The Art of Living Big | Subconscious | NLP | Mindset

In this week’s episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy reminds us that we can become the version of ourselves that we need at that moment. How we do one thing is how we can do everything. We have the power within us to navigate bad news and hard times as well as the power to make decisions that will move our lives in the direction we want to go little by little. Take a listen and remember that the next step you take, you are ready for because it’s all yours.

Transcript:

 Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everybody. Welcome to the show today. I’m excited. I’ve got all these little like updates that I wanna give you. Um, and I swear when I do this show the, the leaf blower lawn men do not come until I start this recording. So we’ll see. I can see them out there, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna hope for the best. Okay? Okay. Quickly before we get started, if you have seen, we have launched. A retreat in Belize in July. It is going to be. Really amazing. It’s called The Reimagined Life. And we are gonna move through creating a whole blueprint for you and how you really want to live your life. And so we’ve got workshops like twice a day, but the then the like in the morning and the evening, and then the whole day is full of snorkeling and laying in the sun and chatting and processing and journaling. And then in the end you move forward with. A blueprint for how you wanna move through the rest of the year, the rest of your life. So. Join me. We filled up really quickly. There’s only like, like half the spots are full already, so if you would like to come, please don’t delay. If you have questions, email us at [email protected]. I will jump on the phone with you and answer any questions and see if it’s a good fit. I think it’s gonna be so fun and some of the ladies that are in already are. Women that I know from my program, some of them are people that I don’t know, and I’m so excited about that and I’m excited for them because I know they’re gonna make all kinds of besties in there. So, um, you can find the link to it in my Instagram profile, or you can go to my website under live events. You’ll see it there, but it’s gonna be at this really beautiful resort. And I heard that the snorkeling there is like snorkeling in a fish tank. Like it’s amazing. So. Please join me if you would like. All right. This week I went with a friend to a fashion show that was a fundraiser for Cancer Research and this center here in Atlanta. And, you know, I thought it was, it, it was so moving. Honestly, it, it, it, I was so honored to be invited and to be with her and her friends and to, you know, get, to get to experience the whole day. And the thing that I kept thinking when I was watching the fashion show, because it was caregivers, doctors and nurses, and it was women who had been through their cancer journey and it was family members and they were all modeling these really beautiful clothes from local boutiques, and it was really fun for that. Also my little, my little aggression, my microaggression towards the patriarchy was to call all of the men with the, they, they would carry a white rose if they were a, a caregiver. And if they were a man, I, I assumed they were nurses. And if they were a woman, I assumed they were the oncologists. And that was kind of fun to be like, oh, I wonder what kind of nurse he is. So. I’m watching this thing and I’m watching these women and I, it’s, it’s really so moving. ’cause you’re like, how do you move through something so big? Right? Like, how do you get presented with that? And so many of them were like, I had no idea this came out of the blue. Like, I wasn’t expecting this. And you know, I think with a lot of big things in our lives we’re, we’re just not expecting it. And so we can’t be prepared. For things. We can’t be prepared for everything. And what I started thinking about when I was watching them is, you know, of course like we go to like, oh my God, what would I do? What would I think, you know, who would I call? What would happen? And I realized that the women that were walking down the runway were likely different women that were told. That they had the diagnosis and that they didn’t have to be that final version of them in the beginning, it was going through the process that made them that way. Now, nobody wants to go through that journey in order to grow or to become a a, a, A D, I wanna say a different or improved version. I don’t know. Uh, that’s a subjective thing. But I think with all of our journeys, and you know, so many of you listen and follow me because you’re struggling in your marriage, but the version of you who has a clear decision, who knows the path she’s gonna take, who’s walking that path, isn’t the version of you that listens here today. And that’s by design. You’re not supposed to be. So it’s okay if it feels really scary. It’s okay if it feels like you can’t do it. It’s okay if it feels like overwhelming. How would I figure this out? Because you only have to figure out the thing that’s right in front of you and then you begin to become the kind of person who is able to walk through the journey. And I wanted to share that ’cause I just was thinking about it. I mean, the lens that I see the world right, is through this work in so many ways. And I thought it was just like such a beautiful example of, of victory, you know, on the other side of that. And it was really cool. Anyway, I was honored to be there. It was, it was great. You know, my birthday’s coming up. I, I’m about to be 55, I gotta say. I remember on my 50th birthday, I remember I brought myself to the beach. Yeah, my former husband went with me, but I planned it. I paid for it, luckily, and went to the beach. And I remember sitting by the beach going like, I am not gonna do my fifties like this. I, I’ve never been as miserable on a birthday as that birthday. And I was at the beach, which is like my favorite place ever. And I have a picture of me like just pulling the. My hoodie down over my face because I was crying. I don’t know that anybody noticed, but I noticed it was so miserable. And this year I’m going to the beach on my birthday to look for my beach house, and that is really fricking cool. And so we get to make a choice. We get to notice it’s okay to be in the crap because then we get to make a totally different decision. And we get to become the person who can make that decision. So I’m gonna be going down to Florida, actually. And if you listen to my episode, several, maybe like a month ago about how to make big decisions and I was talking about making this big decision and I felt so strongly, it’s California. California is the thing, and I feel a little differently now. I have done a hella research over the last month. I got really into the research so much that it began to get paralyzing because here’s what I teach, is that you can’t make pros and cons lists. And then what did I do? So I was like, let’s make a pros and cons list. Let’s figure it out. And you know, I recognize that in every decision, and even with the women that I work with inside the Navigate Method, there are. Practical decisions that also need to be made. So the decision from your gut and the practical choices that surround that. And I’ll be honest, I did my Q1 taxes for my business and we had a huge tax bill, which was great. I, you know, very proud. I saved the money every month, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, although it’s always painful and. I put, I figured out like what the, you know, looked at the p and l and if I was in California, what that tax bill would be. And that was for one quarter. And then if I multiplied that by four quarters for a year, and that’s just on my business. And then to be practical, I’m 55 years old. I’m not 30 where I have room for a lot of, you know. Mistakes, I guess, or, uh, I, I have room for mistakes, but, but the, the trajectory is shorter for me to retirement, right? So I wanted to pay attention to those that felt in alignment to pay attention to that. And so then I started down this rabbit hole of Florida and where in Florida. And when I tell you you can go on YouTube and you can find a walking tour of every city you can find apartment. Um, walkthroughs, home walkthroughs. I mean, you could real estate shop, like you could do all the things from YouTube. It’s, it’s pretty amazing. And so I went up and down the coasts and, um, you know, my aunt lives in Sarasota. It. She’s only there part of the year and then it gets too cold. So she goes to Puerto Rico to her place in Puerto Rico. But I, you know, there is somebody there, right? So like. My dad would likely come down. He would see his sister. I would be able to see him. Like there was things about it. I have several friends that live in the Tampa area area, Sarasota area. There’s a huge airport there, which I, it was important to me. I want to be close enough to the water and be able to afford to be on the water. Like that feels in alignment to me. So I started doing all this recon, like paralyzing amount of recon. I cleaned out my little, I had like a little storage closet. With some things I had put in there and totally cleaned that out, narrowed everything down. I got my whole life into one bucket, you guys? One bin. One bin. And then I just kind of got where I was like, you know what? There’s things I really love about Atlanta, where I live, there’s things I’m gonna really miss. And I started noticing when I would make plans or I’d hear from a friend, I’d be like, oh, I’d really miss that. And so then I thought. You know what? I think what I’ll do is I’m gonna just buy a little condo in Midtown in Atlanta, and then I’ll just snowbird. I’ll spend my winters in different beaches. I’ll go to California one year. I’ll go to Florida one year, and I’ll just start checking it out. And I told my sister. And my sister said, but would you? But would you, or would you just sit in your condo in Midtown and wish you had taken the leap? And I was like, oh, you shut your mouth. You shut your mouth. It was so true. It was so true. So I decided to give my notice at my apartment, move late this summer after the trip to Belize, and I’m going down to find a place to live on my birthday on year 55. So we always have an opportunity to. Feel what we’re feeling and to be unhappy with where we are and to make a new choice. And to make a new choice. And I started thinking over the last couple days, like how with this new version of me, right, the version of me that walks the runway and is like through the storm and is now choosing my life, is this in big decisions? And small decisions, or am I just doing this with like big decisions because my life is in the tiny things that I do all the time. Now I’m gonna tell you a very silly, silly, silly story, but I wanna just illustrate what I mean. So when I moved into my apartment, I bought. A very well fancy for me, a very fancy espresso machine. I wanted to create a new ritual for my mornings. Okay? So I wanted to have like something different that I did. I wanted to have, and bear with me here when I say this word, but I wanted to have a hobby. Like I wanted to really understand coffee and I wanted to order. From private roasters, small roasters all over the country. So every month I get different beans from a different small roaster somewhere in the country, and I wanted to like really get into coffee. It felt really fun and it gave me something different to start my day so that I wasn’t thinking about what I would have done or how I missed my dog or, you know, any of those things that I, that I lost in, in the separation. And so. I, I got this coffee maker and, and, and had to get a grinder for my beans. Okay. So I bought a grinder. It wasn’t cheap. I don’t know if I’m just really cheap, but I was like, it was a couple hundred bucks for this grinder, you know? And it was great. It made great coffee. I was, I was pumped. And then last week it died. It like completely died and I’m like, I’ve only had it like, not even 18 months, you know, 18 months, 20 months. I don’t know. I just was like, why is this dead already? I did a little Google search and found out that that isn’t really a, a grinder that you can use every single day, and I used it multiple times a day and lots of times my kid would come over and I’d make coffee for them and so it was getting used a lot and you know, a good grinder. Slices the beans instead of crushes the beans. And that’s what makes it better. ’cause it makes the water flow food better. Anyway, the whole thing just jammed up. Like it just was going tick, tick. And it wasn’t, and it wasn’t gr nothing was coming out. I tried to fix it. I ordered parts. I mean, I did the things. And then I thought, you know what? For my 55th birthday, I likely am not gonna get anything. My dad might send me flowers or something. He’s very sweet. But I was like, I’m likely not gonna get anything, so I’m gonna buy myself something. I’m gonna buy myself a fancy grinder, but I’m gonna get a grinder. That’s. Gonna last more than a year, I’m gonna get a grinder. That’s like a substantial piece of equipment that I’m gonna have for 10 years. I know this sounds, I don’t have a lot of, I don’t have a lot of things that I do, but I was like, I want a really nice grinder. And so I found the kind of grinder that I wanted, and Eureka, I think was the brand anyway, they had it in Chrome. They had it in this like enamel white, that was really pretty. And they had it in Ferrari Red, it’s Italian. It was Ferrari red is what it was called. And I was like, oh, I want the, I want the Ferrari red. Like I, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my God. And then I thought, that doesn’t go in my kitchen. Which I live in an apartment. My kitchen can be anything I want. But I was like, that doesn’t really go. And I was like, I don’t know. And then I think I put it unconsciously through a filter of what other people would think if they came over. Now hardly nobody comes over. Gosh, why is that my filter? Because that was the filter I was handed as a young person, right? So I put it through the filter of like, well, what will people think? It doesn’t match. It doesn’t go, I got this like weird red appliance in my. Coffee bar, you know. No, I wanna pause ’cause I wanna say I get that this is insignificant. Like I get that this isn’t, you know, uh, some big catastrophe. I just am saying in the small things. In the small things. And so I put my hand on my heart and do what I tell people to do and I, and I just really breathed into it. And if it was just me. What do I want? And right off I was like, I want the red one. I want the red one. And so that’s what I ordered. It wasn’t the safe option, it wasn’t the option that goes with anything. It wasn’t the option that maybe made the most sense. Like if I buy a place at the beach, do I really don’t? I want neutral appliances, or chrome or white is so cool. No, I want the red, I want the Ferrari red. That’s what I want. I want Ferrari red. And so that’s what I ordered and I found a small distributor in upstate New York to buy it from and then didn’t buy it on Amazon. And so that felt really good to, to give my, my money to a small business. So when I talk about like these big things like moving to the beach and like where do I go and how do I. Distinguish between what I want and what’s the right thing. You know, I’m using air quotes, or if I wanna make a change in my relationship or my marriage, or whatever those things are for you. How you do one thing is how you do everything. And I was like, I have to really pay attention if I want to build a life that is fully mine, that fully embraces the me in all of this. Then I have to pay attention to the little things too until it becomes second nature to just choose what I want and move forward. So that’s the story of my Ferrari coffee bean grinder. I’ll post it on Instagram if you follow along over there. I will. I will make sure to let you know if you wanna know how to do this like this, like deep work of like, how do I know what I really want? I have a, a, a path for that. Like if you go to my website, it’s called the Bridge. You can comment on anything, like on my Instagram or whatever. Just put Bridge and it’ll send you a link to it. But if you go to my website under, I think it’s like work with me, it’ll say the bridge and the bridge is like six chapters to move you towards this deep inner knowing about six different chapters of your life. And so I ask like there’s a little audio to listen to, kinda like a little mini podcast. I have a little. Process for you to do. And then you’re gonna take what you learned one sentence and you’re gonna move it to something I call the honesty map. And then you’re gonna fill out your whole honesty map, and at the end, you’re gonna be able to create a little declaration for yourself and about where you are. So check out the bridge if that. If that appeals to you, but definitely check out my Ferrari red coffee grinder. I think it comes next week, so I will post about it. Um, and yeah, thank you so much for being here today. I know this was like a short little catch up with all the things I wanted to tell you, but those are the things that I wanted to tell you. All right, have an amazing week. I will hopefully see you in Belize and if not, I’ll see you next week. Alright, 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 someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at Betsy Pake 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.

