talk about what’s going on behind the scenes, like what actually happens inside the Navigate method. Now, of course, I’m not gonna [00:02:00] talk about people’s individual stories of what happens, but there’s typically a theme or a thread. It’s so funny because we’ll do groups. We have a part of the program, it’s a, it’s a multifaceted program.

There’s a lot going on, but with the groups we meet every week. And there’s always a theme, like one person will say something and then somebody else will be like, oh my God, I wanted to bring that in. And someone else. And someone else. And we kind of joke that everybody’s married to the same person. Like how are we all having the same exact experiences?

Everyone in the group, so. With that, I really wanted to create a place where I could talk about some of those threads and be able to give you a little bit of insight as to what’s shifting for people and, and what happens and a new way to think about things. And so I decided that I was gonna do the podcast.

As you know, if you’ve been here for a while, I did the podcast every week for years and years and years now I do it every other week. And [00:03:00] now on those weeks we don’t have the podcast. There is the Navigate Chronicles, which is my YouTube show

so it’s like on the off week. So if you like this, you can get this kind of thing over there. I have it linked everywhere. If you follow me on Instagram, just go to my bio and click on the link. I send out an email with it every other week. If you’re on my email list, you’ll get that. But subscribe, it will alert you.

I suppose you could even go to YouTube and just put in my name and it would probably pop up with my channel. So I wanted to remind you of that and let you know about the YouTube channel.

I sent out an email this past week when the episode went live, which was like the first real episode. And. It was so hard to do. You know, I started doing the podcast every other week, several months ago with the intention of doing the YouTube, and I had a, well, first of all, I had a lot of technical difficulties.

This is gonna lead into what we’re gonna talk about, but I had a lot of technical difficulties, [00:04:00] like weird things where I was like, why is the universe trying to stop me or slow me down? And. E eventually, you know, I, I recorded, I mean I think it was like six times there. Either, either was an audio or the video screwed up, or, I mean, there was something always.

And so finally I got it locked in. We got the episode out. So it’s not the greatest in the world, but I’m doing it and it’ll get better and better. And just like when I listened to my old podcasts from years ago and die of cringey. However, I sound, you know, I’ll continue to get better and how cool that we can be beginners.

So join me over there. That’ll make me feel better if you come, if you come and visit. And then I also wanted to tell you a little update on my cat. So if you were here a couple episodes ago, I talked about how I got this cat, and if you haven’t listened to that episode, I, I, it’s, [00:05:00] it’s, it’s a, it may be an entertaining story for you, but I ended up, they gave me the wrong cat, so I had this strange cat under my bed for a day until I could get the cat that I had actually adopted.

I just wanna give you an update that I have not been a a cat person my whole life. Like I’ve always historically had dogs, you know, my daughter had a cat, but. It was her cat. I it, it has been a new adventure and it’s been an adventure getting used to not having something totally obsessed with you. Like dogs are right, but it’s also a lot less work.

So I feel like the trade off there is really good.

So, all right. So I wanted to talk with you today. I have, this will be a little bit of a shorter episode, but I wanted to talk with you about this idea that things are gonna go differently than you want them to, and when they [00:06:00] do, how do you deal with it? So when things don’t go the way you want, what do you do?

How do you respond? What’s your reaction? What is it that you are thinking now if you are new here? I wanna kind of give a frame around this conversation. So when we experience our world, it really is our world. It’s not the world, it’s our world. And what I mean by that is everybody is experiencing something just a little bit different.

It may be a lot different. It may be a little bit different, but it all depends on what your brain thinks. Is really important. And so your brain, your unconscious mind is scanning constantly for information that it is taking in from your nervous system. And it is putting that through a set of filters.

And the filters are gonna be things like what you believe and it’s really like what your [00:07:00] parents taught you was true, right? What, what your values are. Also what your deepest identity is, what you think about yourself and who you are. And so all of these things kind of come together and they create a filter and so your reality is yours.

This is how come inside the Navigate method, we talk a lot about understanding our own reality and. How to understand our partner’s reality so that we can find that overlap, right? We can find that consistency and we can talk in ways that help each other actually understand what kind of reality we’re trying to communicate about.

Right? So this is not a small thing. This is a huge thing, and I think when people get this wrong, it leads to a lot of suffering. So. We have our own reality, and that is giving us our version of the world and how we see it. And this is how come, you know, we have people that you’re [00:08:00] like, how? How do they not see that this is wrong?

Right? Something happens in the world and you’re like, how do people think that’s okay? That’s not okay. It’s because it’s your reality. Their reality is different. Now, I’m gonna take a wild leap that’s going to make you unhappy, but I want to just say it for the. The fact of this conversation. Okay, what if there’s no right or wrong, but there just is.

Now right off you may think like, I know there’s things happening in the world right now that are wrong. I will agree with you because we probably have a similar frame. Okay? Our reality probably overlaps, but the truth is that it’s not the thing that’s wrong. It’s that. Our thinking about it is what makes it wrong.

I’m gonna give you a totally different example, so just hang with me. There was a interview that I saw years ago. [00:09:00] With Dr. Wayne Dyer and he talked about how he was doing a speech. If you’re inside the Navigate method, you’ve heard me say this, but he was doing a speech on nine 11, right on the actual nine 11 and on the days that he would give a speech, he wouldn’t watch the news.

That was part of his locking in and you know, keeping out any. Outside noise. He wouldn’t watch any media. He would just get in a really good feeling place, show up and do his speech. And when he got there at the event to do the speech, he’s like, everybody was so upset, he couldn’t figure out what was going on.

And then somebody told him backstage, it’s, this thing happened. This is what happened. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. We can all agree. It’s terrible. Right? But what Dr. Dyer said was. I didn’t know about it, and so I didn’t feel bad. So it’s not that it was terrible, it’s that my processing of it is what made it [00:10:00] terrible.

It’s my view, my lens, and I’m looking at it and that’s what’s making it terrible. He was like, I didn’t have a terrible morning. I wasn’t worried. I didn’t know anything was wrong. Then when I found out what was wrong. Is when I felt bad because then I placed all this meaning on it. Right? And I think that that’s a, it, it, that can be a hard concept, right?

’cause you’re like, some things are just wrong. And, and I get it and I want for this conversation just to open up to say maybe life is neutral and what makes things right or wrong is our view of it. Okay? So life is happening. So with all of that said. What do we do when things don’t work out the way that we want?

And one of the things that I think is really important is to understand anytime something doesn’t go the way you, you like or you want, is to [00:11:00] recognize that the reason that you wanted it to go a certain way is because you thought that was gonna make you happy. You thought, if this thing works out, if this marriage works out, if this job interview works out, if this conversation with my kid works out, if I pick up the, the great coffee, like this is gonna make me happy, and then I get home and I brew the coffee and it’s crappy, then I’m really disappointed.

Right? Then I’m like, this didn’t work. This is bad. We label it right? So. In our world, and it’s really normal, but we begin to label things good or bad. It goes in one of those buckets and typically the good bucket is gonna be the thing that you think is gonna make you happy. So when it doesn’t happen, then you’re left with a whole bunch of stuff going on.

And that’s really what I want to talk about is all this stuff that’s going on. I [00:12:00] have a belief and you can believe differently, but I wanna share my belief, and this is how come when I start the podcast so many times, I say, welcome fellow adventurers. So I have a belief that we are spiritual beings. We have come here into this physical experience to experience life.

To experience the highs and the lows, to have a really wide range of all of the emotions. I think one of the saddest things that happens is when people really limit their emotions, right? They have something traumatic happen and then they go, I never wanna feel that again. And so I’m gonna really limit and bring things in and I’m never gonna get disappointed ’cause I’m never gonna get excited and I’m just gonna live in this kind of meh.

And then they get older and I think they get sick of meh. And they wanna live, you know? And so when I say fellow adventurers, that’s what I mean. We’re here having this adventure. And [00:13:00] if that’s true, then shouldn’t we feel all the things? Shouldn’t it be okay to feel something really bad or something really disappointing, or something really great, or something that’s a lot of love or something that is going a different way than you wanted?

So I have this belief that we came here to have all these emotions and that this is just an adventure. And so I wanna offer you the thought that if things don’t go the way you want, then maybe it’s opening you up for a different adventure. Maybe it is a way for you to experience an up or a down that you didn’t expect, and it might not be a down.

It may be things don’t go your way, and then you have this amazing thing that happens and then all of a sudden you get this experience that you never even dreamed of. I think that we limit ourselves so much in terms of [00:14:00] experiences and miracles and amazing things that can happen because we try and reign in our emotion because we don’t wanna feel something uncomfortable.

So what do you do when things don’t go the way you want? Do you constrict? Do you push against it? Is it the kind of thing where you’re like, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want this to happen. Or can you start to train yourself to relax into it? That your thought process could be, well, this adventure I didn’t expect.

I wonder what could happen from here. Do you see how that can shift so many things? Not only because of what I said at the very beginning, that your experience, it’s your reality and your brain is funneling through information and showing you things that it thinks is important. And if you are allowing [00:15:00] instead of constricting.

Your unconscious mind is gonna show you way more opportunity. It’s gonna show you way more options, way more excitement, way more ups and downs, all of it. But we’re here to have that experience. And so maybe when we constrict, when we go, oh, this isn’t going the way I want now. I’m not going to be happy.

Maybe that’s not true. So maybe everything that you’ve thought about, things going right or wrong, good or bad, maybe it’s not even true. And if you can open up yourself to the possibility that it’s not even true, then you can start to imagine what could be instead. How does it get better than what I had?

I think we have this idea that when we don’t get what we want, it’s going wrong, right? We’re not getting what we want. And so that is wrong, that’s bad. [00:16:00] That’s now heading down a path I don’t want. But what if that’s totally false? What if you don’t get what you want? It’s because you’re going on adventure or a path that’s even better. So when you can accept what is a couple things happen. You limit your suffering. You know, we get this idea, I want this thing now I’m not gonna have it. Oh no, now I’m sad and I’m creating my own suffering, right? Because think about what Dr. Dyer said. Nine 11 happened, but I wasn’t upset because I didn’t know so, so.

I can open up to what could be. I’m not suffering anymore. I’m not creating my own suffering. Now I’m on an adventure. And now I can say, well, I wonder what it will bring from here when we can do this. I think we really [00:17:00] start living way more in the flow. I think we become overall a lot happier, right? A lot more what some people may say aligned, right?

’cause we’re not. So constricted. We’re not so stressed. We probably don’t feel as much tension in our body. Our nervous systems aren’t as activated or alert when we can, and this is simply a thought process. So I, I want you to recognize that that may have felt like a huge jump. Like if something goes wrong, I, I’m not gonna be all of a sudden like in the flow and being like, oh, great, I’m done.

This is, I’m down for whatever happens like, and. That really can happen quickly. We have been told this, what I believe is a lie, that change has to take a long time. Right? We, we have to. Work at things for a long time. We have to struggle and and really figure things out. My point is that change happens. When your thoughts [00:18:00] begin to shift, when you can see a totally new way of doing things, and that comes from a lot of different ways of thinking being introduced, right? That comes from listening to podcasts like this or other ones that you probably love, like that change in that shift.

Doesn’t have to take you 10 years to be like, oh my gosh. I have always been really worried when things didn’t work out the way I wanted. And I’ve been in a lot of suffering and I’ve been worried about things and thinking about things and like worrying things were gonna go wrong and, and, and wouldn’t it take a long time to undo that?

Okay. So now you’ve, you kind of got your mind around that, but now you’re thinking. What about really bad things though, Betsy? Because bad things happen. You know, my kid gets sick. My, my best friend dies. Like my, like bad things do happen and I’m gonna label ’em as [00:19:00] bad, bad things can happen. You know, when I was in high school, my, my mom died in a car accident when I was at school one day, it would I change that?

Like, would I love to have my mom around? Heck yeah. I never got to text her. We didn’t even have cell phones then. You know, like I, I’ve wonder about all these things. She didn’t go to my high school graduation, my college graduation. Like I didn’t get to experience so many things. My first apartment, buying my first house, I mean, a million things bad.

Right, right. Sure. And it also led to some of the. Purpose in my life, some of the greatest things that have happened to me happened to me because my mind was shifted by that experience because I chose to grow. Right. And you’ve had things like this too, where you’ve chose to grow when things have gone, air quotes bad, so Absolutely.

Would my life be totally [00:20:00] different? My life would absolutely be totally different. You wouldn’t be listening to this for sure. Right. If my mom had. Not died that day. Absolutely. But I don’t label it as bad. It’s, it is, and I suffered a long time, but I don’t suffer about it anymore. It’s, I’ve really changed the way that I think about it now.

Did my suffering go away? Did my suffering evaporate? Did my, does it mean my suffering never needed to exist? No. I think we have processes. We’re humans. But remember, I believe we came here to have this experience, this adventure, and so I want to have all the emotion. I wanna deeply grieve my mom. When my dog died four years ago, deeply grieved.

I wanted to, I wanted to feel how bad that was because that. Showed me how much love there was. There wasn’t a good or a bad. The [00:21:00] grief wasn’t labeled as bad to me. Now, I don’t have this all figured out. I’m not trying to sound like I have everything figured out, but I do think that maybe there’s a thought here that will click something in you, right?

Maybe you’ve been. Partway here or had thoughts about this, about what do you do when things don’t go the way that you want? And maybe this will give you another way to see things to say maybe. I get to have all the emotion. All of that is totally normal. Please don’t think you need to have no emotion. I, I like having all the emotion.

That’s part of the, this whole experience having tears and having joy and laughing. All of that is part of it. But when you accept what is, is the only way that you can grieve what isn’t right, that you can decide that you’re gonna lean in to What else could be possible from here?[00:22:00]

You know, I have a really cool relationship with my mom. Now, she’s not in the physical, but I don’t believe that she’s very far away. I got to create a new relationship with her in a different way. Do I miss her physical form? Yeah, absolutely. But I got to create something new. Something else came from that that I never would have had or I would’ve had when I was much older.

So when we grip really tight, we stop the flow and the dance of what we’re here to do and experience. So if you start to think of instead of disappointment. There can be discovery, right? What else is here for me? Instead of attachment, it’s gotta go the way I want it to go. It can be flow. You get to pick, and that’s really what I wanna say.

Life isn’t about controlling everything that’s in your path. It doesn’t work that way. I wish it did. I would [00:23:00] map it all out. You know? I would be so organized. I would have a whole map of how this was all gonna go, but that’s just not real life. And so expanding your capacity to move with life’s current events, that is really what shifts you into a place where you can feel aligned and you can feel like that is how you live a big life.

So I hope this gives you a little bit of a different way to look at maybe some of the challenges that you have going on in your life right now. Maybe where you’re constricting instead of flowing, and maybe reframe what it is that you do when things don’t go the way that you want. All right. Thanks so much for being here with me this week.

I will see you next week on YouTube. Then I’ll see you back here on the podcast the following week. Thanks so much for being here. I love you so much. I’ll see you guys next week. Thanks for joining me on The Art of [00:24:00] 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 Pay 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 reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.

Today Betsy tells a story about her new cat… and how she had to lean into hope. You’ve had times when you had to choose hope too. Listen in as Betsy shares more about how hope may be influencing your life too.

Transcription:

In todays episode, Betsy shares insight on how to navigate your desires when you aren’t aware they exist! What DO you want after so many years of taking care of what everyone else needed?
She examines why this is such important work for you to do, why it happens the way it does and gives you two great tips to start to open up to thinking a new way.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, 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. Hello everyone. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. I’m excited that you’re here today. I wanna talk about something. Well, I have a little story to tell you and then I wanna talk about something that people ask me a lot and it’s something that I have given a lot of thought to because it is a really, really good question.

So here’s the question people ask me. How do I know what I want? And I don’t think they’re asking me this about marriage necessarily, although that is what people come to me for, right? To figure [00:01:00] out what they want in their relationship. But I think when people message me this, they’re talking about it in general.

I had someone recently that reached out and said, I listened to your podcast and you talk a lot about goals, but I don’t even know what I want. So I think this is such a great topic. And I have , a couple things that you can do, but I also wanna talk to you about why I think you don’t know. Recently I moved into , a new place and you may have heard me talk about this.

I sold my house last year. It closed right after the new year, and I moved into a new place and I decided I was gonna live here for a year. Before I got a pet, I have historically always had a pet, if you’ve been here for a long time, you know, my sweet dog Miley died like four years ago in April.

And I was devastated, like devastated for a long time. And I’ve always had pets and, and we had Henry, you know, [00:02:00] if you’ve been here for a while, you’re familiar with Henry, which is Craig’s dog. And when I moved into this apartment, I was like, I am going to. I am going to give myself a break from having to take care of something.

I wanna be able to get up and go if I wanna go, and I don’t wanna have to worry about getting a pet sitter or, you know, worry about any of that stuff. And that was great. You know, I went to The Bahamas a couple weeks ago. I took off and left. And the truth is, I mean, my truth is that I miss having something around like I miss.

Talking to something I miss, having something to snuggle with, you know? And my truth is also that I don’t want to have to take care of something to the effect of a dog where I would have to walk it every morning and walk it every evening and. Walk it all during the day. Right. Like I, I, I didn’t want that level.

When I was growing up, and you guys were probably [00:03:00] like this too, right? I grew up, I mean, I was born in the seventies, but I think of myself as growing up in the eighties. We always had so many pets. When I was growing up, we had fish and gerbils and Guinea pigs and cats and dogs. Like we had all of it.

So over the last couple months, I have really given it some thought, like what? Would be enough, almost like the, the lowest effective dose of, of animal that I could still have some freedom and, and be able to have something around and something to take care of. So. I finally decided and landed on a cat. A cat would feel fun.

They’re independent enough. I could leave it alone overnight. You know, my daughter lives really close. I mean, walking distance, and she could take care of the cat and it wouldn’t be a lot of work. It wouldn’t be like walking the dog, right? And so I thought, I’m gonna get a cat. And I started looking online.

Now, the reason I’m telling you this story is [00:04:00] because I felt myself. Think I should check, I should check in with my sister and see what she thinks. I should check in with my dad and, and see what his thoughts are. I didn’t take action on those, but I thought those things, like how would this be perceived?

Would this be seen as irresponsible? I, I’m, I’m almost 54 years old, like I’m about, it’s not irresponsible for me to get a cat. From the pound, you know? But I found myself pushing it through those filters. And here’s the thing, when we are trying to determine what it is we want, or make a decision on what it is we want, if we have spent a lifetime pushing it through a filter of what everybody else wants, then that is gonna be our default nature.

It’s gonna feel, it’s gonna be what [00:05:00] feels really normal. It’s gonna be what feels right. The problem with that is that if you do that all the time and you get used to doing that, and your nervous system gets used to doing that, then what happens is that now you don’t connect to what it is you want from the get.

You are immediately putting it through a filter of how it would be perceived. And I don’t think this is like, well, what will people think of me? Will I be judged? I don’t think it’s that at all. I think it’s that we get to a place where we have put it through this filter so much that we think that’s how we make decisions.

And so then when we think, what is it that I want? We’re like, I don’t know, because I don’t have anybody to put something through a filter of, right? I don’t have the thing to say, is this okay? What about this? And if we don’t have the thing to say, [00:06:00] those filters don’t work for us. Here’s the thing. I think it’s so, so, so normal to have the filters.

I think it’s normal to. Want people around us to approve or even to give us feedback. Like, is there something I’m missing? Is there something that I’m not thinking of that I should be aware of? Like, all of that I think is so normal and really good. And like I said, I’m 53, so I was born in 71. I believe that there’s this, I wanna say this generation, but I believe it could happen for young women right now too. I, I don’t believe it’s to the extent that it was for my generation, which is the idea of checking for everything.

When we’re really young, we have to be putting things through a filter of like what our parents approve or not like, what our parents [00:07:00] like this, um, what would, you know, our teachers say, all of that is necessary for our, our growth and for us to make and learn how to make wise choices. I mean, as long as your parents are making wise choices right?

And guiding you through that. But I think that for my generation, and I’m open to being wrong here. But I think for me and my friends, there was this feeling of if that doesn’t work for other people, you probably shouldn’t do it. Like if that is something that would make other people have to do something different or bend in a different way or put anybody else out, then maybe you need to rethink that and that when we look at the hierarchy of our.

Choices and the things that are, I’m using air quotes like right. For us, the hierarchy doesn’t start with us. [00:08:00] It starts with our, our partner. It starts with our kids, it starts with our parents or whatever. Like I said, I don’t think that’s inherently wrong. I think when that is the default, and that’s how it happens all the time.

That tends to give you an outcome that pulls you away from what it is you really want, and then all of a sudden you’re in your fifties and your kids are grown and your relationship kind of sucks. And then you’re like, I don’t even know what I want. And now I’m trying to make really big, huge life decisions for myself, but I don’t have a really.

A really crystal clear compass or way to do this internally, and I think that’s where we start going sideways. I think that’s where it becomes really overwhelming. And what happens when we get really overwhelmed, our nervous system puts us into a state of fight or flight or freeze, where we just don’t make decisions.

It doesn’t [00:09:00] matter if we’re unhappy. I think that’s an important piece of this to understand. It does not matter if you like it. It doesn’t matter if you’re super unhappy. It doesn’t matter if you’re like the most unhappy you’ve ever been to the point where your doctor’s like maybe you should look at antidepressants.

It it, none of that matters to your brain if what is normal for your brain and safe. For your brain is that you push everything through a filter of what everybody else would want or think or desire or like all of those things, right? So now you’re in a place where you’re like, I, I’m, I’m 54 years old and I unhappy and I don’t know how to make change and I’m wondering if maybe I’m depressed and I don’t know what to do from here.

Now I. I think there are ways, I know there are ways to start to unwind this. This is the work we [00:10:00] do inside the Navigate Method is a really starting to investigate why you still think those filters are so important and are they, and when are they like the distinctions and the, the, the way this needs to be picked apart is super important.

You know, I always say to women that come into the program, it’s like we have this bowl of cold wet spaghetti noodles and they’re all sticking together and wound about each other. You don’t know what one follow one noodle through it. It overlaps and goes under and swings around and it is so hard to know which noodle is which, you know, and so this is the work of, of uncovering.

And so I have a couple. Ways that can start that process. Now, when I say start the process, start the [00:11:00] process of thinking differently, dreaming differently, there’s still gonna be the process of unwinding the nervous system regulation piece around why that feels so safe to you. Because what happens with.

Habits and patterns. You know, we talk a lot about patterns and things. Those patterns and habits and ways of being and tendencies and all of those things are only true when they are unconscious. Once that pattern becomes conscious, it is a choice. And so there is work to be done to change the way that you’re making that choice.

And so much of that has to do with your nervous system believing that something is safer than [00:12:00] something else. So if we wanna really try to dig in. To, what is it? What could I even want? If you’re at a place where you’re like, I don’t even know what I would want, like that, it, I, I don’t know. I go through the motions every day.

I take care of my family, I do the laundry and I go to work and I make sure everybody has food, right? But if you’re like, what, what, what would I really desire? Like I have no idea. This year when I moved into this place, I. I really was thinking through this, like, what is it that I want from here?

And one of the things that I started doing was just jotting down everything that I saw that made me go, oh, that looks cool. Or, and, and it, and I wanna say something. That feeling of that looks cool and the follow up that comes behind that, which is, that’s not for me, happens really fast. You might not even catch the, that looks cool [00:13:00] because you just think that it’s not For me, I saw a organization that’s like brings people out on whale watches and I thought, oh my God, that’d be so cool to see a whale.

Like that would be really cool to be able to like pet a whale, right? If I could pet a whale, like how cool that would be, and then I immediately thought, I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time that, God, I’d have to go somewhere Alaska or something.

