The Art of Living Big | Subconscious | NLP | Mindset

In this episode Betsy talks a bit about midlife and 3 things women who are ready to make their mark in midlife typically do. Transcript: 410 reinvention in midlife Speaker: [00:00:00] 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, welcome to The Art of Living Big. Hi, everybody. I have, I have a couple things to share with you as we get kicked off today, and I wanna do this episode really about being in the middle, the middle midlife, and being in the middle of all the things, the middle verse as I like to call it. And. You know, I, and, and before I continue, I also wanna just remind you, we are doing another fireside chat. If you go to my Instagram in the bio, so if you go to my Instagram [00:01:00] page and you click on the links, there’s a link to the next fireside chat, and it is in January. It’s a Sunday night, I think it’s the ninth, if I remember right. And we really just get together and talk about things that are coming up in midlife. So I have some. Thoughts to share this time. Last time it was just really lovely and I think there was like, I don’t know, 40 people or something there. So, so put it on your calendar. Go check that out. Um, come and join us and today we’re gonna talk a little bit about midlife and all the things. And I’ll tell you, I have the most midlife story ever. So I got this idea. I have been really actively working on all the little things that bring me joy. I have the belief, and you probably have this belief too, that hard things happen and the things that make hard things easier is having a lot of little micro happiness, right? [00:02:00] Little things that can support you through the hard times. This year has been like one of the strangest years. I need to do a podcast on this year, like, like an incredible, incredible transformational year for me, and I can feel myself like. It’s like I’ve gone through the portal, like I can feel myself like just being ejected from the portal. I know this summer I kept saying I’m in the birth canal, like I feel like I’m in the birth canal and I am definitely out now, but the most midlife thing to ever happen to anybody ever on the planet ever happened to me. So I have this idea. About these little things that bring me joy, and one of the things that I really like is I like to color on my iPad. Okay? I like to listen to audio books, right? I want somebody to read me a story. I like to do puzzles. Okay? I haven’t done a puzzle in forever, and I really like doing puzzles. I like [00:03:00] doing like, like those small focused things while I’m listening to music or while I’m listening to. Uh, like I have a YouTube channel that I love that is like my comfort show and. I also like to do it when I listen to audio books, right? So, or podcasts, you know what I’m saying? So something. And so I decided I was gonna get a puzzle and I was really excited about it. I went to the store and I was like looking at all the puzzles and trying to figure out one that would be hard enough, but not too hard, and. Anyway, I found one, it’s like these stickers you would put on a suitcase, right? So it’s all like these travel stickers. So I was like, that’ll be fun. It’s cute, it’ll be easy enough because there’s so much uniqueness to it, right? So each of the pieces will be unique. So. I get it home. I mean, I have it all like laid out. I’m sorting the pieces. I’m like, I am like a professional [00:04:00] puzzler at this point. And so I get to work. I got an I or I got a, an audio book going like, I mean, I’m feeling good about this, right? A, a couple hours go by, I’m standing up because I’m like leaning over the table and organizing it all, and I got the whole like outline together and I’m starting to get like the second and third row of the puzzles and then I’m like, man, I’m getting tired. Like I’ve been doing this puzzle for like three hours and then I go to stand up and I realize that I have been leaning over, sort of like if you were brushing your teeth for three hours. And this midlife back was very unhappy. It was just tired. Do you know what I mean? I, there’s nothing bad that happened, but it was so tired that it was starting to spasm on one side of my back. I mean, I was like, are you joking? I don’t know if you’ve been here for a long time. You might remember I had that back spasm when I was in Iceland like four years [00:05:00] ago. It was that same spot, right? So I just about died, but the thing that I learned from Iceland was not to put ice on it. I needed heat. So I laid on a heating pad and I made it through, and I’m feeling better, much better today. You know, it took a couple days, but I was like, is this not the most midlife thing to ever happen? That I have a puzzle injury, like I puzzled too close to the sun and I had a puzzle injury. With that. I wanna talk this week about being in midlife, but also this reinvention and why this time of our lives. I really believe with the wisdom that we have and. The life lessons that we’ve learned and the experiences and the things that we’ve gone through. We are actually in one of the best possible places ever to have a real invention, reinvention that [00:06:00] creates like amazing change and an arrival of something really new for us. You know? So let’s dive in here. You know, I think. As I was thinking about this, I was like, you know, I, I think when I think about midlife, you know what I think about, I think about. The guy with the sports car, right? Isn’t that what we kind of always think about? At least when I was younger, that’s what I thought about. Like the guy that got a younger girlfriend and had a red sports car. And I also think there is something that we are meant to believe about women in midlife. Which is that we’re going through all these crazy hormonal changes and everything is different and it’s something that you actually have to survive, like something that you have to really get through or endure. And I also think until recently it was something you were supposed to endure like silently. You [00:07:00] weren’t supposed to talk about anything actually happening biologically in midlife. That was sort of taboo until recently. I think even like the last five years, maybe 10 years, but like five years probably. But I am wondering, and these, this is the thing that I always talk to the ladies inside the Navigate Method about is that what if midlife is actually the most incredible, powerful portal that you will ever step into? N not because it’s easy, magical, like birth canal, but because things get stripped away and now you get to tell the truth. And I think every woman that I work with reaches this moment where the performance of life and being a woman, the performance of being a [00:08:00] woman, right? Like I. Of how you’re supposed to be a woman. Let’s say it that way. That performance stops, right? You stop performing stability, you stop performing the roles that you had to, and your roles change. Like maybe you had kids and now your kids are moved out, like you, you, you know what I mean? All these different things happen. You stop pretending. That everything in your marriage is fine or that you can just sweep stuff under the rug that it’s it like it’s fine. Like that. You can stop pretending that the life that you built, even if you put a lot of effort into building it, you get to stop pretending that it still fits. And I think this is a huge breakthrough because we are refusing to whisper. Because we are refusing to stay the same, and we are in a [00:09:00] world that really wants us to stay the same. It wants us to still look 20. It wants us to still have the body that we had in our twenties. It wants us to still be performing all the things and all the tasks and have the energy and all these things, but that’s just not our lives anymore. And I think that, you know. Men in a lot of ways are allowed to age. We say even when men get gray, it’s distinguished. I, I can’t, I, I feel rage. I feel rage even now as I say that. It’s distinguished, but women are supposed to. Sit and put chemicals on your hair, and if you want to do that, I salute you. Do it like I love it. I’m thinking about getting some Botox because I want to, but probably because I’ve been told that I need to do, you know what I mean? Like probably my eyelids are heavy, so I have this idea that I could get some Botox and lift my eyelid a little bit so that I wouldn’t have to get surgery on my eyelids, which a side note I think will probably be a medical [00:10:00] procedure at some point soon. But the point is. That there is a difference between what we do and what we are supposed to do and what men do and what men are supposed to do. Men are supposed to just age and women, we have to evolve in a totally different way, and I feel that too. I haven’t colored my hair in years, but I still look in the mirror sometime and like should I, would I look better? How do I define better? I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with being younger. I think it has to do with looking youthful. And of course I want those things, but why do I, and so I think that this, that midlife starts to feel like a collapse, right? There’s this point where all of your old coping strategies sort of lose their oomph. [00:11:00] So I think that this, this point of midlife is a reinvention, but it’s not a reinvention of starting over. I think it’s a reinvention about becoming the version of you that is renewed, right? It’s about remembering someone old, the version of you that got buried under, you know, e expectations or responsibilities or the, the roles that you had, right? Marriage dynamics, how you operate i

This week, Betsy highlights the importance of women giving themselves permission to make choices that bring joy. We often pour so much into creating memorable experiences for our loved ones, especially during the holidays, but it’s essential to remember that our own moments are just as special. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are so thankful you are here. 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. Welcome to The Art of Living Big this week. It’s a holiday week, so a little shorter episode, but I wanted to share a thought, and it’s actually something that I shared last year in a reel on Instagram. In fact, I may share it. I may re repost it this year because it resonated with so many people and I think it’s. Such a good message. So here’s the message. , I realized when my daughter was young and she’s about to be 24, but when she was young, , like a little kid, like a toddler, I started to realize how many things that I always just took as like the magic of Christmas where actually my mom doing all this work, right? Like . The cupcakes and champagne that go out for Santa every year. , , when my daughter, it was time for her to do well. We didn’t do cookies and milk. I did cookies and milk when I was little, but when my daughter, well, Santa changed his preferences by the time I had a kid. And cupcakes and champagne is what we left out. , But I had to make the cupcake. Right. It didn’t just like magically happen. We used to leave out reindeer food and I remember as a little kid leaving out reindeer food, well, that actually has to be created reindeer food. And then the whole magic of it has to be implemented and was implemented by my mom. I remember being a little kid and my parents would have the elves do something crazy in the house like. We had a little craft table, and I remember one year the chairs were upside down on the table and my socks were over the legs. I remember thinking that was so crazy and evidence that elves had actually been there and done something so silly. And I remember when my daughter was little thinking about that and going, oh my God. All that magic. All that magic was my mom. Filling the stockings, figuring out what to put in ’em, putting out the little reindeer, all the little things. And , as we head into Thanksgiving here in the US I, I wanna just offer this thought. And it is the idea that as women who do so much, we. Matter too. Our experience matters too. And if you’re putting together a big dinner, if you’ve got people coming over, if you’re doing something special where you are entertaining, I want you to also think about yourself in that. And one of the things I realized a couple years ago was that I was getting everybody’s order for. Pie right after Thanksgiving. What does everybody want? And everybody that I was asking wanted pumpkin pie. I, I don’t dislike pumpkin pie, but I really love cherry pie. Like I really love cherry pie and I don’t have cherry pie very often. I don’t know why we don’t have pie as much as we have cake because pie is superior. I love pie season. So here we are in pie season. I’m asking everybody what do you want? Everyone’s saying, pumpkin, and I’m feeling this tiny kernel of disappointment because I can’t have my cherry pie. Now you may already be thinking in your head like, yeah, you can. But when you’re in that moment, you’re like, I don’t wanna get a whole pie just for one piece, just for me. And if you’re like me, I also think, , I don’t wanna get the whole pie and end up eating the, whole pie all by myself. ’cause that’s likely to happen too. But I remember last year , when I did this reel on Instagram, my message was Get the pie. Get the pie. I remember leaning over at Kroger and looking down and seeing the pumpkin pie and seeing the cherry pie and feeling that paying of guilt. Where did that come from? Like we get to have a holiday too. It doesn’t have to all be just about creating magic for other people and , I think that if you want the cherry pie, get the cherry pie is a great metaphor for other things in our lives too. So if you want something, just because everybody else doesn’t want it or doesn’t want it for you, doesn’t mean it’s not for you. And so I wanna offer you that little nugget, , as we move forward. And I will say this too, and this is so silly that I’m even saying this out loud, but you know, one of our sponsors here on the podcast is Cozy Earth, and I get asked all the time to do sponsorships, and I never want to, because very few people that reach out to me, it’s already something that I love , and so. When I tell you about Cozy Earth, I really mean it. But one of the things, if you have been seeing my stuff on Instagram, and here’s what I mean, this goes with the Cherry Pie theme. So many times I post my quilted house coat that I got on Cozy Earth. It’s, one of my favorite things in the whole world. I know that sounds so insane that a house coat would be, but I put it in the dryer. It’s a, like a comforter, you guys, it’s, a comforter. If you took a comforter and then you cut out a bathrobe shape and sewed it together, that is what this is. And I put it in the dryer at night. And then when I. Get outta the tub, or if I take a shower at night or whatever, I put that on and it’s, magical and it brings me joy. So much joy. That and their cozy socks, and I love their sheets. I mean, all this stuff, there’s nothing, you can’t go wrong with any of it. But this bathrobe, I’m telling you, I’m obsessed. So on the website, it’s called the Quilted House coat, but I have so many people that reach out because I post this. House code all the time because I really love it. And , right now through the middle of December, they have 20% off that you can get on their website. But you can stack the coupons. So you can use the R code here for the R of Living Big, it’s just, it’s a live big Betsy. You can use that code and stack it so it’s, you get 40% off. I’m actually thinking about getting a second one ’cause I love it so much, but then I’m like, why would I need in case one’s in the wash, I guess. I just love it. So I always am like jumping on Marco Polo with my girlfriends and they’re like, oh my God, that freaking bathrobe is like, it’s six 15 at night. Why do you have that bathrobe on? And I say, do not judge me. It is my cherry pie. I want to wear it all the time, and so I shall. So if you’ve seen that. , Cozy Earth has a really fabulous return policy. They’re amazing. The stuff is amazing. Get yourself what you want for the holiday and get the quilted bathrobe, but I really do want you to get it, but I want you to tag me when you get it. ’cause I really wanna see, I’m so excited for all my friends that bought it for themselves to put under the tree. So. , Whether it’s cherry pie or the quilted bathrobe or a walk in the afternoon where somebody else cleans up the dishes. , Give yourself what it is that you need. We are so sold, this idea that we are supposed to be second or third or fourth or fifth or put everybody, it’s it, a virtue to put everyone else first to be selfless. And I think there has to be balance. I think you cannot give of yourself if you’re totally depleted and even though you’re a mom, even though you’re a wife, even though you’re a working woman, even though you exist as a female in this world, it doesn’t mean that you don’t get to have the things that bring you joy. I think these little joys that we get to have. These are the things that make the big things, the big, hard things manageable. I think it’s the thing that makes grief doable. I think it’s the thing that makes struggles at work . Tolerable is by finding the little things that we can notice and give ourselves and be part of that are. Tiny joys., I, on my Instagram stories every morning I always post good things. And I asked this past week, I said, I feel like this is different from gratitude, right? My list of good things. And I asked people, is it gratitude or is it a little bit different? And , it was pretty 50 50 of what people thought, but I have been thinking about it ’cause I love words and I love nuance of things. And I think it’s appreciation. I think it’s not gratitude as much as appreciation, and that feels like a higher vibration to me. Right? Appreciation. And so when I think about getting the cherry pie or getting the quilted house code or whatever it is, I, think about this idea that I get to appreciate these things in my life and I’m allowed to choose them for myself. I’m allowed. To create the experiences for myself that bring me joy. It’s wonderful when somebody else does that for you too. And you don’t have to wait. You can create it for yourself. So get your cherry pie if that’s what you like, or whatever you like. Get the thing you like. And if you get the house coat tag me. , We’re gonna do a fireside chat. In January, so there’s already one scheduled, so make sure to look. The link is in my bio, , my Instagram bio. If you go there, it’ll show you the fireside chat. But I, I want, everybody to wear their quilted house coat. Oh my gosh. Maybe we could make that a fun thing. I’ll wear mine. It’s, so good. And then we could really be cozy and chat by the fire that doesn’t exist. But I put a candle out last time I put a candle out, and that made me feel like we were, , achieving the goal. So I hope that if you’re listening, you’re having a really good Thanksgiving. I hope you got the cherry pie. I hope you join me for the fireside chat. And if you get the quilted House coat, I hope you wear it. All right. I love you guys so much. I’ll see you next week. Thanks for