Oh WOW, this one hits different for sure. In this episode, there are many ah-ha moments as Betsy outlines three signs to watch for when your partner promises change. Is it performance change, or real transformation? This podcast will leave you with the clarity you have been craving. You may even want to take notes during this one!

Transcript:

 Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everyone. Welcome to the show today. Our trip to Belize has been finalized, so if you heard me on last week’s episode, talk about this retreat that I’m doing the Reimagined Life in Belize this July. It’s the 23rd to the 27th, please join me. There is a link, on my website. In the header bar if you go to live, and I’m posting about it every day on Instagram. I think we got, we opened yesterday afternoon and we’ve already got a really great group of women coming, so I am so excited. I’m like thrilled. This is gonna be just really so much fun. And we had our first live coffee here in Atlanta, and that was so fun to see everybody. I was planning on going to California in May, and I was gonna do one of these in May, and then my trip got changed. But we are still looking at all of these and, and trying to plan. Times to go. And also, and also why is the airlines, the flights are so expensive ’cause of gas. It’s so exhausting. I remember years ago when I took that trip to Iceland, I flew from Atlanta to London and it literally was like. 30,000 delta points, what would translates to like 500 bucks. Now it’s like 1500 bucks. , It’s just so sad. And so to kind of circle back to Belize, I know that if you come to Belize, I know that it is a challenge and I’m gonna show up for you. There’s still, I think, one spot left, maybe not by the time you hear this, but maybe, , for the VIP swag bags, so, you know, get in there and who knows it. Maybe all the early people that get in right away will get a swag bag like that. So we’re working on all that stuff in the background here too. So today though, what I really wanted to talk about was this thing that I have posted about online. And it’s something that people ask me about all the time. It is something that many women have seen me post about. And so when they have seen that particular post is when they decide to investigate working with me. And then they go through the whole program. And then when it happens to them, I think they’re like, oh my God, what? What is this? And I’ll tell you, it. It is a really, really hard thing when you have been working so hard and fighting for your marriage and not feeling as if you are heard to then get to the heart wrenching decision that you can no longer stay intact as a human in this relationship. To then decide to leave, to ultimately save yourself, and then to have your partner go, Hey, I’m gonna do the work. And so I wanna talk about that moment because it is something that I have a lot of thoughts about. And also, even as I go to talk about it, I wanna preface, and this is something I say inside my program all the time. Is that there is no right answer here. It’s just about what’s right for you and honestly, what’s right for you today may not be the same thing that’s right for you six months from now, , or two years from now, and you’re allowed to move through things and change your mind and lean into hope and get your bearings and make a decision. Like all of those things are really, really valid. And so even as I say all this, I just wanna say there’s no right decision, and I am certainly not coming here telling you what to do because if I knew what to do, then I would be, I don’t know, sucking on a pina colada somewhere in, in the deep Caribbean. But my point is that if I knew what to do. Then that would have made my whole journey easier. I was in indecision too. So I understand deeply this place, and I think that this place of indecision has value. I know that sounds so crazy, but I think there’s something to learn in every single part of our lives. And so I wanna talk about this and I wanna talk about this specific moment where you get to the place where you decide you wanna leave. So first of all, I wanna talk about. What is historically what I have seen and what I have experienced in my own life experience of what happens before you get to this moment. Now, I believe you can choose to believe differently, but I believe that women will stay long after it has fizzled out for them because they want to have. A partner, . They wanna have a partnership. They wanna have a life that they had hoped and dreamed about. , When women get married, we want this vision. We, have an idea of what partnership will be, what it’ll be like to possibly raise kids with that person. What our vacations will be like and how we’ll make joint decisions and what all of those components of building a life with somebody actually entail. And when those things are never realized, I truly believe women. I’m using a lot of blanket statements here. I get that. So if you’re a man listening, this can go both ways. , I work with women, whether they’re married to a man or a woman. So I’m just talking from a woman’s perspective here. I believe that women will just try to make things work and they will try. If the vision that they had doesn’t work, they’ll try to adapt to a new vision. I don’t believe that it’s that women only want their way or the highway. I really believe it’s that they’re trying to navigate, well, what does this mean? And when there’s communication issues or when hard decisions are being avoided, or when they as human beings aren’t being seen and met. It becomes this really confusing swirl of, I don’t know what to picture from here, because this isn’t, not only not what I imagined, but it’s also not clear what it is. And I think that moment for a lot of women is where the indecision and the circular thinking about it sets in. Because they can’t make a decision to stay or go when they don’t fully understand what they have. Some moments he meets them where they’re at some moments he doesn’t he’ll, ask for what they’ll need and he’ll say that he’s going to do it and then never does. So that confusion starts to really set in. And so, , the men in my comments sometimes get really angry with this particular post. Because of their own experience with it. But I believe that when you get to this moment where the woman says she’s gonna leave, there is a whole lifetime of work and exhaustion and pleading and trying and adapting that happens before they ever get to that place. And so when they get to that place. It is really a moment where they’re throwing their hands up and saying , I don’t know what else to do from here. And I believe it is a moment where their life force energy is rising up and saying, I will not be lost in this. I cannot be lost in this. And I think the women that really get to the place where they are grasping for their own air in this. And so now here you are. You have been through it trying to get him to hear you and step up and do things differently and become a partner. Even if it’s not the partnership you had in mind. You are willing to adapt and to discover and to create something different, but you never get any clarity or any communication. To tell you what this is, and now you’re taking your one last big deep breath of air before you feel like you just will drown and you say, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve decided that this marriage no longer works for me anymore. And what I see so often in my program is, there’s a moment he maybe takes a beat, maybe he gets mad, maybe he just ignores you. But what I have found in the program is that there is always a pause of some sort, and then it sort of settles. And as it settles, he begins to understand that his experience is about to change. And when that awareness happens, when he recognizes that you are no longer willing. To just keep doing things the way that you had been. Then he wants to show up differently. He wants to talk. He wants to go to therapy. He’s reading the books. He’s saying all the things. Maybe he’s even crying, which you haven’t seen maybe in years. He’s asking you what is it that you need, and he’s telling you that he’s willing to do it. , He will do anything. He’s telling you I am changing. Like it’s been three days. And he’s like, I am changing. , I’m looking at this book, I’m reading this, listening to this podcast. I’m whatever. He’s just telling you to give him a chance.. And so what I wanna talk about today is what, that is what happens inside you when that happens, and how to tell the difference between. Real change and , the same kind of pattern, maybe showing up a little bit differently. And I think most importantly, how do you hold onto what you know to be true without turning into a shell of yourself trying to do it right? Because I think that’s the trap, right? Like in order to protect yourself and your clarity, you think, okay, well I’ve got. Get hard, like I’ve got a armor up here. And so you think that you, need to stop feeling stuff because it is a shell shock. It’s like you got whiplash from it. And so what I wanna talk about is how to move through that whiplash and finding where it is that you really need to go. So I wanna talk about what is actually happening. Inside your body when this change happens, right? When he says this is gonna happen, and when he says, I’m already changing, I’m already doing the work. And maybe he’s learning some words, right? He’s learning some new vocabulary words that make it sound like hopeful and that maybe it’s true and. So that version of him, , that’s showing up. Now, this engaged version, the one who wants you to know, the one who wants to listen, right? And the one who wants you to know he’s changing that version, is the version that you have likely been asking for years, maybe decades, , depending on how long you’ve been doing this. And your nervous system does not know what to do with this. So when I say nervous system, if you’re newer here or not, in my circle in my world, our nervous system, what do we see? What do we hear? What do we smell? What do we like? These are all the ways that my nervous system takes in information and inside my body it’s how I’m processing what’s happening. So I’ve got like cognitively what I’m thinking about it, , Ooh, this sounds like everything but what’s happening inside my nervous system. So your body remembers. Every single time that you begged him to, listen, right? Every conversation where you tried to explain yourself or, , felt defeated and, cried about it every moment that you made yourself smaller. And when I say smaller, I mean like where you realized that asking for something. Was met with avoidance and so you learned to not ask, but instead to just internally turn inward and just get tiny so that the relationship could keep working. And every time that you told yourself, , maybe it’ll change maybe after the holidays or , maybe we can work on this after the kids’ graduation, or once this project at work settles down, or whatever it is. And now you have gone come to this painstaking decision and now he’s here doing the thing. So , , it scrambles you, right? Internally? Of course it does, because one part of you, the part that was holding on for years is going like, oh my God. He’s finally, he finally gets it. He finally sees me. And then there’s this other part of you that, finally was able to stop holding on it. Like grasping for air is going. , Wait, I, just put this down like I finally made a decision and put this down. And you are caught between those two things. And this is like your whole history colliding and, dealing with this new present reality. And honestly, it feels terrible. It feels terrible, and I don’t think that. The person, the partner who is all of the sudden showing up recognizes how terrible it is. I don’t know how they could, , because if they had been ignoring you for so long, then how could they just suddenly understand? And if they truly understood, then they would know how terrible it felt and they would stop asking you to do something that you’d finally decided to do. So. The question , that I want you to sit with in this whole thing is like, why? Why? Why is it now? Why now? Because the things that you are leaving over have been there for a long time. You’ve been saying them, you’ve been asking him to change or her to change. You’ve been signaling it right? In a lot of different ways. So why are they showing up now? And there’s a version of this that I think can be true, absolutely can be true, which is like they finally heard you, they finally get how severe this is, and that is possible. , There’s the version where maybe they finally did it, understood it, or there’s a version where they