I, I don’t have time for all that. It’s so not true. If it’s important to me, I could find time and it’s worth writing it down. And so I wrote it down and every time I noticed I felt jealous, like envy. I’d see something and I would go, Ugh. That, uh, I wish. That’s so cool. I wrote it down and after a couple of weeks, I had a pretty good sized list of things that I actually didn’t know that I wanted.

Now, am I [00:14:00] gonna do everything on the list? No, I’m not. But having the awareness that that triggered a feeling in me started to make the feeling more safe. I started to notice a whole lot more things that would feel fun and then a really interesting thing started happening instead of having to see the thing that was laid out for me, like that looks fun going on a whale watch that looks fun.

Having a group of friends to go play Mahjong with, like that looks fun. I started getting ideas of things that were. My own right. I started to get ideas and make up things that would feel really fun to me. Like, you know what would feel fun is taking a creative writing class, but in Paris like, like all of the sudden these little pieces started to come together and [00:15:00] I was able to start to see how I could create the thing that felt fun.

It didn’t have to be given to me as an example. I don’t think I would’ve gotten there as quickly if I hadn’t done the work to follow the envy, to follow the, the other people, right. The other things that were shown to me and to notice when I was shutting it down to notice when I was saying, oh, but that’s not for me.

That’s cool, but that’s not for me. I, had to be able to make. This, shift and to say, instead of viewing this as negative, I’m going to view this as a compass and I’m gonna use it to try and help myself define what it is that I want. The other thing that I wanna offer you as an idea, and I think this can work so well, because I think when we allow [00:16:00] ourselves to write.

Like real paper and pen. Do you know what I mean? Not type on a keyboard, write things out. There is a flow that starts to happen, a creative flow. And remember knowing what it is you want is creative. It’s a creative flow, right? So we wanna get into a creative flow. So one of the things that I think can be so impactful is if we write down.

An obituary for ourselves. Like right now, if you were to die today, what would your obituary say? Like, how have you lived your life? What would you want people to remember or notice? What would be important to you in this life? Now, once you do that, I want you to write another obituary, but as if you’re 95 years old and you.

Had every single [00:17:00] dream that you ever dreamed come true, you petted every whale that you wanted. You showed up on every stage that you wanted. These are my dreams by the way. You, you had your cats, you did your thing, you connected with people, you felt alive. Now write the obituary from that place, and what does that obituary say?

What’s different about it? What’s showing up? What’s important to you? And that is gonna give you so many clues into what it is you really want to experience. I’m gonna guess. It’s not gonna be like she spent two months out of the year scrolling on her phone looking for things that other people were doing to feel alive.

Like I, I get that we all scroll on her phone. [00:18:00] I’m not saying that’s bad. That’s probably how you found me. So I support, I support, that’s how I find so many people. But there is this thing that like. Is this how I wanna live my life? You know, recently I put a post up on Instagram.

If you wanna find it. It’s like a pink post and it says netflix and scrolling isn’t normal. I think that’s what I said. And if you hate it, this post is for you. That’s what I say. It’s really coping, right? If we’re, if we’re sitting next to our partner and we’re just scrolling every night. We’re not interacting, it’s coping.

And somebody got mad at me and said, oh, please, this is real life. My partner is there with me. And I said, look, if you’re happy with that, I said In this post. And if you hate it, air quotes and if you hate it, and if you don’t hate it, keep doing it. But that is not, I mean, and I didn’t say this part, but I’m thinking in my head like, that’s enough.

Is that like, is that, [00:19:00] is that really enough for you to spend every night just scrolling next to your partner? I, I, it’s totally fine if it is, but I’m guessing if you’re listening to this show, it’s not, it might be okay once in a while. Like that is life like, but that’s not when I write my obituary when I’m 95, that is not, that is not how I wanna be thinking of my life. That’s not how I want my life to be remembered. And so I think this exercise can give you so much insight into what it is you really want. I swear you already know. You already know so many things that you want.

But you’re so used to pushing it through the filter of what everybody else would think, that it’s getting lost in the shuffle. And it is a simple mind shift that can help to start to make that available to you. It doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to take months. [00:20:00] You could get some ideas today, but you’ve gotta be willing to slow down the process of what’s happening, what you’re seeing.

The decision and the story that you’re making about what you’re seeing immediately after that is causing you to dismiss it and not even notice that you had the desire. And I think you know when you can really start to do that, not only are you gonna start to see stuff every day, all day, that feels fun and like a great idea, you can change the story that it feels like envy.

’cause it doesn’t, it feels like your compass. And I think that is how you start to live a big life. So thank you so much for listening. It was so good to have you here. I love you so much. Keep going, keep dreaming about all the things and if I can help you, be sure to reach out. You can find [email protected] and I have a new downloadable with my process on there.

So go ahead to my website. [00:21:00] Right underneath the big header part, you’ll see Mirror Mend or Move process. See if that might help you. You can download it there, and if I can help you, you can always book a call and we can chat. All right, I’ll talk with you soon. Have a great week. See you next time. 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 reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.

On todays episode Betsy dives deep into your truth and how you know your following your own path.

She tells a story of her recent travels on a solo trip to the Bahamas and the strange incident that happened that made her choices seem even more important.

Transcript:

Betsy:
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. Hi. Good morning. Hi. Welcome. Welcome to the show.

Betsy:
If you’re new here, I’m happy that you’re here. Thanks for giving it a listen. And if you. You are old here. Hi. Hi. I’m so happy to see you. I hope you’re good.

Betsy:
All right, so this week, I. There’s something. There’s something really important that I want to talk to you about. And also, I want to tell you this crazy story. And I don’t think the story is crazy, but I know from the outside it probably looks a little crazy. And if you follow me on Instagram, then you may have witnessed the crazy while the crazy was in route. So I’m gonna explain to you kind of what has been going on. So a couple weeks ago, I decided I just needed to sit in the sun.

Betsy:
You know, I wanted to just sit and feel the heat on my face, feel the sunshine, you know, listen to the ocean. I just really wanted to be someplace warm, and I thought maybe I’ll run down to Key west, because I love Key West. But I wanted hot. I wanted to make sure that I had hot. I live in Atlanta, and it really doesn’t get super cold here, but it had been cold, and I just get sick of the winter, you know? So I am a Delta girly, and I have lots of Delta points. And so I looked up where could I go and was able to book a flight to the Bahamas. So the intention was that I would go on a Friday and stay till a Tuesday. Okay.

Betsy:
So I would be. It’d be like a long weekend, basically, which felt good to me because I didn’t want to miss group. I know this. I know I’m allowed to miss group with my ladies in the navigate method, but I don’t. I don’t like to. I think maybe I miss, like, once a year. I’m really. I really like doing it.

Betsy:
Unless I have, like, an event that I just can’t be there for whatever reason. So then I have one of my coaches do it, and they’re great and they do a great job. So there’s no. There’s no harm, no foul. But I really like to be there. And so I thought, I’ll leave. Group is on Thursday. So I thought I’ll leave on Friday, and then I’ll just be there a couple days, and I’ll come home.

Betsy:
So I worked my magic with the points, and over the last couple weeks, I have really liked thinking about going. Like, I’ve really liked thinking about how much fun it’s going to be to feel the sun on my face and, like, what I’m going to order from the restaurant. And, you know, the. The place that I decided to go was Bah Bahamar, which is in the Bahamas. And it’s this huge resort with, like, three different hotels and tons of restaurants. I mean, I think there’s, like, 17 restaurants. There’s, like, six different pools, and they have really good mocktails. Now, I’m not afraid of having a cocktail every once in a while, but it’s not totally my thing, so I was like, that’ll be fun.

Betsy:
I started thinking, like, what kind of mocktail am I going to get? Like, what am I going to sit and drink by the. By the pool and the sound of the pool and all of that? I just. I have really enjoyed the last couple weeks thinking about it. Okay, so part of the joy of the whole thing was me thinking about it. I remember years ago. I mean, years and years ago when I was, like, in college, and then, like, a young adult out of college and going to visit my grandmother. And if you’ve been here for a while, you know, I was close with my grandma, and I remember thinking, I’m gonna go surprise her. And I remember saying to my sister, I’m gonna go up and see Grandma, and I’m gonna surprise her.

Betsy:
And I remember my sister saying to me, you should tell her, because she really likes to think about it, and it brings her a lot of joy to, like, think about it for the couple weeks or the month or whatever until you arrive. And I remember thinking, like, okay. I mean, I guess the surprising seemed fun to me, but I wanted it to be fun for her. So I always told her, and she was always excited. And every time I talked to her up until I got there, she would be talking about how I would be there and what we would do and all the things. So I’ve been thinking about that because the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment from thinking about going. I. I booked the trip.

Betsy:
It was, like, one night. I was like, should I do this? And I looked it up, and I had the delta points and I had the hotel points. I mean, like, the whole trip cost me, like, 150 bucks. Do you know what I Mean, like. I mean, I was like, this is so fun. I’m getting to go basically for free. And, like, it’s. It’s fun to think about.

Betsy:
So Friday comes, I pack up my bag, I get a couple swimsuits. I’m like, ready to go, and I fly there. I get there. It’s awesome. It’s great. I’m having the best time. I spent the first day by the ocean. The second day, I got a private seat at the pool.

Betsy:
Like, you pay for the pool seat, but then you get a waitress and you get the amount you paid in the pool seat, in food. Do you know what I mean? So I was like, I’ll totally do that. And so I. I mean, I sat there, I had a turkey club. I. I ordered, like, just French fries. Then I ordered, like, just nachos, because who could eat $150 worth of food? Do you know what I mean? So I was just, like, getting stuff I wanted. Felt so fun.

Betsy:
At one point, I got up, and they had these seats that are, like, water seats. Almost like they had, like a section. There was two different pools there, but they had a section of ring around the pool that is kind of like a lazy river, but it’s shallow. It’s not a lazy river, but you know what I’m saying. It’s like a little river. And they have these chairs in the pool. You know what I’m talking about? You’ve seen those pool. Those pool chairs in a resort.

Betsy:
So the pool. The chairs are in the pool, but there’s, like, a waterfall behind me. So I go to lay in these chairs. Like, nobody’s around. Nobody’s in these chairs. I don’t know why. So I’m laying in the chair. You’re kind of buoyant because you’re, like, in the water kind of.

Betsy:
I have headphones in. It’s, like, the best music. I look up, all I can see is, like, blue sky and seven different palm trees. I can hear the sound of this waterfall behind me. Like, I’m like the sun. I’m like, this is. This is. I’m so, like.

Betsy:
I’m like, this is heaven adjacent. I’m so, so happy. Okay, so that’s Saturday. I’m so happy. Sunday, I’m back at that pool, and I’m like, this is. It’s okay. Like, it’s okay. You know, I.

Betsy:
I’m. I’ve traveled alone. And so there was a part of me that was kind of. I wasn’t lonely. There was no part of me that was lonely. No part of the trip. That I was lonely, but I was a little bored, if that makes sense. And so, you know, I was going to the restaurants in the evening, and I was going by myself, which was fine.

Betsy:
I would chat with people or with the waiter or whatever. But by that Sunday night, I was like, I’m ready to go home. Like, I’ve had three days in the sun. I’m. I’m feeling like I’m done with the sun. You know how you kind of get where you’re like, I don’t really want to be out in the sun. I wasn’t burned. I did such a good job with my sunscreen, but I was just kind of getting, dare I say, tired of it.

Betsy:
I got what I needed. That’s what it felt like. I got what I needed. And so I thought, well, maybe I just need, like, a little variety. I needed an adventure. So I looked and I was like, I could go. I could book a spot on a ship, on a cruise, like a. You know what I mean? Like a catamaran cruise for the day.

Betsy:
And then looked at that, and it didn’t feel really fun. I mean, I’ve done those many times, and I like them, but it didn’t feel like the thing I was gonna do, flamingo yoga, but I couldn’t get a spot. And, like, I just was like, what am I? What do I wanna do? And when I really, really sat with it, what I really wanted to do was just come home. Like, I was just like, I’m ready to go home. I wish I was going home tomorrow. And then I thought, I could. I could just go home tomorrow. Now, in my head, I did this thing where I went, like, I’ve paid.

Betsy:
I’ve got the hotel till Tuesday. Like, my flight’s not till Tuesday. Like, I’d have to change my flight. I’d have to. So then I thought, well, I’ll just check and see if I could change the flight. And I could. It was easy to change the flight. And I left the screen and didn’t change it.

Betsy:
And then I noticed I felt regret. I felt regret that I didn’t hit change the flight. And again, I had this moment, and now maybe you’ve done this before, and it might not be something like a trip to the Bahamas, but it could be anything where you’re like, I really want to do that, but it makes no sense. Why would anybody leave the Bahamas? You’re on vacation and it’s paid for. But I wanted to go. And so I opened the app back up. And I hit submit and I changed my flight and I felt immediately so good. Now, I want to talk about this for a minute, and then I’m going to get to my travel day, which, if you follow me on Instagram, you saw the crazy travel gift day.

Betsy:
But I want to talk about this. So there is something that happens, and I don’t know if this happens when we’re. I think it probably happens when we’re kids, where we put the filter, the question or the intention through a filter of, like, what would my parents say? Because that’s really important when you’re little, right? You. You’ve got to be thinking about what your parents would say, or what would my teacher say? Like, what would other people say? And then the second question that came into my mind was, like, what’s the right thing to do? The right thing. And I thought that was so interesting that the. The right. That there was a right or wrong. And then I thought, the wrong thing to do is not listen to myself and what I want.

Betsy:
Leaving didn’t hurt anybody. Like, it didn’t. Who cares? And I thought, people are going to think I’m crazy. People. I’m using air quotes. I don’t know what people. People in my life, I guess. I don’t know.

Betsy:
Will my friends think this is silly because I’ve been so excited about going, but I got what I needed. I was done, and so I booked that flight. And in the morning, I headed to the airport, and I was really in such a good mood. Now, if you followed along on Instagram, I’m going to give you the quick and dirty recap. But I got on the flight. I got upgraded for free. I was sitting down. We’re about to take off.

Betsy:
Like, we’ve already backed up from the gate. And the pilot comes on and says, hey, everybody, sorry to let you know that as I’ve been sitting here, we got a crack in the windshield, which. Which impacts our pressurization. And so we can’t ride this plane. So we’re going to pull back to the gate and everybody’s going to get off. Now there’s no. I mean, was I like, oh, we’re not going to. But there was something about it.

Betsy:
I know this sounds so weird that made me really happy. I was like, oh, I didn’t know what adventure I was going to have on the flight. And this is turning out to be an adventure now. I want to say, like, I was ready to come home, but it wasn’t like, I want to be home. I just want to get home. It wasn’t like I was sick and I was like, oh, I just want to get home. Like, I just was done being there. So they tell me they’re bringing us back to the gate, and I really don’t care.

Betsy:
Like, I’m really, totally fine. Now, as I keep going with this story, there’s going to be a point where you’re like, you weren’t totally fine. And I want to tell you. I want to tell you that this was one of the best days of my trip. I know. I know. So we go back to the. To the gate, everybody gets off, and they tell us that they’ll let us know, you know, they’re going to give us some passes for Quiznos or Wendy’s.

Betsy:
Like, the airport’s little in the Bahamas, you know, so you’re gonna get these passes for some crappy food. Keep in mind, I left a resort where I could have had really luxury food, and they give us these passes. And, yeah, I went and got some pizza. I hung out. And then I got a text that said, your flight’s gonna leave, you know, four hours later. Now, I know in my head, I thought it probably, that’s a long time, but I didn’t care. I was, like, having a good time. I was super, people watching.

Betsy:
I went to Wendy’s and got a Frosty. I walked around. I did a couple laps around the airport, like, just to get some movement in. It felt good. I had some podcasts on in my earphones. Like, it was fun. I went back to the gate and noticed that they had changed our gate. So I went to the new gate.

Betsy:
Nobody was there because I was, you know, two hours early. And then I got another message that said, the flight’s been delayed again. So now where I was supposed to leave at, like, I don’t remember what time my first flight was maybe like 11:30 in the morning. Then I was leaving at 1:45. Then I was leaving at 5:45, and then I was leaving at 7:45. Get home at, like, 10:30. And I was like. I noticed how I felt.

Betsy:
I felt like, I’m totally fine with that. And it feels late to get home. I would like to have an earlier time getting home. I don’t care what time the flight leaves. I just don’t want to get home that late. That’s what I thought. And then my second thought was, I hope that doesn’t get delayed, because if it gets delayed too much further, we probably wouldn’t go home. You know, they’d probably move us to the next day.

Betsy:
So I thought, well, let me get up and walk around. And I wanted to see how I feel again. I’m feeling, this is like a fun day. I’m getting to interact with people. I’m walking around, it’s kind of windy and outside it’s not like the most beautiful day. I was there the most beautiful days in the sun. And it felt good to not be in the sun. I was like, I’ll walk around.

Betsy:
And then I noticed there’s this other flight that’s starting to, that’s starting to board. It’s like 4:30 and it’s going to Atlanta. And so I open up the app because I’m platinum on Delta. I open up the app and I text with them and I say, is there a spot on this flight? And they were like, there is. There’s one spot, you want it? And this is the beauty of traveling by yourself. So they moved me to that spot and I got the flight. I got, I mean literally, they were about to close the doors. They confirmed my thing.

Betsy:
The I get to the thing to check in and the guy’s like, do you have a boarding pass? And I was like, no. I just talked to the guy and he looks me up and he’s like, you’re not in the system. And then he said, let me refresh. And then he refreshes and I’m there. Okay, so there’s, there’s one spot on the plane. I get it. So he’s like, give me your baggage claim number. I’m going to pull your baggage.

Betsy:
Make sure your baggage gets on there. I’m like, okay, amazing. So he does that. Like, I’m like, this is great. I get on the plane, I have one of those little apple like, you know, little things that keeps track, whatever they’re called, that you put in your suitcase, you know, and you can track it. Find my suitcase. I can see that my suitcase is getting on the plane. I’m like, this is so great.

Betsy:
This is so great. I get upgraded. I’m still in an upgraded seat. And then, and then this kid in first class starts throwing up. And when I say kid, I mean 22 year old. Ish. My guess is that in the layover he was drinking at the bar maybe, I don’t know. I get that’s what I’m guessing.

Betsy:
Disgusting. The person sitting next to him was not his dad. His dad was like behind him. So the person next to him is like wiping off like their briefcase. I mean it was so bad. And they were like, we’re going to have to go back to the gate. We had already backed up the, the airline. The flight attendant was so annoyed, I could tell, but he was a trooper and he was like, we’re going to have to go back to the gate and get this cleaned.

Betsy:
So they bring us back to the gate, the kid gets off, his brother jumps out of comfort plus goes with him and they bring a whole cleaning crew on and they spend the next like 20 minutes cleaning. And so our flight is delayed like I don’t know, 30 minutes or 40 minutes or something. I don’t even know because I’m fine. And then we take off and I get home and it was easy. And I know that it doesn’t sound easy, it was fine. So I know that this sounds kind of crazy because you’re like you wanted to leave and then you spend the whole day in the airport, like, how was that better? I didn’t get home till 9:00 at night or something, right? So 8, 30, I don’t know, something like that. Here’s why, here’s why it was so great because I did what I wanted to do. I didn’t push it through a filter of what I should do, what other people would think, if it made sense, if it was wasteful, if I was missing out.

Betsy:
I just paid attention to something inside my body that said, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to do. And it doesn’t have to make any sense at all. It doesn’t have to make any sense to anybody. It doesn’t even have to make sense to me. This is the part I want you to know is that it doesn’t have to make sense to me. The feeling of it is enough. You know, people come to me to make really, really big life altering decisions in their life every single day. And there is something in them that have, that has done decision making the same way for years and years and years and years.

Betsy:
And in that decision making they have pushed aside or put through filters or whatever it is that they’ve done. And then they know that something isn’t right, but because they can’t label it, they have a really hard time accepting it and understanding that things need to change. There is something about our world that tells us that a feeling isn’t enough, that we’ve got to have like a justification or rationalization. It has to make sense, there has to be sequenced things and there has to be good reasons. But I want to offer you the thought that the good reason is that you feel like it, the good reason is that you feel like something’s not working right. The good feeling or the good reason is that I know something’s wrong, I don’t know what it is and I don’t know how to label it. And that is okay. You know, I wanted to leave.

Betsy:
I was just done. I was just done. And I was like, well, this will be my party trick, is that I just leave because I want to, not because it makes sense. Not because two week earlier me would have understood this, but just because I’m ready to go. You know, when women come into my program, one of the things I hear all the time after like three days and I, and I get it, but after like just a couple days, they’re like finally relaxing into the idea that what they’ve been going through and the mental gymnastics that they’ve been going through as they’ve tried to make these really big heart wrenching decisions about their marriage. And one of the things they’ve been going through is pushing away the idea that they have a truth and that their truth could be theirs alone. Nobody else has to understand it, make sense of it. Doesn’t have to look right in the world.

Betsy:
Your parents don’t need to get it doesn’t have to be something somebody approves of. None of that. And then when they recognize that, that truth, they want to be comfortable in that truth right away. But I want to offer the thought that getting to that truth takes time. You know, when we’re pregnant, when we’re pregnant it takes nine months like to have the baby and then it takes nine months or 18 months to get back to feeling normal. You know, you’ve been through a lot. And when we start to do this work where we start to really understand who we are and what we want separate from the way that we’ve lived our life for lives for, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. It’s going to take a minute, it’s going to take a second to recognize what it is you really want first of all and then to be okay with it.

Betsy:
And it’s the being okay with it that I think people have the hardest time with. You know, we’re given all these senses. We can see things and hear things and feel things and like, feel like tech, like texture, like we can touch the table. But when it’s an emotion, when it’s something like that, we, we label it as not as real and we kind of push it aside and you know, it, you know, not to go down the whole patriarchy rabbit hole. And you heard me say this in the last episode, but I’m not saying that the patriarchy. The patriarchy hurts everybody. Everybody. Man, woman, child.

Betsy:
It hurts everybody. But also in that structure, we’ve labeled things as masculine or feminine. And if it’s feminine, it’s not as good, right? If it’s feminine, then it’s. It loses its value, is diminished somehow. And so having an intuition is been labeled. Everybody has it, but it’s been labeled as feminine or witchy or whatever, however you’ve heard it called. And so it diminished its value. And we go, oh, well, it must not be real, or it’s not as good as seeing or hearing and, or smelling or tasting.

Betsy:
So it’s not as good. But the truth is everybody has access to it. It’s not masculine or feminine. It is. It is another sense. I know when I’m talking to my dad, if I say I have a gut feeling, he so more accepts that than if I say my intuition told me, like, the gut feel. He understands, right? It’s. It’s.

Betsy:
It. It is more acceptable. So I want to offer you the thought that you can have a feeling and that’s enough. And a step, a first step is recognizing that you have the feeling even if you don’t do anything about it. Even if you’re like, I. I have the feeling that I want to leave the Bahamas, but I’m not going to do it because it doesn’t make sense in any other way. Just having the realization that I have the feeling is a step towards breaking that habit of pushing it through everyone else’s filter. Now I want to offer this thought.

Betsy:
I want to say, putting decisions through filters of how it will impact other people is not a bad thing. That feels aligning to me. That feels like honoring myself. So, you know, when I made my reservation, I messaged my daughter and said, hey, I’m going to be going out of town. There’s nothing going on that weekend, right? Like, I can. You don’t need me for anything. And she was like, no, no, that sounds fine. Go.

Betsy:
That felt aligning to me. That wasn’t me. Like making. Having somebody else made a. Make a decision for me. That’s not what I’m saying. We can take other people’s experience into account when we make decisions based on how we feel, because that impacts how I feel. If I was with other people, it may have felt better to stay because that improved their experience.