This episode aims to inspire listeners to live authentically and joyfully, just like we did before the world shaped our identities. Betsy shares insight on honoring the impulses we feel, like we did when we were kids, but this time with the intention of discovering ourselves again. So grab a wooden spoon and sing… after you listen:) Transcript  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello everyone. Hi. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. This week, hopefully I will be in Florida meeting with my coach and the mastermind team that I’m part of. I with the airline flights, I’m getting a little concerned. I’m getting a little concerned, but I’m really hopeful. So I’m recording this podcast early so that you still get one, even though I’m gone and we’re just gonna keep our fingers crossed that I actually am gone. Although I think my kitty will be happy if it doesn’t work out. My kid will be happy. . My adult daughter will be happy if I’m. Still around, but I’m really hoping that I’ll be able to go. So I wanted to record this and , this episode is something that has been on my mind, like sort of in the back of my mind as the years gone by. And then, , the other day we did. The fireside chat, which was just an open invitation for people to come and get together in community and just talk about some of the challenges and commonalities that happen in midlife. Right. And I think more and more I’m recognizing how important my village is, and as I have started to create my own village over the past year, really focusing on that. I can see how helpful it is. So I wanted to create that for people that maybe don’t have it, and then also for people who just wanted more of it. So we’ve been doing these, what I say we’ve been doing, we did ’em once. We’re gonna keep doing these fireside chats. And so, , in that, one of the things that kept coming up was that this idea that in midlife what’s really happening is an uncovering. What’s really happening is you’re getting back to who you were before, , before the world told you had to be a certain way. And gosh, this is something I feel like has been, like I said in the back of my mind and something I have been thinking about of what really makes me happy. And I did a whole episode on that, on joy and the things that I’m finding that bring me joy. But what really makes me happy and. What are the things that make me uniquely me? And I think there’s a component of this that can be really hard to dissect because so much of who we are is what we were told we were right when we’re young or when we formed relationships that we have now that are significant and whatever role that we’re playing in that begins to define how we are. It may not be what we would choose if we could wipe the slate clean and say, this is who I am, this is how I wanna show up. And the thing is, once you’ve started down a path of showing up a certain way, it’s really hard to change course. Not only because. It feels unsafe internally. Our nervous systems, they don’t do that. But also because other people around us start to react differently to that. And that’s, , one of the challenges and positive things that can happen. And one of the things we talk about inside the Navigate Method, when you show up different, your partners going to have to show up different. Right. Or you’ll just recognize you’re just. You’re not interested anymore. Right? So there, there is this shift that happens organically, I think, when we hit midlife, but also when we really wanna start looking at this and discovering this. So what I wanna talk about today is really who you were before the whole world told you who you needed to be. And I think this is something that. Impacts all of us in different ways at different times of our lives, right? And it is a question that shows up, , in, midlife when you have a breakdown or when something really big happens in your life or it just in those moments. I know there are times where I’ve got my coffee and I’m just thinking, , on the thinking couch in my thinking chair. And I think , what is. The version of me who is really, really joyful. There’s this, idea that I have that, and maybe you have this too, that our soul, right? So I’m thinking like my soul is inside me, but it’s, that is the essence of me. I think that I’ve had this soul for a lot of different lifetimes, and so the. Packaging shows up this time as Betsy and Betsy’s choosing to live her life in the way that she is. And in another life I was somebody else and in a different life I was somebody else. Like I, the outside could change, the packaging could change, the circumstances might change to give me an opportunity to experience lots of different things. But there is this soul. Peace of me and I really feel like I can, I get to her and I say her, but I don’t even feel like it’s a gender. I know this sounds kinda strange. I can feel this soul part of me. And sometimes when things are really bad, I check in with my soul and my soul loves it. I know. Is that so weird? When things are bad and I check in? My soul is really happy because my soul came here to have experiences. It didn’t come here to just have positive experiences, and I don’t know if that’s my delusional way of dealing with hard things, but it really does help me deal with hard things. But I think there’s, I believe there, it feels like truth, even when I say that it feels like truth. And so. When I think about who I was before the world told me who I needed to be, there is this soul piece of me that has been a lot of different things and a lot of different versions. And so who I was perhaps is a piece of this, of something that I get to choose and if I haven’t chosen, which so often we haven’t, and in most ways I haven’t. Then maybe there’s something to look at, right? And so I think we start to look at this when we have a big transition. We get married, we get divorced, we have kids, even we start a new job, right? All of those things, we have a breakdown. Or when we’re just sitting thinking like, what happened to me? You know, there’s that Oprah book. , And I read it years ago, but I think it’s called What, Happened to You? And it’s the idea that. Everyone is acting or reacting out of a place of what they know and what has been handed to them in many cases. And that instead of saying like, why are you so frustrating or whatever, it’s like, what happened to you to make you that way? Right? And I think about that in terms of myself, like what happened that made me. The way that I am, that made, that gave this packaging right, this shell, this exterior, when I can touch my soul and I know that my soul is just skipping along, real oblivious to the danger, but. It also gives me a lot of, a peace, you know, and I think that there have been a lot of roles and expectations. I think about, gosh, I think about some things that I’ve done. , Even when I was dating my, , former boyfriends or my former husband, , and. Like the things that I did, were in an effort to be a good girlfriend, right? In an effort to be a good friend in an effort. And that’s not necessarily bad, but does it align with who I really am or is it some rule that we were following to just make you more lovable or valuable? And who were you before all of that rules came into place? And so here’s what I think. I think that most of our lives were built around who we think we’re supposed to be, but not who we actually are. So I go all the way back to when I’m little, when I think about this, and , when we’re little, we’re wide open, we laugh at everything. We cry when we need to. I mean, I saw a kid on the floor of the grocery store the other day, like having a tantrum. And I’m like, , that’s how I feel too when my ice cream is out. Like it, we. We, go with the flow of whatever is the experience and emotion, and we’re curious, right? We follow curiosity. We ask a lot of questions, and then we learn and we learn at some point that being loud gets you in trouble. That making a mistake gets you a big red check mark on your page. You know that you crying or being emotional can make people really uncomfortable. I remember crying when my mom died and everybody comes to your house, you know, after somebody dies, like everybody just comes. So, I mean, this was within hours and there was an adult , that I love. I loved then, and I still love now, but an adult man who said, don’t cry, stop crying. I was like, I remember even at the time being like, if any time seems appropriate, it’s this , but it makes people uncomfortable, right? He, loved me and so he was uncomfortable with me being in pain. It takes a lot to be okay with witnessing someone’s pain, , and we become the achiever and the peacemaker, right? We hold back our pain just to make people feel better. Then we become caretakers and, little by little, I think we start to trade our, truth for belonging, for being chosen, right? Not because we’re weak, but because we are really smart. And because fitting in and being chosen meant survival. But the problem is, especially now, it’s 2025, , we wake up and we have a life that might look good on paper, but it feels like somebody else’s story. And we start to wonder, look what happened. Like, who am I? Where did I go? What do I even like? I can’t even tell you how many times people are like, I don’t even know what I like. That I think is the moment. It’s the moment where we begin to remember, , I think that there is a cost to becoming who you were told that you needed to be. Right. There’s a cost to all that adapting, and I think it’s, I think it’s really subtle and it’s quiet. I think it looks

In this episode, Betsy hosts a Q&A session based on questions from her Instagram followers. She addresses topics like divorce’s impact on children, rebuilding a sense of thriving within a marriage, transitioning identity in midlife, and the importance of a flexible morning routine. Many of these questions are most likely ones that you have asked yourself, so tune in and prioritize your personal alignment so you can live your best life. 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. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. I’m happy you’re here. Today we’re going to do a q and a. You know, maybe a week or so ago I asked, I put a little thing on my Instagram stories, asking if people had questions, and I got a couple, but I get questions quite often, so I’ve just been screenshotting those. And I thought today we could dive in to that. If you missed our fireside chat on this past Sunday night. It was so, fun. We had a big group there and we just talked about all the things. Midlife, it was really great. We didn’t record of course, because , things come up that we don’t want to have recorded and shared with people who weren’t there. But we’re gonna be doing it again. I’m not totally sure if I’m gonna do one in December. I’m traveling and I’ve got some things going on, and so it may be easier to start after the new year and that might also be like a fresh start to get going on those. But I really would like to do them every month. So if you didn’t make it to this one, come to the next one. And if you did come to the last one, I’d love to see you at the future ones too. I really feel like. We are beginning to build community there, and who knows what that will lead to. I always think like live events, it’s gonna, we’re all gonna get together. I’m gonna get to hug you, so be sure to be on my email list or be checking on Instagram and I’ll be sure to post when we have the date for that one. And that way you can sign up and you’ll get a reminder and all that good stuff and the zoom link and all that. So that was great. I am heading outta town this weekend. I’m going down to Florida for, , my group with the people , that I am a coachee of. So I’m meeting up with all these people. You’ve probably heard me talk about that before if you’ve been here for a while, but I have been in this coaching. , Since 2018. So a really long time, and really steadily over the past two years. So we get together about three times a year live, and then we meet every week. So it’s so fun ’cause you form relationships with people. Online, and then you get to see ’em in real life, which is just really, really such a treat. So it’s right before Thanksgiving, but I am so excited about the holidays. This, season. , There’s nothing that could throw me off at this point. , I’m just so excited to be able to plan things and figure out what feels the best to me. Get the things I wanna get to eat and visit with the people I wanna visit with. It’s just gonna be really, really great. So I’m excited to kinda have that event to like kick off my holiday season. So I’m not sure if you’ve got something coming up where you’re gonna kick off your holiday season, but , I am really looking forward to that and I’m gonna miss my kitty. We’re gonna do it. I tell ’em I’m only gone a few times a year, , and then next year I’m planning already, , so I’m excited for that. I’ve got some big trips planned for next year and some really fun things coming. And so, yeah, there’s just a lot to look forward to. So let’s dive in today. I’ve got some questions and we’ll kind of go through, , some of these have thought through and, to be honest, some of them I haven’t, which it, kind of leads to. I think a good outcome. So we don’t always have to have everything totally planned. , And , with this podcast I tend to get an idea and then just kind of talk. So let me grab the first question that I got. Okay. So the first question that I got was, , how much do you consider the effect of divorce on your children when considering your own needs? , This is. Such a universal question and this phrase of question. , And I will say this, if you’re listening and you’re like, I’m not on the verge of getting divorced, it’s okay. I have a wide range of questions here. We, run the gamut. But this one in particular, I think is really important because it is something that I get asked in a number of different ways almost every day. And I think that, , it’s a really, really important question and. I think it’s one of those questions that sort of, the answer for it lives in the space between logic and your brain and your heart, , because as mothers our, nervous systems are really wired to prioritize our, children’s safety and, their happiness really. Right. And sometimes we do that even at the risk of our own. And so when the idea of divorce starts coming up between you and your partner, it’s, rarely just a practical decision, right? It, puts you into a existential crisis as you really think through what’s the right road. And, you know, you’ve probably heard me say before, , with so many things, there’s no right and no wrong. Any road that you take. Is gonna have pluses and minuses. But here’s what I believe. I believe that you don’t stop considering your children when you start considering yourself. Like those two things aren’t opposite. They’re intertwined because what our kids ultimately learn from us isn’t , how well did you sacrifice? It’s really. How, honestly, did you live? They’re watching. They’re watching what we tolerate. Oh my gosh. I’ve had so many conversations like this with my daughter, but they’re watching how, we love how we stay. They’re watching how we leave. , I always say to the women in the Navigate method, if they make the choice to leave, to do it with bravery and integrity. Right. Don’t say you’re gonna do something, don’t agree to something, and then change your mind. Like especially if you’ve, had , somebody asked you a question and then you said yes, or you signed something saying yes, , be in integrity. That’s, something nobody can take from you. Be brave and make the decisions from a place of bravery because kids are learning, , whether peace is something that we’re just performing or that we’re really embodying. Right? And when you live with integrity and bravery, , all of those things matter when you’re looking at this. And , I think that every mother considers their kids. And I know when I went through my divorce, I considered my daughter, but I also had to ask what does she learn If I model a life that looks good, maybe on the outside, but she knows it’s slowly draining me on the inside, right? Because kids don’t need perfection, but , they need honesty. They need to see what repair looks like, what boundaries sound like, what really thriving looks like. And the truth is, sometimes the most loving thing that you can do for your kid is to choose a life that’s really true to you, because that’s how they learn to choose themselves too. So. This is such a hard question, and it’s something everybody has to come to terms with on their own, but I think the real question shouldn’t be like, how much should I consider them? It should be, what am I teaching them through what I’m choosing? And I think when you start to look at it that way, it stops feeling selfish and your decision starts to feel sacred because not all. Pain, and I’ve, said this in a, number of different ways on Instagram and, , in my posts or even in newsletters. But marriage can be an incredibly spiritually uplifting and growing process, but not all pain is holy. If the other person is just allowing you to just fight for your damn life and struggle, and that’s what your children are seeing, then maybe there’s another way to look at this, where you can show them what it looks like to be brave and to be an integrity, and to choose yourself, right, and to choose what’s honest. So I would just offer that as your thought, as your guidepost, as you think through this. All right. My next question that I got is, can you rebuild a sense of thriving when you’re still in the marriage, or do you have to leave to really find that in yourself again? And I think this is such a good question and one that I think. So many people ask like in secret, , I think that there’s a belief that you can only come alive once you’ve really burned it all to the ground and that. To really reclaim a feeling of thriving you, you’ve gotta get out of the situation , that you’re in. And , it doesn’t mean that that’s not it. It may be that’s it, but I think that feeling like you’re thriving or feeling like you’re alive begins way before any of that. I think it starts when you start having. Little moments of being honest with yourself. When you stop saying that you’re fine. When you’re not fine. You know when something happens and you say That doesn’t feel good, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. I had somebody say to me the other day, , if my husband, if I’m washing the dishes and my husband , who hasn’t hardly talked to me in days, sees me. Leaning over the sink and comes over to grind himself into the back of me while I’m trying to clean up after dinner all by myself. , I’m going to lose my mind. Right. And I hear that version. It, comes in different formats, but it’s that same kind of feeling. And I think when , , this person that messaged me this, I think was trying to. Figure out why that didn’t feel good, because it’s her husband and she should be happy. But I, think that this feeling of I’m thriving, or I’m coming alive again, is really when you let yourself say that isn’t right.