finally felt consequences to what they were doing. And those are different sides of the stick because when someone changes because they heard you, that’s change coming from them seeing you. When someone changes because they heard you, that’s change coming from them seeing you. When someone changes because they felt consequences. That’s change coming from them feeling the loss of what you provide. And you have to be honest with yourself about which one this is, because one of them is a response to fear and one of them is real change that you can actually work with. One of them deserves hope and one of ’em is the same pattern, running in a different way. A response to fear lasts until the fear goes away, which, happens the moment you decide to stay or they feel safe enough that you’re going to stay, that you’re not going to leave. And so when you think about this, you have to get honest with yourself about what is he actually responding to. Is he responding to you like the whole you, the, you that maybe he hasn’t really. Paused to look at in years? Or is he responding to the possibility of losing his life as he knows it? And those look the same from the outside, right? The words are the same. The going to the podcast and going to the therapy and finally getting a coach and doing all that. All of that looks the same, but they’re coming from completely different places and they go in completely different directions. So. I wanna talk about how to actually tell the difference, but I also wanna, interject this thought too as I’ve been talking. You know, when we think about values, like what’s important to me, what’s important to me about a relationship, what’s important to me about a friendship, what’s important to me about work, what’s important to me about any of the number of things that I do in the world? Those are my values. Now, if I had a, friend, even a coworker that came to me and said, what you are doing is really upsetting me, I would pause and I would say, help me understand because I don’t wanna upset you. Now, if it was a partner, absolutely I would stop everything that is in my value system. I would be like, wait, what? That’s not how I’m gonna move forward. And if your partner didn’t do that, that’s a difference in values. And a difference in values is a whole lot different than we just like different things for dinner. This is like. How we actually operate and how we experience the world is different. Okay, so now how can you tell if this is like a real change? So I’m gonna give you a couple things to watch for, not to analyze him. I don’t want you putting him or her on trial. I just wanna give you something to look at when your nervous system gets this overload and you are like, I don’t know what to think. Okay, so number one is that real change is actually slow. Real change is slow. , If inside two weeks he has become a totally different man, like that is not change. That is the performance of change. Performance of change is really fast. Real change in a human being, especially around patterns that are decades old, don’t happen in two days or two weeks. It doesn’t even happen in a month. It happens over a long time, and it has a lot of, I’m gonna say like reflection or ugly, messy parts. Right. There’s like, this is what I want to accomplish. This is what I’m trying to figure out. I’m trying to understand myself and why I do this. Oh my gosh, did I do it again? Tell me how that felt to you. This is what I’m thinking about. This is what I’m afraid of, like there are backslides, there’s discomfort on their side about who they used to be. Like they get a, a realization. Of the pain that their behavior has caused. Right now, so many women in my program say, but I get it. Like his family was, you know, he had the, it’s okay, you can understand it, and his behavior can still cause real harm. And if he thinks he’s changed in two days, because you said you’re gonna leave, that is performance change. And so if what you’re seeing is super. Smooth, , super polished. I want you to pay attention to that. Okay. So real transformation with a person that’s really wrestling with their behavior. And, and, and potentially being embarrassed of themselves, of getting it wrong. Like that person is showing up much differently than someone that’s like, Hey, I’m doing the work. I know I’m a Apex man. Or whatever the, the bro podcast say. Okay. So number two is, and this one is, this one’s tricky. Okay. But number two is that real change isn’t about you. It’s not about you. It when he is doing the changing to accommodate you, to make you happy, to get you to notice how he’s doing things. If every gesture is aimed at you right when he’s doing it, to get you to change your mind. When every single thing is about how he’s going to be different for you, that likely isn’t change. It’s just a more, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say like sophisticated reason or sophisticated version maybe of making you responsible for him. Right. Now you are responsible for his behavior instead of him being responsible for his behavior. Real change when someone actually is doing the work, it includes them going and getting themselves help. That has nothing to do with you, right? It’s not a. It’s not you guys sitting down and just talking about stuff. It’s him working on his own stuff, his own shame, his own patterns. Just like you have likely done, right? This is why you’re listening to this show, stuff that has its own separate life outside of your marriage, because if the entire project of him changing is happening because of you, then it’s all aimed at you and the minute you are not there, or the minute. That project stops then it’s not his, it’s yours, and then you are still carrying it. But just in a different way. Just in a different way. And I have often thought when I hear the stories and my own lived experience, like if you really understood what you’ve done, you wouldn’t be asking me to do anything different than what I’m doing. Okay? So number three is that real change doesn’t pressure you. In your decision. Right. Just what I just said. This is, this one is, big and I think sometimes confusing, right? Real change looks like him saying like, oh my God, I’m getting it. And I understand why you have decided what you’ve decided. And I’m gonna go do this work because it’s mine and I’m gonna do it. Whether you stay or don’t stay. And I am so sorry. And maybe someday we will meet again and you’ll meet a different version of me performed. Change looks like him saying, you know, look at, I’m trying, look at, I brought out the garbage. I did all this stuff for us. Right? Please don’t. And they’re like, please give me a chance. You owe me a chance. The kids need you to give me a chance, right? I don’t wanna live without you. I don’t wanna do this without you. And on one of those aspects, , there’s this person that you decided to do your life with, that you want to be with, and the other one is treating your decision. Like something he’s in charge of that he gets to decide what you do and you’ll feel the difference in your body. You know you’re gonna feel it. One of them leaves you feeling more spacious. I always say , if you can feel your chest expanding, that’s likely the direction you wanna go if you feel yourself constricting. That’s a lot of really good information and so. , Even if you listen to those three things that I said and you’re like, okay, he fails all of those, I can see clearly that this is a, you know, it’s fear. It’s not real change yet. All the things you are still gonna feel like you wanna stay. It’s totally normal. It is not like a sign. You’re making the wrong decision. It’s just a sign that you’re human. So it doesn’t mean that you’re making a right decision. It doesn’t mean you’re making a wrong decision. It just means that you are a human being who loved someone for a really long time. , You built a life with this person. You possibly had children with this person. You shared pets and history, and maybe inside jokes or a house. You know, you both love the holidays the way you do them. Maybe you have coffee with them in the morning. Maybe there’s parts of him that you’re like, he can be a good friend. And the pull is that part of you doesn’t wanna lose that world. And that part of you isn’t bad. It’s not weak, it’s not wrong. It is just the part of you that knows how to love. Then you don’t wanna get rid of that part of you. You just don’t want that part of you to be the one making the decisions. When the pull comes, I, want you to do something. I want you to stop and let it speak. You know, Elizabeth Gilbert has this really good line in her book, big Magic about Fear. And how it can be in the car with you, but it can’t be the driver. It can’t operate the radio. It has to sit in the backseat. Will you decide? So don’t argue with it. Don’t try to put it down. Just put it in the backseat and let it say whatever it is he wants to say. It’s gonna say things like, I love him. It’s gonna say things like, but what about the kids? What about if this is a wrong decision? Or I’m scared, I don’t wanna go through this. What if he can change? What if I don’t know who I am without him? Let it, let it say all of that, and then when you get in a really settled place that you have worked so hard to get to, you get to answer that. And whatever way is a right for you. , I’ve talked about my own journey here. I, I decided, I, I got the bravery. I mean, it took me a long time to get the words to say I’m gonna leave, and he said, I’m gonna work on it. And I leaned into hope, and I think that’s so important. And I stayed for a few more years until I had the wisdom to see that the change in my experience , wasn’t real. It wasn’t the way that I wanted to move forward, and so I finally had the wisdom to leave and to not turn back and to just keep going down the path that was right for me because you can still love him and leave, like you can still get to the place where you are just like, I can’t continue to live in a container. Where I feel like this all the time, loving him and staying are two different decisions. And I know that sounds really confusing and if that doesn’t feel right to you, that’s okay. I think we can love someone, who is the, parent to our kids. Somebody who we have experienced a lot of life with and not love who we are in the relationship with them. So I wanted to talk with you about how to get through this without like, turning into a shell of yourself really. So here is something that I see women do when their husband start fighting for the marriage after they decided to leave, is that they just go kind of cold. Like they, they don’t even know what to do. They kind of get like frozen, you know? They get distant or they armor up and they don’t know what’s real and what’s not. And I totally get that because I think the pull can be really, really strong to be, to keep going the path you had decided, which was painstaking to come to, and the pull of being afraid you’re making a wrong decision, but you don’t have to just turn. Into a shell of yourself in order to make any decision. The, feeling of being frozen is, just a, sign that you’re afraid. That’s all. It’s not a sign that you’re unclear. It’s not a sign that maybe you were wrong about your decision. It’s just a sign that you’ve got fear. So I think. That if you are in this right now, I want you to know that I know it’s hard and I know you’re freaking exhausted. I know it feels like you can’t really find any solid ground anywhere, and I know that there is a part of you that’s wondering if you should just go back. If you should, just give it one more try. Lean into hope and just see what happens, and I would never tell you what to do, but my job is to help you hear yourself. And so I want you to do that. I want you to know what you already know before any of this started. That’s how you ended up at this decision. It didn’t come from nowhere. And you can give yourself the space of seeing if the change is real or if it’s performance, and you get to decide that you don’t wanna go through that as well. Both options are fair because it’s up to you, it’s your life and you get to keep what you know. Nobody can take that from you, not his fear, not his change, not his pleading, not even your own pull back and forth. You get to keep the clarity of what you know, and I think that is how you live a big life, not by getting cold. And not by winning an argument, but by staying with yourself, even though every single thing is gonna try to pull you out of it. I love you so much. I will see you guys next week. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at Betsy Pake 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.