Betsy:
But my truth could still be that I wanted to go. Knowing the difference between those is super duper Important. And I think that we forget about that. And that leads down a pathway of a lot of disconnection from ourselves and I know from working with women, you know, trying to make big decisions in their marriage. But anytime we’re trying to make a big decision, if we have spent a lifetime or a decade or two decades or a marriage where we have put everybody’s experience before ours, we start to lose touch with what our experience actually is. We start to lose touch with what our truth is. And you start to second guess yourself. You start to say, well, I don’t know just because I feel it, I don’t know if that’s what I feel.

Betsy:
We start to pause before speaking up because we run it through all those other filters of what will happen if I say this, what will happen if I say my truth? Will I be cut down? Will I be ignored? And after a while, if you’re cut down or ignored enough, you stop saying it. You stop saying what your truth is. And once you start stop acting on it and then you stopped saying it, and then pretty soon you stop recognizing it. And it’s a process to move back into that alignment and into the touch that you have with who you are and what you want and how you want to create your life. You know, I have this little post it on my, on my computer and you’ve probably heard me talk about this over the years. But the little post it note says this is just my current reality in the process of changing into something better. If there’s anything that I don’t like, I always think this is just my old reality. This is just me getting in touch with the feeling of that thing.

Betsy:
And if I can disconnect from that and instead connect with where I want to go with what I really want, then my, my reality is going to change into something better. And by better means more aligned with who I am and what I really want. So, you know, I know going coming home early from the Bahamas may not be that big of a deal. Who cares? I was by myself. It doesn’t affect anybody. Like it’s not that big of a deal, but it’s one of the biggest deals ever because it’s being in alignment. And when you make a choice like that I’m going to do what’s right for me, then that is the message that you’re sending out. That is what you’re creating.

Betsy:
When you’re creating your current reality, when you’re changing it into something else, make sure that it’s something better. Make sure that it is in alignment with you and who you are and how you want to live your life. You know, we have this one great, wild, wonderful life. And I think I mentioned this maybe on the show last week or, I don’t know, probably years ago, but I have this app on my phone that alerts me like four or five times a day, hey, just a reminder, you’re gonna die. You’re gonna die. Like, is this what you want? It’s okay if it is. There’s no right or wrong, but is this what you want? And if it’s not, what are you gonna do? How are you gonna show up? And what’s the process that you’re gonna go through in order to change your reality into something better? And when you can do that and have that level of awareness, I think that is how you live a big life. All right, thanks so much for listening today.

Betsy:
I will see you all next week. I love you so much. Bye bye. 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 with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram, Etsy Paik and on my YouTube channel.

Betsy:
Remember, the world is vast. Your potential is endless. And your life, it’s yours to shape. Until next time, keep reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.

On today’s show, Betsy shares how she’s used rest to help define what is right for her or wrong.
Listen in as you get new ideas of why rest is revolutionary.

transcript:

Betsy:
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. Hi, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to the Art of Living Big.

Betsy:
If you’re new here. Hi. We’re excited you’re here. And if you’ve been here for a long time, I’m going to reference el. Kinds of old stuff, I think today. So today’s episode, I really wanted to talk to you about rest. This is something that has been coming up for me a lot over, I’m going to say, like, the past month, but when I look back, I think this transition or awareness or shift in how I’m thinking about rest really probably started about 18 months ago. You know, probably a lot like you.

Betsy:
I have always been really busy, and I think that I liked it. I think that that was just who I was and how I operated. In fact, I used to say this thing. I used to have this thing that I would say which would be like, I will outwork you. Like, I might not be the smartest, but I will outwork you. And I remember when I started my business back in 2012, I was like, I will outwork everybody. Like, I’m gonna get what it is I want because I will not stop. And I worked all the time.

Betsy:
I mean, I worked on weekends. I worked at evenings. I mean, I did anything that had to be done just to be able to say that I was doing everything that needed to be done. I remember years ago working for a company where I had a quota. Historically, in my career in corporate America, I always had a quota. And I remember it being really pretty early in the month and thinking I should go home. But I’m. But I don’t deserve to go home because I’m not at my quota.

Betsy:
And it was like, early in the month. Like, I specifically remember that. And, you know, I think that there are times in our lives where we’re really tired and we push through. Right. Have you ever done that where you’re like, I am. I’m exhausted. Like, I’m exhausted. Like, sort of like it’s a badge of honor.

Betsy:
I have done this. So I’m coming at this totally point of view of, like, I have lived this. I know this feel. I was trying to think back recently of, like, when did that begin for me? And I remember being in second grade and I was taking ballet class, and ballet class was on Saturday mornings. I remember it was with two of my very best girlfriends. And I really was excited to do it, but I wasn’t good at it. I was not. It was like a dance class.

Betsy:
We learned different kinds of dance, but it was ballet focused, I think. Oh, my God, I was terrible. I was so bad. And I remember what I really wanted was to be able to stay home and watch cartoons. Do you guys remember, like, Saturday morning was, like, the cartoon? Like, you couldn’t watch cartoons other times other than Saturday morning. But I remember feeling really proud of myself that I wasn’t just relaxing, like, in second grade. I remember being like, I’m going out and I’m doing something, like going to a dance class, that even though my friends are in it, I really don’t like it and I suck. So I think that this way of being has been ingrained in me.

Betsy:
And I say it that way really specifically because I don’t think this is how I was popped out. Like, I don’t think. And I’m gonna say something. You may choose to disagree, and I’m okay with that. I don’t think anybody comes out feeling like they’re supposed to be busy all the time. Babies nap. Babies aren’t constantly looking around like babies are napping constantly. Every time they get tired, they cry, and then they fall asleep.

Betsy:
And so I think there is something in our world that starts to teach us that this. This busyness, this. This way of being, of constantly having things on our plate and shuffling a lot of things around, that that is the thing that gives us a lot of value. And, you know, I have been doing my own work, and I’m not going to dive into all of this, but I will just reference it. And that is that we live in a capitalistic society and a patriarchal culture. And when I say patriarchy, I don’t mean against men. I don’t believe the patriarchy helps men, but it is a concept and a construct that defines how we operate within it. And the things that are celebrated in a capitalistic culture are very different from celebrated just in terms of you being a human being.

Betsy:
If you just were born, taken care of, but dropped off on an island somewhere, I don’t think you would believe you had to be busy all the time. I think it’s tied to our worth. And I think as women, especially in our culture, and I live in the United States, so I’m, you know, basing it off of my experience. I mean, all of this is My experience. But I try to learn other people’s experiences, too, around a lot of things, and I’m going to touch on that. But I think that we are taught that to be worthy, we have to be producing. And to be producing, we have to be busy. And to be busy is to not only be successful, but it’s also to be obedient.

Betsy:
And I think there is a perspective on. I’m going to say on girl. I grew up a girl, so this is my perspective. But on girls specifically. To be busy, to be taking care of things, to be doing the dishes and tidying the house. And I always knew when I was young that I was going to grow up and have a job. I knew I was going to go to college. My father worked at the university, and we talked about going to college all the time.

Betsy:
So I knew that I was gonna have a career. And I also knew that I would probably get married and have kids. I knew that I was gonna probably take care of a house and probably own a house someday. Like, those are things I expected. But what I didn’t expect was really how exhausting trying to do all of that would be. And then, you know, you’re also supposed to stay in shape and have friends and hobbies. So over the last, I’m gonna say, 18 months, maybe two years, I have been really looking at myself and my life and how dang busy I am and how tired I am. Like, how really, really tired I am.

Betsy:
Tired not only of having to do all of those things, having to take care of everything in the house and having to work and having to. You know, I had a kid who now is 23, and she’s really doing great. If you’ve been here a long time, she’s doing so good. So good. But she struggled for a long time. And so my parenting wasn’t just parenting a typical kid. It was parenting a kid with severe mental health issues that was in and out of the hospital all the time and going to doctor’s appointments multiple times a week. So I was, like, juggling a lot of things.

Betsy:
And when I look back and over the last. I’m gonna say 18 months again, I have been looking back, and I’m like, have I rested? Like, have I done hardly a thing for myself? I think this is where my obsession with the beach came. You know, I do love the beach, but I have found over the past few years, I also really love the mountains, and I also just really love nature. And I also really love things in a city, like going to the theater. And doing those kinds of things. But the beach was the only place I was allowed to rest. I think my obsession with the beach came from the idea, unconscious belief or knowledge that the only place that I could really just sit, just sit, not be meditating. You know, I’ve been a big meditator, but it’s because it accomplished something.

Betsy:
It was still a doing, but I could just sit by the ocean, watch. And that was acceptable. Now, I want to point out that nobody was telling me per se. Nobody was saying, you should be busy. You know, nobody was making me get up and do things. But there was a lot to do, you know, in my life. There was a lot to do and, you know, to kind of gloss over this. And I think if you’re a woman listening, you’ll get this.

Betsy:
But, like, I had to pick up after a lot of people. I had to make sure everything was okay for a lot of people. I had to, like, fix everything in the house and coordinate things and adapt to deliveries and contractors or whatever. Like all those things was. It was so overwhelming. Now, as I’m saying all this, I don’t think I’m alone. I think if you’re listening, you’ve probably experienced this or are currently experiencing it. And, you know, I have people message me often, very often, and say, can you do an episode on, like, how to know what you want if you don’t know what you want? Like, just for goals, just for dreams.

Betsy:
And I am going to do an episode on that. But I also want to say the things that you want and the dreams that you have become a lot clearer when you’re. When you have a moment to rest. Like, how could you possibly know what you want if you’re so busy doing other things? There’s no time for dreaming. There’s no time for just space, like empty space to just expand and discover new things. And if you think about it again, I’m going to go back to this, like, patriarchal culture. I’m going to say they. But again, I’m not talking about men.

Betsy:
I’m just saying they. The they I’m talking about is the. Is the patriarchy. It is a system, okay? So the patriarchy, they don’t want you to rest. They don’t want you to rest because then you might have time to dream about something different. Then you might have time to really discover who you are. Then you might have time to sit and be recharged and have energy. But if you’re too tired or if you’re hungry because you’re constantly on a diet because you’re trying to fit the mold, you can’t do all the things that you could be capable of doing.

Betsy:
And so over the last 18 months, I’ve started to realize that maybe I could move towards what I wanted in a different way. I almost wanted to say quicker, but I don’t think the speed or the. I don’t think the speed has anything to do with it. Although it could be faster, but I think with the clarity. You know, we hear a lot about, like, manifesting, which. I’m a big fan. I’m a big fan, and I say that kind of jokingly because we just. Manifesting presents the idea that we’re only creating something good and that there is a path to manifesting.

Betsy:
And if you don’t know how to do the path, you don’t know how to do it. But we all know how to do it. You’re constantly creating your reality all the time. You might not be aware of it. You might not have labeled it manifesting. It might not be giving you what you want, but we’re constantly creating what it is that we want by the things that we’re focused on. And so. And there’s science with your unconscious mind.

Betsy:
I mean, I could dive into all that. I’m sure I have in many episodes. But think about it. If you’re too tired, you’re gonna be. I’m using air quotes. Manifesting whatever is the, like, default, easiest path of least resistance. You know, when you get in bed at night, if you’ve been going, you know, balls to the wall all day, like, you’re not gonna be. You’re not going to be dreaming about your future when you get in bed.

Betsy:
You’re just going to be like, oh, my God, I can barely. Like, I’m. I’m. I mean, there have been times I’ve gotten in bed and I felt like I was, like, vibrating because I’m just like. So I’ve been working all day, moving constantly. And so over the past year or so, I have been really thinking about my life and what is it that would feel really good for me? And I think that takes a level of slowing down, you know? Over the past six months, I’ve had tremendous changes in my life. And I think that me being able to just have a moment to say, like, how do I want this interaction to feel? How do I want this next two hours of my day to feel? I’m going to go to the grocery store, but how do I want it to feel? And you know the weird thing Is that I also was a big meditator. I also was a sit on the thinking couch.

Betsy:
I have been like that for years. But again, I want to point out, that was a doing, and that’s not bad. I still want to be that. So what’s the difference then between the meditating doing and what I’m actually talking about? So what I have been leaning into is disengaging from the idea that everything is up to me. I accepted that everything was up to me and I did everything. And maybe you’re like that too. And I have thought, and I believe I was probably right was that if I didn’t do it, then it wouldn’t get done. And so if it was important to me to have it done, then I better get busy and do it.

Betsy:
Like I said, I’ve shifted this thought and over the past six, eight months have really tried to create space in my life so that I don’t have to be doing anything. I don’t have to be doing anything. I can lay around, okay? I have laid around before. And then if I hear somebody come home, I would jump up because I’m supposed to be busy. Nobody told me this. Keep this in mind. Nobody said, betsy, you should be busy. It is just what I learned and accepted.

Betsy:
That my worth was coming from that place. That my worth was based on my productivity, right? That my worth was based on my output. That, you know, I was good if I got good grades, I was good if I worked out every day, I was good if I had a clean house, I was good if I was successful in my work. Like, those are the things that made me good. And I have deconstructed this to a place and there’s more deconstruction to go, but to a place where I don’t associate those two things. If you’ve been here a while, you remember last summer, I got a custom hypnosis to work on some things around challenges I had around people that were saying things to me on the Internet. Which I gotta tell you, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, but that feels very silly to me now. I don’t care what anybody says to me on the Internet.

Betsy:
But it was debilitating. So there was something there, but it was touching on that. Are you good? When I had this hypnosis, a lot of things shifted for me, but it made me recognize that I was worthy. Now, keep in mind, the doing is what I thought made me worthy. But it shifted me to say and to believe I am worthy simply because I decided to Come here. And by come here, I mean have this physical experience. I believe that we’re souls here having a physical experience. So all the.

Betsy:
All the things, I don’t have to do anything to be worthy. Now, are there actions that have to be taken to get the thing that I want? Yeah, absolutely. That’s what moves things forward, is action. But I don’t have to do actions that completely deplete me. I don’t have to be like a walking zombie. I don’t have to take care of everybody else and everybody else’s emotions and everybody else’s experience. I don’t have to be the one in charge of every single thing that happens. I don’t have to be busy all the time.

Betsy:
I can sit, I can rest, I can relax. And none of that impacts my worth. You know, my dad was a farmer. When I was growing up, we didn’t live on a farm. He worked at the university, but he grew up on a farm. So the mentality, you know, the farmer mentality, like, you get up early, you get going. And so I’m sure that was a component of it. But I don’t live on a farm.

Betsy:
I just want to sit and relax. And I realized that that’s actually something that I really wanted to do. If you have followed along on the podcast for a long time or if you’ve gone back and listened to old episodes before COVID you probably heard me say, I don’t watch tv. I never watch tv. Now, I’m still very careful about what I watch because I’m really influenced by. By what I’m seeing. But that was my thinking of, I don’t watch TV because I’m better than that. Like, if I’m being honest.

Betsy:
And again, you know, if you’ve been. If you’re new here, I hope you’ll stay and you’ll learn that I am constantly saying, I am on this journey with you. Like, I am learning and changing and evolving. There have been times where I have listened back to an old episode. Like, somebody messaged me and said, oh, my God, I loved episode whatever. It was 76 or whatever. And I think, what episode was that? And I’ll go back just to listen for a minute. And besides the fact that it’s hard for me to listen to myself, I think, like, oh, wow, I’m so different from that.

Betsy:
You know, I’ve been doing this show for almost eight years. So if you can imagine anytime, like, if you went back and listened to your self eight years ago, you’d be like, wow. But that’s one of the things that I noticed is this like idea that I don’t watch tv. I don’t think at the time I thought I’m better than everybody because I don’t watch tv. But that was the vibe. When I listen to it now, I’m like, oh. What I was really saying was I’m really busy. I’m really busy.

Betsy:
I don’t have time for such frivolous things like rest. And now I’m like, okay, I do have time. So let’s talk about this just a little bit in terms of what I mean by rest right now. I believe that there are times where we want to hustle. Like, I love a good hustle. I love when I get focused. I’m recording this right now on a Friday. I come to a community.

Betsy:
What do I want to call it? Like, it’s a. It’s like a work space, but it’s really a membership. Like it’s like a giant coffee shop you have to be a member of. And they have these little booths that you can rent. So here I am in a little booth recording. But I got here really early this morning. Like I think I left my place at like 7:30 in the morning. So like, it felt like getting going and like I wasn’t lally gagging.

Betsy:
I gotta. I’m gonna spend some time thinking about that word too, how I feel about lollygagging. Because maybe lollygagging isn’t a bad thing. But I wasn’t spending time wasting away. I was getting going. It felt good though. That’s what I wanted to do. So I believe there are times where we’re hustling, where we’re hustling and where we’re busy and where it feels creative and good and we are energized by it.

Betsy:
Years ago on the Internet, there was this whole like hustle culture that was really being promoted, you know, boss, babe thing and like, hustle, hustle, hustle. Go after what you want. So the grind, it was around the time of CrossFit gyms becoming really popular and, you know, pushing yourself beyond your limits. And I do think there’s a time for that. I also think there’s a time to not do that. And I think the problem is that we punish ourselves when we are not doing that. But it’s not the time. You know, there’s summer and there’s fall and there’s winter and there’s spring and the springtime, metaphorically the summertime is where I feel more like a hustle and Every day I have to assess what’s today.

Betsy:
Is it winter, is it spring? How do I feel? What kind of output do I have or do I want to have? And so I wonder if that idea, that hustle culture has created even more of a moving in the point of I’ve got to keep going right in our minds. We see it online all the time, so it’s like being reinforced constantly. You’ve heard me talk about that Cecilia that I watch on YouTube. I have found her content to be so soothing. But she lives in Svalbard, which is this little island north of Norway. It’s in the Arctic. And so she gets six months of total darkness and then six months of daylight. And I’ve watched a lot of her.

Betsy:
Her youtubes. I like to have them on in the background, like, as I’m doing other things around the house. It’s calming. She has a lot of really pretty visuals of northern lights and just a totally different culture because she’s in the snow and all of the things that that means. And what I notice with her is she talks about how the times where it’s dark all the time. She’s sleepier, she wants to sleep in, she wants to go to bed really early, she takes naps. It’s the ebb and flow of life. You know, plants aren’t constantly growing and pushing seedlings through the ground.

Betsy:
No. There’s a time where all the leaves fall off and it just rests and is dormant. Like that’s how it’s supposed to be. And so how this has started to look for me is me really assessing and having a level of awareness first, a forgiveness. Like, I don’t have to be busy. And I forgive myself for thinking that I did. And I do believe that that hypnosis that I did was just so, so helpful. And if you weren’t here for that episode, I did an episode on it, but I hired a hypnotherapist to do like a guided meditation.

Betsy:
Right. If you’ve ever done a guided meditation. I know a lot of people that reach out to me are so afraid of hypnosis, but there’s nothing. It’s not regression. We’re not doing anything that there’s nothing that’s going to harm you. It’s a guided meditation, but guided with a purpose. That is what a hypnosis, just a general regular hypnosis is. It’s to get you in a super relaxed state so that you let your guard down and you believe the things that are positive that are being told to you.

Betsy:
And so I hired somebody to specifically help me with this, with a problem that I was having. So I think that there is an evaluation that had to happen of, how do I feel? Like, how does my body feel? How does my energy feel? Just, like, how do I feel? Not I should get up. Some mornings, I’m like, I should probably, if I was participating in that patriarchy. But I’m no longer participating. So what does this version of me do? I’m participating now in the matriarchy, and she wallows in the happiness of just laying around for a minute, getting acclimated to my body. I’ll do a body scan a lot in the mornings or even at night, but where I’ll just lay on my back, Savasana, I think they call it in yoga. And I’ll feel, where are my toes? Where are my feet and my heels and my calves and my kneecaps? Like, can I feel everything? And I’ll scan all the way up my body, and then I’ll feel like, okay, now I know where my body is, and I’m ready to go. Something I noticed earlier this week was that when I was doing this body scan, which I have been doing now for months, I noticed when I got to my hips, it felt like a long time to get to my heart, where I did the scan back and forth.

Betsy:
I went back down. I went all the way back down on my knees, actually, and then I came back up. Once I hit my hips, there was this long space until I got to my heart, and I realized that I was, I’m gonna say, skipping from my upper thigh to my heart. That whole section of my body, I had just dissociated from. Like, I didn’t feel it. I didn’t notice that I didn’t feel it until I did feel it. But that comes from slowing down, right? That’s where my root chakra is. Like, I had felt unrooted for a long, long time, and that started to come back, and I could sense it now.

Betsy:
Why is it important that I sense it? Well, because I think anytime that I understand and I connect to myself and the vessel that I’m in, I’m better able to make decisions for myself. I’m better able to know what it is that I really want. I’m better able to dream. I’m better able to know what kind of life I want to have and creative and choose what’s right for me. One of the other things that I have found to be so helpful in this season is to be really honest with people. In my life to the point of being okay. If it sounds ridiculous or if they don’t understand, I will tell you that the women in my life seem to really understand. I’m going to give you an example of what I mean.

Betsy:
So I may make plans for dinner. I made plans with a friend for dinner yesterday. And earlier in the week. We made plans to go out yesterday. I had some coaching at night one night this week. And then I went to a group dinner, which I’ll tell you about. And so by the time the day came for us to get together, I felt really depleted. My body was showing me I was depleted because I had a huge headache and I don’t get headaches.

Betsy:
And so I drank a lot of water. I sat, I took some Tylenol. Didn’t get rid of the headache. So I was like, there is something else. How many times do you get a headache and then you’re like, I have to push through. Unless it’s a migraine, you could just keep going. But I sat on the couch and I just sat. Like, I didn’t look at my phone.

Betsy:
I wasn’t scrolling. I just was like. It was quiet and silence and I took a big, deep breath and I thought, what does my body want right now? I wanted to see my friend. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her, but more I wanted to just sit. I wanted to not have something to do. I even thought, what if I just have her come here and then we could just like, order doordash or something. But even that felt like too much. I moved into an apartment and I’m on the fourth floor and I’d have to go down and meet all of it.

Betsy:
I just was like, I don’t want that. And so I messaged her and I told her, this is how I’m feeling. And she was like, oh, girl, I don’t care. We’ll do another time. No problem. And thank God, those are the kinds of people that I surround myself with. But having to get really in touch with what I want and being fearless in sharing that. But I do think when we share it from a place of not like a, hey, I’m so, so, so sorry I can’t meet you.

Betsy:
Like, I really want to, but, you know, or blaming it on something else or, you know, outright lying about why, I just was like, I have a huge headache. I think my body’s telling me to slow down. I need some space. Is that okay? So being able to do that, I think came from a place of really Understanding where I was. And I don’t even know if I could have really done that in the same way, even, like, eight months ago. I think that has been an evolution as I have been working on this and deconstructing this and figuring out, you know, maybe why, the reasons, like, maybe the thing that I believe. This is always the thing I’m about to say, may make you itch, but I’m gonna just offer it as a thought. And this is something we really, really work on deeply inside the navigate method.

Betsy:
But maybe the thing that you think isn’t even yours. Like, maybe the thing that you think that you have thought your whole entire life and that you’ve lived your life by and that you’ve reacted to and that you’ve made decisions by. Maybe it’s not even yours. Like, maybe you don’t even believe that. Maybe if you were really being you, you would be acting totally different, behaving different, having different activations, triggers. Like, maybe it’s not even you. And I think there’s something really powerful to it being you. I have a small group that I work with every week called Voyager.

Betsy:
And in that group this month, we have been focused on authenticity and how to really be authentic. And how do you know when you’re not being. And if you are busy, so busy to the point where you don’t know what is up, you don’t know if you’re being authentic in a lot of. In a lot of cases. And so being able to have really good boundaries to be able to say no, but to be honest about it. My hope is that if I’m really honest about it, the. The women that I share that with, they’ll be really. They’ll go, oh, I want to be really honest about that too.