In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy explores what it really means to upgrade the energetic “software” running your life. Just like your phone or computer needs updates to function smoothly, your inner system … your beliefs, identity, emotional patterns, and energetic boundaries… also needs regular upgrades. Betsy unpacks how outdated energetic programs (like people-pleasing, scarcity, or over-responsibility) quietly run in the background, draining your power and distorting your clarity. She shares how to identify when your system is glitching, those moments of burnout, confusion, or repeating cycles — and how to consciously install a new energetic framework that supports ease, alignment, and expansion. You’ll hear stories from Betsy’s own recent upgrades — the subtle shifts that changed everything in her business, relationships, and daily rhythm — and practical ways to recalibrate your own system. This episode is a guide to clearing energetic clutter, stabilizing your power, and reprogramming yourself for the version of you who lives bigger, freer, and more grounded in truth. 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 Art of Living Big. I’m excited. I’m excited to be here with you today, , and I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna talk about this a long time, and if you’re new here, you’re like, what? We don’t really care about your teeth, but last week I said I was getting these stupid brackets, my Invisalign off, and that did not happen. There’s more to do. So anyway, that’s the update on that. I just, I know this sounds really. Stupid probably, but I felt like guilty. ’cause I told you that. And I know you don’t care. I know you don’t care, but I like to be truthful, so I wanted to let you know that I didn’t get ’em off. So if you see me online and you’re like, she still has those. Brackets on her teeth. She’s still wearing the Invisalign. Ugh, I am. But it’ll be over soon and it’ll be so worth it. So anyway, I’m excited to do today’s episode and as we get started, I just wanna remind you that we’re in November. Do you remember I was telling you and I was telling people on Instagram about Cozy Earth and. Amazing bathrobe that they sent me. And I wanna remind you that it is November. So right now my code live Big Betsy on Cozy Earth gives you 40% off, which is like a special thing. And I think it only goes to the middle of December. But here’s the thing about that is that bathrobe that they sent me is, it’s a puffy I, I turned it into a sticker and I use it on all my Instagram stories. It is the most amazing. Uh, thing ever. I, it’s funny, I was on, , I was on Marco Polo with a girlfriend of mine and I left her this big message and I was getting ready for nighttime, , and recording and she messaged me back. She’s , I just love you’re in that puffy house coat. I know. You’re so happy. ’cause I am so happy. It is like a quilt that they turned into a bathrobe and I think on their website it’s called like the quilted house coat. It is., , Really one of my favorite things. And if you take a bath and you put, if you take a bath and you put it in the dryer and then you put it on after, it’s like the coziest most amazing thing ever. , They sent me that bathrobe and they sent me these cozy socks. , I don’t know, maybe like a month or six weeks ago, they sent, I had, I think I had maybe had talked about it on the podcast when my daughter was in the hospital. To help when she came home is I had her apartment cleaned and I went over with my cozy Earth sheets ’cause they’re so comfy. And I was like, I’m gonna let her use my Cozy Earth sheets. Anyway, they sent me sheets for her, so she has her own Cozy Earth Sheets and when they did that, they sent me this bathrobe and the socks, and I’m telling you. The socks are like, , they say they’re lounge socks. I wear ’em with like my Birkenstocks, , with like clogs. But anyway, make sure you use the code ’cause now you can get 40% off, which makes it like insanely inexpensive and really good gifts. Those cozy socks, lounge socks. I got the three pack with the three like pinky colors and they’re so cozy and comfy. So, anyway, I, wanted to say that as I got started, because. It’s the coupon is now, so you could get it for Christmas. Okay. And if you hear this like in February, you could still use Live Big Betsy, but I think it only gets you like 20% off typically moving forward. So that’s a big deal. All right, so today I wanted to talk about energetic operating systems., I know it’s kind of a random topic, right? But here’s the thing. More and more and more in my life over the last eight weeks, I think I have been really leaning into energy and you know, I talked a few weeks ago about the energetic, the energetics of making a decision, and I have been thinking for myself like, okay, let’s say , that we are an energetic operating system. Right? Let’s, let’s just assume that is true. Then how would we update the software? Like I, I’m like, , how could I get an update? I think we go through times where life is hard, right? And then we grow and that’s an update. But also I would like to, I would like to update without all that, I’d like to skip the hardship and just go right to the growth. I know that’s not how life works, but I think there is a way to. Identify earlier, like when your system is glitching and consciously install a new energetic framework that really supports where it is that you wanna be. And so that is something that I have been working on over the past eight weeks. Life has been kind of hard. And I post about this sometimes on my Instagram stories, but. Every day. I typically post like my good things, a list of good things, and I find this so important for our energetic operating system to reprogram our brains to be looking for good things. But also there are times where I post about something that’s going hard, right? Because life happens. There’s always this stupid growth. So life happens and I do wanna acknowledge that too. And so, , today I posted something, , about life being hard and my daughter’s back in the hospital for the fourth time and like things aren’t simple and there is an energetics around it that I can use to help. So that I don’t do this pattern again, whatever patterns I’m playing in this, right? When something bad happens, whatever it is, take my situation out of it. But whatever it is, we have a pattern, right? We feel like a victim or we get overwhelmed or we shut down or whatever our pattern is, , so today, let’s talk a little bit about. About this upgrading of your energetic operating system. So,, the new iPhone came out and so I noticed that my iPhone is lagging, right. And it’s because well, it’s because Apple is trying to get me to buy a new phone, I’m sure. But it’s because there the software needs to be updated. The new iOS came out. Mine wasn’t working right. I’m like, oh, I need to upgrade my software so that it’s running the same thing that all my apps are running on, and your energetic operating system is made up of beliefs of patterns. Of emotional codes that really determine how you move through the world. It is like an unseen blueprint about what you think is possible, what you think is okay to tolerate , what you magnetize into your life. And most of us were running on a code that was written years ago or decades ago, or when we were little kids. And so let’s just talk here first about this operating system , and how to even know, well, actually, let’s just talk a little bit about the unseen blueprint. And, I kind of touch on this in every episode and I’m sure I’ve done a deep dive about this in one, at one point or another. But if you’re new here, I just wanna give sort of an overview of this. So, , I say this like unseen blueprint, you have this blueprint, the way that you do things. Our unconscious mind, our unconscious minds c create habits, right? That is where our habits are stored. It’s where our micro expressions are stored. It’s where everything, every memory, everything I’ve ever experienced is stored. And in all of that, it creates a blueprint of reality. And that reality is like a set of sunglasses that I put on. And everything that I see in the world is through those sunglasses. So I grew up in Vermont in a little small town. My dad worked outside the home. My mom was a homemaker and was super involved in our lives. I had a sister and my grandmothers were important to our family. Education was huge. My dad worked at the university and that was something that we talked about all the time. So all of those, we had pets and that was important. My dad was active in the community. My whole family was active in the community. That was important. Taking care of each other was important,. It’s so this whole like framework became my glasses that I put on. Now when I look at the world, I see it through that frame, right, of what’s important, how do we take care of each other? How do we show up in relationships? What does life look like as a friend or a sister or a daughter? Like all of those things. That is my sunglasses now. Somebody else could have grown up in the same town with different parents, different experience, maybe. They were with, , parents that were, that worked weird shifts, right? Worked their butts off, but weird shifts. And so family didn’t appear to be, I’m gonna say a priority, but that’s probably a judgment. , Didn’t, wasn’t played out in the same way mine. Right. So their framework is a little bit different. Their sunglasses are a little different. Or if somebody grew up in Chicago or grew up in la, , do you know what

You know that moment when you find yourself in the same situation again… just with different names and faces? Maybe it’s a new job that feels oddly familiar to the last one, or a new relationship that somehow has the same emotional dynamics. In this episode, Betsy unpacks why that happens, what the universe (and your subconscious) are really trying to teach you, and how to finally integrate the lesson so you can move forward…not in circles. This episode explores: The energetic and psychological reason we repeat patterns How to identify your “loop moments” The role of self-trust and awareness in breaking cycles The difference between recognizing a lesson and embodying it A 3-step reflection process you can use anytime you realize you’re back in a familiar pattern It’s an invitation to stop asking “Why does this keep happening to me?” and start asking, “What in me is ready to be healed?” Transcript  You know that moment where you find yourself in the same situation again, right? Different names, maybe different faces. Maybe it’s a new job that feels oddly familiar to the last one. The situations that happen are the same, or it’s a new relationship that somehow has these same emotional dynamics. All right, today we’re gonna talk about this. Why does this happen? What does the universe, and of course, your subconscious. Really want you to know, and I’m gonna teach you how to integrate the lesson so you can start moving forward and you don’t get stuck in circles. Okay? Alright, let’s go. 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 Art of Living Big. I’m Betsy. I’m happy that you’re here today. All right, a couple quick updates. ’cause you know, I like to give you a couple of quick updates. So this week, tomorrow, in fact, when you’re listening to this, if you are a subscriber and you listen in the morning when this comes out, while you’re listening, I’m getting my brackets taken off for my Invisalign, which the last couple weeks, the liners that I’ve had have made me. Like Lispy and it’s so hard to talk. I took them out to do this episode, but it is something that I’m really excited about and I’m happy that my teeth are perfect and it’s like just something to celebrate. So I wanted to celebrate that with you here. If you follow me on Instagram, then you may have noticed, , every morning I do like a good things post. So thank you guys for loving those and for liking my outfits. You know, it’s kind of funny because nobody sees my outfit all day ’cause I’m, because I’m at work from home, but you guys, when I post, so it makes it fun to get ready and I like to get ready. Someone did ask me that, like, why do you get ready every day if you work from home and nobody sees you? And I know this sounds kind of strange, . There’s no judgment if you don’t do this, but I do it because I believe that it makes me show up as my favorite version of myself, and I think my clients deserve that. So I like to get up and get ready and feel good and start my day. So if you have been watching those, you may have noticed earlier this week I posted something about the portal 2025. So. Typically this time of year, I do some special things for people that are coming into the Navigate Method. So we are gonna be taking a handful of people through the regular process, but there’s gonna be some additional. Things that we’re gonna do. And the reason that we’re doing those is two parts. One is because it’s funky, it’s a funky time of year to do the navigate method because there’s breaks for the holiday, right? So, , like the week of Thanksgiving, we have a group, but it’s earlier the week of Christmas. Christmas falls on a Thursday, right? , And that’s when we meet. So like there’s changes to the schedule. So because of that, I like to make it a little bit more. Fun for the people that go through and I have some extra things that we’re doing to support you. I also think right now is the most important time of the whole year to go through this, and the reason is because we kick the can down the road so much for so many things in our lives. I mean, I know I do it for things too, right? There’s things that we want and things that we said in January that I’m not gonna live another year like this. Whether, whatever that is for you in this job, in this relationship, in this uncomfortableness, in this body, whatever it is, right? Things we wanted to do different, and now it’s, now it’s showtime, right? You still have an opportunity to make a lot of the changes that you wanted to make. The truth is a lot of the things that we set out to do at the beginning of the year really don’t take that much time because once you start there becomes momentum and then that just becomes the way that you live, right? And so I wanted to invite you in if you are that woman that you are, the kind of woman that you’re, like I said, I wasn’t gonna do this another year. Last year, the year before, the year before. And I’ve gotta do something different. And one of the things that I posted earlier today was just about change. And someone asked me about asking our husbands to change and they were like, I don’t wanna ask him to change. And, and I kind of laughed ’cause I’m like, you’re not asking him to change. You’re asking him to be aware of who he is. You’re asking him to notice the things that he does that create disconnection and struggle, like you are just , asking him to be aware because you can’t shift anything if you’re not aware that you do it. And so it sounds to me like so many times women are caught in this back and forth because they’re like, I don’t wanna ask him to change. I should accept him the way he is. And I, you’re not asking him to. Change who he is. You’re asking him to recognize his patterns that aren’t helping him to live the way that you guys decided to live together. And it may be that he can never do that, that’s a possibility, but you don’t know unless you do things radically different. And that’s what we teach you inside the Navigate method. Okay? So I didn’t mean to go off on all that. I just feel like that’s important and important for you to know that we’re doing that right now, so you could get in on it and you know, if you’re listening to this and it’s December or even early January, there’s still ways for you to get in on that. And , we have special ways for you to be able to still participate in the things that we’ve done for the holidays. So, okay, so let’s get into this episode. We are gonna be talking today about something that I think that we’ve all felt at some point, and it is that feeling of, wait, have I been here before? Like I’ve done this before. You know, the details might change. It might be a different relationship, like I said, or a job or a new city, but somehow the emotions, the dynamics, they all feel the same. And you’re like, why haven’t I learned the lesson? Like there is a lesson for me to learn and I never learned it, but what is it? And it’s, it can feel like. The universe keeps sending you this same test. I hear people say that a lot, like it’s just a test until you finally learn the material. And the truth is,, it sort of does. It’s not really a test, but we’re gonna talk about this, all right? I used to think that if I worked a little bit harder, or I got a little bit smarter, or if I made better choices. That I would stop ending up in the same emotional places. But what I learned is that , the universe isn’t punishing us, but it is partnering with us. It’s showing us again and again. The places where we’ve abandoned ourselves, right? , The parts of us that are like seeking attention or validation, and it will keep showing up until we are ready to see it differently. So first, let’s just start with what’s actually going on, because I think that this. This is an important thing to notice. , Anytime I talk about the universe, I’m using air quotes like the universe. I do believe in an energy around things, and also there’s always a way to track it back to your subconscious mind. So here’s what’s really going on from that level. So our subconscious mind runs the show about 95% of the time, and what I mean by that is. It is the thing that is reacting, deciding, sifting, and sorting through what you are consciously aware of. We think we have free will, but we only have free will enough to the 5%. The other place that we can impact our free will is by understanding our subconscious mind, and I think this is so important if we want to be and experience new things. Otherwise we become where we are running this track, right? That kind of runs the same thing over and over and over again. And that is actually really helpful. Biologically, it’s really helpful because we don’t have to remember everything. Like I know exactly how to brush my teeth. I don’t even hardly remember doing it until I realize I’ve done it. It is a habit. It’s unconscious. And if I had to remember everything or look at a YouTube every time I wanted to put pants on, like it would become, life would become very hard, right? So our subconscious is running the show and it loves things that are familiar, even if the thing that’s familiar really hurts. So if deep down we believe that love means taking care of everything, right, or safety means just pushing it under the rug, or just ignoring things. Then our subconscious mind will keep creating circumstances that feel like that. And I’m gonna say this in a different way. It’ll keep showing us, remember. ’cause not everything is being shown to us, but it’s gonna keep showing us circumstances that feel like that. It’s not because it

 This is a good one yall…Betsy explores the energetic shift that happens when we make a decision and how to pay more attention to our subconscious and rely less on logic alone. If you have been circling in indecision, big or small, this one is for you! Betsy invites us to think less about what to do and more about who you want to be. 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 Art of Living Big. I missed you last week. It got to be a crazy, hectic week, and then by the time that I had to have everything recorded, I just was like, you know what? I’m going to take a bath and get a massage and everyone will forgive me because I was really overdone. So I’m excited to be here this week though, and I have, I an episode for you that I think might be interesting, like no matter where you are in your life or what your challenges are or what’s. Coming up for you. We all have decisions to make, right? Things that we have to choose between, and the more that I live my life, the more I think that decisions are not just, in fact, probably less logical thought out. It’s more energetic. So today I am gonna talk about something that could really change everything, not because it gives you more to do, but because it helps you to shift the energy that you are being while you do it. So we’re gonna dive in here to the energy, be behind decisions. So, okay. I think when we think about decision making. We think about it as something we have to do in our heads. You know, I talk to people all the time and they’re like, I have done so many pros and cons list, and we even hear that as a strategy to make a decision, make a pros and cons list, which I think just makes me circle in even more chaos making a pro, because both lists seem good, right? Which I could go into my whole. My whole diatribe about how there is no right decision. There’s no right or wrong, right? And that’s how come a pros and cons list doesn’t feel right, because there’s no right or wrong the universe isn’t going to. Punish you with a bad outcome if you choose the wrong thing. Like that’s just not how it works. No matter which choice you make and which road you go down. Both roads, , have bumps and both roads have flows, you know, and so there is no right decision, but I believe that deciding is an energetic act. It’s not just a thought, but it’s a frequency shift, and when you can do it from that layer, then your cobblestone road doesn’t seem so cobblestoney, right? You’re able to handle the ups and the downs in a way that feels so much more aligned because you are energetically. On the path that you’re on, instead of energetically being on one path and your brain being on the other path or hopping back and forth between paths. We always hear people say, you know, the universe isn’t giving you what you want because you’re not being clear. And I think a pros and cons list gives us that not being clear because both sides could make sense. And , you’ve probably felt this before. It’s like this moment. Where you finally decide something like fully decide after you have been circling and rehashing and thinking about it forever, right? Maybe it’s deciding to leave a job or to say yes to something new or to stop trying to fix something that isn’t working, but that moment that you decide there is a click. You can feel your whole body relaxes. It becomes way less anxiety ridden, even though you haven’t even done the thing. You’ve just made the decision to do the thing. Your mind gets quiet, you just feel lighter, and that is not a coincidence. That is energy reorganizing itself before you make a decision, your energy is scattered. It’s like trying to tune. Like a couple radio stations all at the same time. Right. , I am imagining in the car. You know, , and I don’t know why, because I haven’t had the kind of tuner in my car where you turn the little knob and the little dial moves. It’s like a analog radio. But that’s the image in my mind. Right. And you can’t tune it to two stations. Like you gotta turn it to one or the other. Otherwise , you won’t get anything. So when part of you says, I want this, and another part of you says, , but what if that’s the wrong choice? Again, thinking there’s a right and wrong. The universe can’t line things up for you because it doesn’t know which signal to follow, and your subconscious mind can’t either. So remember, whenever I talk about the universe, I love talking about the universe and energy and all of those things, and I believe that there is a. Greater force out there for us. And I also know that we can line up the way our brains work to how we talk about the universe. So your subconscious mind cannot look for the right things, right? Look for the coincidences and the things that it could be looking for that would bring you down the path you wanna go if it doesn’t know what it’s looking for. Your subconscious mind wants safety above all else. So when it feels that indecision, that like hyper wobble, it interprets that as danger, right? So it says, well wait a minute. Hold on, let’s not move forward till we totally know, but , we never totally know. And so. This feeling, and I’ll hear people say this sometimes inside the Navigate method, , they’re like, I just wanna know. Like I just wanna be certain. And I get that. Like we would wanna be certain, but certainty doesn’t come before the decision. It comes after, like that’s the paradox. And when you make a clear, energetic decision. You’re not just choosing a path, you’re shifting your identity. And I we’ll talk about that a little bit more, but what you’re saying to the universe and to your subconscious is this is who I am now. This is the choice that I have made. This is the path I’m going down. And that is when everything starts to move. Right? And I see this all the time with clients , and I’ve lived this myself, right? When we’re in that in-between place, what I sometimes call the wobble, or sometimes I say it like feels crunchy, right? It feels like hell, really. It’s not that you don’t know what to do, it’s that you’re afraid of what happens after you do it. Fear of loss or the fear of change, or you know, the fear of no longer being who you were. And it’s not just about roles. When I say identity, I’m not talking about roles. Like I’m not saying you as a wife or a coworker or a mom or a, like, I’m not talking about your role as much as you are, who you are, being right, how you’re showing up what you are energetically embodying. As that identity. So when we have this choice to make, , our conscious mind says, I want something new. Like, I don’t like what’s happening. I want something different. But your subconscious mind says, but that sounds really unfamiliar. So you know, that might not be safe. So maybe not. And unfortunately, you know, your subconscious mind always wins. It always wins. Until you decide differently, because that decision is what reprograms the subconscious. It’s what tells your inner system it’s totally safe. Now we have chosen, right? And without that choice, your brain just keeps hopping back and forth between these two pathways. Right? It stays is the pros and cons list or the this path or that path. Like both roads could work. It just depends, like which adventure you wanna go on. And if you keep going back and forth, you’re gonna keep finding new evidence to stay stuck. You know, I hear people all the time, they’re like, I just need a sign. I just want some clarity. I have somebody in my program that can’t even say the word clarity. She’s like, I, it is, that’s like a hot potato word. Like I just can’t even say it makes me sick to my stomach. But clarity isn’t gonna come before her decision. It’s gonna come, it’s gonna be created by the decision. So, all right, so here’s what happens energetically when you decide, I wanna talk about this. So when you energetically make a decision, basically you are. Collapsing all the other timelines. Right? If you could think of your life as like, I mean, in infinite number of choices you could make, think about the number of choices you make in any given day. And you might be thinking like, well, I made like six or seven choices today at work. But no, you made a choice of when to take a drink, when to walk down the hall, when to make a phone call, when to, like, there was prob, there was infinite number of choices you can make in every single day. Right? And when we. When we choose those other options that could have been potentials out there basically collapse, right? You stop and it collapses because you stop entertaining though, well, what if that road, what if that road right? You are not even looking at those anymore. And so they essentially disappear and all of your energy comes home. It stops being scattered across all those different possibilities and it starts to flow in one direction, and that is when something really magic happens. So that is when we feel momentum. And that’s when people go, Ugh, I feel so much better. I feel so much better. It’s when , synchronicity start showing up, right? The, right people, the right conversations, the , people will say , oh my God. All of a sudden this thing showed up and then I’ve gotten email, and the email linked me to this and that, and all of a sudden it’s so magical. And I love, love, love when that happens. I love the magic. But it’s not actually because life suddenly changed. It’s actually ’cause your energy lined up. It’s because you changed your frequency and you became the person who has already chosen and you can feel that shift. Right? There’s a calm, like a confidence to it, really.