Do you use words in everyday communication that make you smaller? In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy shines a light on the little things we were taught as children that we may not even catch ourselves doing as adults. Betsy invites us to catch this reflex, claim our accurate self worth, stop using apologetic language, and maybe we can collectively eliminate shrinking once and for all. PS, who wants to join us in Belize?

Transcript:

 Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everyone. Welcome to the show today. So, alright, before we get started, I wanna tell you about this show that I have been watching. I have a hard time, and maybe you’re like this too, but I have a hard time finding a, show to like chill out and watch that isn’t. , I’m gonna say like scary. I don’t want true crime. Like I’m pretty careful about what I put in my brain, you know what I mean? And so it’s hard for me to find something that I actually really enjoy that feels light enough that I’m not stressed out before I go to bed. And , I talked a couple weeks ago about how I got that bed jet. I swear this isn’t. It. I’m not sponsored. I want to be, but I’m not. But I got this bed jet and you turn it on. It’s like this. It blows hot air, basically. Hot or cool air. But my favorite thing in the world is to take a shower at night, get all the pollen off me from the day, turn on turbo mode so that when I get in bed, it’s like cozy and warm and then put on a show and watch a show for 30 minutes or something, and then go to bed. This has become like my, I, it bring, this brings me so much joy. Okay. But what do you watch? Because I don’t wanna be stressed out. I’m not really into reality shows. Like it’s just, I, , maybe I’m super picky, but, I found a show and I started watching it, and it was just so quirky and weird and fun. And then it never ended. I was like, why is this, how am I still watching this show after days and days and days? And I realized there were two seasons. And so it’s a great show to watch ’cause there’s like eight episodes but two seasons and it’s just gets kookier and crazier. So the show is called Palm Royale and it’s on. Apple tv. It’s totally worth getting Apple TV for it. I think , if you’re like me, did you ever see that show the residents on Netflix? It is a Shondaland mystery about a murder at the White House, and it’s quirky and weird like a clue. Remember that board game Clue. , Anyway, this reminds me of it, Palm Royale, but it’s set in Palm Beach, so it’s in the sixties and it’s just quirky and weird and really fun. So anyway, that’s my hot tip for a show if you like to watch something light and not get stressed out before bed. So I’ve got some fun things that are coming up and one of them. Is that we are going to Belize. I know. It’s so fun. I’m so excited. So I don’t have the exact dates, but by the time this airs, it should be live on my website. If you go to betsypake.com and you’ll see live events in the menu and it’ll be there. But we found this place that you’ll fly into the main Belize airport. And then we’ll pick you up and put you on a little plane and shuttle you to like a little island, and we’re gonna spend time together, chilling out and recreating your life. , I’m so excited about the little workshops that have got planned for us. So be on the lookout for that. We’re gonna do it in. July. I think it’s gonna be around the 24th. I don’t have the exact, like I said, I, met with them on our final appointment yesterday to finalize everything. They were gonna confirm everything. The people that I hired to do this, and it will be live hopefully by the time you’re listening to this. So I’m like so, so excited to get to see people and hang out and spend time together at the beach. And just like that place I heard is like amazing snorkeling. It’s like going into an aquarium. Anyway, it’s gonna be amazing. I haven’t had a beach trip yet this year, and , I need to have a beach trip before it hits like hurricane season. And so anyway, I’m super excited and I hope, that you can join me, which brings me to what I wanted to talk to you about today. We’re gonna talk about something that I think that every single one of us that’s listening has probably done. Maybe you’ve already done it today, multiple times. And I wanna talk about all the ways that we make ourselves smaller, and I don’t mean physically, although we have been told to do that too. But I mean, in the way that we shrink our opinions, dismiss ourselves the way that we use words to make ourselves appear more submissive or. Smaller, you know, your, your needs are not as important and you’re just asking, you’re just suggesting you can dismiss my thought if you want, and maybe this is something that you’ve got good at and you’re not doing anymore, but I noticed that I did this yesterday and when I did it, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m doing this thing. So here’s what happened. I’ve been working on this retreat with this really lovely company that’s helping me plan it, and I’ve been working with this woman and she set up like a preliminary page for our retreat, and they asked me, like for my bio, and I sent over the bios that I have and pictures of me, stuff like that. So she puts all the information on there. And when I’m looking at it under my name, it says Coach. It says coach, speaker, and writer. And that is what’s in my bio. It’s like a media bio that we sent her. But it said, coach and I looked at it for a long time and look, , I am a coach. But it didn’t feel right. To me, you know, I’ve been coaching since 2012. I’m a certified master coach. I’m, trained up to the level of trainer. I can train coaches and therapists to do what I do. I have multiple certifications and I’ve gone in deep with those. I’m highly, trained and I have spent over a decade doing this work. I have built a program, I have had a podcast for nine years. I wrote a book. I have another book that’s. In process right now, I have helped thousands of women go through some of the hardest decisions of their lives, and when I looked at it, it said coach. And so when I went to write her an email. And I thought, I’m just gonna ask her to update that. , It should at minimum, say, master coach and I don’t need to have all my credentials and the letters after my name and all that stuff, but , I needed to have it, not just say, coach, that wasn’t accurate. And I started the email and I wrote, I know this is gonna sound silly, but. And as soon as I got that out, I was like, oh my God. I, was at a coffee shop and I like sat back at the coffee shop, looked around the room, like I looked around the room actually at women and men that were there, and I thought, would the men do that? , And this has nothing to do with. Our chromosomes. I’m not, it doesn’t have anything to do with our gender. It has to do with our socialization. Right? Would men do that? Why is this silly? Like, why did I wanna say, I know this sounds silly. Why am I pre apologizing for asking to be accurately represented? Why am I padding a, completely reasonable and totally professional, not even remotely complicated request with language that immediately tells the other person that I don’t fully believe that I deserve what I’m asking for. And so I deleted the email, deleted the opener, changed it, sent the email, and just said, Hey, I see that I’m. Posted and listed as Coach. Would you mind changing that to Master Coach? Done. But I kept thinking about that moment because of the, I know it sounds silly. I know it sounds silly. That wasn’t for her. She didn’t need it. She probably didn’t even notice. She didn’t care. Like she doesn’t, okay. Master coach, whatever that language was for me, it was a reflex a, habit, right? That is. I think so deeply grooved in the way that it ran before I even noticed it, like before I even consciously noticed it. I typed it out. That language was for me. And so that’s really what I wanna talk about today. So here’s what I want to make, , I wanna make clear, here’s what I would like you to understand in this. Making yourself smaller isn’t humility. It’s not being humble. It’s just a habit, and it’s a habit that most of us have been practicing since we were really little. It’s a habit that kept us safe, that we were taught like explicitly and implicitly that confidence is arrogance. Boys aren’t taught that. We were taught that taking up space is really selfish and that being proud of yourself or being proud of what you’ve built or who you are means that you think you are better than someone else. And so we learned to pre-frame everything, , almost like to pre apologize, to downplay every accomplishment that we have. So we say things like, I don’t know if this is right, but, and this is probably a dumb question, I’m just wondering. I’m just a mom. I’m just a coach. I’m just a woman trying to figure it out. Just I’m just, ugh. And I feel like that word is doing so much damage. We use it to. , I wanna say like even cut ourselves down before somebody else gets the chance to, in my comments a couple days ago, I have been doing these posts once a week for the past three weeks, and it is a carousel post on Instagram where I share something about how I’m rebuilding my life in my fifties. So the first one was sort of like an overview of how I got here. The second one was about how I am choosing to rent instead of buy, and the reasons why and why I think that can be a really good choice for people. And the third one was about doing things on my own, like doing things with friends and doing things on my own, traveling even. And a woman wrote, this is just life. You’re not so special. It, actually, I mean. Comments on the internet don’t bother me at all since I was hypnotized two years ago, to not have them bother me, but that’s another story. But I just thought it made me so sad for her because this isn’t just like a personal habit, it’s social, it’s cultural, it, and women do it to each other. She felt like she needed to police me probably because she didn’t feel comfortable with it. It made her uncomfortable to see me sharing so openly to not try