Betsy:
It’s not bad to say I need some rest. It’s not bad. I remember when I first moved into my apartment. So I’ve been in my apartment a month now, and I remember sitting on the couch like that. Maybe that, like, first night, I was really settled, and I sat for a minute, and I was just looking at everything. I really love my place. It feels so good. It’s so me and perfect.

Betsy:
And I remember sitting there and just observing. Like, it was so quiet, there was nobody around. I was like, this is like, I’m just going to sit. And I sat for, like, 20 minutes, maybe even 30, because I remember being like, oh, my God, how long have I been sitting here? But just allowing my nervous system to decompress, just allowing myself to actually be you. Know to be instead of do felt really powerful. It felt powerful to just sit. So doing my body scans, having boundaries, being able to say no, being able to be really honest and super open and knowing that the right people will come to me and the wrong people will fall away, and noticing when that conditioning comes up that says I have to be really busy in order to be worthy. Now I know that I’m.

Betsy:
I can get everything that I desire. And you have to be quiet and slow and rest enough to know what you desire. But I get to have that simply because I chose to come here and have this experience. I have to do some work, of course, but I also have to listen to my body. And that season will come. There’ll be a hustle, there’ll be a rest. There’ll be a hustle and a rest. And sometimes that happens within one hour.

Betsy:
Sometimes it’s a day, and sometimes it could be weeks where I am in one or the other. This week, I started feeling really good. I mentioned I’ve been in my apartment for a week. I started feeling so good. I was like, I’m back like myself. But over the past three weeks, I was resting all the time. I was really just exhausted, mentally fatigued, emotionally fatigued, physically. I’d moved.

Betsy:
I mean, it was just a lot. I had that drama sell in my house, like, so the rest. So now for me, resting looks like a couple different things. It looks like just sitting. Like, sometimes I just sit. I’m not meditating. I’m not trying to be productive. Even in my rest, I’m not trying to be productive.

Betsy:
I’m just sitting. I’ll get my little espresso. One of the things that I really love is in my apartment, I set up. They had like, a desk area off the kitchen. You know how some places have those? And I set up a whole coffee bar. And I have an espresso machine, a really, really fancy espresso machine that I love. And a special, like, really good bean grinder. I have a subscription to Coffee Delivery from Custom Specialty Roasters.

Betsy:
And I get specialty roasts every month delivered. And I grind the beans in the morning. And I’m so present, I’m not looking at my phone. Sometimes I will put on music, but it’s yacht rock. You know what I mean? I am smelling the beans and roast, grinding the. I’m not roasting the coffee. I’m grinding the roasted coffee. I’m making my espresso shot.

Betsy:
I have had so much fun figuring out how to pull the perfect shot. I am putting it in these. The cutest little cups with the cutest little cup. Saucer. Holder. Cup holder. Saucer. It’s a saucer, I guess a cup and saucer.

Betsy:
And then I go and sit in my special chair and I open the blinds and I can see the sunrise. And I just am. I am just being. I have been listening to podcasts, but not always ones that are teaching me something. Sometimes I do, but if it feels good, I don’t have to be productive in my podcast listening. Although I will tell you one podcast I have really loved. It’s called Diabolical Lies. Do you remember the guy that was on the Chiefs? He is on the Chiefs that did that graduation speech and said that there’s a diabolical lie that women have been told that they have to work and really they need to just set their lives aside and be moms.

Betsy:
There’s nothing wrong with being a mom, but I think there’s space to be a lot of things. And he said it was a diabolical lie. And so they break down the patriarchy and capitalism. And I have really learned a lot. I have a subscription to their podcast, so I pay to hear the extended versions. I think it’s like five bucks a month, and it’s really just so worth it. So I’m learning things, but in a way that feels it’s fun. I am reading, but I’m reading books that have no purpose other than to entertain me.

Betsy:
I’m watching tv, the thing that I used to brag that I don’t do. I have been watching Severance. If you haven’t watched that, it’s just so fun. The new season of White Lotus started, and I really loved the other seasons, so taking time to be able to just enjoy myself. Like, I’m allowed to just lay around and enjoy myself again. I want to reiterate that nobody told me explicitly that I could not do that before. Nobody sat me down and said, you’re not allowed to sit and enjoy yourself. It was just what I picked up unconsciously from the world around me and the way that I felt deserving and worthy.

Betsy:
And so this feels like a really big shift. And again, like I said, it’s really like the past, like 18 months, but probably. Probably eight months, much more intensely that I have been going through this. I’m just sitting. Sitting in the stillness and really, actually enjoying that. I’m actually planning days where I don’t have anything to do typically. Like, if there was a weekend, I’d be like, okay, well, this would be a chance for me to catch up on a lot of work? No, I get to have nothing on my calendar. I have a girlfriend that reached out to me and she’s in town and I really want to see her.

Betsy:
And she offered to get together in the afternoon. And I just. I didn’t want to schedule anything. So I asked, is it okay if I get back to you that day? I have been through a lot in the last eight months, and I have moved and sold a house. And like I said, that was all so chaotic. I need to be able to see what season I’m in on any given day, and I won’t know until that day comes. On Wednesday night, I went to a dinner. It’s a dinner where you go and you meet five other people that you’ve never met.

Betsy:
I did it last year, and I think I probably talked about it, but it’s called time left. And you just sign up. It’s like a membership. And then they pair you with five different people at a new restaurant every Wednesday night. And it’s kind of late. It’s 7pm I eat dinner at 4:30. But I was like, I want to meet new people and I want to get out. And it’s my thing that I can go and do now.

Betsy:
I committed, and so I did go because I committed, but I felt like it was gonna be a thing that I could do that could be just for joy. Does that make sense? Like, just the. The intention, the goal was just to have joy, just to experience it and have fun. You know, this is not about just laying around, and it’s not about not being productive, and it’s not about not having goals or being successful, because I love all of those things. This is about reclaiming your right to exist without constant output. When we rest, we resist a culture that values doing over being. And your rest can be revolutionary. You know, I remember years ago, my aunt and uncle live in Maine, and my uncle got me eating clams when I was young.

Betsy:
And there’s this thing about clams. If they don’t open up, when you heat them a little bit, then you throw them back, they’ll make you sick. So it becomes apparent which ones are the ones that are okay to eat and which ones aren’t. But the ones that do open, those are the ones that are really yummy. And so I’m trying to surround myself with people and things and ideas that make me open up with ideas and people and things that show up who make me feel good even when the heat rises. So don’t hesitate to let go of what remains closed up. That’s to be thrown away. It will make you sick.

Betsy:
Throw away what makes you feel unlike yourself, the things that don’t nourish your soul. But you won’t be able to distinguish what those things are if you remain utterly exhausted. And that, I think, is how to live a big life. Thank you so much for being here with me. This was kind of a long one. It was fun. I love you so much and if this spoke to you, please share it with a friend or share it on social media. It’s important to me and I love it when you do that or when you leave me a review.

Betsy:
So thank you, thank you and I will see you next time. 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, Etsy Paik, and on my YouTube channel. Remember, the world is vast. Your potential is endless, and your life, it’s yours to shape.

Betsy:
Until next time. Keep reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.

In todays episode Betsy is giving an update on the past few months, shares with you her fun magical story of turning away from worry and how everything is working in your favor and gives a tip on why you have more influence on your world than you think!
Listen in to this episode for a new spin on how you see the world.

Transcription

Betsy [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the Art of Living Big podcast. My name is Betsy Pake. I’m an author, a speaker, and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now let’s go live big. Hello, fellow adventurers. Hi everybody.

Betsy [00:00:35]:
Welcome to the Art of Living Big. I have a lot of things to tell. I have a lot of things to update you on, so I’m really happy that you’re here. I have a really magical story that I think might be kind of fun and I have a couple thoughts. Some things that I have been thinking through this year as we kind of kick off 20, 25 and honestly January of the 72 year long month that it was. So last time I talked to you, I had put my house on the market. It was something that I had been thinking about for quite a while and just decided that it was time to sell the house. Now, if you’re not familiar or you’re new here, welcome.

Betsy [00:01:20]:
But I have lived in Atlanta, Georgia, in a house that’s like a hundred years old. And you know, I think now looking back, this house that I bought is the cutest. It’s the cutest house. It had the best front porch and I have fully, fully enjoyed sitting on the front porch and spending so much time out there, like all spring, all fall, I mean, just the middle of the winter, in the middle of the summer, it became unbearable. But I mean, I was out there for hours and hours every day. I did a lot of work out there and just really enjoyed this little house. You know, when I bought it, it was this idea that I really wanted to live in the city and live in east Atlanta, which is where I live now. And this house, I was ready for projects.

Betsy [00:02:12]:
I don’t know if you remember listening to any of the episodes back then, but I had this big house in the suburbs and sold, sold that and moved into the city and was renting. I thought I would rent for a year. I ended up renting for like almost three years and then was ready for this house and to do all these projects. So now looking back, I think what happened, this is my thought, is that I bought a house that probably wasn’t really well maintained. It looked good on the surface and the inspection wasn’t necessarily bad, but there were a lot of things in the inspection that I knew I was gonna have to fix. And I did A lot of that work right after I moved in. But it became a real. A real money pit, I guess you could say.

Betsy [00:03:02]:
I mean, you guys, I expected projects. I didn’t expect the thousands of dollars that it consistently cost me every single month, on top of just what it costs to pay for the house and the utilities and all those things. So it became this huge drain. And every time one thing would go wrong, the next thing would go wrong, or I’d have somebody out to fix something, and then they would notice something else, and it just became like something from a movie. It felt like. So I had fixed everything. I feel like at this point, I probably should have just kept the house for 30 years, because I think I had fixed everything. I had replaced every appliance, the havoc unit, entire bathrooms, toilets.

Betsy [00:03:50]:
You name it, I have done it. But I was pooped. And I just felt like, you know, I think there’s just some changes, you know, that needed to happen in my life, and it was time to make those changes. So back early fall is when those changes started to happen. So I put the house on the market, and I thought, this house is going to sell really fast. It’s so cute, and it’s insanely well maintained at this point. And I thought, it’s going to go, like, within the first week. And, you know, I’ve been really lucky.

Betsy [00:04:22]:
I think this is the eighth house that I’ve owned, and I’ve been really lucky when I’ve sold houses because they’ve sold really fast. And so I think I was expecting that. So here’s my magical story. So I decided, I put it on the market, and then I decided I was going to go to where I was going to go live. So I was going to go to an apartment. It’s an apartment, like maybe a mile down the road. I wanted to stay in the same community. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next or where I really wanted to go, but my daughter lives right here.

Betsy [00:04:53]:
And so I was like, this will make a lot of sense, and I’ll do that. So I go to the apartment, you know, they give me the tour. It’s actually really fun because I’m like, you know what? Something goes wrong, and they have a maintenance department, they have a gym on site, a coffee, you know, place, whatever you call it, coffee house, coffee bar. They’re just, you know, big, huge pool. A lot of the stuff that I was missing from my old house. And I have a huge soaking tub, right? So I was like, this is going to be so Great. I’m a big huge bath person. And I couldn’t take a bath at my old house because it was so old.

Betsy [00:05:31]:
And the, you know, the, the house was not built to have big huge soaking tubs. So I go to this apartment, they give me a tour and I look at a couple places. I’m like, this is the unit or the style of the unit that I want, right? So I’m really clear. And I told them when I was gonna want it. I thought I’d move like in a month. Cause I thought I was gonna get, I thought as soon as I get a contract and we’re through the due diligence period, you know, where they do their inspection and everything and then we’ll move, I’ll move. Well, didn’t sell right off, but every night I was getting in bed and I was just imagining where I was. I was imagining that apartment.

Betsy [00:06:15]:
And although the apartment that I saw was the model, I knew it wasn’t going to be that exact apartment. But since that’s the apartment that I saw, that’s the one I was imagining, you know, the apartment I was going to get was like flip flopped, you know, it was like an upside down version, you know, of the model. So it was flip flopped. Different view, of course, and all of that. But every night I’m laying in bed and I am just thinking about what it feels like to be in the bedroom. Like where would the walls feel because it would be different than the house. Where is the bathroom door? Like where would I go for those things, you know? I imagined wiping down the islands on the kitchen and it like the island overlooks. This is like a new style, I think, where the island in the overlooks like the living room and there’s a sink in the island.

Betsy [00:07:04]:
Do you know what I mean? So it’s all like this open space, a lot different than a hundred year old house. So I’m imagining this, right? I’m imagining like looking out the window and what do I see? And of course I’m imagining what I see from the model because that’s all I know. But it doesn’t matter. Matter because I’m just envisioning, you know, anytime there’s something that we really want to happen that’s not happening, right? I really wanted the house to sell and it wasn’t selling. The more that I look at the fact that it’s not selling, the harder it’s going to be. It’s like, it’s like a watching a pot boil, right? It just seems like it takes Even longer because you’re staring at it. And so I was like, I want to be doing something different. I don’t want to be thinking or looking at the fact that the house isn’t selling.

Betsy [00:07:48]:
I want to be looking at the fact that I’m going to this other place and how fun it’s going to feel and how good it’s going to feel and what a relief, you know? So I go to the. The apartment, I see the model, I tell them I’m going to take it, but the house doesn’t sell. So after about a week, two weeks, I message them and I say, I don’t think I’m going to be able to take the apartment because the house hasn’t sold, and I can’t really move the furniture out even if I wanted to pay for the apartment and the house. Like, I have to have furniture in the house to sell the house. So I said, I need to wait. And they said, that’s fine. We can hold it for you for a couple more weeks. Which all I need is an offer and for them to go through due diligence.

Betsy [00:08:31]:
So it could really happen in a week, you know, couple weeks might be good. So I say, okay, okay. So every night I’m continuing to envision, you know, what I saw at the model, but this apartment and how it feels, right? Really getting into how it feels. So pretty soon I get an offer. So I’m like, okay, great. So I reached out to the apartment. They were like, you know what? The unit we were going to give you is gone, but I can hold another unit for you. So I’m like, okay, great.

Betsy [00:09:00]:
Hold the. Hold another unit for me. And this offer, I think, is going to be good. And then on Christmas Eve, that offer fell through. There was all kinds of things that they wanted us to do that showed up on their inspection that wasn’t even listed on the inspection as, like, you have to do it. Do you know what I mean? It was just, like, stuff they wanted done, and that’s not what I was going to do. So we let that deal go. So I called the apartment and I said, for the second time, I’m not going to take the apartment because I don’t have a deal on my house.

Betsy [00:09:30]:
And she was like, well, I can hold it for you until the 31st. So. So it’s like, what, a week and a half or week or so? So I’m like, okay. But I’m still feeling like this. I’m starting to feel this, like, pressure, because every time we get close to the date that they’re holding. I have to reach out and tell them my house hasn’t sold. And I’m really trying not to focus on the fact that the house hasn’t sold. I’m really trying to focus on the fact of how good it feels to be where I want to be, right? So the 31st rolls around, and I’m like, I can’t take the apartment.

Betsy [00:10:04]:
Okay, Ms. Betsy, just let us know if anything changes. So now I’m apartmentless once again. I’m waiting for the house to sell. Within just a couple days, I get another offer, and I can feel it this time. I’m like, this one’s gonna close. I can tell. Seemed like a really good offer, and everything was fine.

Betsy [00:10:24]:
And the woman that was buying it has lived in the area. Her family lives in the area. The agent has sold old houses, right? Because it’s a different kind of thing, you know? So I’m like, this is really good. So we go through. We start the due diligence period, and I’m like, I’m gonna reach out to the apartment because I don’t want to not have an apartment. And this woman wanted a really quick close. It was like, three weeks, start to finish. And so I reach out to the apartment, I message them, I email them, because I’m like, I can’t have this conversation again.

Betsy [00:10:55]:
I’m starting to lose my mind. So I email them and I tell them, I’m ready. I’m going to take the apartment. And they email back and say, you know what? The apartment’s actually been rented. Somebody came in and took it. The very next day after your, like, hold on. It expired. And she was like, I am so sorry.

Betsy [00:11:14]:
We don’t have any more apartments until the end of February. Now, this woman that put the offer on our house that we accepted was February 3rd. She wanted to close. You know, so I’m thinking, like, I know I really have no place to go. So I had this moment right where I get the email. And, you know, if you can imagine, like, I’m reading the email, and my hands. It’s like slow motion. My hands are going up to, like, cover my mouth.

Betsy [00:11:39]:
Like, oh, no. Like, no, you didn’t. Oh, my God. And so as my hands, like, two hands get close to my mouth, I’m like, nope, I’m not gonna be horrified. I’m disappointed. And that’s okay because I can handle disappointment. And I put my hands together and I said, universe, I know that this is going to be something really great, Like, I know this is working out for me. Like, if I’m not getting this, then there’s something better.

Betsy [00:12:12]:
And you know what? I really felt that. Like, I felt it, you know, I spent three months envisioning this apartment. And I just was tired. I was so tired. I just was like, whatever. Like, whatever happens at this point, just throw me across the river. You know what I mean? I just was like, I am so tired. And then.

Betsy [00:12:33]:
And I checked later, it was six minutes after I got that email in my inbox, the phone rang, and it was the apartment complex. And the woman said, hey, Miss Betsy. Hey. And I. I’m sorry about the apartment. And I said, I totally get it. Like, you guys, you know, you’ve been over backwards. I appreciate you so much.

Betsy [00:12:53]:
And I’m so disappointed. Like, because in my head, I’m thinking, like, now I gotta figure out not only where to go. Like, not only, like, a different apartment. Like, now I gotta go to a different, like, apartment complex. And I only have a couple weeks, you know, like, I gotta apply and all of those things. And I work for myself. So it’s not like an easy. You have to, like, you know, give a blood sample.

Betsy [00:13:15]:
So I’m like, it’s an apartment. Oh, my God. Like, let this happen. So I. I’m listening to her and she’s like, I’m so sorry about that. And the lady came in and, you know, took the place right off. I said, I understand, I understand. And she said, but then I started thinking, what if we just took the furniture out of the model? Do you want the model? And right off I was like, oh, my God, yeah, that would be amazing, because I’m thinking, I need an apartment.

Betsy [00:13:42]:
And then I hung up. And then I thought, it’s the model. It’s the model that I have been imagining. I didn’t care about it. Like, I didn’t. It’s an apartment. Like, I didn’t. I was fine with wherever I got, but it was the model that I was imagining.

Betsy [00:13:58]:
And, you know, we talk on this show so often about how important it is to be really clear about what you want and to focus on where it is you want to go. You know, the problem, and my problem, too. I am not excluding myself just in this particular instance. I did a good job. But the problem is that we focus on the thing that’s not working, like, over and over and over again. And it takes some training, I think, to be able to shift that and to be able to consciously catch all the times where you’re unconsciously Focused where you don’t want to go. And you’re creating a lot of momentum towards where you don’t want to go. You know, this closing with this house had a lot of bumps in the road, and it would have been really easy to focus on that.

Betsy [00:14:50]:
It would have been really easy to say, this is never going to sell. Like, this is not where it gets to. Although the climate, the environment isn’t right right now, it’s not a good time to sell. Real estate’s down. Like, I could have. Interest rates are high. Like, there’s a lot of things that I could have said. In fact, when I would talk to friends, I would say, I can’t tell you what’s happening because I don’t want to give any attention to it, but I want to tell you where I want to go.

Betsy [00:15:17]:
Like, I would purposely not talk about it. I would say, when this is over, I’ll tell you about it. So now it’s over, so I’ll tell you about it. But moving away from that was such a big lesson for me because it made me recognize how insanely important it is to keep your focus, not only for your mental health component of it, but remember, our unconscious minds are scanning all of the environment to be able to show us the things that it thinks is really important. And if it’s scanning for the things that it thinks is important and what you’re focused on is the negative stuff, like the stuff you don’t want or the worry, it’s scanning for that. It’s learning that that’s what it should be paying attention to and that’s what it’s going to show you more of. And I really was like, I am not going to do that cycle in this because this is so important. And so when we can start to shift to where we want to go, then the bumps in the road take a different viewpoint, right? They don’t seem quite as bumpy and you get new ideas about things you could do.

Betsy [00:16:31]:
That moment of, like, disappointment of seeing that email, but being able to shift really within like, four seconds before any momentum was created to a place of, I know this is working for me with, like, absolute certainty was really, really a powerful thing. Now, later on, I hit the skids later on about a week before closing. So one thing led to another. Like, we found out in we had a super cold spell in Atlanta and we got rats and squirrels that came into the attic right at the time where she was doing her inspection. And so we had to eradicate the rats and the squirrels that had moved in. Right. Which makes sense. We don’t want.

Betsy [00:17:15]:
I don’t want that in my house. So in that process, when they came out, the. The. The people that were, you know, the pest control people were like, they’ve chewed the wires on your HAVOC unit, which are made of soy. So that happens a lot. And so I had to have a HAVOC guy come out. Do you know what I mean? Like, one thing was leading to another, to leading to another. So now I got everything done.

Betsy [00:17:40]:
Everything that they asked me to do is done. And, I mean, it was a lot of stuff and a lot of moving parts. And then a week before closing, the title company reaches out and tells us that there’s an easement. Our fence is actually on the neighbor’s property. But the people we bought the house from had entered into that easement agreement, and we were never told. It wasn’t disclosed to us, and it wasn’t disclosed at closing. So it became a issue. We worked it out, and it all came out fine in the end.

Betsy [00:18:16]:
But that week of working through that was really, really tough. I had to use a lot of my tools to, like, regulate my nervous system and to make sure everything’s okay. We closed on the third, like we were supposed to, and then they closed several days later after. After a survey was done, and some other things were done. So it was like the extremes of the extreme, and one thing led to another, led to another. I just was like, before we look at anything else, because one thing is gonna lead to, like, seven other things that need to be adjusted or fixed or changed. But we made it, and it’s a cool little house, and it’s an awesome place, and this woman is gonna love it, and everything is finalized, and I am fully moved, and it all feels really good. It feels really good.

Betsy [00:19:03]:
So I wanted to give you that update and that fun, like, magical story, because I think it’s just such a good example of how we can control our experience and how we experience certain things. You know, I can’t control if somebody else rents the apartment, but I can control my reaction to it, which changes my whole experience. I did a podcast, actually, when I moved. The last time I did a podcast, it was episode 349, and it was on the Quantum and about how our. It was the science behind how when we are observing something, it can change. So our observation of things impact things. So what is it that you’re looking at? What’s the side of the situation that you’re spending the most time lingering on or worrying about? I heard somebody say something years ago, and it stuck with me. And it was that worrying is a form of prayer, right? Anytime you’re wishing for something is a form of prayer you’re worrying about.

Betsy [00:20:13]:
Wherever you’re lingering is you telling your unconscious mind that’s important. Essentially, that’s what you want. But also. And if you listen to episode 349, I really break this down about how when we are observing something, it can change. And that’s true. When we observe something, it changes. So a little food for thought of what is it? Where is it that you’re spending the most time focusing? Are you focusing on what you want, or are you focusing on the thing that’s making you worry? Are you spending time lingering on all the ways you could find solutions, or are you focused on the thing that. That is driving you insane? Right? Where are you spending time? And that shift.

Betsy [00:21:04]:
That shift is really important. And it’s a skill, you know, it’s a skill that I don’t really think we’re taught necessarily. And it’s a skill that has to be learned in order for us to be able to really create lives that we really love. And I think we hear that thrown around a lot, like live a life that you really love or create a live a big life, all of that. But that comes down to you having like this control over your experience. And by control, I mean controlling your own perception of things and understanding what your perception is and why it is so important. And so, you know, this is the work we do with women inside. The navigate method is really helping them deconstruct their reality and what that is and make the decision on if it’s working for them.