In a world that glorifies visibility, productivity, and constant sharing, what does it mean to rest…not just physically, but spiritually? In this episode, Betsy explores the radical act of reclaiming your privacy and stepping out of the performance of being “seen.” This is about choosing peace over proving, stillness over striving, and alignment over approval. You’ll learn how to recognize the subtle ways you’ve outsourced your worth to validation, how to create sacred boundaries around your energy, and how rest becomes a reclamation of self-trust. Betsy shares her own reflections on quieting the noise, finding comfort in solitude, and remembering that your life belongs to you—not to the algorithm, the audience, or anyone else’s expectations. Listen if you’re craving: Permission to rest without guilt Space to breathe and feel safe being unseen A reminder that your value isn’t earned through effort or exposure Transcript: Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, everyone. Hi. Welcome to the show today. I took out my Invisalign. I took out my Invisalign to be able to talk to you. I am almost done, you guys., I’m like three weeks out from getting these brackets off my teeth and getting to be done with Invisalign. , But it, it does make me sound a little lispy, so I am. I’m proud of myself for remembering to take them out before I’m like halfway through this recording. So I’m excited that you’re here with me today, Invisalign free. I wanted to talk to you about something today and it’s been something I have been thinking about and I was really trying to think about like, [00:01:00] how do I explain this in a way that makes sense , and I’m gonna just be really honest. It doesn’t make me, . I don’t wanna seem like there’s more self-importance in this topic than there needs to be. ’cause that’s not my intention. But I think the gist of it, you’re gonna get, because I think this is a universal, although the experience may be a smaller segment of the population that has experienced this, I think , the intent of it is something that’s universal. Let me explain what it is that, I mean, so really what I wanna talk about , in the essence is about, is about rest and privacy and visibility. , And I think that I wanna talk about social media a little bit. I think that right now there’s so many things happening on social media and I think it can be so depleting.[00:02:00]  I wanna talk about what happens when you are really seen on something like social media. You know, a few years ago I had a post that went viral. It, was a series of posts really. I had, I mean, a lot of posts over a million views, but I had one post in particular that I would say went mega viral. That’s how I would describe it. Now, even as I say this, I’m like, you may have had a post that went more mega viral. , You may know people that have had way more mega viral posts than me, but I had, a, a lot of posts that were over a million views. And then I had one in particular that was 9 million, 8.9 million, so almost 9 million. And it wasn’t something that I expected. It happened really fast when I started posting about the Navigate method and about women being unhappy in their [00:03:00] marriage and just trying so hard to make things happen. So I knew that it would resonate. I figured, I hoped that it would resonate. I didn’t expect it to resonate in the way that it did, and I didn’t expect the viralness and I, I didn’t try to to make that happen. It just sort of caught fire. And in that one post I got, I think it was close to like 19,000 new followers essentially overnight. And I remember this really strange mix of emotions about it, like excitement. It was exciting. I remember one of the very first posts that I posted on this subject and it, I remember it was like at eight. Thousand views and 9,000 views and 12,000 views. I remember it got to 13,000 views and I messaged with one of my friends and I was like, oh my God. This is [00:04:00] crazy. , It just keeps going and it’s wild. Now. That was just about two years ago. I get 13,000 views regularly in a day, so that doesn’t even phase me. But I remember at the time having that creep up , , and feeling like excited and gratitude , , and if I’m being really honest, I think a level of overwhelm that I didn’t really know how to name at that point. It was. Beautiful and dizzying all at the same time. I was so, so happy with that. My message resonated, although simultaneously sad that it resonated because it was really about people being frustrated, extremely frustrated in their marriage and at their wits end. But I was grateful that I helped people feel seen through that, you know. But what happened from there, I think was really something that I didn’t anticipate. And when that many people [00:05:00] suddenly have opinions about what you say and who they think you are, you know, it starts to change how you think. I started wondering what people might expect of me. I felt like I had to keep showing up and explaining myself, and I felt like there was a lot of people in my real life who were unhappy or didn’t understand, but didn’t try to either, and I was living in this space , it was. It was kind of like being waterboarded by eyeballs as you, I mean, that’s the only way I can describe it. So it was connection. Totally. And I felt seen because I was posting something real to me at the time, but it also had a underlying feeling of pressure. Right. You know, at first one hand it feels like a dream. I wanted my message to be seen. I wanted my message to reach people. [00:06:00] I loved the conversations that were happening. It felt like real impact. And I had been in my business for a long, long, long, long time, like a decade, more than a decade before this post. So it felt like, oh, I’m, the hard work and the hard and the good work that we do is finally getting access to have a real impact. And over time I started. To realize how easy it was to kind of get caught in the performance of being helpful, you know, and to start creating from an expectation of, I’ve gotta have another big post instead of just from my intuition. You know, during that time where things were really getting hectic , and people were really seeing my posts, it was a good like 10 months probably, where this was like ramping up sort of, I guess you could say. And I noticed , I would wake up sometime in the [00:07:00] middle of the night just to check messages. It got, my nervous system was really activated from it. I checked notifications before I checked in with myself, and sometimes I would rewrite posts and I would think about all the different ways people could take this the wrong way and then try to rewrite so that it would land perfectly right? And little by little I started to lose track of what was mine and what was sacred and private and what had become part of this. Exposure or this show. And it’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just what happens when you have like a piece of your life that becomes visible, right? So maybe you haven’t gone viral online, but maybe you know this feeling right? It’s this feeling of being needed everywhere by everyone all the time. It’s the same energy. So you give and you give and you give until you [00:08:00] don’t know how to stop. Then, you know, for me, I was posting all this stuff. I mean, a year goes by, right? I had my own life that shifted. I went through my own divorce. So, you know, as divorce is like a, a really, really hard thing combined with a ton of relief, you know, and honestly, this changed me in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. It gave me access to healing that I didn’t even know that I needed. And over the past year. I have learned and grown and become quite a different person than I was when I posted those very first viral posts several years ago. You know, this last season, my daughter has been struggling with her mental health, and if you’ve been here for , a long while, you know we’ve talked about this. She and I have talked about it on the show. She’s an adult. [00:09:00] This particular season has been a long, ongoing season, and I have been helping her and fighting through this. Well, we try to hold other things together and that has also changed me, and what I realized was that. I started caring less about being understood and more about being grounded, less about how something looked and more about how something felt. I didn’t wanna keep explaining my life to strangers online. I wanted to live it quietly. For me and for people who really know me. And there’s something really humbling about that. You know, when life hits you really hard and you stop caring about optics, and you start caring, , caring about energy, about peace and the things that actually sustain you. So here’s what I wanted to bring to you because for sure you’ve had these seasons too. [00:10:00] And what I found myself asking is what’s actually important. Where does my energy go? Who actually gets access to me? And I realized that I’ve been pouring from an empty cup, you know, for a long time as we do as women. Like my story isn’t unique , and it’s, it’s manageable, right? And I think that’s what happens is it’s manageable, so you just keep going. But we can’t keep pouring from an empty cup. And when you’ve built a rhythm around being productive or being available, slowing down feels a little bit like betrayal and you probably know that too, right? You’re juggling work, you’re drug juggling, family, emotions, responsibilities, right? And it all feels like if you stop, everything’s just gonna fall apart. So you keep on running,

We love to tell ourselves that some people are just lucky, born under the right star, in the right place, with the right opportunities. But luck is not magic, and it is not as random as we think. In this episode, Betsy explores the science and psychology of luck, and why what we call “good fortune” often comes down to patterns of thinking, awareness, and action. You will learn: The research behind why some people consistently experience “lucky breaks.” How attention, openness, and mindset actually create opportunities. Why unlucky people often miss signals and possibilities right in front of them. Practical shifts you can make to increase your own luck, so you are not waiting for chance but setting the stage for serendipity. This is not about superstition. It is about training your brain to see and step into opportunities. If you have ever wondered why certain doors keep opening for some people, and how you can make that happen in your own life, this episode will change how you think about luck forever. 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 Art of Living Big. Welcome to the show. Happy Thursday. I have been thinking about luck. I’ve been thinking about luck, and I wanna say I’ve been thinking, well, I’ve been thinking about this for like 54 years. I have always thought of myself as really lucky. You know, things always work out for me. I always know that in the end, things are gonna go the way that I want. I am lucky enough to have. Really cool experiences and synchronicities [00:01:00] happen and many times I win things that are unexpected. When I was in high school, I won a gift card to $500 worth of shoes at a shoe store that I didn’t even remember putting my name in the fishbowl. You know, which $500 of shoes back in 1988 was a pretty significant amount of shoes. I had shoes for years. I have won iPads at events and iPods at events. I have won everything under the sun from cakes and cookies to chicken sandwiches. I have always found a way to get the good stuff. I feel like I’m really lucky and not to mention, I think that it’s kind of luck how I grew up. Who my parents were that they had money to send me to college. Like there was a lot of things that I think you could lean on and say those things were really [00:02:00] lucky. Privileged in many ways, right? And not to confuse those two things, I wanna stick with luck, but I just wanna point out that a lot of things weren’t necessarily something that I did Now. If you’re already feeling like kind of some pressure here, I wanna tell you another quick story and then I wanna really talk about this because who doesn’t want more luck? Right? Why not? Why not have luck on our side? So years ago, probably five years ago, I took a class and in the class it was a business class, like a coaching class. And in the class somebody mentions it might have been me, mentioned something about luck. And there was another woman in the class that got really upset and she said, I am not lucky. I work really hard for everything that I have. And I thought it was so interesting because she was so adamant about it. I just never thought that [00:03:00] my luck took away from my hard work. ’cause I work hard too. But honestly, if I could work in ease, like I. I don’t know that my goal is to like work really hard. I would like things to just kind of happen and have it be fun and flowy, right? Who doesn’t. But I remember how much this woman who was great, I really liked her, but I remember how much she fought to hang on to the idea that she wasn’t lucky that everything that she got was simply. A matter of her hard work and determination, and I think both things can be true. But what I wanted to talk to you today about is really the idea that we could think about life as a little mystical, a little bit out of our control, and a little bit lucky and. You know, sometimes you’ll hear [00:04:00] people say like, Ugh, she’s just so lucky, or, I never get those lucky breaks. Well, I wanna flip that story around because I don’t think that luck is nearly as random as we have been taught. And so I wanna talk about the science behind luck, why some people always seem to land on their feet, and more importantly, how you can make yourself luckier. So this isn’t about like superstition or. You know, carrying a rabbit’s foot around in your purse. This is about mindset and about awareness and about action. Okay, so let’s get into it here. When we hear this word, luck, I think what a lot of us default to is that we think that it’s chance, right? Like winning the lottery or. Stumbling upon the right job or meeting the right person in line at Starbucks. I mean, we watch romantic comedies that create these magical run-ins that seem [00:05:00] totally like Chance, and I believe those moments do feel that way. I think they do feel random, but the truth is that there’s a lot more patterns behind them. And so I want you to think about the last time something really, really good happened to you. So did it just fall from the sky or did you put yourself in a position where it could happen? So most of the time, luck isn’t something that just randomly strikes you down in the driveway. It’s really about being in the right place with the right mindset, and that’s what we’re gonna talk about and actually recognizing something as an opportunity when it shows up. Sometimes inside the Navigate method, somebody will talk about something that’s a problem, and I always like to call it something different. Is it a problem? Is it an opportunity? It’s an opportunity to [00:06:00] learn something new. Learn something about you. Learn something about somebody else. Learn a new way of doing things, and you might think it doesn’t matter what I call it, like you could call it not a problem, but it’s still a problem. And I would say that you can call it whatever you want. But which one feels better in your body? If you say out loud right now, maybe you’re in your car driving ho, hopefully not like in an elevator with a whole group of people, but I want you to just say, I have a problem and I want you to feel how your body feels. Does it kind of constrict a little bit? Maybe you feel that in your chest, but if you say, I have a challenge. How does that feel? A little bit better, right? Like it’s something I’ve gotta work through, but it’s a challenge. But what if you say, I have an opportunity. I know for me, I feel like my chest really [00:07:00] opens. I almost feel like I’m sitting up a little bit taller. Like that feels different. And you might think that the way that you feel doesn’t matter. It absolutely matters because your brain and your body are talking, and when you notice that you feel something, that’s how you can recognize what your brain is actually talking about. Sometimes people are like, how do I know what my unconscious mind is thinking if it’s unconscious? And I say, how do you feel? How do you feel? That is gonna be the gauge that’s telling you what’s going on upstairs, and I wanna be. In an expansive, open place in order for me to be able to see the most opportunity, the most synchronicities, the most ways I can solve this problem. Look, there are infinite ways to solve every problem, but the more constricted you are, [00:08:00] the more narrow your focus becomes and the harder it is for you to be able to see. Other options that may be right under your nose. When we start to see all these options, what do we do? We go, God, I got lucky. I got lucky. I just happened to walk in when there was a sale. Right? Maybe there was a sign a week ago that there was gonna be a sale, and you didn’t notice it consciously, but your unconscious mind did. These little things happen all the time. There’s a guy on the internet, there’s a guy on YouTube. Darren Brown, Darren, D-E-R-R-E-N, I think is how you spell it. Darren Brown, and he is an illusionist, but he does some incredible things with putting out, he does these elaborate, I’m gonna call it a hoax, right? Elaborate. Experiments where he puts out little tiny signs all along somebody’s [00:09:00] path, you know, their drive to an event, , in the parking lot. Little things you’d never notice, and then he can get them to. Say a certain song based on all of the different signs that they saw. They don’t remember seeing any of those things yet when they show up and he has them come up with any song they want, they say the exact thing that he has been dripping out to them throughout the day. So our brain is constantly picking up information. Check him out on YouTube. His videos are fascinating. He’s fascinating. But I want you to be thinking like if my brain is always scanning for information and it’s gonna be scanning, like opening or closing, depending on what I’m telling it, then wouldn’t it make sense that if I told it that things were magically happening all the time? And that there was constantly opportunity and that things always worked out for me. Doesn’t it make sense [00:10:00] then that they would, I’ve seen this trend on TikTok, it was probably a year ago, called Lucky Girl Syndrome, and basically it was the idea that the more luck you think you’ll have, the more you have it’s science. It makes sense. So there is a science of luck and there’s this researcher named Richard Wiseman. He studied people who call themselves lucky versus unlucky, and what he found is that lucky people aren’t magically blessed, but they do think and act differently. So here’s what really stood out in his research, he found that lucky people. They’re really open to new experiences. So if things don