and dim my own light or to say, I know this is probably isn’t a big deal. I know probably everybody has this experience, but everybody has a different experience. Everybody is special., I’m not saying I’m more special than anybody else, but of course I’m special. You are special. That lady is special. She had no profile photo and her whole profile was private. I don’t know why. , I’m sure she was thinking like, this chick just rubs me the wrong way. And I’ve had that happen where I’m scrolling and I’m like, why does this woman bug me? Like why does this irritate me? And I start to ask myself Now, is it because she’s confident? Is it because she’s showing up? In a way that makes me uncomfortable because I don’t feel like I can do that either. And you know when we hear that, , I don’t know why she just rubs me the wrong way. When I ask myself or I ask somebody else, what is it they really mean , I really want to ask that lady. What do you mean? What do you mean? This is just real life. You’re not so special. What do you mean she is? Uncomfortable with me being comfortable with who I am and when I see someone that is showing up fully as themselves and I notice she’s totally comfortable with who she is, she’s not apologizing for it. She takes up space and she doesn’t look around and make sure that everybody is okay with it. , She’s not checking to make sure men are okay with it. And that can be really unsettling to people who were never given permission to do the same thing. We were all kind of handed this book of rules, right? Don’t be too much. Don’t think too highly of yourself. Be humble. I remember years ago on the internet and Facebook, I wrote, , I posted a Kanye West Post. And, , like a Kanye West quote, and I don’t even remember specific, I could probably Google it, but the quote was like, everybody tells you to be humble. Be humble, but also be great, be amazing, be spectacular, whatever it was. But the quote was, everyone tells you to be humble. Be humble. And be great. Be people. People I know. I mean friends, I’m using air quotes like friends. People I knew from high school that I haven’t seen in, , 30 years were so bothered by that. Some people wrote me long messages about their grandfather taught them about being humble and it was like the weirdest thing. It really bothered people when I first started my business like 2012. And I would post on the internet showing up fully as me. , It, it pushed a button, ? And when someone breaks that rule, when someone just is without shrinking. There’s a part of us that can get activated. It happens to me too, not because that person did something wrong, but because they are doing something that we haven’t let ourselves do yet. And that is all about you. It’s all about me. When I see that, I’m like, oh, that’s a me thing. And these people posting and commenting in my comments. It was a you. Them. It was a them thing. It was a them thing. And so when I think about this woman who said, you’re not special, I knew that, , my content isn’t claiming to be special. All, all it’s doing is saying , I figured something out my way and I wanna share it. Maybe it will help you. That’s it, that, that’s the whole thing. And the response is, who do you think you are? And. Who do you think you are to share this? Who do you think you are to have an opinion? Who do you think you are to take up space? On my feed, in my day in my life, and what I have learned is that the people who throw these comments are not mad at what I said. They are mad that I said it out loud. They are mad that I didn’t stay small. They’re mad that I took up space that they never felt like they were given permission to take, and that’s their own work to do. So what I wanna talk about now is really about claiming your own space and what that really looks like, because I think we’ve really confused. These two things that aren’t the same, like arrogance is believing you’re better than other people. , I have no qualms about knowing I’m not better than anybody. Accuracy is knowing who you are and being willing to say it. I’m a master coach, not just a coach. I’m willing to take up that space. I’m willing to go against the pre-programming that tried to make me minimize myself. And so when I ask to be listed that way, I’m not saying I’m better than anyone. I’m saying I have earned this credential and I would like it to be represented correctly. It’s not ego, it’s accurate. , When I share content about rebuilding your life in your fifties, I’m not saying my life was harder than yours. I’m saying I walked through something and I have something to say about it. It’s not arrogance, it’s sharing it’s contribution. When we have been taught that any form of self, when we have been taught that any form of self acknowledgement. Is vanity, then you can’t do anything because any form of visibility is showing off. Any form of confidence is something that we actually have to circle back and justify or soften or, you know, say just you can know your worth and you can still be kind. You can take up space and you can still be really generous. Those two things aren’t opposing. I always say to the Navigate, ladies, like two things can be true at once. You can be proud of yourself and proud of what you’ve built and still be humble about how much you have to learn. Those things are not opposing. Posing. This idea of humility that we were handed isn’t actually humility. It’s more like erasing part of ourselves. I have been reading this book, and I think I talked about it before a few weeks ago. It’s called On our Best Behavior, the seven deadly sins , and the price women pay to be good. That’s what it is. . That’s one of the sins, right? Don’t show up. Don’t be proud. Don’t be, don’t be too much. And I think about all the ways that women were taught these pride. Greed, lust, envy. Gluttony. What else? Wrath and sloth. Sloth is one I see. Show up all the time where people are like, I can’t rest, but, pride. You’re allowed to feel proud of yourself. You, likely have done amazing things at work. You’ve raised amazing kids. Perhaps you’ve built great friendships. You have a great sense of humor. You have a sense of style. You’re funny, you’re there. You have so many things. You have so many things. When you dumb all those things down and you make them seem unimportant, and then you’re like, I don’t know who I am anymore. Well, yeah, no, no shit. No shit. ’cause the whole world told you to shut up. It doesn’t just feel uncomfortable like socially to claim your space. , For a lot of us, it can feel really dangerous. Right. If you grew up in an environment where too much got, being too much, got you punished, whether it was like just a parent being critical or a teacher being critical. I mean,, my, teachers always said I was chatty, but luckily my mom thought that was a fine thing to be, so it didn’t end up bothering me. But I know there are people that were told the same thing, that it really impacted the rest of their lives. You may have been told a lot of things from church, anything where you learned that visibility had a cost, it may be relationship. Gosh, I know I learned so many things about how much I was allowed to be in relationship, and then your nervous system starts to calibrate to that, right? It files it away as a threat. And , one of the things I see all the time in the Navigate method is women that come in and they say, my partner , , would ignore me or , push away whatever it was I was, that was important to me, or dismiss my thoughts. Or I could even say things and they would be right there and they wouldn’t even recognize me. So your nervous system starts to learn that I have to be small ’cause that will keep me safe. Because being dismissed is not a good feeling. Like your body goes though, this isn’t supposed to be happening. Why is this happening? I must be doing something wrong. What could I do different? Right? So we learn in all these different ways to be small. And so your brain trying to protect yourself gives you this language. , I know it sounds silly, but. Could you change that to master coach? I’m probably wrong. This probably isn’t a big deal. I don’t wanna ask too much. I don’t wanna be a pain. But would you mind changing that? Like that language? Is your nervous system actually doing what it needs to do? It thinks it’s keeping you safe, right? It’s trying to help you avoid punishment. That visibility once cost you, and I see it. I’m gonna say cost me, but it doesn’t really cost me ’cause I don’t care. But this person saying, you’re not special. This morning I got, , a note on the internet, , that said, you’re the worst woman in the world. I was like, wow, I wanna be good at something. So I just blocked delete and block. But that, that’s the kind of thing that can trigger a shame reflex. So. Your work here is just to notice it, to catch it right. To hit backspace and say, I’m not gonna do that. I see that you’re trying to minimize yourself. I know why you’re doing that, and we’re gonna do something different today. And I think that when you can start doing that, catching yourself first, then starting to make shifts. Believing that you’re worthy of being seen, of being visible, of taking up space, of having an opinion. I think when you can do that, that is how you live a big life. So thank you so much for joining me today. . I’m hoping I’ll get to see you and give you a hug in Belize. Nothing could make me happier. I was on the internet and got fully influenced to buy a bathing suit the other day. This woman was so cute and she had on this little one piece red bathing suit, and it was so cute, and I was like, oh my God, I need that. So I bought it and she was tall and blonde and skinny, and I got the bathing suit and I was like, mm, why doesn’t it look like it does on the internet? But it’s so cute and I’m gonna bring it to Belize. We can snorkel and do some work together and have a cocktail. All right. It was so good to be here with you today. I love you so much. I’ll see you next week. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at Betsy Pake 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.