Betsy [00:21:58]:
You know, if something’s working, leave it be. But if it’s not, there are a million different ways to see things and a million different ways to go about things and to find the solution. And so often I think we live in this world of black and white, right? I either have to get the apartment that’s available, or I can’t have the apartment. But the truth is, there was another option there that I hadn’t even been aware of, but I was focused on it, which is I could just move right into the model where nobody else had lived. And it has really cool paint colors. So maybe there’s an option that you hadn’t even considered because you didn’t know it was an option. So listen to episode 349 if you want to get another perspective on that or go a little bit deeper there. But I wanted to Share that magical story, because I think it’s just such a good illustration of, like, when we think about manifesting, right? Which I kind of hate because it’s turned into this funny, weird thing.

Betsy [00:22:53]:
But manifesting is really. We’re constantly manifesting. That’s what we do as humans. Good, good, bad, indifferent, all of it. We’re creating that experience because our unconscious mind is sifting and sorting through all the data and showing us what leads to the creation of our experience. Anyway, I could go. I could spend a lot of time there, but I wanted to just share that I’ve got a bunch of new episodes coming for you guys, so I’m excited about that. We’re gonna roll these out every other week, so we’re gonna have two a month.

Betsy [00:23:26]:
I was getting back on my. I’ve been so busy and just really working with women inside the program and getting focused. Plus all of this with. With changing the. The apartment and selling the house, I really decided that I was gonna put things on the back burner and put my mental health first in all of that. So I was gonna do what I could do with this space that I had and not push myself because I wanted to be healthy through this whole thing. And so. So I’ve.

Betsy [00:23:56]:
It’s been a little bit since I’ve had a podcast, but I have a million ideas and I have a giant list, and there’s been so many things that I wanted to tell you, and I think if I can commit to something that’s achievable, which is going to be, like, every other week, so that I can bring you some really good episodes that have real meaning for you instead of just trying to put something together. So that is my plan. I’m so happy that you’re here. Thank you so much for spending time with me, and thanks for coming back to the show. And I will see you all in two weeks. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show, and thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that. I appreciate it so much.

Betsy [00:24:35]:
And thank you for leaving me a review on itunes. I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast, I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to, like, figure out how to even make that happen. Now if you want to find me, find me on social media. I’m usually on Instagram, starting out on TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Paik, and that’s my website, too. Betsy paik.com and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me just shoot me a dm, shoot me a direct message on Instagram and I will be at your service.

Betsy [00:25:18]:
Thanks again for listening and I will see you all next week.

On todays episode Betsy shares some ways of thinking through the “magical in between” so you can have new ideas, feel satisfied and notice all the ways life is working for you.

Transcript:

Betsy [00:00:05]:
Welcome to the Art of Living Big podcast. My name is Betsy Pake. I’m an author, a speaker, and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now let’s go live Big. Hello, everyone. Welcome.

Betsy [00:00:34]:
Welcome to the Art of Living Big. If you have been here for a long time, hi. It’s good to see you. I hope things are going well. If you’re new here, I’m excited that you’re here with us, so. Okay, so I have a couple things to talk about today. A couple things are just random things that I wanted to tell you. Okay.

Betsy [00:00:53]:
One. One of those is about two months ago, two months ago, maybe three months ago, I needed a new mattress. I kept finding I was waking up and, like, my back was so out of whack, I had to go to the chiropractor. And after, like, the third week in a row of going to the chiropractor, I was like, this is not normal for me. I’m not, like, a person that typically has to go to the chiropractor. And I realized that my bed, you know, when your mattress just gets shot. And I felt like I was hanging on for dear life. Like, I had fallen into, like, a middle.

Betsy [00:01:29]:
And in the middle of the night, I woke up one night, like, gripping the side of the bed, like, so that I didn’t fall into the hole. And I was like, oh, my God, my mattress is dead. And it is hard to figure out what mattress to get. I know that sounds dumb. As soon as I said that, it’s hard. It. It can be hard. It’s hard because so many of the things you buy online and they say that they’ll deliver them and then come pick them up if you don’t like them.

Betsy [00:01:56]:
I don’t know. That just feels, like, a lot and kind of scary. But also, I don’t think you can just go to a store and lay on a mattress and be like, oh, this is the thing. Like, you gotta sleep on it. Right? So I asked one of my girlfriends, and she said, oh, I have a purple mattress. Do you guys know that? Have you seen the purple mattress? It always seemed really hokey to me, like a gimmick. You know what I mean? But she said, oh, my God, I love my purple mattress. In fact, I love it so much, I bought it for all three of my kids.

Betsy [00:02:25]:
So then I Was like, you did? And she was like, yeah. And when I go away on vacation, I always, even if it’s like the most comfortable hotel bed, I always miss my bed. So then I was like, what? I give me a purple bed. I bought a purple bed. She told me, give it a couple weeks because it takes a couple weeks to get used to it. No, no. Like, the first night I was like, this is the most amazing bed I’ve ever had. It.

Betsy [00:02:56]:
It. It’s amazing. I didn’t buy the most expensive one and I didn’t buy the cheapest one. I bought the one right in the middle. So I’m telling you that I just bought like the plain old purple bed, but not like the minimalist purple bed. And it is so good. It is like these little grids. The mattress is like, I don’t know, it’s like these little grids and you can almost feel them.

Betsy [00:03:21]:
When you lay in bed and you, like, rub your feet against the mattress, you can almost feel the grid. Which, I know it probably doesn’t sound like a good thing, but I don’t know, there’s something magical about it. I did go out of town last month. Remember, I went to California. And I. When I was there, I thought this mattress, although the mattress was really good and I slept fine, I kept thinking, this isn’t like the purple mattress. So I wanted to share that because I think it can be really hard to, like, find a mattress. And anytime I know in the past when my mattress has, you know, cropped the bed, I’m like, oh, no, I gotta figure this out.

Betsy [00:03:58]:
But purple mattress is the way to go. Okay, so now my next. I’m really not being paid for any of this. I probably should be. Okay. So my next thing is I get those ads for olive and June nail polish. Do you get these on Instagram? Like, I get the ads for the Olive and June nail polish. And I’ve seen it before at tar.

Betsy [00:04:19]:
I just, I, you know, I have known about this nail polish for a long time, and I’m just not into it. I go through phases where I don’t go get my nails done for years. Literally, I’ll do them myself. And that’s like a whole thing that I really like doing. And then I’ll go through a phase where I want to go get them done. And I am just coming out of that phase. It was like a six month phase where I wanted to go get them done. And then, you know, it, it rolls over into this like, like feeling.

Betsy [00:04:47]:
I like, it’s A burden. Like, I just want to be able to drop my hands off and pick them up later. Like, so I needed to just get back to doing my own nails. So I started seeing these ads again, right, for this olive and June nail polish. Now, I guess the thing that makes it good is that it supposedly lasts as long as gel. So I’m kind of down for that. And then I went to this event in California, my mastermind. And when I was there, one of the women in my mastermind had like the prettiest nail color on.

Betsy [00:05:18]:
It was sort of purple. It was called Raisin. I like raisins. It was called. And I was like that. I like, I kept looking at her nails, like the whole time. Like every time she’d be talking, I’d be like that. I don’t know, something about her nails look really good.

Betsy [00:05:32]:
So I said, your nails look really good. And she said, oh, it’s that olive and June nail polish. So that. So now I’m like, like, I’m listening, right? I’m like, oh, what color is it? She tells me the color, it’s that raisin color. And I’m like, it looks so good. She’s like, I. It’s weird because I don’t usually do my nails, but this polish stays on forever. That’s all I needed to hear.

Betsy [00:05:54]:
That’s it. That’s all I needed to hear. Next time I saw the ad, I was like, I’m going to get that. So I bought like their little set so it comes with like the top coat and nail file, you know, the oil, stuff like that. But it comes with six polishes. And so I got the polish and I got the long lasting. So they have a gel version. But I didn’t want to stick my hand under the light and do all that.

Betsy [00:06:19]:
I wanted just polish, polish that I could take off with a regular nail polish remover. So I got this polish. I got like a couple reds, like a deep red and a brighter red and that raisin color and a blue and a green color I got. It’s called something like it’s. No, it’s green. No, this is green. Don’t get that color. That’s the only color I didn’t like.

Betsy [00:06:44]:
But maybe I need to do more coats. But it’s so pretty and it lasts forever. So it just stays on forever. So I wanted to share that when I did it. They’ll have coupons. Like every time I’ve seen the ad, they have like a coupon so you can get it cheaper. But I think it was a really good deal for everything that I got and how long it lasts. So the colors I got were really deep, like fall kind of winter colors.

Betsy [00:07:11]:
But, yeah, it would be a really good gift, I think, too. So sharing that, those are my two things. Get the purple bed. Get the olive and June polish. All right. So while I’ve been recording, I got a message from my kid. She was like, I got my Spotify wrapped. So, you know, I had to hear.

Betsy [00:07:28]:
I had to pause and go listen. And then I was like, who’s on my Spotify wrapped? I don’t even have to tell you, if you’ve been here for a little while, we already know it’s Taylor Swift, every single thing. Except this year. Because always it’s like my top five songs are Taylor Swift songs. I don’t know. I’m nothing if not consistent, I guess. So it’s always Taylor Swift’s my top person. And then all the songs are Taylor Swift.

Betsy [00:07:52]:
But this time I had Chapel Roan on there. That Pink Pony Club was like my most streamed song. Apparently. I was really digging that back in September quite a bit. So anyway, the Spotify wrapped is always fun, but once again, I’m. I’m a swifty over fifty and it is. It is shown in my Spotify wrapped. Ah.

Betsy [00:08:14]:
All right. So I want to talk to you a little bit today about the in between. You know, I mentioned over the last couple episodes that we decided to put our house on the market and it’s not selling. In fact, I haven’t had a showing in two weeks. They lowered the price, so I think it will things. The tide will turn, things will change. But that was a frustrating time to be in. You want something, right? It’s this moment where you want something that you’re not getting and you’re doing all the things you know how to do.

Betsy [00:08:54]:
And the truth is, the realtor is the expert, so I’m leaning on her to say, what’s next? What do we do different? And there’s this moment of how do I show up in this space? And, you know, I think it can be selling your house. I think it can be a million different things where there is this, like, in between. Like, I’m not quite where I want to be, and I’m not where I was, but I’m sort of in the middle and how do I want to show up in the middle? And so I want to talk about that just a little bit. One of the things that I decided early on. So I say early on two weeks ago, Two weeks ago. But early on in this process, when I got back from California and we had, like, two showings that weekend I got back, and then that’s been it. So maybe it’s even been three weeks. It’ll be going on three weeks this weekend.

Betsy [00:09:55]:
So I haven’t had any showings. But also, like, trying to keep the house really clean and trying to, like, keep it all put, everything put away so that if someone does want to see it, it’s ready to go. And so in all of that, there is an opportunity to get really frustrated, and there’s an opportunity to get really mad, and there’s an opportunity to think like, this is just never going to work. And I have done all of those things. I’m not coming to you here saying, and I didn’t do those. Oh, no, I did those. But what I realized really quickly was that that wasn’t doing anything to move the needle, right? Like, me getting mad wasn’t doing anything. Me getting impatient wasn’t doing anything.

Betsy [00:10:42]:
So there was something here for me to learn. And so what I decided for me was there is this space, and this space is here to give me something, and I need to learn everything that I can and figure out what my lessons are in this so that when the next thing comes, I will be ready. And so I wanted to offer you that thought because I think there are times where we can get really impatient with what is. But the key. The key to all of this. This. I say this, like, air quotes. This, this life, this struggle, right? This challenge, anytime we’re in that, there is an opportunity to practice.

Betsy [00:11:33]:
To practice releasing and accepting what is. And what was was that nobody was looking at the house. Now I’m all for, like, what are the strategic things we need to do to move the needle forward. And I agree with all of that. But I don’t think you find the thing to move the needle from a place of being angry and frustrated and unhappy. I think the only place that you find the strategic levers that are really going to push the buttons you need pushed is from a place of acceptance and peace and recognizing that there’s lessons to learn and being open. Because when we get frustrated and we get really uncomfortable with things, we close down, right? We constrict, and when we constrict, we’re not open to any other energy. You know, one of the things I always say to the ladies in the navigate method is there’s a couple things that we have to do, right? We’ve got to be practicing every day.

Betsy [00:12:40]:
So we can’t just come to group and be in group or just do the curriculum and listen to the curriculum and then never implement. Right. So all of our curriculum is designed to have things to implement because you have to be practicing that every day. And I feel like this experience, like, you know, change doesn’t happen in group. Change doesn’t happen on the yoga mat. It happens in the times where there’s a struggle. Right. That’s the chance that you get to practice.

Betsy [00:13:10]:
So I think, number one, you’ve got to have practice. You’ve got to be doing the things that lead you to who you want to be. And so this was giving me an opportunity to practice, and so I could just appreciate that. The number two thing is we’ve got to really focus on where we’re going. I think there’s great value in acknowledging where you’ve been, acknowledging past hurts or struggles or healing things that are painful. I think there’s a lot of value in that. And at the same time, I think a problem happens when we continue to regurgitate the same things over and over and over and over again. Right.

Betsy [00:13:53]:
Which is what happens so many times when we go to, like, couples counseling. Right. We just talk about the painful things over and over and over again. We’ve got to shift to the things that are working. And so to bring this back to my experience with the house, like, it gives me an opportunity to practice. And then I’ve got to be thinking forward. Like, if this house was selling, how would I be feeling? What would I be stepping into? Right. Who would I be? And that brings me to the third thing, which is understanding that there is a magic that can happen when we relax and accept that.

Betsy [00:14:31]:
I’m going to say it like this, but the universe always has our back, right? That there is always space for us to be supported and to grow. I think it’s when we do that constriction that we cut ourselves off from that. You know, I was in group this last week, and somebody said something about how uncomfortable it is because I don’t know what’s happening. Oh, it was in our alumni group. I think so. Well, once you become an alumni of our program, then we meet once a month. So it was in our alumni group. We do a monthly coaching, and I love it because we get to connect with everybody.

Betsy [00:15:06]:
And someone was saying there is still this, like, in between. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Right. I don’t know if this is going to happen or that’s going to happen. And I hate that. And I thought. And I said, this is. This is amazing because when you don’t know what’s going to happen, it means you’re getting something new.

Betsy [00:15:27]:
Like, if the path was laid out, then it would be like, this is the same old thing I’ve done before, right? I’m going to get the same outcome I’ve done before. But we want new stuff, right? We want new experiences, we want new problems. There’s always going to be a problem, right? That’s just life. That’s just life. But if we’re having new problems, it means we’re not stuck. It means we’re not just churning in the same thing over and over again, right? It means we’re moving in some direction. And I think that’s one of the big keys to this life, you know, to really enjoying this life. And so when we’re stuck.

Betsy [00:16:06]:
I’m using air quotes again. When we’re stuck in this, like, I feel like I’m. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s the best. Because you’re not really stuck. So in this house, I get an opportunity, right? I get to see what it is that I have to learn here. I get to practice not constricting and being open. And I get to trust in the magic of the universe, of this could lead to anything.

Betsy [00:16:34]:
There could be something that I never even dreamed of that can happen. But when I constrict up, I’m cutting out possibility. Like, somebody could just walk up to my front door right now and say, I want to give you cash, but you have to be out by this weekend. Like that could happen. That can happen. Like anything can happen. But we cut ourselves off and we say what’s probably available to us instead of what would be amazing, what would feel so fun, what would be totally different? And I think that when we can do those three things, you know, when we can be practicing, right? Life is a process. And if you want to change the process, you have to practice it every single day.

Betsy [00:17:25]:
And we can be focused on what’s coming instead of rehashing the crap, right? Heal the crap, but then move forward. And we can start to trust in the magic of the universe and know that the universe has our back and that all the things are working for me. But I’ve got to pay attention to be able to get the lessons and to be able to move forward in a way that really serves me. One of the hardest things I think that I see for people is this idea of maybe it’s not the way you thought. Like, I know you think you see it that way. Like, I know that seems very real. Like, I know you are so sure that what you see is what is, like, the person your. Your spouse that they are that way.

Betsy [00:18:14]:
Like, that is who they are. I’m seeing it like, or my life is this way. The way that this is. This is what will always happen. Or, you know, wherever it is that I’m going, I know this is how it’s going to turn out, because this is how it always turns out. Like, that idea is one of the hardest things to be able to shift, because the truth is that the past will just replay over and over again unless you start to become the person who does something different, right? You begin to change. That process begins to change for you. Now you’re reacting to things differently, and now your outcome is different.

Betsy [00:18:56]:
And that maybe what you see is just what you’ve always seen and you’re hypnotized to look for it, but that there is something else. And so as I’ve been here in this process the last, like, three weeks now, I guess, of having nobody look at the house, I’ve really had to lean into these factors, right? These structure of how I decide I want to live my life. And I could have sat here and stewed and bitched at the agent or complained about everything, or, you know, a number of things. Who knows? All the things I could have the rabbit holes I could have gone down, but instead, really shifting to focus on what can I learn here, how can I practice who I want to be, what is it that I can look forward to, and how can I just lean into this magic? So I feel. I feel it coming. I think I’m going to get some people this weekend, and then I think on Monday I’m going to get an offer. That is what I can feel coming. And I’m just leaning into that.

Betsy [00:19:59]:
And whatever happens is working for me. And so I’m going to just allow whatever happens. But I’m excited. I. I’m excited, too. So I wanted to offer you that my process and way of thinking when things get hard or when you feel stuck in the middle of the in between, but the magic happens in the unknown. And when you can remember that, that is how I think you live a big life. All right, thank you guys so much for listening.

Betsy [00:20:26]:
I love you so much. And I will see you. I’ll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show, and thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that. I appreciate it so much and thank you for leaving me a review on itunes.

Betsy [00:20:45]:
I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to like figure out how to even make that happen. Now if you want to find me, find me on social media. I’m usually on Instagram, starting out on TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Paik and that’s my website too. Betsypake.com and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me, just shoot me a dm, shoot me a direct message on Instagram and I will be at your service. Thanks again for listening and I will see you all next week.

On todays episode Betsy shares some new ways to look at the “In between” and to find some joy even when things feel like they are going sideways.

Transcript:

Betsy [00:00:05]:
Welcome to the Art of Living Big podcast. My name is Betsy Pake. I’m an author, a speaker, and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now let’s go live big. Hello, fellow adventurers. Hi, everybody.

Betsy [00:00:35]:
So I’m here. I’m here recording today in my office, and my dog is just such deep sleep and he’s snoring, and so we’re gonna hope for the best. Sometimes when I’m recording, I try and wake him up before I start recording, and then he’ll fall back. I feel like he falls back asleep deeper if I do that. So we’re just going to roll with it. I have a lot of things to catch up on because it’s been a couple weeks, you know, so I’ve got a lot of things to tell you, but I want to start off with the really important things, which is I cut my hair off. Yes, that’s right. And I’m.

Betsy [00:01:10]:
I’m sharing this with you as a warning. If you don’t have really thick hair. Okay. If you don’t have really thick hair, perhaps reconsider if someone is going to razor cut your hair. I just. I think razor cutting your hair can be. So I have a friend that does it and her hair always looks amazing, but my hair is not that kind of hair. And I have been trying to.

Betsy [00:01:36]:
It’s. It turned it into the biggest flyaway mat. And finally I just was like, I can’t. I’m just chopping it off. So, I mean, I chopped a ton off. It’s short. It’s. It’s a bob.

Betsy [00:01:46]:
It’s well above my shoulders. And I gotta tell you, it made me feel a little bit like jumping up and clicking my heels together. So I have cut my hair off. And, you know, anytime you cut your hair, amazing things start happening, like new things. I saw an interview with a guy recently, and he was saying that he thinks, you know, historically, when do we cut our hair, right? We cut our hair off. Like when we break up with a boy, right? But this guy was saying he thinks that when you get a new hairstyle, right? Or if you break up with a guy with your boyfriend and then you cut your hair off, it’s a way for you to look in the mirror and have a visual reminder that you’re not that person anymore. And this morning I looked and I had a visual reminder that I was not that person. And I thought, who’s she? Who is she that does something different? And I wonder, you know, if you’ve been here for a while, you’ve heard me talk about how I had this hypnosis, this custom hypnosis, and you can go back a couple episodes and start to hear about that journey.

Betsy [00:02:52]:
But I. I can’t help but wonder if the desire to cut my hair off, although there was a necessity because I felt like my hair was so thinned out at the bottom from this razor cutting. I have lived with it for a couple months, so it’s not like I was dying every day like I was living with it. But I can’t help but wonder if it then became uncomfortable to be in the suit that I have been in, because so much has changed from that hypnosis. Now I’m going to be sharing more, and I’ll share more, you know, as we do, as I do over the months to come. But this has significantly changed a lot of things. And like I said on the last episode, it’s still unfolding, but it still is unfolding. But one of the things I decided to do is my husband and I decided to sell our house.

Betsy [00:03:48]:
I have talked about my house. I love my little house. If you’re looking for the cutest little house in Atlanta, I. I have loved my house and I love my porch. I love it so much. There’s so many things that I love about this house. And we’ve lived here, you know, almost two years, but it is a bit of a drain. I think we have fixed everything.

Betsy [00:04:10]:
Honest to God, I have taken better care of this house than probably any house in my life. And when we moved in, I didn’t realize how many little things were left undone. Do you know what I mean? Like. Like an outlet that didn’t work or all the. Every single. Every single appliance within a few months had to be replaced. Know we had to get a new hav unit. We had to get the crawl space reinforced.

Betsy [00:04:34]:
We had to get the roof replaced, part of the roof. We had to get the roof internal, the attic reinforced. Like, there were so many things and so many of them weren’t like fun things that you could see, you know, I would have rather redo my kitchen, but instead I redid my bathroom, you know, got a new toilet, got all that. So there has been so many projects. And it’s interesting because when I owned my last house and then I sold my house and I decided to live in an apartment. Tons of people messaged me, and they were like, why would you do that? Like, why are you living in an apartment? And I said, it’s because I. Like, I just don’t want the projects, you know? And so I lived in an apartment. And then I was like, I’m ready.

Betsy [00:05:13]:
Like, I’m ready. I did not anticipate the projects. Like, I really didn’t anticipate not only the number of projects, but the expense of the projects. And I don’t mean regular. I do not mean regular expenses. I mean, like, almost every month, I felt like it was like three to $5,000 in expenses just for upkeep, not the mortgage. And so we made the decision, let’s sell it. We’ve done a lot of things.

Betsy [00:05:38]:
It’ll be a great home for somebody else. Because she’s been so well loved and taken care of, and all the little things have been tended to, and now we get to go decide what’s next, you know, And. And that will be continued to be unveiled. And I do wonder if that has anything to do with the hypnosis. Do you know what I mean? So, so many things. I’m like, tracking back to this, and I think I mentioned on one of the episodes, but inside my program, inside my program, we have. There’s the navigate method that you’ve heard me talk about, and then people can continue on. And in that continuation program, we call it Voyager, and we are starting now to do custom hypnosis for everybody that comes that.

Betsy [00:06:24]:
Because I’m like, let’s really. Let’s. Let’s do some experiments here. Let’s see if we can get, you know, some. Some really big shifts here, really get to the root issues of problems and start to shift them so it changes who you are. And I think that started to change in how I was reflected in where I lived and what I looked like when I looked in the mirror. All these little things. So it’s been really kind of fun.