In the 3rd and final podcast in the series entitled Finding Clarity in Your Marriage, Betsy talks about the importance of inner strength and how we can create it for ourselves. Betsy goes over the ‘ladder of change’ and offers listeners practical exercises like stability statements to help us train our brains to create stability from within. Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello and welcome to the show today. So this is part three of the three part series. This is lesson three, making Confident choices in an Uncertain World. Look, the world feels so unpredictable and really kind of scary in a lot of ways. People feel really divided, and it’s hard to find your grounding. So in this episode, we’re gonna talk about how to do that, how to find that, and a tool that you can use. All right. I hope you enjoy. Welcome back. This is episode three of How to Find Clarity in Your Marriage, even when the rest of the world feels uncertain. So far, we have covered in episode one why this uncertainty sort of feeds indecision and why your brain keeps you frozen. ’cause your brain works really well, right? It’s keeping you alive. So that’s a great thing. And in episode two we talked about the hidden cost of waiting. How postponing decisions actually costs you a whole lot more than you think, right? Energy, peace, self-trust, all of those things. And now in this final episode. What I wanna do is give you a bit of a path forward. So this is where the fog really starts to clear, and this is how you’re gonna learn a little bit more about creating stability inside of yourself. So that you can start making confident choices, even when the world outside is so unpredictable. So let’s start off this episode with talking about why stability actually matters, right? So let’s start with the truth, and that is that clarity doesn’t come from your husband changing. I know this can feel really hard because like me, you’ve probably thought at some point or maybe many times, if he would just change. If he would just listen to me. If he would just hear what I had to say, if he would just take into account how I see the world, right? However it is that you say that, then things would be better. But the truth is that it doesn’t come from him changing. It doesn’t come from your kids needing you less. It doesn’t come from the world calming down. Clarity comes from you. It comes from you feeling stable enough to trust yourself, but that’s why you felt stuck for so long. Because without stability, every choice feels like danger. But with stability. You can finally see clearly. So I want you to think of it this way. Just imagine that you’re standing in the middle of a storm holding an umbrella, right? The storm is wild, like there’s rain coming in sideways, there is wind toweling. You can’t stop the storm. But if your feet are grounded, if your grip is really good, if your umbrella is steady, then you can stand there without being blown away or drenched. That’s what inner stability does. It doesn’t take the storm away, but it does let you stand in it and feel confident. So one of the things that I wanna frame here as we talk about a shift that I want you to make, and this is really an identity shift. This is the root of really all the work that I do and have ever done. I want you to think of our, our brains as a ladder. So I want you to just imagine a ladder leaning up against the side of a house, and this is gonna be one of those, it’s gonna be one of those decorative ladders that you put towels on. Okay? So a smaller ladder, just a few rungs. But I want you to think about the very first rung of that ladder is environment. It’s your house. It’s where you are. It is the gym. It is an environment. Okay? The next one, the next rung up is your behavior. The things that you do, the patterns you run, the way you show up. Now I’m gonna go up one more level and this, this level, this level we’re gonna call capabilities, right? What you think you’re capable of. Now, behavior and environment are very conscious. You choose those, right? I’m gonna choose to go to the gym, I’m gonna choose to meal prep, for example. So my behavior is the meal prepping. My environment is the gym. Right. So if we’re thinking about our family life, so the environment is my home, my behavior is the patterns that I run. I might notice those things, right? And those are conscious. I’m aware of them, I’m choosing them. I’m making dinner. That is something that I, my behavior that I’m doing at night, at the house. Okay. Now when I move into this next thing, potential right or capability, this starts to get unconscious. Now what is unconscious? What does that even mean? It just means things that operate without me thinking about it. When I go brush my teeth in the morning, I don’t even hardly remember. I just know I’ve done it right? It’s sort of unconscious. I don’t have to watch a YouTube video first. I know how to do it. My body just sort of does it right. It’s unconscious. I know how to do it so well that I don’t have to think about it. So I’ve got my rungs on the ladder. I have my environment, I have my behavior, I have my potential or my capabilities, what I think I’m capable of. And then the next few rungs up are gonna be my values, my beliefs, and the very tippity top is gonna be my identity. Now the cool thing about this ladder is that whatever is above it influences what’s below it. So as I get into my beliefs, my beliefs don’t matter as much as my values matter. Those are generally really deep seated things, right, that I probably learned as a little kid. And then when I get into my identity, it’s who do I think I really am? And this can be because it’s unconscious. Can be hard for you to figure out or to identify, but many times it’ll come from when we say something like I am. That’s like my deepest part of my identity. If you could think of an Olympic athlete that was prepping for the Olympics, would it matter if they were in a room? With a whole bunch of Sweetss, like, probably not. ’cause they’d be like, I am an Olympic athlete. I don’t eat that kind of food. I eat the kind of food that supports my sport. So my identity, who I think I am an Olympian, impacts everything below it. So with that said, the way to make real long lasting change. The kind that is like brushing your teeth that you don’t even have to think about is by going to the top of the ladder. It’s by changing your identity and who you think you are. So when we start thinking about what happens when I delay, and in the last episode we talked about that cost of delaying I am creating over and over and over, and reinforcing. My identity isn’t a one of someone who makes decisions, who is worthy of more of all of those things. And when we’re living in this kind of situation, we are in reactive mode. So I talk to women every day that say they react to their husband’s moods, um, their scanning for how he feels every day. They react to their own fears, right? They have their own thoughts about fears or things that could go wrong. Typically, they’re not spending a lot of time thinking about all the things that could go, right, right? And that’s normal. But they’re reacting to their own fear, thoughts, they’re reacting to politics or the economy. All of these things outside of themselves. And when you’re reacting, you’re always chasing that stability someplace outside, which is impossible. So the shift is to become intentional. It’s to stop waiting for the outside, to calm down, and to start creating calm inside. By becoming the identity of the person who doesn’t matter what’s happening outside, inside, all is well, and I control how I respond to things and what happens to my life. So that shift again is to become intentionally intentional. And the best way to make that shift is to ask yourself, what do I wanna model for myself and for my kids? And if you don’t have children, or your children are grown, what do I wanna model for myself? How do I want to show up for myself? Because here’s the thing, whether you realize it or not, you’re teaching your kids right now. My daughter is 23. She sees everything I do. She notices every little nuanced side comment that I make that I think doesn’t even matter, and she’ll see it and say something. That’s the kind of relationship we have, but she’ll point it out and it just makes me realize how much they’re really watching. I talk to women every day who are the best moms and want good things for their kids. When we start talking about their kids, they say, I don’t think they really know. They don’t know that we’re unhappy. And I, I disagree. Even if they don’t know the extent that you’re unhappy, they feel the tension. You know, when you walk in a room and you can feel that they watch you freeze. They watch you postpone. They know that you’ve put your life on hold for things, right? They learn that that’s what adulthood looks like, and maybe you learned that by watching somebody else, right? We come by all of these things. Honestly, the one thing I know about our brains is that it wants to do the thing that is looking out for us, right? It wants to do the thing that it thinks is safety, and so. Although what happens might not be good for you, your brain thinks it’s good for you, and I think that’s a really important thing to notice. You’re not doing any of this stuff to harm yourself. You’re not doing any of this to harm your kids. You’re not doing any of this to make life harder for anybody. You’re doing it because that’s what your brain is telling you is safe. And so if your kids watch you. If you watch, you freeze and pos

Here is part 2 in the 3 part series entitled How to Find Clarity in Your Marriage. In part 2 Betsy delves into how waiting impacts one’s unconscious mind which can drain energy and erode self trust. Stay tuned until the end when Betsy offers an exercise to identify the effects of waiting. Transcript: Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello and welcome. Welcome to the show. So this week, if you listened to the last episode, we are doing a three part series. This one is lesson two. It’s the hidden cost of waiting. It’s the things that actually happen to your unconscious when you choose to delay. I hope this gives you some new thoughts, new ideas, and helps you along your journey. So without further ado, here’s the show. Hello everyone. Welcome back to episode two of How to Find Clarity in Your Marriage, even when the rest of the world feels uncertain. So last time we talked about why your brain keeps you frozen and indecision and how to start stabilizing yourself. And today we’re gonna be talking about something that most women don’t ever really see clearly, and I include myself in that. This is a hard thing to see. When you’re in the middle of it, and it is the cost of waiting. So today’s episode is called The Hidden Cost of Waiting, and Why Delaying Clarity hurts you way more than you think. I think this is, I think this is such an important one, especially as women because we handle so much stuff, right? We are the ones that are handling so many of the things in our families. And for our children, for our homes, just to keep our homes running. And we’re also working and making decisions at work and being counted on for things. And so all of this starts to build up. And when on the background, like we learned in the last episode, there’s this. This underlying current of I’m not making a decision. I’m allowing things to stay in a way that does not feel good to me. And I will go to the liberty of saying, and that’s what I deserve, right? Because if we thought we deserved more, that’s what we would get. And so I think there’s an illusion here of safety. When you say, I’m gonna decide about that later, or I’m gonna push that off till after the holidays, or I’m going to wait until somebody graduates from college or high school or dance, or whatever it is. It feels like you’re hitting pause, right? Like you’re giving yourself a break. But waiting isn’t a pause. It’s still playing in the background. It’s not like you shut this off or you stop thinking about it. You just have delayed a decision. And what that does, because it’s still playing in the background, is it begins to drain your energy even when you are going about your day. So now, if you could think about this, if you have a hundred percent when you wake up in the morning, your battery is on a hundred percent, which whose is? ’cause you’ve probably spent half the night tossing and turning thinking about this. In the back of your mind, so, but let’s just say you wake up at a hundred percent, but 20% of your brain is still thinking about the fact that you’re putting this off, or it won’t be that much longer. Or you might be calculating or thinking, or wondering or changing your mind, going back and forth. You’ve only got 80% to do everything else that you’re doing. And so this is what this looks like. It’s gonna show up like thinking about your marriage like on a loop, right? It’s gonna show up as feeling really distracted or disconnected from people that you actually really love and that you wish you were closer to. It’s gonna look like carrying tension right in your body. ’cause you’re avoiding decisions. So you might notice your shoulders are like up in your ears. You might notice that you’re breathing really shallow. You know you’re gonna start to notice that you’re waking up in the middle of the night. Maybe you’re tossing and turning, or you get this idea in your head and then you just can’t let it go. And it’s gonna manifest in ways that maybe you’ve got a lot of headaches or you’ve got belly aches. Or before you go to bed, you like grab the Zillow and you’re like, I’m just gonna look up just to see what it would cost. So like your brain needs that moment of relief, right? And so what ends up happening is a compound effect. It’s like adding. A stone into a backpack every single day, and at first you kind of don’t notice. You’re like, it’s okay. I mean, it’s fine. I know it’s on my mind. But after months or even years, you are completely bent under that weight and it starts to erode your self trust because every day that you don’t choose, you reinforce the idea that you can’t choose. And it robs you of a lot of joy you could be having in the present, right? Because you can’t fully live in today when your mind is tied up on what ifs. You can’t fully enjoy the time with your kids. ’cause in the back of your mind, you’re scanning for something that could be going wrong, that you’re gonna have to handle, or that you wanna see if you can have a preemptive strike against, right? Some way that you can start to control things so that things don’t go outta hand. And so. You are constantly churning on the sidelines thinking about this, and so you can’t be fully present. You can’t be fully enjoying things because you’re always in scan mode. Now, here’s the truth is that waiting is actually a decision. It’s not neutral. It’s a choice to stay stuck. Once you know you’re stuck, it’s no longer a habit. It’s a choice. And it costs you way more than making a move ever Could. Once you begin to make any kind of decisions about anything, the angst is really in the lead up, not in the actual doing, and I’m sure you find that over the course of your life. I even remember way back when I was in college, I’d have a paper to write. Writing the paper wasn’t as bad as the two weeks that I put it off and thought about it and let it stick in my craw if I had just done it and got it over with, things would’ve been a lot more simple. Right. So the decision is being made, the decision is waiting, and that is not a neutral thing that has a high cost to it. So what I want you to do is I want you to grab a piece of paper and I want you to draw across on the paper that makes four quadrants, and I want you to label them like North is Thoughts, south is feelings. East is actions and west is results. And in each quadrant I want you to write what waiting has created in your life. Okay? So the thoughts might be like, I don’t know what to do. The feelings might be anxious or frustrated. The actions might be procrastinating, or I have to have a glass of wine every night just to like deal with what’s going on. Or I’m venting to my friends all the time, whatever that action is. And then the results still stuck. Less energy, less joy. I feel drained, I feel nervous, I, whatever that is, what are the results? And I think that when you see it mapped out, you can’t keep telling yourself that waiting. Is harmless. There’s no way to look at that and walk through that and see that there’s no impact. I believe that when we can get really honest with ourselves, that is when we can start to create change, because we can’t, if we’re still living in denial, like I was saying, once something is seen, it’s no longer a habit. Now you’re choosing. It may be that even as I say this, you’re like, I’m not gonna do that little exercise because I already know. I already know I’m drinking a bottle of wine every night, or I’m. Just opting out or I know that I’ve shrunk. I know that I’m like getting smaller. I know that I’m overeating to compensate to make myself feel better, which that too makes a lot of sense once you understand your nervous system and what happens when you eat to calm your nervous system. There’s so many things here. So although we think I’m being safe, I’m I’m, I’m gonna wait until conditions are right. The conditions are already wrong. Well, you’re waiting because that choice isn’t a choice that’s actually healing or moving you forward. So I really want you to do this even if you’re like, I, I don’t need to do this. I already know. Do it on a couple different things, right? What is the thought that you have? And maybe there’s a thought that you have, you can look back on like last night, what was it like in the evening last night, and what were the thoughts I started to have? Or during the day, maybe you’re at work and a thought comes into your mind. Use that our unconscious minds present information to us so that it can be healed. And it presents it at the time that it believes you are ready to deal with it. That’s why we get so many thoughts when we’re driving in the car or we’re standing in the shower because we’re having a moment where our brain isn’t full of other stuff. And so the information that’s being served up to you, the ideas, the thoughts, the concerns, they are so important because they are things that your unconscious mind has sifted and sorted through and decided this was important and. She’s ready to deal with it. And if you push it away and say, I am not ready to deal with it, you’re telling your unconscious mind that it is wrong. You are not ready. And the more you tell yourself you’re not ready, the more and more deeper you get stuck. So. Do this today. ’cause in our next episode, we’ll, we are gonna cover the path out. So how to create inner stability and finally make really confident choices in a really uncertain world. 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 re