Have you ever been asked this? Which way does your intuition want you to answer? In this week’s podcast, Betsy asks her listeners if they are fully committed or loosely involved and how that outlook can apply to the everyday choices we make. She encourages us to ask ourselves if we are bravely invested or a little wishy washy, because we may be in mid life but we don’t want to be mid. Also, if you are local to Atlanta, please consider meeting up for coffee on April 11th. All of the information is on betsypake.com.

Transcript:

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

Hey everyone. Welcome to the podcast today. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. How has your adventure been going over the past week? I am suffering from the pollen, so you may kind of hear it in my voice. Pollen in Atlanta right now is unhinged. It’s always really bad. But right now it’s really unhinged. I am taking Zyrtec or Claritin, depending on the day.

Flonase. I have a air purifier in my apartment. I’m wearing a mask, like an infected person walking around outside to keep the pollen out. I am Netty potting every time I go outside and come back in. I shower before bed and wash my hair and change my pillowcases, and I am still really suffering. It’s really bad.

I got one of those memberships to get your car cleaned because the pollen was coming into my car. And so every other day, I am going to bring my car. It gives me, it gives me a project. You guys, it gets me outta the house, but I’m going to wash my car, go through the car wash because. Everything is just covered in yellow.

It’s just insane. So anyway, I will keep this one short ’cause I know my voice is a little funky and , that may be really annoying. It may not have been annoying if I hadn’t said it, but now that I’ve given you permission to have it be annoying, you won’t be able to not hear it. But let’s, just move along with the show today.

Okay. So in the spirit of keeping this one short today, I have a. A thought. Something I was thinking about this morning when I was getting ready for my day and I was thinking about this possible move to California. I was thinking about how. I realized I really need to be consistent with my working out and not from a, like I need to lose some weight perspective or I need my body to look different.

It’s actually ’cause I need my body to work a little bit different. I had a massage therapist come this morning, early. Early. She came at eight o’clock in the morning. I was barely awake. This is a woman that I’ve used for years and she just comes to my apartment. It’s, it sounds luxurious and it is that she comes to my apartment, but, , she’s really not any more expensive that if I went to a spa, , ’cause she just works for herself and came over.

And I told her that I sit so much for work and I do try and sit stand throughout the day. I have one of those standing desks, but I sit so much that my back is just, it’s just tight. My lower back is tight, my shoulders are hunched ’cause I’m working away my keyboard, , looking down all the time and I’m like, I really need to be.

Getting a lot more activity for my posterior chain, , for like all down my back. , I need to have my hamstrings engaged. The bottoms of my feet have been hurting, and I’m not walking, I’m sitting. But it’s because everything is just tight from being kind of like folded like a lawn chair, you know?

I was thinking about that and about how I need to just move my body because it needs to be moved, not because the mood has hit me, or I suddenly have a goal for something. And I was thinking about all these choices that we have in our lives and how committed we are to those choices. And I remember years ago I used to ask coaching clients when we would come up with goals.

For things is, this was before the navigate method, but I would say, are you hammer eggs? Are you hammer eggs? That was the question. And they would say, Hmm. It feels more like eggs. Eggs is like, you know, , an egg is, you know, the chicken doesn’t have to die to have to give you the egg, right? It’s, it’s the egg, ?

But if you’re ham, you’re committed. You’ve committed so much to breakfast that you’ve given your life for breakfast. So is it eggs or is it ham? And I was asking myself like, oh, if I’ll think about it that way, am I hammer eggs with this moving my body? And I’m, I’ve moved into ham because it has to be ham.

I was eggs before, so I moved, uh, you know, I worked out, I had my little workout thing I do once or twice a week when it, the mood struck. I was thinking about this move to the beach. Am I ham or eggs? I’m not sure. I’m, I’m leaning into ham territory of like, I’m going to make a brave choice. And so I started thinking about this with everything that we do, and if we put it in the perspective of what is it that I really want and do I really want anything?

That’s just eggs. I wrote something on social media a week or two ago and so many people resonated with it. And what it was, this idea of being, having a life that is mid. I like, I’m in midlife, but I don’t want a life that’s mid, that’s how I explained it in the post mid is eggs. Mid is eggs. It’s not, it’s not ham.

Now, I know this is kind of a silly little thing, but I wanted to share it with you this week so that you can just think through my choices. Think through your choices. Am I ham or eggs? Am I wishy-washy or am I committed? , Sometimes it makes sense to be eggs, and sometimes you choose eggs when it’s time to be ham.

So. I think when you know the difference, that is how you live a big life. All right. I will see you next week with a much more lengthy episode when I am feeling like my brain is back in my body. All right, y’all, I love you so much. Don’t forget, in uh, , in Atlanta on April 11th, we’re having a live coffee live.

We’re gonna all meet up for coffee. And the point of this is so. That I get to hug you, but also so you meet other people and make friends, and that could be a really cool thing. So you can find out all the information on my website. It’s right in the header. It’ll say like live events, and just choose Atlanta Coffee, and I will see you there.

All right. Bye y’all. See you next week. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today.

You can find me over on Instagram at Betsy Pake 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.

Do you remember the ‘choose your own adventure’ books? In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy explores the idea of living out our choices in life just like the books we remember from childhood. What if we decided to go to an Early Bird Dance Party? What if we moved to the place we always dreamed of living? What if you only thought about those things but never acted on them? If you have pondered an idea over time and need a little nudge, this will be it! Enjoy it on a walk or a drive and be sure to join us for our Fireside Chat on April 5th and if you are close to Atlanta, come have coffee with Betsy on April 11th.

Transcript:

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

Hi everyone. Welcome to the show today. Okay,, I wanna tell you about the Early Bird Dance Party. Before we get started, I wanna tell you about this thing that I went to. You know, as I have talked over the past, like couple years about recreating my life as a single person in my fifties, and how I’ve found friends and the things that I have been interested in and discovered about myself and all of those things.