Betsy [00:06:50]:
And in that process, also, I have found, you know, anytime. And you guys have sold houses before, I’m sure. And, you know, you have to make it look like a hotel, right? You have to make it look like really, you know, very Zen. I. I went to California for a conference last week and got to see so many of my friends. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But I showed them, you know, here’s the MLS listing. Look at my house.

Betsy [00:07:19]:
And they were like, oh, my God, it’s so cute. This is so cute. That’s so cute. And one woman said, do they use somebody, like, local to stage? And at first I was confused. I was like, what do you mean it’s a stage? Like a stage? Like, no, what? Like, I live there? And she was like, yeah, but I mean, all the furniture and everything, is it staged? And I was like, no, that’s mine. And, and somebody, like, across the table was like, oh, my God, I saw your pictures and I just assumed, assumed it was staged. Which, it brings me a lot of joy. That’s why I share that.

Betsy [00:07:48]:
It brings me a lot of joy. But it also means, like, things look rather sterile right now, you know, like, like, my furniture is super cute, but there’s not any pictures up. There’s not, you know, there’s very few tchotchkes out. There’s not a lot of things around. And so I was really thinking, like, especially as we’re about to roll into Thanksgiving and know, I, I don’t know, I probably need to ask my agent, but, like, can I put any Christmas decorations up? Like, I, I don’t even know, because you want it to look sort of generic so someone else can imagine themselves in the house. But here’s what I did, and I, I, I want to know if you had one of these growing up. So when I was growing up, we had this, this gold tealight holder that had, like, a cherub with a trumpet that sat on the top. And it had, like, these little bells and, like, things, like long gold metal pieces that, like, hung down.

Betsy [00:08:52]:
And then the tea light, you would light, and it would create heat, and the air would change, and it would push this little, like, fan, and the little, the little metal pieces would rub up against these bells, and it would make, like, a little chimy sound. And it was always out at Christmas. Do you guys know, you guys know what I’m talking about, right? It’s like this rotating tea light. Anyway, I started thinking about that, and I was like, you know, I just want one of those. I just want one of those. So I went to Amazon and I, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t even really find. I tried to just Google and I tried to find, like, what that, A picture of what that was, right, with the cherub baby thing with a trumpet, which I guess is an angel. But I, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t Google and find an image of the old one that we had.

Betsy [00:09:45]:
And I couldn’t totally remember it. So, like, there was some that I thought looked similar, but I couldn’t totally remember. But I found one on Amazon that is. It’s silver, so it’s not gold. And it has the little fan thing, but it has these, like, just hanging Christmas trees. And it was like six or seven bucks. So I was like, I’m getting that. And I got these Frasier fur Christmas candles that are little tealights that smell like Frasier fur.

Betsy [00:10:12]:
And I have to tell you, there was this moment. I set it all up, and it’s cheap as f. You know, as cheap as can be. I’m sure I could bend the whole thing and just break it in half. But I set it all up and I was very gentle and I lit the candle and I just. I feel like I could have watched it. I put it on my bedside table and I laid in bed to go to sleep. I watched it.

Betsy [00:10:36]:
I Bet it was 20 minutes. Like, really, it was just, like, so soothing or calming. You know, sometimes if you watch, like, watch like fish in a fish tank. Do you know what I mean? Where it’s like, this is so calming. And I just watched it go around and round and it cast this really cool shadow on the ceiling. And I don’t know, just. It made me really happy and it made me think about sometimes we. We.

Betsy [00:11:01]:
We don’t have to have everything be totally perfect to have it really feel really good. You know, I. I think I was thinking, I’ve got to decorate this whole house. I want all my Christmas decorations up. Like, if I don’t have a tree and the thing on the hearth and the. All the things from I’ve had for 20 years, like, if I don’t have all of those up, it’s not going to feel like Christmas, you know, it’s not going to feel good. And it was. It was sort of leading me to a place where I’m like, this doesn’t feel good.

Betsy [00:11:33]:
And I thought my house was going to sell super fast. And it’s been over a week, week and a half now, and it hasn’t sold. And it surprised me. And it started to make me realize, like, I started to recognize, do I have resistance? Because there’s things I really love about the house. Like, I love the poor. You know, do I. Do I have resistance? Am I holding on so tightly that nobody else can come in? Right? And it reminded me of the saying that I’ve heard before that said, if you don’t learn to find joy in the snow, you’ll have less joy in your life and exactly the same amount of snow. And I thought, there’s joy in this.

Betsy [00:12:15]:
Like, this might feel like a transition it might be, like, the in between. It might be, but there’s a possibility of finding joy. I don’t have to have my whole house decorated. Like, I don’t have to have, like, a team of decorators come in. Not that I would ever do that, but that would be nice. Like, I don’t have to have, like, somebody come and create some winter wonderland. It really was as simple as me spending, like, 6.95 on this little metal tea light. That just brought me, like, a level of peace, I’m going to say.

Betsy [00:12:50]:
Like, that’s the only word I can use to describe it. And I don’t. It’s not like I have specific memories, although I have memories of looking at it as a kid, watching it as a kid. And maybe I was just. Maybe I spend a lot, a lot of time as a kid just staring into the flame, you know, like I do now. But, like, it made me realize that sometimes it’s really simple things. And if I want to sell my home, right? The outcome I want is to sell my home. If I want to sell my home, and I don’t want it to be a miserable experience because I’m living my life still.

Betsy [00:13:23]:
Like, how do. What’s the highest and best? How do I show up in this and feel the most gratitude and be so excited for the new people coming? And I don’t have to be sad. I don’t have Christmas decorations up because I can have one thing that I get end up. Like, I think I got more joy. I think I got more joy from that one thing. Because my whole house wasn’t full of stuff, and it wasn’t like, oh, the same stuff is up. You know, I got to, like, really focus and appreciate and notice and remember and experience this. This very simple thing.

Betsy [00:14:03]:
And I thought, I’m finding joy in the snow because that’s. That’s it. Like, that’s it. Like, there’s no outcome. Like, I think the outcome is selling my house. But once I do that, there’ll be something else. So there’s no outcome. It’s me just being here now, recognizing this in this moment and finding the most joy in it.

Betsy [00:14:26]:
And so I offer you that thought because you might be in the same place as me. Like, things are changing or you’re feeling a little bit like, in the. In between or the world isn’t going the way you wanted it to go, and you’re just like, now what? And I. And I firmly believe. And I know I’ve talked about this, and I don’t always Live it. I’m being honest. I don’t always live it. I try.

Betsy [00:14:50]:
I try to remember. I try to notice when I’m not living it right? But I have moments where I’m not living it, which is in this moment. There are things to appreciate, and if I keep focusing on the things I don’t like, I’m adding energy, my life force, my precious, precious time and energy to the unwanted. And in the end, that’s not. Like, I think of this all the time. Like, when I’m an old lady laying in my bed, like, about to die, like, what do I. What do. How do I want to look back on this day, right? Not my whole life.

Betsy [00:15:28]:
Because honestly, that’s so abstract. Who can look, who can. Who can imagine being in bed in the old lady about to transition to the next great adventure? And you’re like, my whole life. You can’t even imagine that. I can’t even conceptualize my whole life. That’s already happened. But I can conceptualize today. And how do I want to live today or this week? What’s the main feeling that I want to have? What’s the highest and best? How do I act with the most dignity and bravery through all the hard things that are happening, right? So that’s where I am.

Betsy [00:16:10]:
That’s where I’m moving through. And I offer you that in case you are in a transition or an in between, or you’re about to go through a transition, or in between, or you just got through a transition, it’s always something. You’re either going into a problem, about to go into a problem, in the problem, or about to leave the problem. So there’s always stuff, but what if we can shift how we’re experiencing it so then the problem just becomes the adventure. You know, there are times where I will really sit. And I know you’ve heard me talk about this, and when I was in California, somebody asked me, they asked me, betsy, do you think everybody has access to that thing? Because I always talk about, like, this inner knower, this inner part of me, and I was like, oh, my God. Like, yes, that’s like, I got nothing special. Like, everybody.

Betsy [00:16:55]:
Of course, everybody, everybody, everybody. But when I’m going through a specifically hard time or a especially. That’s the word I want an especially hard time. And I sit and I go into my life force, right? My life force, my inner source, whatever you want to call her. Like, when I visit with her. Oh, she’s so pleased. Sometimes it makes me mad because I’m like, why are you so happy. This isn’t good.

Betsy [00:17:28]:
And I. And I feel her, and I feel like she’s like, no, no, this is the adventure. I wanted this. I wanted to experience the ups and downs. Let me have it. Let me. Let me find joy in it. It’s so fun.

Betsy [00:17:41]:
I love figuring out problems. That’s what she says. And then I say, you’re dumb. Let’s have it be easy. But it can be even in the hard thing. And I say this if you’re new here, I say this from somebody whose mom died in a car accident when I was at school one day. I say this from a woman who has a child, who’s been mentally ill and struggled for a decade. Like, I say this from a place who’s been.

Betsy [00:18:09]:
Woman who’s been divorced, who’s had struggles in her current marriage. Like, I am saying this not from a person that’s. I’ve had it so easy compared to so many. And I. Yes, I will say that I have so many privileges in my life, but I’m saying it from a place of knowing hard stuff, too. And when I check in with my deepest part of me, she’s thrilled. She loves the up and down. And when I know that, it really does make those hard things a whole lot easier.

Betsy [00:18:40]:
A whole lot easier. You know yesterday, and you’ve heard me talk about how I’ve gotten hate comments on the Internet, and it really used to bother me. Remember, this is what started the whole thing with the. With the going to the hypnotherapist, right? This is what started it. So yesterday I started getting this kind of vile hate. It was a new kind of hate. It was a new brand of hate, which was good because I was over the other. So I felt like, oh, well, now it’s time to step it up.

Betsy [00:19:08]:
Give me something a little harder, because I’ve grown accustomed to the other. But this was more sexual in nature and it was a little more aggressive. I don’t ever post anything political, but it. A lot of it was politically based, which was kind of weird. There was a lot of people calling me, calling me a boomer, which I thought was weird because I was like, well, I mean, I guess my hair is gray, like, not a boomer. And calling me a Karen, which also was weird because I’m not posting anything. I don’t think that’s Karen, but whatever, whatever. But I found myself being more activated.

Betsy [00:19:45]:
Like, not in the same way that I was at all, but more. I felt on alert. Like, I should check. I should check. I Need to be on alert, you know. And sometimes I worry about the things people post, honestly, because I don’t want the women that are part of my community and coming to my page to see something awful and feeling like it’s about them because they agreed with my post or they saw themselves in my post. Do you know what I’m saying? So like a lot of my vigilance is like, I don’t want anybody to see that and feel terrible. And some of it was a little bit aggressive about, you know, waiting for me.

Betsy [00:20:28]:
Basically they were saying, I can’t wait till you die. That’s basically what they were saying. And that was start. So I really checked in with my inner knower and I was like, do you like this? Like, do you like this? This kind of up and down. And I didn’t feel the joy in her of the woo. This is fun. But I felt this steadiness of. I want you to notice.

Betsy [00:20:55]:
This is for you. This is for you to notice. What in you is left to be healed. This is a gift. Consider it like a 48 hour gift. What are you noticing? What are you learning? What are you finding out about yourself? Where do you need to go? Because right now you’re in a cocoon. Like right now you’re in the incubator, right? You’re. You’re not in the birth canal right now.

Betsy [00:21:21]:
You’re in the womb and you’re being formed into this next version of you. And you need to be looking at this and figuring out what there is to learn from it. And I was like, oh, okay, well that’s different than like you taking joy in the. In my hardship. It felt better, I guess. Or it felt more authentic, I guess. And so I’ve really been thinking about that. Like, what is this teaching me? There is something.

Betsy [00:21:51]:
There is. I don’t. Well, I don’t have words for it yet, so maybe it is not yet to be shared. But there’s something. I am in the cocoon, but I don’t know what the butterfly is. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s. She feels sort of like a moth.

Betsy [00:22:08]:
Like she’s just gonna be. She’s gonna be an old, worn out moth. But we’ll see if it’s a beautiful butterfly. But I don’t need to worry about that. I need to be where I am. Be where you are. And you’re in the goo. You know the.

Betsy [00:22:24]:
You’ve heard this a million times. The. The caterpillar goes into the cocoon and turns to goo, you know, turns to goo and then reforms. I don’t know if she cuts her hair off, but she changes. And then when she comes out, she’s someone new. And I don’t have to worry about who she is, what she looks like, what, how big the butterfly wings are. I just have to worry about becoming the best version of the goofy, learning everything I can in the goo so that when it does emerge, it’s everything I need her to be. And that’s what this is about right now.

Betsy [00:23:01]:
Although the feeling like they want me to die, that part didn’t really feel that good. And there was a lot of stuff about, like, blowjobs and stuff. And that just didn’t feel good either. Like, I just was like, can we not. Can we not have this conversation on my page? So there was just a lot of deleting and blocking. It’s fine if they said something that seemed violent. I reported it and then moved on. So, you know, in all of this, and I think with all the things that have happened and just our world right now, our world even.

Betsy [00:23:31]:
I mean, even since COVID Right. Or before, like, the status quo is that nothing is status quo. Right. The status quo is constant change and new things and just feeling. I think everyone feels, no matter who you are or where you are, I think everyone to some extent, feels this sense of unease, like. Right. Like what’s. What’s coming.

Betsy [00:24:00]:
I even said this morning, I need some things to be certain. And so I started really thinking, especially when I started getting these comments roll in. I was stomping my feet in the office, and Craig stuck his head in, and he was like, are you okay? And I said, I just am discharging some of this. And after he left, I put a really good song on, and I put my hands in the air and I just yelled because I wanted it verbal. I wanted the vibration of it in the world. All the good things that we’re doing, all the good things that I’m doing that my program is doing, the feedback that we get. I talked about specific women in the program and things they’ve said. That’s.

Betsy [00:24:37]:
That even when they say it, I’m like, holy crap, that’s amazing. Like, that’s an outcome. I didn’t even know what happened. You know what I mean? Like, that’s so cool. And I think that there’s something in this and, like, finding certainty. And I was. And that’s really what I was doing, was I was finding certainty in myself, in my knowing, in my experience, not other people’s. Experience of me on the Internet.

Betsy [00:25:03]:
But in my experience of myself, what is that and what does that look like and what’s true. What’s true for me? And, you know, this past week, I was in California, and you’ve probably heard me talk, and I went back in March. I went. I go twice a year with my coach. He has a live event, and there’s a whole bunch of us. And so it’s people that I see, you know, I see them every week and in our zoom calls and stuff, and people that I connect to through Voxer and Marco Polo and all those kinds of things. It was so cool to get to see them. You know, I haven’t seen them since March, and so to connect.

Betsy [00:25:43]:
And a couple of the girls, we went to the spa and, like, there’s this big spa at the hotel and, like, just to have those connections. And I think that right now, what all of this may be driving us towards is connection. That is our certainty, right? It’s not this like this. I’m going to say it like this because this is what it felt like all of a sudden, like a radio wave, right? Like all the Internet, all the static, It’s a radio wave, like a wave pattern in the. In the. In the air. But we’ve got to find our people, you know, we’ve got to find our support systems. We’ve got to find that structure and find that center for ourselves so that when all the things are going, we can stand up and yell out loud what we know to be true about ourselves.

Betsy [00:26:40]:
And we’ve got that grounding force behind us to say, yes, you’re right, that’s correct. I see that in you, too. Like, I can reflect that back. And I think more and more, us finding our community is going to be more and more important. And, you know, I’ve been trying to think about ways to do this. One of the things that I’ve heard inside my program a lot is women saying, I wish they’re, like, the way that people learn, you know, I’m going to say it this way. My program really teaches people to think different. And the way that they think then starts to change the kinds of people that they want to draw into their lives.

Betsy [00:27:23]:
And they have said, I wish we could. I wish we were all in the same place, right? I wish we had a community. I wish we had a live event, which that’s something I’m going to do for them because so many people have asked me for that. And I started thinking, like, there’s enough people that listen to this show, that we could do some sort of gathering, right? Where if I was there and gathering, you all, you all could meet each other because you’d all be in that area. You know, I had to speak in Baltimore, I don’t know, a year ago or so, and I invited a bunch of women to. I invited anybody come and have lunch with me. And so a whole group of people came and had lunch, and then they all got to meet each other, and they’re local, you know what I mean? So I’ve been thinking about this idea of connection and finding our people. And although I do that virtually, how is another way to do that? And what could that look like? So in this.

Betsy [00:28:23]:
In this environment, right in this incubator that I’m in, and maybe you guys are in too, what is the grounding piece and how can you find your people? And what does that look like? And then before I close up, I want to just remind you, if you have been following along on Instagram, maybe you’ve booked a call with our team and, you know, the navigate method wasn’t something that you were ready to do at that moment or you’ve been curious about learning more about it. If you go to Instagram on my. On my bio, it’ll say, subscribe. It’s 10 bucks a month. And I do a Q A in there every week. I think what I’m gonna do is a coaching call every month. I’m trying to figure that out, like, where I would coach one person and then have it to share just to the people that are inside the subscription. So somebody could get specific help.

Betsy [00:29:17]:
Because I know from doing the work that we do in groups, one person says something and everybody’s like, oh, my God, that’s me. And so I know helping one person specifically with an issue could help tons of people, but I’m always posting Q&As. Like, I’ll always answer questions. I usually post kind of a theme around what our weekly meeting was, so people know that. And then yesterday, I posted something that was a little bit more teaching. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that because I only have access to reels and stories in there. And so, like, how do I do that in a way that I can get the most information in? Sometimes my concepts are longer than a real. But I’m really trying to figure that out.

Betsy [00:29:58]:
But somebody was like, oh, this is so good. This is exactly what I needed. So I was like, okay, we’re on the right track here. So I think we’re getting this figured out, so come and join me over there. Like I said, it’s only 10 bucks a month. You can cancel at any time, but it’ll give you some extra access to me. And I really hope to be able to do some fun stuff with people there, too, to bring us together in another way and in a deeper way. So.

Betsy [00:30:19]:
All right. Thank you so much for being here this week. I love you guys. And I have ideas for next week’s show already. So I’m excited to share with you a little bit more and I will talk with you soon. See you next week. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show and thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that.

Betsy [00:30:42]:
I appreciate it so much. And thank you for leaving me a review on itunes. I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast, I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to, like, figure out how to even make that happen. Now if you want to find me, find me on social media. I’m usually on Instagram, starting out on TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Paik, and that’s my website, too, betsypake.com and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me, just shoot me a dm, shoot me a direct message on Instagram and I will be at your service.

Betsy [00:31:27]:
Thanks again for listening and I will see you all next week.

On todays episode Betsy shares some stories about friends, living big and the secrets to the universe…. well, sort of!

Listen in this week and discover how you can impact a shift in your reality and start walking toward what you really want.

Transcription:

Betsy [00:00:05]:
Welcome to the art of Living. Big podcast. My name is Betsy Pake. I’m an author, a speaker, and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now let’s go live big. Hello, fellow adventurers.

Betsy [00:00:34]:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show today. This has been like such a busy, crazy week in so many ways. The hurricane came through, Milton came through Florida, but impacted us in Atlanta. I’ll explain why it impacted me specifically. And there’s been some updates that I want to share with you about my hypnosis. If you have been listening the last couple weeks, you know that I got a customized hypnosis to work through a really big core issue. So I’ll recap and kind of give you the rundown on that.

Betsy [00:01:10]:
Last week, as you probably know, that Hurricane Milton came through Florida. And, you know, we were kind of watching it. And I live in Atlanta, so I wasn’t expecting to get weather, but it’s so close to us. And my dad has a home in Florida. And so I was really watching and watching the path. One of our friends is the meteorologist in Tampa. So, you know, she was posting a lot on her instagram and on her private Facebook page, just talking about how she was preparing so that she could go in to work and not have to worry about her home, you know. So all of this I was just kind of watching, it was so fascinating because I talked to my dad and my dad has a home in Florida and he has a home in Vermont where I grew up.

Betsy [00:01:58]:
And he has this house in Florida. It’s outside Orlando. So we’re not in the direct path, but still, like weather and, you know, tornadoes, possibly all this stuff. And although he wasn’t there, so I wasn’t worried about him and his safety. But I did call him and say, like, do you know anything about your house? Do you have to do anything? Do you have to pay anybody to go board it up or like, what’s going on? And, you know, my dad is, he’s 83. He’ll be 84 in February, beginning of February. And he’s, he seems really young to me. I don’t know if I’m like, I just see him still as like 60 or if he really is young, but I think he really does seem young.

Betsy [00:02:39]:
He rides his bike all the time, you know, that kind of 80 year old. And he’s super active. He goes back and forth between these two houses and, you know, has. Works on. Has board. He works on boards. Like, he’s on the museum board in Vermont. He goes down to Florida, and he’s active and stuff.

Betsy [00:03:01]:
He still does stuff with his fraternity and goes around and works with the kids at the fraternity houses with different things. So, like, do you know? You know, you get the idea, right? So I say to him, like, do you have to do anything for the house? And he was like, what do you mean? And I said, well, it’s, like, in Florida. So, like, do you have to have anybody do anything? And he said, you know, I bought that house 25 years ago, and they told me it was hurricane proof, so we’re just gonna go ahead and put it to the test now. My dad is not a dumb man at all, and it was far enough outside where he felt like he didn’t have to do anything, but it made me laugh so much, because sometimes that’s exactly what we have to do. Like, we have to just say, I’m safe. The people around me are safe. Everything’s put up, you know, because he doesn’t have outdoor furniture or anything there because he hasn’t been there. And I’m just gonna.

Betsy [00:04:01]:
I’m not gonna spend my precious energy on worrying right now, because the things that really matter are totally fine. I don’t know. Also, I strive to be that unbothered about things. But you know what? His house was totally fine. It was totally fine. He was really lucky. I think there was a little bit of damage in his neighborhood from wind and that kind of thing, but he was fine. On Wednesday last week, I got a message, and I had been getting messages for a few days before from a friend of mine whose mom lives outside Tampa.

Betsy [00:04:37]:
And she said, you know, my mom is down there. She lives in a trailer outside Tampa, and that hurricane is coming, and I’m trying to get her out, and she’s supposed to get a flight out, like, the next day. And so she was messaging with me, and then the next day came, and she said that the flight had been canceled. Like, she didn’t even know she got to the airport, and that’s when she found out it had been canceled. So my girlfriend was like, get in your car and just drive. Like, just start driving. Which, if you saw any of the news or, you know, you have friends or family that live there, it was like, wall to wall to wall traffic trying to get out. Like, it was just packed, and it took, like, you know, hours and hours and hours.

Betsy [00:05:22]:
Would have taken an hour. So it was a big project, right, to load up her car and to head out. And so she grabbed one of her neighbors, who is an older man who was 89, and they started driving. And she told me when they started driving, she said, they’re driving, and they’re going to drive. She lives in Virginia, so she’s like, they’re going to drive all the way to Virginia. And I was like, that just feels, like, really too far to drive. Like, she’s 85, he’s 89. And I said, why don’t they stop in Atlanta? They can park their car at my house, and I will drive them to the airport.

Betsy [00:06:01]:
And then they could take a flight from Atlanta to go to Virginia to see her. And so she was like, that’s great. That’s a really good idea. So she was trying to figure it out and then ended up calling me back, like, that morning, early that morning, and she said, my mom is driving now, and can you drive her the rest of the way from Atlanta? Can you drive her? So she has her car. And I was like, I really can’t. Like, it was just 10 hours or something each way, and I had to work, and I had group and all these things. So I was like, I really can’t, but I want to be able to help, so what else could we do? And so she decided she was going to fly down. I was going to pick her up at the airport.