In this 3 part podcast titled Finding Clarity in Your Marriage, even when the rest of the world feels uncertain, Betsy explores how we can find inner stability when the world around us feels chaotic. Betsy offers a helpful tool at the end of each podcast in this series so listen into part 1 and enjoy. Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Art of Living Big. I am doing something a little bit different this week, so I created a three part series called How to Find Clarity in Your Marriage, even When the rest of the World feels Uncertain. Now, you could take the like clarity in your marriage and input anything, so if you don’t have. Non clarity in your marriage. If you’re not confused about your marriage or wondering if you should stay or go, this still may be helpful information to you because it’s really about resting your nervous system and how to get centered when the world feels like a little crazy on fire, right? So. What I’m gonna do, I created this three part series and I was offering it on, on Instagram and it, I had it set up as like a, a private podcast. I don’t necessarily know why I did that, other than I wanted to keep it like this three part series that people could enter into to get this information. But the truth is more people will get it if I just put it on the podcast. I, I, sometimes I try to make things more complicated than they need to be. So we’re gonna do this, it’s gonna be three episodes, but I’m going to give it to you all at once. So that you can get it all at once, so you can just listen if you want. So altogether, it’s maybe only like 45 minutes, so it’s kind of like one big long episode. But I do think it may be helpful to listen to one of the mini episodes and then try it. Because I give you a tool at the end of every single one. Um, and then the next day, maybe listen to the next one. So even they’re all available. So lesson one is really about why uncertainty feeds indecision. So we’re gonna talk about like what’s really happening inside your body. The second lesson is about the hidden cost of waiting. This is something I don’t think we think about very much, whether it’s your marriage or anything else, like what that indecision is actually doing. And then our third lesson is about making confident choices in an uncertain world. So how on earth do I make decisions about things big or small when I don’t know what’s happening? Right? And the truth is we never know what’s happening, so we will, we’ll teach you how to find some certainty and get grounded. I think you’re gonna really like the episodes. I hope you do. So without further ado, we are gonna give you these next few episodes all at once, and let me know what you think. All right, see you in a See you next week. See you next week. Hi everybody. Hi. Welcome to our private podcast mini series. This is called How to Find Clarity in Your Marriage, even When the Rest of the World Feels Uncertain and Uncertain is probably such an understatement. So I’m really happy that you’re here with me. I hope that this gives you a lot of value, gives you some new ways of thinking about things, and some tools to be able to shift a little bit. If you’ve listened to my podcast, the Art of Living Big, or been around me or in my vortex for any amount of time, you know that I believe that these shifts that we can have, these little aha moments can happen. Without any kind of delay. They can happen all the time, and they are little pieces and reminders that miracles happen all the time, and so I’m happy that you’re here. Let’s have some miracles here together as we spend the next three episodes together. If you’re pretty new here, my name is Betsy P. I’m the founder of the Navigate Method, and I’ve hosted the podcast, the Art of Living Big for like the past. Eight or nine years. So it felt like a really good idea to be able to do this private podcast for you and share this information because that’s the format that so many of you have heard me and listened to me over all these years, and I feel like this information. Can really be a big shift in how you’re experiencing the world. And you know, when I say like, even when the rest of the world feels uncertain, like uncertain is probably like a huge understatement, right? So over the next three episodes, I am gonna walk you through why you feel so stuck. Indecision and probably about a lot of things. You know, we’re gonna be framing this around your marriage, but it’s probably a lot of things and there’s a real reason for it, a biological reason for it. It’s not your fault, it means your brain’s working really well. So we’re gonna dive into that. In the second episode, we’re gonna talk about the hidden cost of waiting, how postponing decisions actually drains way more from you than you realize. And finally, the last episode, we’re gonna talk about your path to inner stability so that you can start making confident choices no matter what’s happening outside of you. And I wanna say. And I will reiterate this as we get to episode three, but that is a practice. It is something that you learn and you continue to practice and get better and better and better at it. So if you have been circling the same questions like, should I stay? Should I go? What’s happening? What if I go and I regret it? What if I stay and I lose my life? How long do I stay? When is this gonna end? Can it get better? Look, all of those things. Then this series is gonna give you some relief. Finally understanding why you’re stuck and how to start moving forward. And by the end, you’re gonna know exactly what steps to take to stop living in limbo and start building stability in your life whether the world comes down or not. Alright? So right now I’m gonna state the obvious, which is that the world feels really chaotic, right? There’s politics, there’s the economy, there is the news cycle. I know when I go on social media, maybe I’ll get on TikTok and I try to swipe really fast if it’s not something that will bring my vibe up, right? I try to teach the algorithm that I really want fun, happy things in cat videos, you know, because I go there to get away and to have an escape, but it’s inescapable. Right. There is constant division and there is constantly people telling you their side of things in a very authoritative way that. Then leads everyone in the comments to begin arguing, right? So many times we see this and you know, people comment and argue in the comments around CAT videos as well. So it is just everywhere. And then I go to Instagram or I go to Facebook and people are arguing there. And gosh, sometimes it’s people that I’ve known my whole life and I think like. How do I disagree so deeply with what they’re saying? And so we’re seeing all of these things all the time that that cause us to feel constriction. If we watch the news, we feel constriction there. And then if we have constriction at home in our own marriage, just over little things that are happening or big things in our lives, right? So the truth is you really just cannot get away from it. It’s everywhere. And when the world outside feels really unstable, it’s natural to tell yourself, now isn’t the time to deal with my marriage. Like I have to wait for things to settle down. I think this makes a lot of sense, and I hear this from women over and over and over again. Like, I need to wait till I know what’s happening in the world before I deal with this. But here’s the truth. That is that waiting actually isn’t the thing that gives you safety. Waiting’s actually the thing that’s keeping you stuck and that stuck feeling. That is a really exhausting place to live. And the longer you stay there, the more depleted you actually get and the more depleted you get, the less able you are to be able to cope with what’s happening. So. Let’s talk about why we get stuck in the first place. So when the world starts to feel really unpredictable, right? Our, our what we’re seeing out in the world, but also inside, right? When our world, the world, our world, our brain naturally defaults to survival. So. I have said probably on the podcast a million times, but I, I like this example because I think we can think about this from a biological perspective. If I am walking through a field and there’s a rustle in the grass, I have to know that there’s a tiger, right? I have to know that there’s something that maybe unsafe to me, something that might harm me, and so I begin to become, become acutely aware of the rustle in the grass. But the truth is now I can go outside and walk my dog and I don’t have to worry about a tiger, right? But my brain. Still has that high alert and so it kind of like swoosh really up close. So now it’s scanning for patterns, right? Patterns of anything that I see that will also trigger that, oh, there’s a tiger in the grass. It might be a a. Something on TV or a comment or something that our brains are like, that’s the pattern. And right now we’re being fed so much information that it can become really alarming and our brains don’t know what’s real, what’s not real, when to shut off. Uh, I will go from a horrific. Video to the very next one of somebody’s birthday party. And my brain’s not designed to go from tragedy to happiness in, in a swipe. And so what happens is that fight, flight, or freeze kicks in and it kicks in at times where I, it may not have in the past. And in marriage limbo freeze can tend to really take over. That typically is the, the version of that that I see really, really often is just freeze. I get stuck. I don’t know how to make a decision, so I just stay where I

We all do it, what are you putting off until tomorrow that you could do today? In this episode, Betsy talks about some things she recently tackled instead of kicking them down the road and how empowering that can be. Sometimes we let fear and anticipation stand in our own way, so listen in, and consider something you want to challenge yourself to stop kicking down the road. 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, welcome. Welcome to the show everybody. So right before I started talking, I was like, I’m gonna take these Invisalign out. You guys know I’ve had this Invisalign now for a while, a couple of months. It. Lots of times people say they can’t tell I speak any differently, but it sure feels different to me. So anyway, as I was taking them out, I was like, oh my gosh, it’s already September 17th as I’m recording this and I only have to keep this a couple until the end of October. Like I’m almost done. And I just started thinking about that when I went to go get [00:01:00] them. I had been putting this off. Like literally for years I had a bunch of teeth work that had to be done, a crown and a filling and all kinds of stuff. And then this was like the final step right in me having glorious teeth. And so I had braces as a kid, but then as I’ve gotten older, my teeth were shifting like a lot. It was really bothering me. And so finally, I was like, I’ve gotta take care of this. And I really didn’t wanna go through it. I really didn’t want to. But the time was gonna pass anyway. And , I gotta tell you, like I’m so glad that I did, and I know that there are sometimes things that we’re like, I have to deal with that, but I don’t want to. And I think the anticipation of it. Is way worse than the actuality of it. Right? This past week, if you’ve followed me on social media, you know, I’ve been posting about how I have been in the middle of a five day CLI Siri journey. So [00:02:00] CLI Siri is a cream that you put on your face and the cycle is like five days. And I’ve heard other people have to do them 10 or , 15, 20. Like people do them much longer. And it is for pre-cancerous. AKs, I forget what the word is, but it’s like little scaly patches that show up on your skin. And when I went to the dermatologist last time, she said, , there’s so many of these that were burning off your skin every time. Like we should just go do a big cleanup and have you do this five day Cly Siri treatment. And so I Googled it and it’s pretty new. I think they used to use a different kind of product before, but I think this is pretty new. So there wasn’t a lot of people talking about it online or a lot of pictures or you know, journeys that were shared. And the ones that I did see looked so terrible. So I get this five day. Cream and it’s little packets. So you get five [00:03:00] little packets and you have to put the whole packet on your face every night for five days. And the dermatologist said to me, you’re gonna do one. And then day two, and then day three, like right before you go to bed, day four, day five. And when you wake up day six, your whole face is gonna be red. And you know, it’ll take a few days to a couple weeks for it to feel better. And then when I Googled and I saw photos. It was complete insanity and it looked terrible. I saw a woman on TikTok that actually like kept track of her journey, and she talked about how the pain was so bad that she just laid on her bed and listened to podcasts and had a fan on her face. Like it was so terrible. And so I kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. I had the medicine, I paid for it, and finally I was like, I think I gotta just do it. Like if I’m gonna do it, do it. The time is gonna go by anyway. And if I do it now, I can be done next week. Right? Or I can keep [00:04:00] worrying about it and do nothing and the next week will still come. And so I started doing it and I have to tell you, and I, I’ve posted, so if you might have seen it online, but I mean, it looks bad, I think it looks worse than it feels and. Tylenol took away the pain. I was never laying on my bed. Maybe I’m a complete badass, I dunno. But I was never laying on the bed with a fan. It was fine. I mean, it was uncomfortable and it wasn’t the greatest. And of course I can’t, nor would I want to wear makeup or anything like that over it, but you know, whatever. I’m just living my life. The time would’ve passed anyway. And the worst part. Even now having gone through it, ’cause now I’m through, I’m like on day eight, I can tell it’s a lot better. The anticipation of dealing with it was worse. So sometimes it’s not the actual thing. It’s the anticipation of the thing that [00:05:00] we like, spend all this time really working up in our brains, right? Making us feel like it’s gonna be so much harder or so much bigger when we actually just deal with it. When we’re actually like, you know what? I’m gonna roar. I’m gonna lean into who I really am and just take care of this. . I mean, I know it sounds so stupid. I’m gonna do the Invisalign. I’m gonna do this crap on my face. I’m gonna take care of the things that medically needed to be taken care of. And I think we have this in so many parts of our lives. I think that this shows up in work. It shows up in hard conversations. It shows up in like having to deal with big things in our lives that have been big things for a long time. And , I think the longer. We have those things, the harder it is because what we’ve done is built up a lot of momentum around the idea that it’s going to be really hard, right around [00:06:00] the idea that it’s going to be bad or uncomfortable. But the truth is you can deal with bad or uncomfortable. You can, all you have to do is trust that you can deal with whatever is gonna happen. And I gotta tell you, I was so trepidatious about doing this Cly Siri cream on my face. I really didn’t want to. I almost didn’t. I almost was like, you know what? It was only a hundred bucks, which it’s a hundred bucks. It was only a hundred bucks. I’ll just trash it. Like I just, and then I was like, wait a minute. What I’m doing is telling myself the deepest part of myself, the identity of myself, the part that I really want to protect, the part of me that I really want to enforce in the way that I want her to be. What I’m doing is I’m telling her, you know what? You’re not worth dealing with this. Medically, [00:07:00] like you have precancerous spots on your face, you’re not worth fixing that, right? That’s what I would be saying. And more importantly, mindset wise, I’m telling her, you can’t handle it. Whatever happens, you can’t handle it. And I had to pause and say, what is it? It makes me think I can’t handle it. Now I know dealing with having Invisalign, I mean, my God, there’s worse things, right? Dealing with having to do cly Siri cream, although I will say on day four when it was raw and red, red, red, having to put that cream on again was like, uh, I was like, I don’t wanna do it. I’m gonna do it. I don’t wanna do it. I’m gonna do it. Like it was so stressful, but I can handle it and you can handle it too. You’ve got things in your life you’ve been pushing off, kicking the can down the road, right? Not dealing with the stuff you have to deal with. Maybe it’s a big thing, like something in your health. Maybe it’s something at work. [00:08:00] Maybe it’s a project you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s something in your relationship, like a really courageous conversation that it’s just time that you have. Maybe it’s getting your teeth fixed, whatever it is. Big or small, it’s important because if it wasn’t important, you wouldn’t be thinking about it. You wouldn’t be dreading it. I don’t have this kind of feeling when I go to brush my teeth in the morning. I don’t go, oh, I don’t want to. It’s not important. I just do it, , but when things show up like that, it is a sign that this thing feels scary to me. So it’s important and it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for me to grow, to change in this. And I did that episode a month or so ago about walking down the hallway, and about how we always, we’re constantly becoming [00:09:00] someone new. Every time you make a decision and when you choose to do the hard thing, you’re making a huge decision. A huge shift in your identity, showing yourself and showing up like a really brave person that you most likely wanna be. You know, my daughter and I have had our moments like all mothers and daughters, and the one thing that I’m really proud of with her is that if I say to her, we need to have a courageous conversation, she can do it. She can do it. She might not like it, but she’s able to show up and to keep her emotions in check, right? To understand herself. I think she knows that I’m a safe person to listen to her side of things, but we can have courageous conversations. Now, if I said I need to talk to you about [00:10:00] something, it would not go the same way, but by framing it as. We gotta have a courageous conversation. Can you do this? Then she can. And I think sometimes there’s that moment where we have to say to ourself, alright, self, we need to have a courageous conversation. Like it’s important to me to be able to take care of pre-cancerous cells on my face and I can move through this and it might be uncomfortable, but that’s okay. I can do it. I’ve done hard things before and I’ve come out on the other side, and I can do this too. I keep saying that. I don’t feel like the Cly cereal is that big of a deal, but it’s a good example, right? Sometimes it’s just about cleaning out your junk drawer, right? You’re like, oh my God.