And , like me, , you probably get most of your information from Instagram. And I got an ad that kept being shown to me for the Early Bird Dance Club and it is a. Idea that these two women had about wanting to go out and dance, but not wanting to start the night at 10:00 PM and get home at three.

, They had stuff to do in the morning and so they created. These events at clubs like all over the country where you come at six and it ends at like 10, I think. So it’s like for women who want to go out but still have shit to do in the morning, I think that’s the tagline. So I had seen it and then my friend Elizabeth reached out to me and she’s like, do you wanna go to this with me?

The tickets sell out really fast. So if we wanna go, we gotta get tickets. And this was like in January, and so I was like, yeah, let’s do it. So we got tickets. It was me and my friend Elizabeth, and my friend Dina. Now I’m gonna pause for one second. ’cause I wanna tell you, if you listened to my episode about how I was rebuilding my life in my fifties as a single woman, I talked about going to those time left dinners, Elizabeth.

Somebody that I met at time left and then she invited me out for dinner with two of her other friends a few months later. And this woman, Dina was there. So I went out to the early bird dance party with Elizabeth and Dina. I’m, connecting the dots there. Just so you can see, and I know this sounds silly ’cause you’re probably like, I know how we make friends Betsy, but for me that.

Can, that was not an obvious thing. I just thought like, I’m, I,, I don’t know how to meet people, but that’s how, so you meet, I went to a million time lefts. I met several good friends from there, and then. , They had other friends and so we all met up. So I will have Elizabeth meet my other friends and we’ll go to dinner together too, so she can meet them.

So I think it, it’s like just a nice way. And I see women doing this all the time including, , we’re, we’re not in a circle, we’re in a horseshoe. Everybody’s welcome in. And so that’s who we went with. So back to the story. So Elizabeth is like, let’s go me and Dina and you will go. So you get there at six o’clock, you get there at six o’clock, you dance your little heart out, and we ended up leaving at eight 30.

Dina had to get up really early in the morning on Saturday, and Elizabeth I think was heading off on a trip , out of state or out of the country. She travels a lot, so. We went. I mean, I gotta tell you, we got there right at six. We were the first ones on the dance floor. ’cause we basically just walked in and walked right to the dance floor.

The songs in the beginning, I’m gonna be honest, weren’t the best. Like they had a work in nine to five when it hit the work in nine to five. I was like, okay, , we gotta, we can, do better. We can do better. That’s a good, it’s a banger, but it not. Really what I want for my dance party.

Disco balls are going, you know what I mean? All the lights and it really did get better, but it was a lot of like nineties music. The place was packed., It was women only, so it was just like packed with girlfriends having fun. , It was just so fun and so nice. And then it was so fun. But we were all pooped and everybody had to stuff to do in the morning.

We left at eight 30. We got outside. I was like, first of all. I’m really proud of everyone’s knees in there because people were doing the low, low, low, low, you know, apple bottom jeans and the boots. I was like, how are people getting so low? ’cause my knees, I just will not. And then when we left, Dina was like, oh my God, it’s still light out.

It was still light out, but it was really so fun. So if you have a chance to go to the early bird dance party, go to that. It’s really fun. And just like a cool thing, , if you haven’t seen my Instagram stories, we are having a coffee. In a bunch of different locations, live coffees where you can come meet me for coffee.

It’s less about meeting me and more about meeting other people in your community, right? So like other women that follow me or whatever, , have come across the page and want to come and meet and make friends. So we’re doing them in Atlanta. It’s April 11th in Atlanta, and. On my website, there’s gonna be a link that says coffees, and then there’ll be a dropdown with all the different locations.

I, Atlanta is up there. Now the other ones are being put up as we get the date, but it’s gonna be Atlanta, San Diego, New York City, Nashville, London, and I think there was one other place. Maybe that’s it. We’re thinking, I know I get a lot of requests for Chicago, , and maybe we’ll do something in South Florida.

So just a way to be able to get together, grab a coffee, come and meet people, and then you have meeting people in your community. You know what I mean? Which I think is so fun. So be on the lookout for the coffee and community events. And then of course our fireside chat is live this month and it’s on the website.

You can get to it. On the menu we’ll have it put like events so we can have all of that underneath. ’cause I don’t want you guys to get confused. But the fireside chat is virtual. It’s on Zoom and it’s on Easter. It’s at night on Easter. So I get it. If you can’t, if you got family stuff, but you might have family stuff in the morning, and then by 7:00 PM Eastern, you’re done with family and you wanna come join me or you don’t have any family stuff going on, and then you have a chance to come and do something and be with other people.

You know that also are free at 7:00 PM Eastern. So that is just like a non-scripted, not recorded zoom time for everybody to get together and just have community no matter where you are. So those are some of the events that you could come and join me, which I would love. Okay, so now I have a story and I’m gonna tell you this story.

With a caveat. And the caveat is the same caveat that I tell women in the Navigate method, which is everything is written in pencil. Like we get to change our minds, we get to shift, we get to learn more information, we get to go back, go forward, whatever it is that we need. Okay. So as we move forward in the months ahead, I want you to keep that in mind because it’s.

A little risky that I’m telling you this, but it’s also true and it feels really true. And so I wanna tell you this weekend I was. Free most of the weekend I had my dance party, and then Saturday I ran errands. And then Sunday was just meant to be like a rest day. And on Saturday morning I was making my coffee.

And I do this thing that I do, which is I make my coffee and if I don’t have a message from a friend, lots of times I have two girlfriends that I. Voice memo with. And if I don’t have a voice memo to listen to, I call it my morning podcast. I pretend I have a roommate and I listen. , But if I don’t have one of those, then what I do is I talk as if I’m standing in the kitchen of my beach house and I’m talking to some friends who have come to visit and they’re planning their day.

And I’m asking what the beach plans are for the day. I’m letting them know if they walk right out the back door on the beach and they take a left, there’s a volleyball tournament. , Sometimes I let them know that I get done at three. If they wanna meet up for cocktails, I’ll have cocktails. Sometimes I say , I’m gonna have Chef Greg come.

I know, I know. This is crazy. I’m gonna have Chef Greg come. At six. So you guys have your whole day at the beach, and then if you wanna come home and shower and then just be ready, chef Greg’s gonna make sushi or whatever. I decide the meal is gonna be okay. So I’ve been doing this for months, months, talking about my beach house and welcoming my friends.

It’s the most fun, like it puts me in the best mood like it. I just love it. Now, if you’re fairly new here, you might not know for the past, , 40 years, I have wanted to move to the beach. Why don’t I live at the beach? Well, there was always a lot of reasons and , I, my daughter was here, she was growing up, she, her dad lives here and I was married to my former husband who is an attorney and he’s licensed in Georgia.

So then we thought about moving to the coast of Georgia, but that’s not really the beach I had in mind. Like so many things. It just never was the right timing. And , there was a time. When I very first left my marriage where I thought, I don’t wanna move to the beach. , That’s not what I want. I think it was just the beach was the place where I felt relief from my marriage, like when I felt relief from all this.

And so I thought, , I have relief now because I’ve, left and I don’t really need the beach. But as I healed and, my nervous system started regulating and I really started to feel more like myself again. , I used to have this joy that I have now, but I used to have this real joy and like zest about life.

And, , 20 years ago, let’s say, I, I, really, I loved a lot of things and I, was. A lot more charismatic than I was when I was married. I think I just got very, very small and I started to lose touch with what I really wanted. Now, that’s not his fault, that’s my fault. I, that was my reaction to things that were happening, and so I thought, well, maybe I don’t really wanna move to the beach.

Maybe the beach was just my vision that I needed to have to escape where I was. And over the last few months as I have been rehearsing. Owning a beach house. I started thinking about why I am where I am, and I started to think about those books that we had as kids that were the Choose your Own Adventure books.

I loved those books, and you could have a million different stories, , you could choose. A, B, C, or D as the path. Or you could choose A, D, B, C, or you could choose A, C, B., Like every, you could make a million different pathways. And I started thinking about our lives and every time we make a choice, a whole new A, B, C, or D shows up.

Then we make, we choose A, and then a whole different A, B, C, or D shows up and then we choose C, and it’s a whole different A, B or C or D that shows up and the path could be played out a million gillion, different ways. And I started thinking about my choose your own adventure and from a spiritual perspective, would I redo this?

If I could, and I’m, not talking about regret. And that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t believe there’s any right or wrong. Not in my story, not in yours, but I believe there is adventures. And if I were to do it again is, are those all the adventures that I really wanted? Now what I mean by that is are they the adventures that I would choose or were the they, the adventures that were the default.

There’s nothing I can do about the adventures that I had, but now here I am. I’m in year two of a lease of my apartment, which means I am free. I’m free. I can do whatever I want. I can make whatever choices I want, and I don’t hate it here. I actually really like Atlanta. I’ve grown to really love Atlanta, especially over the past year.

I have friends here in community, I’m volunteering places. , Doing things, it’s like greatest thing to be right near a big airport, like all these things. But am I, is it just that this is the default? Is it just that this is the adventure that’s right in front of me and if I zoomed way forward to being 90 years old, is that the adventure that I would be happy I took?