Betsy [00:06:38]:
Her mom was going to drive right to my house, and then they would be reunited, and she would drive her mom back to Virginia. So I had a doctor’s appointment that morning. Um, and after I left my doctor’s appointment, I got a phone call from her, sort of frantic, and she said, oh, my God, Betsy, my mom had a car accident outside Atlanta, and she’s totaled her car. Can you go get her? And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. Where is she? And so she told me, like, the cross streets. Like, she’s on the corner of Memorial drive and this. And I was like, I don’t.

Betsy [00:07:14]:
Like, I don’t even know where that is, but let me go see if I can find it. So I did. I found it. And it didn’t take me that long, 30, 40 minutes to get there. And there her mom was, like, on the side of the road, the car just totaled. The police hadn’t even gotten there yet. And so, anyway, long story short, I spent the day with her and her friend and brought them both to my house, fed them, got them situated. I mean, it was, they were so nervous.

Betsy [00:07:44]:
You know how, you know, you get shaky after something like that anyway, and then imagine you’re, like, fleeing. You don’t know if your home is going to be okay, and you’re older, and it just all feels unsteady and just really hard. And I just. My heart just broke for her. So I got them on my porch. If you followed along on my instagram, you know how much I love my porch. So I got them settled, I moved the tv out to the porch and got some pizzas. And it’s like, we’re just.

Betsy [00:08:13]:
We’re gonna make this as fun as we can, right? So whenever something goes sideways, I always like to think, like, what is the easiest path here? What could feel, like, the most fun in this situation? It doesn’t mean the situation is fun. It just means what could feel the lightest? How can we make this the best it could be? And, you know, I’ve talked about this before, but that’s kind of what I think about as living biggest. Living big isn’t having, like, some big, extraordinary life that everybody wants or celebrity, like money and wealth. It’s not that. It’s like, what’s the highest and best, right, in this situation, how can I make this work for me? And being able to live and to grow in whatever environment I’m in is really. Is really what that’s all about. So I feel like we really made the best of it. And, you know, I don’t know that they would say it was fun, but we made it as light as it could be.

Betsy [00:09:07]:
And then we picked up Michelle, got them home, got them to a hotel for a couple days. They stayed in Atlanta and until they could get a flight out. And then, because there was no car to drive home to Michelle’s, she flew her mother back, and her mom’s going to visit her for a little while before going home. So it was sort of a lesson, I think, in. In being present, right? Like, how can we make this the best? Because there’s lots of ways to look at things. You know, we can say we’re safe, and that’s the best that we could hope for, and how can we make what we’re going through now seem as light as it can possibly be, right. And we can kind of lay that formula, I think, over lots of different areas and times of our lives. The other thing that this all reminded me of, and years ago, I talked about this when I had gone to Vermont to stay with my best friend, growing up with her mom at the hospital while she transitioned.

Betsy [00:10:12]:
And I talked about Jesse Itzler Eitzler. I should know how to say that. It’s Sara Blakely’s husband. And you know how I’m a fan of Sarah Blakely and Jesse. I was in his coaching group years ago, and one of the things that I remember he said that really stuck with me was when your friends need you, you show up. Like, you don’t send a card. You don’t, like, shoot him an email, you show up. And I’ve thought of that so many times over the years, and I remember I talked about it back then when my girlfriend’s mom was transitioning and in the hospital, I found out, and literally within 40 minutes, I was at the Atlanta airport.

Betsy [00:10:52]:
Like, literally, like, I got a flight and, like, ran to the airport. I was like, I can catch that first flight out in the morning and be there, right? So to be there. So honestly, it felt like an honor to be able to be there. I love the opportunities where there’s something that happens that I can help and make things easier. You know, how can I make this the best and lightest that it could be? So it felt really good to me to be able to be there and to help. So. All right, so I want to give you an update on the hypnosis, because if you remember, a couple weeks ago, I talked about how I hired a hypnotherapist, and it’s Joseph Clough that I hired. I’m going to explain to you a little bit about him, but he has an app that I have used for years.

Betsy [00:11:42]:
He and I went through a coaching group together back in 2018. And in fact, I, as I listened to his hypnosis, I think we were probably trained in a similar school of thought for hypnotherapy. I’m a trainer of hypnotherapy, and the things that he says or the way that he does his inductions reminds me a lot of the training that I had. I think we were probably trained. There’s many different kinds of hypnotherapy, but I think we were probably trained similarly. I have listened to his app and used his app for several years, and I really like it. A lot of it’s amazing if you look up hypnotherapy, like, if you go to the Apple Store and I don’t know about the other phone, what is it? Android? But on the Apple store, if you just put in hypnotherapy, I think it’s like the first one that comes in, it’s a little white square with a JC for Joseph Clough. And it’s really the best.

Betsy [00:12:36]:
It’s really, really good. And if you have the paid version, you can switch it to nighttime mode so that at the end of the hypnosis, it just puts you to sleep instead of says, wide awake, well aware, you know? So I really love that. Okay. So in all of this, I was like, I have something that’s really holding me back. And I was starting to recognize it because I was getting weirded out by mean things people were saying on the Internet or things I perceived as mean. I have an update on that. So, anyway, I was like, there’s something going on because I feel this, like, intense shame. And I don’t feel like shame is the appropriate response to, like, a stranger telling me they hate my glasses.

Betsy [00:13:15]:
Do you know what I’m saying? Like, it just seemed really weird. And so I was. I mean, I had done. And historically, over the past, like, 15 years, I’ve done a lot of work on myself. But, you know, like you, I’ve got. I got stuff. You know, I got my stuff. And so I was like, you know what? I don’t know what this is, but this issue that I’m having is a gift, because if it’s showing up like this, then it’s been showing up for years, and I just haven’t noticed it because there hasn’t been enough pressure behind it to put it into the forefront of my thoughts, right.

Betsy [00:13:53]:
And so I hired him to do this to create a custom hypnosis for me. And in that process, we had to get to the core issue, right. Because the symptoms are, like, when somebody says something on Instagram, I feel yucky. That’s just a symptom. That’s not the thing. So anytime I’m working with clients, I’m always like, what’s the belief or the story? So that we can try and get to the core issue. So I hired him. It was a real investment in myself.

Betsy [00:14:25]:
I will say that it was a real investment. And so I was like, I am going to get to the core issue. So that when I tell him what the core issue is, it will really take care of the problem, because otherwise, I’m paying a lot of money and not being honest with myself and getting to the root. Right. And I think we can do that sometimes because it feels hard to touch the things we don’t want to touch. Right. And so many times, we don’t change until where we are is too uncomfortable. And when it gets really uncomfortable, that’s when it’s worth it to go through the pain of healing it or changing it or looking at it, right? And that is absolutely where I was.

Betsy [00:15:09]:
I actually didn’t even. I wasn’t even aware of it, that this existed. And so I was like, I’m gonna get to the dang root of this thing and figure this out. And so I mentioned this on the podcast, so I don’t want to rehash everything, but I had a dark night of the soul. I had a whole night where I was, like, up basically all night, and I was thinking of things and remembering things. And when it got daylight, I was like, I have a belief that I’m bad. That was the belief. I don’t think I mentioned that before, but it was that I am bad.

Betsy [00:15:48]:
And if I didn’t mention it before, it’s because I still sort of believed it, and I couldn’t say it out loud. But when I saw it, like, I am bad, which you might be like, Betsy, how would you think you were bad? Well, you know, just like everybody else, I’ve had things in my life that have happened. And after my mom died when I was 16, it was really traumatic. And some things happened to me, and over and over and over, some things were said to me, and I asked for help, and I told people these things were being done, and nobody helped me. And I think my 16 year old brain decided, well, you must be bad, because if you weren’t, somebody would help you, right? If you weren’t, somebody would listen. And I think that because I was smart and not an adult, by any chance, and my brain certainly wasn’t even, you know, my brain was ten years out from being fully formed. But I think I had enough intellect wherever I was. Like, I got to keep going.

Betsy [00:16:52]:
I have to keep moving forward. And so I had another year of high school, and then I went off to college, and those years were excruciating for me. And I think I really solidified that belief during that time, because that’s when it got really bad, too, when I was asking for help, and nobody would help me. And so I had. I had really adopted the idea with, well, I mean, the only thing that really makes sense is I must be bad, and so I must create patterns around all of this to protect myself, because I can’t keep living. When I look back at those years, like my not even, well, probably my senior year of college or of high school, it started a little bit, but it really intensified when I went to college, I think, because by that point, my dad was married to the woman he started dating after my mom died. And there were a lot of rules around me being able to do certain things or to come home. And so I was in so much deep grief and so vulnerable, and then all of these changes, and so I created some really, really heavy patterns.

Betsy [00:18:05]:
Right. Because that’s such a sensitive place for your brain to be, and especially a developing brain. And so over the past six months, I have really started to unpack some of that. And, you know, historically, over the past decade, I’ve worked on so much of that and healing that and moving to a place where I took responsibility for my part in creating the patterns, certainly not in the trauma, but in my part in creating the patterns. Because when I could. When I could accept my part in creating the patterns, that means I could uncreate them, right? When I didn’t give anybody my power and I kept my power. And so all of this was starting to unravel. But when I finally got to that night where I was like, oh, my God, I remember this, I remember that.

Betsy [00:18:50]:
Like, I was remembering stuff I hadn’t thought of in forever, and it was painful and awful. And then when I saw I am bad, it was like, I don’t know, like the sky opened up, because this 53 year old version of me can look at that and say, oh, my God, of course not. Of course not. And so things changed, like, immediately. Once I had the root cause, it changed. But there was still work to do, and I noticed this beginning to unravel things that I have done. I started to really notice patterns and how I was showing up. And then once I got the hypnosis, I was.

Betsy [00:19:29]:
I mean, immediately, the very first time I did it, there was this lightness, but there’s this really interesting thing that happened. So I got this lightness, and I’ve got, you know, I’ve got the hypnosis. I do it at night. There’s one that I kind of do in the morning. It’s called create your day. And that was a custom. Create your day. So that I started my day thinking the way I wanted to think and being the way I wanted to be.

Betsy [00:19:55]:
But the interesting thing that happened while I was doing the hypnosis was at one point, I, you know, if you’ve ever done a hypnosis, it’s. It’s really very much a guided meditation, right? It’s a guided meditation for all intents and purposes. It just is a meditation with a purpose, right. So it’s leading you somewhere. And so when I was doing it, I noticed at one point, I was really, like, there was a point where I was sitting with myself. Like, I. This version of me come up and I sit. When I do my meditations, if I’m not in bed, I sit.

Betsy [00:20:33]:
I have these two gold thinking chairs in my office, and you may have seen them on Instagram. They’re mid century modern, and they’re very cool, and I love them. But in my hypnosis, I was sitting in one, and this other version of me came and sat in one. I don’t know that she was older, but she was, like, way wise. Like, she was centered and fully present and confident, and she came and, you know, if somebody sits down like, you are sitting in a chair, but your elbows are on your knees, do you know what I’m saying? So you’re leaning forward, and she did that same thing, and she put her hands over my hands, right? So, like, kind of, like, cupped my hands, right. So she’s holding my hands, and she started telling me stuff, and she was telling me, so I’m going to tell you. So she was telling me all this incredible stuff, things I needed to know, how to do, things, where I was going to go, what choices I had. Like, if you do this, you’ll get here.

Betsy [00:21:38]:
If you do this, you’ll get here, like, this. Most insightful. And as she was telling me, I knew that she was telling me, like, the secrets to the universe. It was amazing. And then she got up and walked away. And the only thing I remember is that I thought, why is she walking like that? That’s it. I don’t remember the secrets to the universe. I don’t remember my options or where I’m going.

Betsy [00:22:09]:
I just remember, like, why is she walking like that? So, okay, so then how was she walking? She. And I’m gonna say this, and I’m gonna say this with a lot of love towards myself. And I don’t mean this in a negative way at all, but I want to explain it. She was walking really feminine, powerful and feminine. And I had never. It had never, ever occurred to me how I walk before. Like, me walk. Like, you know, like, there’s things I don’t like about myself.

Betsy [00:22:40]:
Like, I don’t like my thighs, but, like, my walk has never been the thing that I’m like, oh, I wish I walked different. But all of a sudden, I was like, she walks different. Which is honestly such an unconscious thing, right? I mean, I didn’t even notice that about myself, that that was even a thing. And so she walked with purpose. I’m gonna describe it like, there was an elegance to it. Her spine seemed very straight to me, but she was looking straight ahead. It made me realize that when I walk, I look down. Like, I look at my feet, almost, like, to make sure I don’t trip or fall.

Betsy [00:23:20]:
I just. So I start so immediately, I was like, how do I walk? I opened up videos so I could see if I could see myself walking in videos. And sometimes I take b roll while I’ll walk down a path when we’re at the beach. And so I started looking at those, and I was like, I walk like a linebacker, kind of. And I don’t say this to be cruel to myself, but I. It’s a masculine walk. I was like, I don’t know that I ever noticed. And what does that mean, you know? And so I actually asked my daughter, I said, hey, how would you say I walk? And without missing a beat, she said, like a man, she said, you walk very square.

Betsy [00:24:07]:
Your upper body is very stiff, and you look down. I was like, is this a thing? Like, is this a thing people notice? So I said, well, how is it different from other people? And she said, well, typically, women walk with their hips, and they look straight ahead, and you walk like you’re almost leaning forward, right? So at this point, I’m like, obsessed. It’s like all I can think about. Every time I get up to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water at my house, I’m like, how am I walking? What’s happening? The version of me that does all the things that I want to do. Apparently she walks totally different, which to me is such an unconscious way of embodying yourself, right, of showing up as yourself. And there are times when I talk to the ladies in the navigate method, and you’ve probably heard this before, but if you want to change your state, your internal state, you can simply change your physical aspects, and it will impact your internal state. There’s a loop, right? So my brain and my body are connected. And I know you’ve heard that, but if I am feeling sad, I want you to think about, like, a time you felt really sad and then just picture yourself in that sadness.

Betsy [00:25:32]:
Are you kind of slumped over? Are you kind of looking down? Right. Are you, are your shoulders kind of slumped? Like, if you’re sitting, are you kind of, like, dumpy sitting? I call it, you know? Or are you, like, looking up? Are your shoulders back? Like. No. So we, our physical body shows up as our internal being. And this is how come when you walk up to somebody you’re like, oh, are you okay? You just seem a little down. Well, what seems down? It’s the way they’re presenting. Right? So the version of me who does all the magical things apparently is embodying a totally different way of being. And I knew because I saw her walk, and it just occurred to me, as I say, that, that that’s all she needed me to know.

Betsy [00:26:18]:
She didn’t need me to know how it all went down. She just needed me to know who she was being, and that’s who she was being. And so I said to my daughter, like, okay, well, how do I walk different? Because I want to embody something different. So let’s play around with it. Let’s see if I can change the way I’m walking, if it’ll start changing the way I’m thinking, right? Absolutely it will. This is how come Tony Robbins has you put your hands in the air and jump up and down right when you’re at his event, because it moves you to a different state of being. And so my daughter was like, well, let’s check some reddits for people that are trans, that are trying to learn how to walk more feminine, which was such a brilliant idea. I have gone down the rabbit hole.

Betsy [00:27:04]:
I have watched so many YouTube videos. I have watched. I have found people on Instagram that teach elegance. I am not successful just yet, although I feel like I have a heightened sense of awareness around it. And I’m starting to notice that this shift, if I am not bad, which, think about it. If you think you’re bad, and I’m not saying men think they’re bad, and that’s why they walk like that. But if you think you’re bad, you’re probably looking down, right? You’re probably walking more blocky because you want to be ready to fight, right. Nervous system wise, I felt like that made a lot of sense.

Betsy [00:27:41]:
And so I have gone down the rabbit hole to adjust my walk and see if it begins to shift who I think I am. I will tell you that the idea now that I have about me not only not being bad, but being good, it almost felt weird to say that. Like, embarrassing to being good, but I. But not. But not totally. I think maybe a couple weeks ago it would have felt more weird. But what I’m noticing now is, like, my standards for myself are totally changed. Like, the level of things that I deserve are much different.

Betsy [00:28:17]:
Like, the things I’m willing to tolerate has absolutely changed. What I think I’m worthy of and capable of has absolutely changed. This has been actually such a dramatic thing, and I have always believed in hypnosis. You’ve heard me talk about it over the years, but it’s been such a dramatic thing that I think I’m gonna. So I have inside the navigate method. When people complete the navigate method, what happens is they go into our alumni group, which is a free group, so they can stay in that group. And I meet with those people every month. I always joke that it’s for me because I love everybody and I don’t wanna not see them or not keep up with what’s going on.

Betsy [00:28:59]:
So sometimes people come every month. Sometimes people just come when they need extra help, but that is always, always available to them. But what I found was a lot of people wanted to go to the next level, right? They were like, I want to keep doing this work. I want to keep. So we launched last month. It’s something called Voyager Circle. It’s a year long mastermind, and that’s for people that have come through the navigate method and want to keep going. But I think, and if you’re listening and you’re a Voyager, let’s do this.

Betsy [00:29:27]:
Let’s do custom hypnosis for everybody that comes into Voyager, and let’s do something to get to the Root. Let’s do a workshop to get to the root issue and then get you a custom hypnosis. Because I feel like this has been entirely game changing. And I think you’ve got to go through navigate. I think you’ve got to learn these basic principles of operating in the world in a totally different way. And then I think you’re ready for, like, that next big transition. So, anyway, I’m excited to kind of do a little experiment with some of the folks that are inside Voyager and, like, test this out, right? Because I’m all about experimenting and testing things and seeing, like, can we make a really big shift? Do you feel really stuck in some certain thing? And how is it showing up? And, you know, like I said, for me, it was showing up because I was getting so much shame around these comments and Instagram. And what I have found to be so fascinating is that I don’t even want to open up the apps in the morning.

Betsy [00:30:30]:
Like, before. I used to anxiously open so that I could, I don’t know, take care of whatever I saw. But now I. It’ll be like, I’ll be already getting my coffee and moving on with my day, and then I’ll be like, oh, I haven’t even checked, so I’m not even unconsciously scanning for danger in that area at all anymore. It’s like, people can write whatever they want. Like, I don’t. It’s not my job to even respond to them all the time now, other than I know the algorithm likes it. So sometimes I’ll say, hey, thanks for commenting.

Betsy [00:31:04]:
You know what I mean? Like, whatever. I don’t care. I don’t care. Oh, I can’t even tell you how amazing, amazing it is. So I’m super excited to see what continues to happen over the next year. If you see a video of me and I’m walking like a damn princess, you let me know, and I will keep you posted on how this continues to unravel and how I notice the external starting to impact the internal. And of course, I’m going to keep some stats on anything we do inside Voyager because I feel like there can be some really cool outcomes here. I’ll keep you guys posted on what’s working.

Betsy [00:31:43]:
So. All right, I hope this is helpful. I hope it gives you some new ideas of what you can do for your life. And I love you guys so much. Thanks so much for being here. I’ll see you next week. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show, and thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that.

Betsy [00:32:04]:
I appreciate it so much. And thank you for leaving leaving me a review on iTunes. I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast, I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to, like, figure out how to even make that happen. Now, if you want to find me, find me on social media. I’m usually on Instagram starting out on TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Pake. And that’s my website, too, betsypake.com.

Betsy [00:32:32]:
and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me, just shoot me a dm. Shoot me a direct message on Instagram, and I will be at your service. Thanks again for listening, and I will see you all next week.

On todays episode Betsy talks about her journey the past 37 days of getting in a good feeling place before taking action on any areas of her life. She shares some ways you can begin this process and start retraining your mind and nervous system for more clarity and happiness. She explains how she’s seeing this show up in her day to day life and how it’s impacting her future. Listen in to the show today to get started on your own alignment journey.

Transcript:

Betsy [00:00:05]:
Welcome to the art of Living big podcast. My name is Betsy Pake. I’m an author, a speaker, and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, everyone. Hello.

Betsy [00:00:34]:
Welcome to the art of living big. I’m excited to do today’s show. I have quite a few updates, and if you’ve been here a long time, you know, sometimes I call these like coffee talk episodes. So go get your cup of coffee. And we’re going to just pretend that we’re really good friends and that I’ve got some things to share. You know, over the last month or so, I have shared some of the things that I have been working on personally, and I told you about how I had hired a hypnotherapist and sort of that whole experience. So I want to give you an update on that. And I want to talk to you just about a process, let me say it this way, a process that I have been doing now for the past 37 days and sort of how it started, starting to shift things.

Betsy [00:01:21]:
So, you know, in our last episode, if you haven’t listened to that one, I talked about really being in a place of, I’m going to use this word, but a place of alignment, like a place where you felt joy. And we talked about the levels of consciousness and about how to move up and down the emotional scale and how sometimes moving up the scale may seem counterintuitive. If we’re really bored or we’re depressed, moving into anger is actually moving us up the scale closer to joy. Right. And the idea is that we’re always moving closer to a place that feels good. And if we go to, you know, think about Eckhart Tolle and him talking about how we have to be present in the moment, that’s the only place that you can start to move in this way. So, you know, as we all have, like, these journeys and ups and downs and moving towards and away different practices that have really worked for us over the past 37 days, I have been moving into a place of shifting so that I’m moving up the scale of consciousness. Now, if you’re inside the navigate method, you’ve heard me talk about this, but we want to be in a really good feeling place as we make decisions.

Betsy [00:02:43]:
If we’re making decisions from a place of really low energy, a place of feeling depressed or angry. The solutions that we’re going to get are going to be solutions from a place of being depressed or angry. And those aren’t typically the most creative solutions to problems. So what we want to do is we want to get in the feeling of what it’s like to already have solved the problem and then take a look around and see what’s going on. So then how do we even do that? Like, how do I get into a place where I feel like I’ve solved the problem? Like, that all can be really confusing, and I think it’s a practice, and so I want to talk about that practice and really how I have been doing it over the past couple months. And some of the things that I’ve noticed, you know, I say 37 days, so 37 days. I really started refining my process. But probably about two months ago, every morning, I started simply writing a short paragraph.

Betsy [00:03:45]:
Like, it wasn’t like I was writing pages and pages. It was a short paragraph about my life as it is, with all the things that I would really like to experience in doing that. It got me really hyped for it. It’s really as simple as that. I started writing about it, which made me feel like I was in it, which brought me to this place of feeling really good. And so I didn’t start any work before I got to that place. And then 37 days ago, I decided to go on another process. I decided for 40 days I was going to really hone in on appreciation.

Betsy [00:04:28]:
And, you know, I think appreciation and gratitude are, like, a little bit different. Like, if I’m like, oh, my God, I’m so grateful, it feels to me, and maybe not to you, but to me, there’s a little tiny edge of thirstiness in that. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, my God, I’m so grateful. Thank you. But if I say, I really appreciate that, that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate those things coming into my awareness today. And so how I’ve been starting every day is still doing that same practice of writing that quick paragraph.

Betsy [00:05:05]:
And like I said, y’all, it’s like, you know, four sentences. It’s not like some big, long rampage. It’s just something quick to pull me into the feeling. And then I write down five things that I appreciate. So it is so easy in the morning to get really focused on all of the things that we need to do or to get focused on all of the current worry that we’ve decided is really important to think about. And if we want to shift that pattern, we’ve got to fill it up with something else. Like, you know, nature abhors a vacuum, right? So if we take something away, we’ve got to fill it with something else. And so many times when people get in a pattern or a habit of worry, which, when you’ve got big stuff going on, worry is.

Betsy [00:05:59]:
I mean, I get it. You know, like, that’s a typical or really conventional sort of response, is to mull it over, right? To, like, really think about it, dissect it, think about all the ways this could go wrong and what I need to be on the lookout for. And our brains are wired for that. You know, our brains don’t want us to miss something important. And so it’s scanning all the time for danger. So if we want to shift that, then we’ve got to really be conscious about it. And that’s the whole idea of staying in the now. Because if I’m not noticing and I’m not in the now, that pattern can go on and on.