In this episode of The Art of Living Big, host Betsy Pake asks us to replace the term starting over with starting wiser as we never truly start over. We build on our life experiences, which make us wiser and we recognize our past as we continue with our present and future. Life is an evolution, not a series of restarts. Transcript Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello everyone. Welcome to The Art of Living Big Today. I have a thi, this is like a theme that keeps coming up and so I thought there’s gotta be something in this, right? Like any, anytime something keeps coming up, I’m like, alright, maybe I need to slow down and really think about what is happening. And what the lesson is in that, for me, typically I try and figure out what’s the lesson in this for me? And then , if it’s any good, then I bring it to you in case it’s like a universal. So here’s how this started. So my daughter [00:01:00] is going back to school. So if you’ve been here for a long time, you might remember she went to scad. She is 23. So she went to SCAD like three years ago, four years ago. And she did amazing. She was on the dean’s list her first semester, her second semester Dean’s list. The third, well, they do like, it’s a little different, but in the, the way they divided up, so , in the fall when she started Dean’s list, Dean list, then in the spring dean’s list, and then that last bit of the school year, it was like April. She just like crashed out. It was so stressful. And, uh, there’s a lot to that story, but she just was like, I hate this. I can’t do it anymore, basically. So she decided to leave school and it was really, it was disappointing, but I also felt really sad for her and she was like, I gotta figure out what I’m supposed to do, you know? So in the meantime, she’s had a couple jobs that she’s [00:02:00] really liked and she’s really liked the people. The one job she had actually led to the second job and , she felt like she was moving up right, getting new opportunities and felt really good about it. But I think there was always something sort of gnawing at her. And maybe you’ve had this happen too, where you’re like, I made a decision to stop doing what I was doing. And now I’m in a holding pattern. I haven’t really moved on to the next thing. I’m just in this like in between. And with her, I think there was a feeling of I’ll know when I know, and also a little bit of like maybe I’ll never know. So she would kind of go back and forth between this. Okay. So over the years, since she was like six. She has loved Anthony Bourdain. It’s been her screensaver on her phone like for years. I think it’s one of her earliest memories that she talks about is watching [00:03:00] Anthony Bourdain on TV with her dad, and it’s like such a good memory. And so she has talked about being a chef, about maybe I should be a chef. It would be fun to be a chef. There’s not really any culinary schools here in Atlanta. Fast forward. About two months ago, we were chitchatting one day and she said, I looked up culinary school and the culinary school where Anthony Bourdain went is in New York, and you guys may know of that, the Culinary Institute of America. And she decided that she wanted to apply. Now I really decided she needed to figure it all out. I wasn’t gonna, not that I wasn’t gonna help, but I wasn’t, I was gonna let her figure it out. ’cause I wanted to see if the drive was strong enough to move through some of the hard parts of figuring it all out. And she did. She figured it [00:04:00] all out and she got accepted and she’ll be hopefully starting in a few months. She’s going up in just a couple weeks to look for an apartment and really her whole life is about to shift. She’s moving into the next phase out of the in-between and into what’s next. And she said something to me about how she sort of regretted that maybe that she left SCAD years ago or that she even started, like there was this. I’ve wasted time and I could relate so deeply to that, right? And you guys probably can too. There’s a million different things where we think, oh my God, I’m starting over., Maybe you got left. Let go from your job and now you’re gotta start over. Maybe you’re really wanting to shift careers. Maybe you’ve gotten divorced and you’re starting over. Maybe you suffered a really big financial [00:05:00] hardship and you’re starting over. Whatever it is, it feels like you’re starting over. And when I was talking to her, I totally understood that feeling and that she was coming from, but also, you’re never starting over. It’s a myth. It’s a myth that you’re starting over, you’re not starting over. You’re starting wiser. And I felt so strongly about that with her. It made me take a look at some things in my own life. Now, here’s a really quick little story, but I have a really nice camera that I bought during COV and I have never really, I’ve never really figured it out. Last summer, I hired a photographer to help me, teach me all the ways, and she made a PowerPoint for me and I have. Information to reference. [00:06:00] And I practiced a little bit after, but this weekend I thought, I want to figure out the camera, maybe I’ll pull it out again. And then I was like, ah, I’m gonna be starting over. And it reminded me of that conversation with my daughter and I was like, are we ever really starting over? And when I say this is a myth, you know, we have this idea that. Of, I’m gonna say it this way, many of us, maybe not you, if, if it’s not you, I’m so jealous. But of this like all or nothing. I know I have had that over the years. I feel like it’s something I’ve begun to get under control over the past few years. But this all or nothing, so. If I’ve screwed up, I have to scrap it all and start over. Like if I’m doing something and I mess up, I’ll just start again next week. Like, I gotta start on a Monday. I gotta start on the first of the month. I gotta wait till New Year’s. I gotta like, it’s, it’s done. But the truth of [00:07:00] that is, is not that it’s done. That is a myth. It is a myth that you erase. The slate and the slate is wiped clean. Right? That’s a myth. The slate isn’t wiped clean because you have experiences, you have knowledge, you have new ways of doing things and seeing things. You have new neuro connections from the first time that you learned how to do it or took an interest in it or tried to figure it out or took the leap or whatever it is. You’ve got new skills and so. Recognized because so often we don’t recognize it necessarily in ourself unless we pause, right. To really notice. But I recognized it when it happened to me because of the conversation that I’d had with my daughter and that language of, ugh, I’m starting over, can feel so disempowering. It was so easy for me to look at her [00:08:00] and say, oh my God. Of course you’re not starting over. You have all this new information, right? Life is a progression. Each thing really builds on itself. You’re not losing anything, and that thought that there is something that you have to start over means there is some finish line and there’s just never really a finish line. There’s not a reset button because it’s a continuum. There’s not a start and a stop. It’s, I’m always learning lessons and I’m always changing how I’m seeing things, and I’m always growing, and I’m always being exposed to new things. So the idea that you have to restart, you could think of it instead, like I’m relaunching. And that’s what she’s doing. She’s relaunching with loads of upgrades, loads of skills that she didn’t have before, a maturity she didn’t have before. [00:09:00] Her brain has grown a whole lot, right? ’cause she’s almost 24. So her prefrontal cortex wasn’t even close to being completed when she started school before. Now it’s close to being completed. So I want you to be thinking. About the ways that you’re disempowering yourself by thinking either about things that have already happened or things that you perceive will be happening or that you’re fearful of happening because you think that this is a starting over. But really the skills and the lessons and the resilience begin to stack up even if the setting changes. So I wanna talk about a couple quick things that I want you to be thinking about that might give you a different perspective. So a couple things that you could, almost like a checklist in your mind. Right? The first thing is emotional [00:10:00] intelligence. So this is a hidden asset and we learn a lot about ourselves as we grow older. If you’re paying attention at all, which I’m guessing you do, pay attention ’cause you’re here, right? If you’re, you wouldn’t be listening to this if you were not paying attention. So our emotional intelligence, the more we pay attention and the more we grow and the more we get to know our ourselves, the older we get, it’s such a gift. To be older and have challenges is so much easier I think. I think, than being really young in a lot of ways. So. One of the hidden assets that you probably overlook is your emotional intelligence. Just how much you’re able to conceptualize and understand things and see things in a new way, and. Relate to people in terms of that challenge that you have, that opportunity that you have, you probably have a way bigger network now, and connections. You know, I even, my daughter found that, [00:11:00] and she’s only 24, right? Where she was like, oh, you know, I know somebody that knows somebody. And you know, the, the front, the front part of. The Culinary Institute, when you drive in, there’s like this huge plaza, it’s called Anton Plaza, and there’s like a big fou

Get ready for the ‘ah-ha’ moments in this episode of The Art of Living Big. Take a drive, go for a walk, or just cuddle up and press play whilst Betsy delivers the advice we all need to live a more intentional, and more joyful life. Betsy reminds us that we must be present in our unhappiness rather than avoiding discomfort because that is when we see growth in ourselves and those around us. Transcript: Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, fellow Adventurers. Hi everybody. Welcome to the show today. I have a quote that I saw that stopped me right in my tracks. And if you are fairly new here, you might really like this and align. And if you’ve been here a long time, you might really like this too. , there’s more for me to think about with this quote and I wanna talk about it. But I also have something really specific I wanna talk about today. So here’s the quote. Real men have a happy woman. The rest. Have a strong woman. Ah, I [00:01:00] really liked it. I was like, oh, yes, that resonates so much with me. So I want to dive in today and I wanna talk about a couple things. , I was in California, , a week and a half ago, two weeks ago for my coaching group. Where I am a coachee. I met with my coach and the whole team of people who are also coached, sort of like if people come into the Navigate Method. , I believe in coaching and so I always have a coach myself. So we meet, , about three times a year. And this time we met in California and the location where we got to meet every day. I’m not sure if you follow me on social media, but you may have seen it was this. Just really beautiful beach house. It was right in La Jolla, right on the, like on the cliff overlooking the ocean. It had those big giant doors, that you. Push and they’re like [00:02:00] windows, but they push open like giant doors. And so you could smell the ocean, you could hear the ocean, you could hear all the seagulls and birds. And I mean, it was, it was so beautiful. And when we were meeting, we were meeting at this big, huge, long dining room table. While we were meeting and somebody was talking or giving a presentation, I could hear the waves in the background and I was like, oh my gosh, there is very little. That sounds better to me than that sound. It really was so calming. I could feel like my nervous system. Just sort of toggling down and I just really, really enjoyed my time there. , It was really so incredible. I think it was one of my favorite times getting together with this group. I’ve known many of the people in this group for years and years, , and we meet together every week on Zoom, and so it’s so wonderful to be able to get together live. It was everything that I wanted it to be. , And really, really a [00:03:00] good use of my time. I kind of wish I’d stayed an extra day to sort of integrate and process. I think sometimes we can take in a lot of information, but if we’re not integrating it, if we’re not making it part of who we are, then it can kind of get lost when we get back into the regular hustle and bustle , of life. But one of the things that I was thinking about, I was laying in bed last night actually thinking about those giant windows and how far you could see when you opened them up and you were able to poke your head out and you could see more than you could if you were just sitting on the couch looking out the window. Right, and this makes sense. You’ve experienced this before, like clearly if you stick your head out the window, you’re gonna be able to see more to the left and more to the right. And as I was laying there last night, I was like, , that’s really what I wanna do. I [00:04:00] want to be able to help people stick their heads out the window to see more. Because what we see in our lives typically is this narrow view. Of what we’ve always been shown and that view sometime becomes so normal and ordinary that we think we know what it is. Years ago I went , and stayed in an Airbnb down in Florida for a month, and it was a condo right on the ocean. And I was so excited about it. If you’ve been here a long time, you know I love the ocean. , It was so beautiful and nice. And those first couple days, I mean, I was like, this is amazing. This is so incredible. And then I noticed by like day six or seven, like I didn’t even really pay attention. It already had become pretty normal. Right. And I think that’s what happens in our lives, right? We have this. Vantage point, and if you can imagine looking [00:05:00] out the window and seeing the same space of the ocean or looking at your life. Seeing the same things over and over again. The ocean may be changing, your life may be changing. Things may be different. But if you’re always expecting that very same thing you’re going to be searching for and finding that very same thing, which isn’t bad if that thing is exactly what you want, but the truth is that there’s way more. To see. There’s more to see when we just have an awareness and we look by being mindful and being present. But there’s also a way more to see. When you lean your head out the window and you’re able to look to the right and look to the left, you’re like, wow, there’s way more to this picture than I thought. And I think one of the things that happens when we start looking at our marriage or at a [00:06:00] relationship that we have that’s important to us, and it has been unhappy for quite a long time, is that’s what we see. That’s the frame in which we are experiencing the relationship. And so to be able to experience it in any other way, we have to be willing to be really present in it. And when that is uncomfortable, when we don’t like what’s happening, we really. We really repel against being present in it because we’re like, I already know how bad this is. I want to disengage. I want to disconnect from it. I’m gonna have a glass of wine at night just so I don’t have to think about this, or I’m gonna retreat into the other room, or I’m gonna turn on TV or sports or movies or whatever it is. I’m not going to be present in this, and I’m not saying any of those things , in and of themselves is bad. [00:07:00] It’s just when we use it in order to disengage from the thing we don’t like, we’re no longer present. That thing. And if we’re no longer present, we’re not seeing anything different, and we’re also not able to create any change. So when we start to do the work of really disseminating what we have in our lives, whether it’s a relationship or something in your career, or just how you feel about yourself or anything, any part of your life, it’s ultra important. To be able to notice where you’re disconnecting, where you’re opting out, and then ask yourself, what is it that I’m trying to avoid? When you know what it is you’re trying to avoid, it becomes much easier to actually face that thing now. Here’s what I really, really wanna talk about [00:08:00] in all of this, because the women that I work with in the Navigate Method, , many of them have been struggling for a decade or two decades. I mean, it can be a very long time. Sometimes women have been married, , 30, 35 years, and they’re. Yeah, looking back on the past 35 years and they’re like, this really hasn’t been good. , I’ve focused on other things, or I focused on my kids when my kids were young, or I, , created good friendships, but I used all of that to opt out. I know for me, I really used something that you would think is really good, which was meditation. I would meditate sometimes for hours, and I always thought, this is, really good. But I was meditating in order to withstand the level of frustration and stress that I had. I wasn’t meditating to what we [00:09:00] typically think of as meditation, right? Of like being still and , getting in touch with ourselves and exploring new things. There was a little bit of that. But , the drive for it was to be able to cope with extreme unhappiness. And so I think sometimes you have to look at the things that you’re doing and , those things may be like quote unquote healthy things, right? You may be working out excessively, you might be off with friends all the time. The, tipping point for that is, is it. Helping you to withstand more unhappiness, and if it’s helping you to withstand more unhappiness , there’s a point where you have to stop and you have to be present with the unhappiness or else nothing is going to change. One of the things when I talk with women, and they’ll ask me, , why is this always up to [00:10:00] me? Like, why am I the one? And people ask me this sometimes on social media, like they’ll post on my posts and say, why is it up to us? Like I’m exhausted. Sometimes people , will even say on my posts, this feels very patriarchal. Like, why am I the one that has to , do this work? And I always say, you don’t have to do it, but this is your life. I’m not even talking about your relationship. This is your life and if you have to opt out in order to withstand what’s happening on a day to day in your life, then it’s time you do something different. If you have been asking your husband for years to listen to you, to go to therapy maybe, or to change in some way or. Just to hear you. If you [00:11:00] have been asking for years and he’s not doing it, then he’s not going to do it. And you need to take control of your life and create a life that you really love. And you can’t make a decision on whether that life includes him or not until you get a handle on your own side of the street until you look at your own stuff and you figure out what it is that caused you to make the choice to be with that person. What caused you to withstand that for