Or would there be an adventure? I wish I had sought out and I thought to myself, I will always be disappointed in myself if I never live at the beach. Always, always, always. It might not work out. I’ll tell you, there’s a million reasons even now where I’m like, oh no, I can’t go. It’s so expensive. It’s a lot more expensive.

Taxes are bad. I could, , I don’t wanna live in Florida, like for whatever reasons I have, right? North Carolina, my body has a negative reaction to even saying the name of the state. , I don’t want, like, what is it that, where is it that I could actually go, , one of my girlfriends has been begging me to move to.

Connecticut where she lives and she’s like, there’s beaches here, but it’s not, I’m not standing in my kitchen with my friends visiting . I mean, the vision I have is like the strand in California, you know? Now you might do what my brain just did, which was like, that’s expense.

Where do you think you’re gonna have $12 million to get a house on the strand? I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know, like how do I know, how would I ever know if I’m here in Atlanta? How would I, how would I ever know? And , I don’t think there’s a whole lot of instances, even the people that have those $10 million homes on the Strand or in California in general.

I don’t know that any of them came from someplace else and just bought that. Like they probably lived there. They lived in other houses that were smaller and moved up and. I don’t know so the ridiculousness of my reasons why started to become really apparent as I framed it , if I was choosing my adventures, what would I choose?

And the adventure I’m on right now is not bad. In fact, it’s good, but I don’t wanna miss the adventure. I wanna choose because this is good enough. . This is not how I’m building my life from here. This isn’t what I’m doing. And is it scary af to think about moving? Yeah, I’m like about to be 55.

I’m gonna be 55 in another month, so I’m gonna be 55 moving to someplace where I don’t know anybody. But you know what? The people I hang out with now, I didn’t know a year ago. I have Dean Martin now. My cat, like a lot of things can happen. And so I started thinking, okay, what if all of the big reasons that come in my brain, .

This weekend, I couldn’t even think about it. Like the idea of, well, I, tried, I got, I helped with chat GBT and I was like, we were trying to find a beach community that I would like. We went through every freaking town in Florida, back and forth, back and forth. I like the taxes in Florida, but , we went , all over the place.

. , I’d been a lot of places in Florida. My dad used to live in Florida for 25, 30 years. I just, , I know what I don’t want ’cause I feel it in my body. I don’t have to understand why. And finally I asked my body like, is it Florida? And it was like, no. My brain logically was like, yeah it is.

It’s so close you could drive home. And then I thought, well what if I just go to. Georgia. I live in a state that has coastal communities, and I looked at that. I felt my body, my body was like, Nope, that’s not the adventure. When I’m 90 years old and I look back at the adventure, the, version of me that goes to Georgia Coast or goes to Florida is the version of me that’s, copping out, that isn’t taking the full plunge.

Even as I say this, I’m like, oh my God, what if I decide not to go? If I decide not to go, it’s ’cause it’s a full body. No, but when I got real with it, I was like, you know what? I really do wanna go, I’m scared as all get out, moving all the way across the country, all by myself, but there’s no other path.

I have to do it. And I have to do it because this is what. I’ve been rehearsing and this is what feels like the next right step. Now we don’t have to know. I don’t have to know what I’m gonna do in 10 months. Like I don’t have to know. I just have to know what the next right step is. This is the entire pathway that I teach people inside the Navigate method.

And if I don’t do it, ’cause I’m scared, what kind of leader am I? And so I pulled up my lease. To see if I could break the lease. I can. It’s like a couple grand Whoopy do. And so now I can, I have two options. My lease, I’ve got until February. I mean I have almost, , 10 months.

It’s the middle of February. So , I’d probably wanna move now. So this is what my brain, the gymnastics that I do. Okay. I’m thinking about my year. My year is pretty scheduled out. I have a lot of things planned and I’m going to London in November, the end of November into December for a week.

And flying from California to London doesn’t sound fun to me. I’m like, oh my God, that’s a way longer trip. And so I thought maybe I’ll just stay. Until the London trip, ’cause the summer’s gonna go fast and then we’ll be into the holidays. It’s all gonna go really fast, so I need to be planning now.

And then I thought, well then it’s Christmas time and then my lease is up. So why don’t I just get all my ducks in a row and get a plan together? If I get the feeling again, I’m going off of the feeling of my body that I need to go. It may be June and I’m like, I gotta skedaddle. Then I will. Then I will.

And right now I’m still feeling it out. I’m two days in y’all. I’m two days into this realization that I, this is something that I need to, an adventure that I need to have. So do I bring all my stuff? Do I give away stuff and buy new stuff when I get there? Do I get a furnished apartment? What does it look like?

I don’t know. It will unfold the next right step and the next right step. In the meantime, there’s a couple things I wanna get done. My car is almost paid off. I wanna pay my car off. ’cause that’s gonna save me a ton of money. Right. I’m being responsible in the decision making and , I’ve talked to my family, they’re all on board.

My sister is moving to France. My dad was totally on board with it. Of course. I mean, what’s he, , he’s never stood in my way of anything and even my kid. Was like, I think you should move to the beach, but if you do, it should be California. ’cause that’s where you’ve always wanted to go. And I thought, you’re absolutely right.

And so . I’m gonna be in San Diego in May and I’m gonna check things out. , I have friends that live in la, I have friends that live in Orange County. I’m gonna map out my next, the next right step, the next right thing, right in front of me now. The thing I wanna point out is that I think that we assume indecision and I had been in indecision, , do I go to the beach or not?

What do I do? Blah, blah, blah. I think we assume that means we don’t have enough information. If we did some more research, a little more thought about it, like we’d finally be clear. But I’ve been talking on this podcast about going to the beach for 10 years. Now, I wanna say again, I had real logistical reasons why there, it, wasn’t a choice that I was gonna make to leave.

I was clear on my choice to not go to the beach at that time. And, last year I really needed to do a lot of healing and this apartment in Atlanta was the best place to do it. And it taught me a lot about myself and it taught me a lot about what I was capable of. And it taught me that. I can build and create a life wherever and whenever I want.

And so I think when we think indecision means we don’t have enough information. What’s, actually happening is we’re trying to find a version of that decision that doesn’t cost us anything. I was trying to , I didn’t wanna go to California ’cause it was so far. And so then I was looking all over Florida and then I was like, yeah, but then I’d have to drive and this is a long drive and if I’m gonna fly and how long I was trying to figure out a version of my decision that didn’t cost me anything.

And, every real decision is gonna cost you something. Not money necessarily, although it’s gonna cost, it’s gonna cost me money. It’s not just logistics. It’s not just like energetically what I’m gonna have to put out to make it happen, but it costs you your other life. If I stay, I lose that version of me that gets to live by the ocean.

, I’m not, I can’t do that. And if I go. I lose this really good life that I’ve started to build here. And so instead of choosing, what happens is we hover, we research, we make pros and cons lists. We, ask everybody we know. I mean, everybody I know that lives in California, where do you live?

Where do, blah, right but what we’re really doing is delaying the moment where we have to let one version go and., What I’ve started to see is I don’t need more clarity. I have been rehearsing this moment., We talk about vision boards and manifesting like my nervous system is acclimated for this new reality.

So I need to decide which life I’m willing to live knowing that there’s no right and there’s no wrong if I chose to stay, not at a default. But if I choose or chose to stay, I’m already saying it in past tense. So I, it’s just a choice. It’s, just which adventure you’re choosing. It’s not right, and it’s not wrong.

It’s not wrong if I decide to stay, it’s just that I have to be willing to let go of the version of me that stands on my. Patio and explains the best spots at the beach that’s laid out in front of me, and I don’t know how that could ever, ever come true. I recognize that’s a expensive dream right there, but I don’t have to know how.

I don’t have to know. That wouldn’t be, that would be a step so far down the road. The only step I need to know is this one. So I don’t need more clarity. I just need to decide which life I’m willing to live knowing that it’s not gonna be perfect. And when you think about it that way, I think you know, something changes.

It’s your adventure, it’s your choose your own adventure. It’s not about making a right choice anymore, it’s about taking a decision and making a choice. I can stand behind as who I am and who I am is an adventurer. Who I am is somebody that’s going to take this life and eat it all up. I’m not gonna be the kind of woman who in her old age says, I really just wish I had tried that.

That is not me. It’s not gonna be me. It was me for a long time and it went so far against everything about. My core essence of who I am. And I bet you’re like that too. Like I bet if you’re listening and you’re feeling something about it, you’re like that too. I don’t wanna keep circling things that matter to me.

I don’t wanna wake up five years from now or , one year from now, or 20 years from now, and realize that I stayed here just because it was easier to maintain. So. The question for me right now isn’t, is this the perfect decision? The question is, which version of my life do I respect myself the most for choosing?

I don’t have to have every detail figured out, but I do know this, that I’m not waiting for the decision to feel perfect anymore. I’m just choosing the one that feels the most alive. So I think when we can do that, is how we live a big life. And if you live in California, Southern California, please hit me up.

Let me know. Get me some guidance. Tell me where you live. And if you have a friend that has a beach house that I could practice. Alright, y’all, I love you guys so much. I hope that you can touch base with that version of you that is choosing her own adventure instead of just living at default. All right?

I love you so much. See you next. 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 Pake 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.