Betsy [00:06:38]:
And what happens when I’m spending a lot of time worrying is the same exact thing that’s happening when I spend a lot of time appreciating, is I’m creating momentum. And so it’s just a decision of which way you want to create momentum. And I decided I really wanted to create momentum, and I wanted to make decisions. Mostly, this was, like, a big thing for me. I wanted to make decisions based on what felt really good, so not necessarily what seemed reasonable or even what I could afford or what made sense. I wanted to just be able to make choices based on that feels so fun, or that feels, like, so expansive. And so 37 days ago, I started doing this practice where every day I would write down not only my little thing about how my life is in the now, right? So it’s already that way, because I want to get in the feeling of it. Then I would write down five things that I appreciate, and one of the things that I realized right off in the morning was that I was getting hooked on worry or thinking about things that I didn’t want.

Betsy [00:07:48]:
Right. The unwanted. And so to take that time and to say I’m going to just really, really intentionally choose things I wasn’t going to write down, like my health, my family, which all those things may be true, but I wanted to be really specific. So, like, the sound of the birds and how I can feel that calming my nervous system, right? The sweetness of the creamer in my coffee. Or let’s be honest here, it’s like the coffee that gets put in my creamer, it’s mostly creamer, but like that, the sweet of taste of that with the coffee, like how good and yummy that is, right? If there’s a breeze. You know, one day I wrote that I appreciated so much that, that I was sweating. I was sitting out on the porch and it’s supposed to be fall here, but I was sweating. And then I was like, but how cool that my body is doing that.

Betsy [00:08:46]:
Right off I thought, ugh, I’m so sweaty. And then because I had started this practice, I’m sure of it, immediately my brain shifted and said, that’s really badass that your body is able to do that. I’m sure there are people in the world that aren’t able to sweat, and I bet that’s a huge problem, right? So writing down these things so that my brain is starting to learn how to move into a place of looking, almost like looking for the bright side. I mean, that moment, you know, where I thought, I’m sweaty and this is gross, I was able to shift really fast, and I unconsciously, like, that happened without my conscious pushing. And that happened because I had been doing this every day, every day, every day. And when I have gone about my day, you know, I’m writing down those five things in the morning, but then I’ve got a day, right? And a lot can happen in 24 hours if I’m not being present. And so I started to really notice where I was feeling alignment, like, when I was doing something and it felt really fun. I would think, like, this feels really fun.

Betsy [00:09:54]:
Like doing this right now, this feels really fun. Like, I love recording the podcast and I love sharing all this stuff. I love that it doesn’t have that. I don’t have notes, you know, that I just talk like I have an idea and then I just talk like, I think that’s really cool. I mean, I think probably a lot of people can do that, but probably a lot of people can’t. So it feels a little bit like a cool thing. Like, I really enjoy it. I’ve had Halloween candy, and I put up my Halloween decorations, and I love my Halloween decorations.

Betsy [00:10:27]:
So I’m pointing this stuff out because sometimes the ordinary stuff to us, the stuff that’s just like, well, yeah, well, I get on and record the podcast. We’re doing it for eight years. Of course it’s easy, but that’s really cool. And you have stuff like that, too. Like, what do you do all the time that you just take for granted because you think well, that’s just what I do, but that’s actually really cool. And when you can start to be in the present moment and start noticing when you feel in flow, right. When you feel really good, then it’s easier for you to not only rise up that emotional guidance scale, right, that consciousness scale, and for you to be landing in a much better place over and over and over again throughout the day. Right.

Betsy [00:11:14]:
We’re gonna go up and down as things happen. I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to just be flat and in, like, absolute joy all the time. Like, I don’t think that’s. I don’t think that’s real life, and I don’t think that’s what we came here to have. I think we came here to have a really wide range of emotion. And so I’m great if I feel sad or if I feel angry or if I feel any of those uncomfortable emotions, you know, that sometimes we think of as, like, unwanted. Like, I am totally okay with that. And I love that.

Betsy [00:11:47]:
I can then shift it. I can have it. It’s giving me information. Oh, I don’t like this. I’m doing this task, and I really don’t like it. I should see if I can hire that out as opposed to before, when I wasn’t being as conscious. And I really think this practice that I’ve been doing over the past 37 days has started to retrain me. Where then throughout the day, it becomes much easier to be aware of it.

Betsy [00:12:18]:
You know, I posted inside our Facebook group, there’s the art of living, big community Facebook group. And, you know, I have really spent some time thinking about this group and sitting thinking because there’s not a lot of interaction. If you’re in that group, please post, interact with each other. Like, there’s so much brainpower in that group that I wish people would share and ask questions and get feedback from other people and me as well. But I think that there’s so much happening in there that could be really amazing. One of the things that I posted was years ago, we used to do something in there called the possibility posse. So Pam Grout has been on the podcast several times. If you’re familiar with Pam Grout, she wrote that book e squared.

Betsy [00:13:07]:
She’s a hay house author. She’s really incredible. And she’s been on the show a couple times. And one of the times she was on, she talked about how she had this possibility posse with her girlfriends, and what happened was they would spend the day and they would start collecting joy. And at the end of the night, they had a group text, and they would all just text each other with, like, the top couple things that felt really fun that day. There wasn’t an expectation of everybody responding. It was a way for them to be training their brains and also to share that, those little sparks of joy. And then their friends would see it and they would go, oh, that’s cool, like, she’s having a good day, or this cool thing happened.

Betsy [00:13:52]:
And I loved that so much. And so many years ago, I started doing a possibility posse inside the Facebook group where how we did it was on Mondays. I would post something like picture of an owl or a fish or whatever, and then throughout the day or throughout the week, people would be looking to find it, right? And it was fun. It was sort of like a scavenger hunt, but it’s also you training your brain to be looking for something, to be scanning for something that you want. And so. And plus, it was fun, you know what I mean? And you don’t need a reason for joy. So I started that again. I posted, so if you’re in the Facebook group, go and look for that this week.

Betsy [00:14:28]:
It’s a fish. I thought we would see a fish. I thought with everything going on in the world right now, a fish might be something that we see. And if all else fails, somebody is on match.com, and there’s plenty of men with fish in the profile photos. So I thought this would just be a fun one. But maybe start a possibility posse with your friends, but start a practice of being in appreciation. And again, I’m going to say it like that, gratitude is great, but I like the edge of appreciation. I like how that feels.

Betsy [00:15:04]:
You know how it feels. To me, it’s like the same font as when you’re late. And instead of saying, oh, my God, I’m so sorry I’m late, you say, thank you so much for waiting. Do you see what I mean? Like, there’s, like, this little shift that I think moves us to a higher place. I think it feels really good. So as I’ve been going throughout this process, so this is the next thing I want to talk about. So, as I’ve been going through this process, I have been really trying to notice, not trying, I have been really noticing where and when I feel really good and also choosing to do things that feel good. There have been times, and maybe you guys do this, too, where I’ll get an idea and then I’ll be like, yeah, but I don’t know how to figure that out, or I should do that.

Betsy [00:15:53]:
But maybe someday, like, I really want to learn how to, um, how to knit, which makes me feel very old. I just said that out loud. But I do. I want to learn how to knit, and at some point I’m going to. But even when I say that, there’s, like, a lot of pieces to it and I’m working on some other things right now, but I decided those little things that came up, I was going to move down the path, right? And so one of the things that I really noticed over the past two months probably was that I eat out a lot. We eat out a lot, pick up food, eat out a lot. I hate it. Not only do I hate, like, spending money for it’s always crappy food, it’s never good.

Betsy [00:16:35]:
It never makes me feel good. Like, I hate eating out. But I was doing it all the time because I wasn’t being present, I was being mindless, and I was just, like, having a pattern, you know? And so when I realized that, I was like, you know what? I really hate this. I’m not gonna do it anymore unless it’s something I really want. You know, sometimes on the weekends, my daughter and I will run and get bagels from this bagel place I really like. And I really love the bagels. And it feels fun, and it feels. It’s a cool place, and it feels fun to go there.

Betsy [00:17:07]:
Cause it feels cool. And it reminds me that I live in the city, which is so fun to me. And so all of that around, all of that feels really good. But picking up wings or whatever heck else it was that we were getting, it doesn’t feel good to me. And so I started to think about, like, well, I’m not a. I’m not a cook historically. Do you notice how I said, I am? I am not a cook. But then I was like, I talk every day about how you can be things you’ve never been.

Betsy [00:17:37]:
So maybe I like to cook. Like, what if I do like to cook? But I had always been in a state of emergency or stress, you know? And if you’ve been here for a long time, you know, like, I was a single mom for a long time, and then my daughter was really sick for years. Like, there was a lot of stress where cooking really felt like a luxury. And I don’t know that I could get to a place. I’m going to say it like this because this is how it feels right now, but get to a place where I could take the time to actually cook. Like, it felt like just a waste of time. There was so much to do, and I realized that that now was a pattern and that I don’t feel like that anymore. And so I really.

Betsy [00:18:22]:
I went on TikTok, and I started finding recipes, and I created a folder, you know, for recipes. Food. Food. My food folder on TikTok, and I found some really fun things, and I have been making some really yummy things that include a lot of chopping. And I have found that I really love chopping. Like, if there is a salad that says to chop something to a size of confetti, I’m like, I am all in. I will chop. I have grown to really love my knives, and I have gotten into, like, sharpening my knives and, which sounds kind of sinister when I say it out loud, but sharpening my knives and.

Betsy [00:19:05]:
And just being creative and having these big salads. If you guys have seen, like, the dense bean salad trend on TikTok. So I’ve done the dense bean salad, that goddess salad, which is like the chopped up, like, confetti cabbage with the green dressing, and you use tortilla chips to eat it. Like, I’ve had so much fun and have eaten so much better, but also, it created a mindfulness for me. It gave me a place to connect with my daughter in the kitchen. She’ll come over sometime, and I’ll cook, and she’ll sit at the island and just talk to me. And it actually is. It.

Betsy [00:19:41]:
It really brings me a lot of joy. I have been listening to podcasts more, and I’m going to talk about that, but getting into some podcasts that I really wanted to listen to, or music that I really wanted to listen to, or audiobooks and just having my head set on and chopping away, you know, creating stuff. I’ve been making bread, which I turned into my whole personality for about two weeks. So I have been noticing that there are things that feel really aligning, and I have been allowing myself to do those things. I use that word really intentionally allowing, because I think that we stop ourselves many times from doing the things that feel joyful, I think. And I. And I raised my hand in this. I’m not saying you.

Betsy [00:20:30]:
Me too. But I would be too busy or too stressed. Right. And over the past year and a half of really working on my nervous system, I can feel that there’s more room for joy. You know, there’s more room for me to be able to explore these things. One of the other things I realized is that I’m getting more and more interested in like, longer form content. So I was, you know, in the TikTok thing for a while, short little videos, and that felt fun to me. I tried to be intentional, but I wasn’t always.

Betsy [00:21:06]:
And then you would find that I was in a TikTok, like, scrolling videos, you know, like you would like a real scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, but more as an opting out. And so I really started noticing when I was doing that, and then what was the underlying feeling that I was avoiding and then dealing with that feeling. I’ve been doing a lot of NLP. I have my own coach, like we’ve talked about. And so I’ve been really identifying those so that I can bring them to the coaching session and say, this is something I’ve noticed. Can you help me process through this thing? And what that has led to is me enjoying a lot more long form content. And one of the things that I have found, there’s a woman on YouTube. Her name is Cecilia Blomdahl, and she lives in Svelbard, which is north of Sweden.

Betsy [00:21:58]:
And I started her. Her videos are so cozy. You know, it’s snowing outside, and she’s cozy in front of the fire, and she’s interesting and talks about where she lives and all the different things that they do there. She’s swedish, but she speaks incredible English. And so it’s easy to listen to and to follow, and it’s making me wonder, you know, several years ago, I went to Iceland, and I really loved it. Like my soul, like, soul loved it. Somebody messaged me soon after that and asked me about my astro chart and about how there’s, like, lines in the globe where we sort of line up and belong. You might know what that’s called.

Betsy [00:22:46]:
It’s escaping me at the moment, but it’s like astro charting or something. But in that I remember I went to a website and looked, and my line went really close to Iceland. It was in the middle of the ocean, which makes sense to me because I have that weird thing with salt water. But it was really close to Iceland. And I remember when I was in Iceland, I don’t know. You know, I grew up in Vermont, but I haven’t been back in snowy weather in so long. And I don’t know if it just was nostalgia or the cozy. I forgot what it was like.

Betsy [00:23:19]:
I mean, I’m in Atlanta, so it’s, like, hot and sweaty. I mean, it’s October and it’s hot and sweaty, and I forgot what cozy felt like. And so as I found this Cecilia, it just started making me wonder if I’m going to flow towards another trip, you know, to Iceland, maybe. I would really like to go back to the blue lagoon. It was so beautiful and cool. It just felt really good to me. Or if I’m gonna go to Svelbard, I don’t know that I’ll go that far north, but there’s something pulling me. So I have found both this, like, long form content being really interesting to me and also, like, being drawn to this, like, cozy, cool weather kind of adventure, you know, and what that could really mean for me.

Betsy [00:24:07]:
Some of the other things that I have found to be really aligning when I’m doing that morning writing. And I have been an iPad girly for a long time, and you may have even heard me talk about when I do my deep streaming, which is like my meditation and automatic writing, where I ask my. My inner knower questions. I have always been an iPad or typing, but I have been really loving paper and writing. I got an ink and volt goal planner, so it’s not like a planner, like a day to day planner, but it’s like you set your goals for the week, and I have been really into that and colored markers and different pens that has been really aligning and fun, and it’s something that I use throughout the day that puts me in this aligned place so I can notice. And it might sound kind of silly, but that’s. Those are the kinds of little things that I’m looking for. Right.

Betsy [00:25:04]:
So as you’re thinking about this, like, what can be bringing me into alignment if you’re a pen girly, like, if I have a good pen, I mean, that is like, it’s bliss, right? So I have just been leaning into that. What feels really good, you know, writing on pen and paper, the whole analog, like, thing going on, moving my body. You know, I have really created space for myself. In the morning, I started doing the kind of morning journaling thing here in the last couple months, and then I was like, now that I’m in this good feeling place, I want to move my body. Which if you’ve been here for a long time, if you’re new here, then I’ll tell you. Years ago, I used to own a crossfit gym. Like, I have been movement my whole life. And then I think perimenopause sort of slowed me down and probably being busy and stressed, and when I move into stress, that’s sort of edge where I cut off everything else because I get really, like, aerodynamic, focused on what it is that’s causing me stress, which isn’t always healthy.

Betsy [00:26:14]:
So this practice of getting aligned every morning in a really intentional way created space for me to want to move my body again, which to me means my stress is becoming lower and I’m getting in a place where I can really start to see what’s good for me and what’s not good for me. And I think that moving is really good. I mean, it feels good, right, when you do it right, when you’re doing something that’s fun and your body feels good and you feel like that good body tired after or even a little sore the next couple days, you know, just to have that movement in my body again. But on the other side, I’m also noticing things starting to fall away, maybe things that I used to do or people I used to spend time with. There just isn’t the alignment anymore, and it doesn’t feel forced. It doesn’t feel like I’m having to make this big decision to, like, cut somebody out of my life. I don’t mean that. Or cut a practice out of my life.

Betsy [00:27:20]:
It’s not that. It’s more like I’m moving so much into adding joy and alignment that there’s not room for the other. So it doesn’t feel like a running from something. It feels like moving towards more good. And so much good is coming in that the other is just dropping off. And there’s things that happen now that I look at, and it just feels bonkers. And I’m like, the alignment, the alignment has shifted so much that it almost seems like a different person. Right? And I think that we all grow and change, and I think there are times in our lives where there’s a leap.

Betsy [00:28:05]:
You know, I mean, you could say like a quantum leap, but a big shift in who you are and how you’re showing up and how you’re thinking and then how you used to be just seems bonkers. Right? It just seems like. Well, that seems really funny that that’s that I thought that. Right? It seems really funny that that’s what I did. It seems really funny that that was me, because that seems so different now, and I kind of love it when that happens because I want to grow and change and learn and become more of who I am. And I feel like over the past couple months, that’s happened in such a rapid rate. You know, a few months ago or a few weeks ago on the show, I talked about how I had hired that hypnotherapist and how I had to get to the root cause of a bunch of symptoms. So I went to him with all these symptoms, these things that were happening that I really wanted to shift.

Betsy [00:29:00]:
And I just said to him, you know, these are all the things. And he said, those are all the symptoms. We’ve got to get to the root cause of it. And I had that night, and I talked about it a couple weeks ago on the show, but I had that one night, it was like a Friday night, and I was, like, up all night and really think, I mean, all these memories coming in, right? All this real, like, all this pain, and, I mean, I really. I. And I think I mentioned this, but sometimes when I hear people talk about how they do, like, plant medicine, and it’s like this awful, dark night of the soul thing that happens for them during the plant medicine ceremony, and they see all the ways that they’ve been sabotaging themselves and all of that. That’s what it was like. But there was no plant medicine.

Betsy [00:29:47]:
It was just me, really. Like, really. I wanted to use the word harshly, but that’s not it. It’s like, really looking at my stuff in a raw way, like, not trying to sugarcoat it for myself. And I think we do that a lot, but really being honest with what experiences I had had, that created a lot of patterns that weren’t serving me. I mean, it was. They were hurting me at this point. They were just really, really causing me a lot of pain.

Betsy [00:30:21]:
And when I could move through that, I mean, I think I napped a couple times that night, but I was up all night and, like, journaling and writing stuff and moving through stuff and doing NLP on myself. So, like, doing a lot of my own self coaching and trying to get myself to the place where I could really understand what the root cause was. It was a belief, and when I got there, just seeing it, it was so obvious to me. It was almost crazy that I could be, like, skirting around it for so many years, you know? And it was such a relief. It changed things before I even got the hypnosis back. But I think I said, at that time, when I get the hypnosis, it’s going to be wild to see what happens. And I got it back last week, and I have been doing it every day, a couple times a day, so I’ll do it at night. There’s a nighttime one, I’ll do a morning one, and then there’s one I do in the middle of the day, really going in.

Betsy [00:31:18]:
And the first time I did, it was such a relief. I felt so light one of the symptoms, and I had taught. I did a whole show on this. One of the symptoms that I was having was that when people would comment on my instagram in a way that I perceived as negative, I would get this feeling that I can’t quite describe. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m mad that they’re saying something. It consciously I was like, there’s nothing wrong with what they’re saying. But it made this feeling of, like, deep shame in my body that I was really having a hard time showing up. I would have times where I would just be like, I.

Betsy [00:31:59]:
And you guys know, if you. You guys know, like, I love what I do. Like, I love it. I have done this for over a decade. Like, I love it. And there was a moment where I was like, do I not do this anymore? Cause this is such a terrible feeling. That’s what prompted me to hire this guy. That feeling is totally gone now.

Betsy [00:32:19]:
Totally gone now. In fact, I get messages now all the time, and I just. I don’t even care. I don’t even have to respond if I don’t want. And if I really don’t like it, I just delete it. Like, I don’t have to explain myself to them. I don’t have to get them to understand me. Like, before, there was just a lot of, like, please understand me.

Betsy [00:32:38]:
And that is just so gone now. Now all I have to do is get into a really good feeling place and make decisions from there. I don’t need anybody to understand me. I need them to either come along or not. Like, it’s totally fine. Everybody’s on a different journey. Everyone’s on a different path. And, like, that feels so good.

Betsy [00:32:58]:
So I know that there’s more and more and more changes to happen as I keep doing this and keep going down this path with the hypnosis. I love hypnosis. It’s so magical. And all you do is relax. Like, what could be better? So those are the things that I’m doing right now. Really starting to lean in to some new stuff. You know, cooking and writing, analog life, really getting in touch, you know, doing that deep streaming, moving my body and just really being present and letting go of all the baggage and shame and weird crap that we all tend to hold onto. You know, it takes some work and effort, but the other side of it is so amazing.

Betsy [00:33:43]:
Like, who knows what will happen? I’m so. I remember last year, I hired my coach, and I’ve worked with my coach on and off, like, since 2018. So I wasn’t new. But I remember last year saying, I want to work with him again, with his whole team. I want to work with him again, and I’m going to commit to that. And I remember thinking, I actually remember saying it out loud. I wonder how much I’ll change in the next year. Cause I knew I would.

Betsy [00:34:09]:
I don’t even think I anticipated this level. It’s been just a year now. I don’t even think I anticipated how much was gonna happen, you know? Yeah, well, I was gonna go down a path and tell you another story, but I don’t think I wanna just stick with what I’m saying here. I don’t think I knew. And as I’m here on the precipice of the next year, I’m like, what? Kind of wild, amazing. I feel like it cleared out all the cobwebs and now there’s like a free flowing river that I’m on. And I’m like in my own little boat, my happy boat, where I am looking up and I can see all the trees and I can hear the water and I can see the birds and rainbows and probably unicorns. And it feels so good.

Betsy [00:35:03]:
And I’m just flowing, rushing down the river and I don’t know what’s going to show up as I’m observing, like, as I’m looking around, like what will show up and come into my awareness that aligns with where I am right now. Whereas before, it felt like I was really in a lot of cobwebs, you know, and I, you know, over the last ten years, I’ve done a lot of, a lot of work, but it was like the last bit. That’s really how it feels. And it feels like now I wonder what’s going to happen this next year. Because this next year I think it’s going to be a lot of outer, like, I think I’ve gotten through so much of the inner that now there’s going to be this lot, a lot of outward change. And that feels really fun and exciting and like, who knows, who knows what will happen? So if you are on the path, which I know you are, because you wouldn’t be listening to this if you weren’t, and maybe you’re farther along than me, and if you are, then you know how great it is to come out on the other side. And if you’re not on the other side yet, it’s worth the work. It’s worth doing.

Betsy [00:36:09]:
It’s worth looking at your crap. It’s worth showing up for yourself. It’s worth hiring help to move through stuff. It is so, so worth it. So that is my thoughts for this week. Moving into a place of alignment. Take that practice. Count the days.

Betsy [00:36:26]:
I’m telling you, within 20 days of doing that, you will start to feel different. You’ll start to notice different things. Come into the Facebook group. Come into the Facebook group and jump in on the possibility posse. Share in there if you have questions or there’s something you want me to talk about or create something, a reel for. You know, I had a couple requests this week and I created reels specifically answering their questions. So, you know, please let me know. And I am going to be launching a subscription on Instagram.

Betsy [00:36:59]:
That’s sort of a new thing that has felt really fun, the thought of it. So I’m going to try it and see how it goes. So there’ll be extra content that you get, that nobody else gets. If you want to join me, it’s not going to be. I mean, it’s like $9 a month. You know, subscriptions are pretty inexpensive on Instagram, but it’ll be a place where I can really share a little bit more, give you some inside info, share some skills, and, yeah, and just be able to connect in a closer way. So look for me over there on Instagram. If you’re not already connected with me on Instagram, you will see it.

Betsy [00:37:35]:
And, yeah, let me know. Let me know how things are going. I love you guys so much. Thanks for being here, and I will see you next week. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show, and thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that. I appreciate it so much. And thank you for leaving me a review on iTunes.

Betsy [00:37:57]:
I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast, I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to, like, figure out how to even make that happen. Now, if you want to find me, find me on social media. I’m usually on Instagram starting out on TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Paik. And that’s my website, too, betsypake.com. and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me, just shoot me a dm.

Betsy [00:38:33]:
Shoot me a direct message on the, on Instagram and I will be at your service. Thanks again for listening and I will see you all next week.