In this episode, Betsy discusses the emotional transition of moving into her own space and the significance of self-regulation. She emphasizes the importance of discovering personal happiness by embracing new experiences. Betsy concludes with an exercise to help listeners identify what brings them joy. Transcript: 395 how i find more joy in my life [00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, fellow Adventurers. Hi everyone. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. I am pre-recording this,, usually I record like. Right before the show, a couple days before, or the earlier in the week, but I’m going to California. So as you’re listening to this, I’ve probably just come home from California. I am in a coaching group as a coachee, and every year, several times a year, we all get together. And so I’ll be heading to California to meet up with fellow entrepreneurs that have been on the same journey as me. And it’s always really, really, empowering and [00:01:00] fills my soul to get to be with these people, we all keep in touch so much throughout the weeks and we all get together once a week on Zoom and , get help and get our questions asked and those kinds of things. But just to have that comradery is so important. I think being on any kind of journey, you know, and this is how come inside the Navigate method, the community is such a big part of it. And getting together live. I have found more and more to be just. Really important and exciting. We’re actually pulling together a live event for Navigate People next year, and it’s been so fun to look at that and what we could do together, live different than maybe what we could do together, , together online, uh, like hug. I can’t wait. Like I’m really, really excited. A couple weeks ago, one of my clients was in town. For a training. And so I got to see her and so I asked her, I was on staycation that week and I said, can I come and meet you and we’ll go to breakfast? And she was like, sure. And so I did, and it was so lovely to [00:02:00] see her. Then I was like, can I come get you tomorrow? She was like, sure. But like it was. It was so, so great. I think there was something really wonderful about being able to do things online and to be able to have Zoom and to be able to make those connections. And I think there’s something really fabulous about creating space to be together in person too, you know? And I think. COVID kind of taught us that too, right? Like , that personal piece of it can just be really so lovely and such an addition to our lives. So anyway, I’m looking at all that and so I’m recording this a week before, so I wanted to share a little bit about some things that have been happening with me because I get this question a lot on social media. So I wanted to. Shift and to share a little bit about some things I’m discovering. So this may not be a very long episode, but I wanted to answer this question so people reach out sometime to ask me about my divorce or what happened [00:03:00] or any of that. It’s boring. I’m not gonna bore you with any of that, but I am gonna tell you how. Good things are and what I’ve discovered about myself moving forward. So if you have been along on this journey, or you’ve followed me on social media, you know that my husband, former husband and I separated. We tried to work it out, didn’t work out, and so we sold our house and moved our separate ways. I wish him all the best, but my life still continues on. And that’s really where my focus is. And so what I have found that has been so incredible, and I’m gonna give you a thought or a action, a little exercise that you can do at the end of this episode, whether you live alone or not, and it’s something that I did when I was married. And it’s something that I have found to profoundly grow while I have been alone. So if you are on the fence or you are just [00:04:00] recently separated maybe, or you’re getting divorced or you’ve just got divorced,, whatever your situation is, I hope that this episode brings you some comfort and some excitement about what could be possible, right? What could happen. So let’s start. Let’s start at the beginning. One of the things that I think happens no matter what is going on in your marriage or your relationship, maybe you just live with somebody and you’re moving out. Maybe you just have a roommate and it’s a , platonic friendship and you’re moving out. There’s something that happens when you leave. A home with somebody else and you move into a space that just includes yourself. And I think that transition is something really important to recognize and to honor because your nervous system has to re acclimate. And what our nervous systems do when we’re with somebody, even if we’re unhappy, [00:05:00] is it begins to co-regulate. So many of the women that I work with talk about how they feel like they have to be the one that regulates their husband, right? So if he’s in a bad mood, they feel like they need to manage that, or if something’s going on, they’re just constantly scanning, right? So. I think that’s like a worst case scenario. But then even if you are with somebody and you’re happy, or it’s just a platonic, like a just a roommate situation, and there is a feedback loop, right? When you’re with somebody else, energetically, your nervous system is regulating to them. You get into ways of being and being in a home with somebody else, and so when you make that shift and you suddenly are all by yourself, I wanna just offer the thought that it’s gonna feel different. It may feel a lot better, but it also, because remember last week we talked about holding two truths at once. It can also feel a little [00:06:00] dysregulating because you’re like, wait a minute, I’m constant. I’m normally constantly scanning for somebody, or I’m normally co-regulating with somebody. And so I noticed when I moved into my own space that there was one night when I first moved in that first week, it rained like insane. My apartment is on the top floor. It’s the penthouse, as I call it., It’s the top floor of an apartment. It’s a penthouse, and the building looks like a shipping container. Do you know what I mean? It’s like that corrugated metal. And so when the rain hits it, it’s amazing. It sounds. So, I mean, you could sleep for a hundred years in here, right? It’s so great. And so that week that I moved, it was insane rain, just downpours for days, like every day and all night long. And I woke up to some thunder at like two or three in the morning and. Woke up and I scanned for my dog, [00:07:00] which I, who I didn’t have anymore ’cause he would be upset. So I scanned for him and then recognized I was alone. And so I got up and I put my bathrobe on and I went out to the living room and I sat in the living room in the dark and I just listened. And I remember it feeling like I could exhale, like just really could be present with myself. And I could listen. I felt, you know, lots of times we’re on our phones, maybe you’re not. I am. Lots of times I’m on my phone and then I realize like, oh my God, I’ve walked all the way down the hallway and I haven’t even noticed. ’cause I’ve been checking messages as I’ve been going from one place to another or whatever it was so present, I felt like I could take like a big, deep exhale and I could feel my nervous system just. Toggling down, like decompressing. It was the sound, it was the dark, it was [00:08:00] the comfortable space I was sitting. It was the space to allow myself, I didn’t have anything to do. It was three o’clock in the morning and I remember being like, this is a place that I can heal, right? And we all have healing to do, but this is a place where I’m gonna really grow and I’m gonna discover who I am in a new way, and I’m gonna create. A life that makes me really happy. And I feel like that was a bit of a declaration of we could beat ourselves up for a multitude of. Things or experiences or ways of being that we’ve done in our lives, right? If I could go back to being 20 and do it over again, would I do it differently? Like we could do that, but I remember feeling like this is a demarcation from this place forward, I get to choose. I can’t fix what I’ve already screwed up. I can’t fix what went wrong. I can’t fix my part or someone else’s part in any [00:09:00] part of my journey. But I can choose from here how I create my life and how I respond to things moving forward. And I think that moment of feeling my nervous system, like it felt like junk, you know what I’m saying? Like where it just settled in and I could be so present with myself. And I could say , from here forward, I’m gonna get to choose something different. I think that can be a really, really important space to live in and to give ourselves like that gift of saying , there’s nothing I can do about what’s happened, but here’s what I’m gonna do moving forward. And one of the things that I thought about in that time was how I really wanted to experience my life and. , We all see things that we’re like, oh, I wish I had that. You know? And one of the things that I really wished was that I felt really alive like that. I had experiences [00:10:00] that I felt really alive. If you guys have been here for a while, or maybe you’ve listened back when I went to Iceland, which I think was like four years ago, that I remember that experience I chose because I knew it would make me feel really alive. So if I’m feeling really alive, what kinds of things am I doing? I’m super present, right? I’m finding things that bring me joy. There’s novelty, like there’s new things and I’m trying things. And I think

In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy discusses how an everyday task can have a profound effect if you can shift your perspective. She explores the importance of focusing on happiness and contributing positively to the world. If you are looking for actionable steps that will improve your outlook, this episode is perfect! Transcript: 394 Never the same person twice [00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, fellow Adventurers. Hi everybody. Welcome to the show, and I’ve got a couple updates and then I wanted to share something that I have been thinking about that maybe will spark something inside you too. So my first update is about Dean Martin, if you’re new here. I got this cat from the pound back in April and I named him, well, he came with a name Dean and I, couldn’t, anyway, he’s Dean Martin, but actually I think most of the time I call him Kitty. So Kitty had his second birthday. Which I was so excited about when I got him and they set his birthdays August 2nd. And [00:01:00] they gave me the date and I wrote it on my calendar and we had a little birthday party. I got sushi from H Mart and some shrimp, fresh shrimp, and I got this really cute little birthday hat and like bib thing that said Happy birthday. I, it was like really the cutest little thing. I got it from Amazon. If you have birthday parties for your animals. Then somebody told me on Instagram that just any animal that’s as stray or that is at the pound, they give it all the same birthday, like August 1st for dogs and August 2nd for cats. I guess. I don’t, I was so, I was like, no, it’s really his birthday. So I don’t know. I guess it’s kind of like Christmas, like you’re celebrating, but who knows what the real day is. But we did, we celebrated and it was really so fun. He has been such a joy and it’s so fun to see how much we can love a pet, right? I had my Miley, which is a dog I had that died about four years ago, and I was so devastated and I thought, I’ll never love [00:02:00] anything like Miley. And it is different from Miley and cats are different from dogs, but I have really grown to love him and it has been like such a fun, joy thing that I’ve been doing. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that every day I will post like good things, like just little things. You know? I think there’s so many little things we forget about that are really good, and so many of my things include Dean Martin, like little, I mean, even getting to sleep in or he’s starting to purr now or get, he’s starting to cuddle with me or really hang out with me. I got one of those. Beds that cat beds that like attach to your desk. So like, he’s right here just watching me do the podcast. So anyway, he has brought me a lot of joy and it’s really fun. So, all right, so what have I been thinking about? So, I live in an apartment right now and. I have so many things to share about that, which I will share in the coming [00:03:00] months. But I’ve been living in this apartment and I actually really like it. It’s a, really cute apartment and, has been lovely to live here. And when I get a package, I have to go down the elevator and to the front of my building and there’s a package room. And so I had a package and I went to go get it and I got my package and came back up. And then I got an email that made me think something. Okay. So I got like an email or a phone call or text or something and I started really thinking about change and I started really thinking about what causes us to change. And , so many times the women that we work with inside the Navigate Method, at the end. They have an opportunity to give us feedback. Good or bad, I want it all. And so many times we get these really incredible testimonials from people [00:04:00] about how their whole life was transformed, and I’m always so grateful that they share that with me. But I’m also like, it’s 10 weeks. So this goes to my whole thing where I am like, change happens in an instant. We have been told this like pack of lies, that it takes 21 days to change a habit, right? Have you ever heard that? And change doesn’t take that long. Like we don’t go to the therapist for 15 years and then one day we’re at the therapists and we have an aha moment. The aha moment happens in the moment, right? It didn’t like slowly unfold or. Like pixelate into our awareness over 15 years. Now, I’m not saying all of the experiences that we have lead up to the aha moment, but the aha moment happens in an instant. It is a miracle. It’s a tiny moment of miracle where we get a different perspective and we get to see the world different. And I started [00:05:00] really thinking about this and about what creates. This level of transformation so quickly. And then I got a text that I had another package, so I was like, oh dang. Like I just came, it’s not far y’all, but I, you know, I’m like, I gotta walk. I’m not just walking to my front door anymore. So I’m like, I’ll run down and get it ’cause I have time. And as I was walking down the hall, I thought I just was walking down this hall like 20 minutes ago, but I am different. I’m different than I was when I walked down the hall 20 minutes ago. And the reason is lots of reasons. I’m older, right? Probably a lot of things metabolically have happened in my body. Like my physical structure is different, but I’ve had different thoughts. I’ve had new thoughts, and I’ve thought about change and I have a different perspective. And so now as I walk down the hall. I’m [00:06:00] experiencing the hallway different. So I’m having this awareness that I’m experiencing the hallway in a different way. Now, I know this probably sounds really traumatic ’cause you’re like, Betsy, you’re just going to get, you’re just going to pick up your Amazon package. But the thought is so important, I think because it is the awareness that we are allowed to change. We’re allowed to transform. We’re allowed to think different things. We’re allowed to have new perspectives. We’re allowed to change our mind, and it doesn’t have to take some big monumental thing to happen. It doesn’t have to take a ton of time, and it doesn’t have to take something interacting with us. It can happen inside ourselves. And so I wanted to kind of. Explore through this thought because I believe that we get held back a [00:07:00] lot,. We are held back completely by the ideas and beliefs that we have. Like there is no non-limiting belief, right? Like you hear about limiting beliefs. Every belief is limiting in and of itself, right? So then. Am I toggling myself back constantly by thoughts or beliefs around experiences that are allowed or not allowed to transform me? So on one hand, can I release the idea that something monumental has to happen or important needs to happen that I deem as important? In order for me to get a different perspective. Can I just allow many different perspectives to exist inside me at once? Is it okay for me to hold [00:08:00] to ideas that may seem opposing, but I can understand or. Experience and have alignment with aspects of each of those components, right? So I work with women who are trying to make this really tough decision on what to do about their marriage. Like, do I move forward and stay in this and get some new skills so that I can see and experience things differently? Or is it time for me to go. And both of those experiences can be held in your body. At the same time, I can want and hope that things will change and get better, and I can have an awareness that there are attachment issues they need to heal, or things that they need to do in order for this to be acceptable [00:09:00] to me. Both of those things can happen at the same time. And I think what’s happening inside our program is that when we accept all those aspects of ourselves, there’s no longer this push or pull and that clarity comes into place and then it’s really. Aligning and clear on what feels like the right thing to move forward, I think the push and pull of there’s a right way and a wrong way to think or be is it, causes us to spin, whether it’s spinning an indecision or spinning in unhappiness or spinning in, I’m fully, accepting myself. And so I lean towards one way or the other, right? Everything’s either black or white. I’m not living in the gray, and I think I really live in the gray a lot. And so when I can do that, I can pull aspects of the black and the white , [00:10:00] that work for me, and I can create a reality that starts to move me in a way forward that I feel happy now. Okay. So now if that’s happening, and I wanna go back to this idea of, I feel happy and why that’s important. So on the other hand, if I’m doing that and accepting all these parts of me, there’s another side of this that when I’m not doing it, something that’s happening. So when I’m not understanding that all of life. I’m gonna say this thing, I say this inside the group and sometimes I can feel tension, , but hear me out. But that all of life is neutral. Like what’s happening is we are putting our beliefs on it and that’s what’s giving it the story that’s telling us if it’s good or bad. Okay? Which is important. It’s important to be able to. Make judgements for yourself about how you wanna live and what’s [00:11:00] good and what feels good to you, right? So all of that’s important. But it’s also important to recognize that it’s neutral. So you walking into the kitchen and seeing that your husband has left stuff all over the counter and left for the day, that in itself is neutral. The story that you have around that, like maybe he doesn’t respect me or he’s not paying attention,

In this episode Betsy asks us to think about the feelings that we felt when we were the favorite version of ourselves. Were you concerned about perception during those times or fully confident and present? Listen in to discover how freeing it can be to accept that you can live everyday as your favorite version and leave your best version to the side. Transcript: 393 How to be your favorite self [00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, fellow Adventurers. Hi everybody. Welcome to the Art of Living Big. I have a. A big topic that I wanna talk to you about, a big concept, and I hope that I do it justice. I hope that this makes all kinds of sense as I talk about it. So before I get into that, I wanna give you a couple updates. If you’ve been here for a long time, maybe you like my updates, I don’t know. I wanna give you a Dean Martin update. So Dean Martin is my kitty that I rescued from the. Pound I got him from the pound back in beginning of April, so I’ve had him now four months. His second [00:01:00] birthday is this weekend. I ordered a hat and necklace and, oh God, some stuff for cat. Birthdays from Amazon and we’ll be getting sushi and I’m really looking forward to this little celebration with Dean Martin. He has grown into being such a nice kitty. If you were here back then or you were following me on Instagram, like he was sort of a terror in the beginning. And I even got a little bit worried like, oh my, what have I done? Always been a dog person, but I thought a cat will be easier. And then he became like this total hellion. But over the last month or so, I mean, every month I feel like he’s gotten more settled, but over the last month, even more so, and now he’s purring. He hasn’t pured y’all. And so it’s like when you’re taking care of an infant, but there’s no feedback and you’re like, I’m doing all this work for what? And then they smile and you’re like, oh, it matters. Right? That’s what it felt like. [00:02:00] I was like, oh, he does like me. So he’s purring and this is a big deal. So I’m excited about that. Okay, so I wanna get into this whole thought, this whole idea that I have, you know, as we. Move through our lives and we grow and I think we get this heightened self of awareness about who we are, hopefully, right? Hopefully as we grow, we get a heightened sense of awareness about who we are, and I know for myself over the past 15 years, I think I have been on a path to discover myself. When I look back before that. I was walking through life very unconscious, and that’s not necessarily bad, it’s just where I was. And so as I have moved through and learned more about myself and been a coach over the last decade, [00:03:00] I’m starting to recognize certain patterns or ways of being that I have, and because I believe that everything is neutral. It’s only the truth that I put upon it that makes it what it is. I’ve started to evaluate how I’m actually thinking about those patterns. So not just the thing that I do, but also how I think about the thing that I do. And , just like you, I have a little voice in my head. That’s like a little gremlin that will tell me things that are lies. You know, you’re not good enough or why are you doing it like that? Or, oh my God, you’re so cringey. And I have been thinking a lot about that. There’s this thing going around social media that’s like, you have to be cringey in order to grow, to do something new, to learn something. There is that moment of [00:04:00] cringey. But I also, when I see that meme that’s going around, I also think, well, is it cringey or is it just what we think about it that makes it seem cringey? But it is in itself totally neutral. And so I started evaluating when I feel that cringiness, what’s the lens that I’m looking through? And so many times that lens would be. How other people would perceive what I’m doing. So me and myself, it didn’t necessarily feel cringey, but it would be when I would evaluate it through a lens of how somebody from the outside may perceive it. And that’s a big may because I’m totally mindreading, right? I’m totally saying. I think they would think of this, but I have no idea. And the truth is probably some people do think that and some people don’t. [00:05:00] And I know just from the work that I do, that if they do think it’s cringey, it’s something that’s going on inside them and probably less to do with me. So why do I have this voice in my head? Why do I evaluate myself through this filter that doesn’t actually serve me? A couple years ago I saw a woman on TikTok and she has this little thing. You might know who I’m talking about, and I don’t remember her name ’cause she’s not somebody that I follow, but I would see her come up. But she would say, have a great day, not just a good day. Do you know who this? It’s a young woman that was like, at Alabama University. So have a great day, not just a good day. And she was very cute, but she would say things like. I wasn’t being my best self or I wanna show up today as my best self. And I really, I kind of liked that, but I thought about it a lot. And in [00:06:00] this like evaluating things that I do through the lens of other people that I know or don’t know, or that I hypothetically think about, right? That may not even exist. Just what I think people might think. And then, am I being my best self? I started to recognize there was this correlation between the two, and that me being my best self felt very external. It felt like if I was being my best self, it meant I was showing up as my best. And if I was showing up as my best, then it was less likely that I was being cringey or that I would be perceived in a way that I didn’t wanna be perceived. Okay, so are you tracking with me so far? Is this making sense? So I’m starting to question the voice in my head that’s telling me things about myself. I’m recognizing that I’m putting parameters that are only made up in my own mind, and it’s coming from this place of wanting to [00:07:00] show up as the best version of me to the world. Haha. And so over the past. Probably two months, three months, maybe four. ’cause probably since I’ve gotten Dean Martin, I would say I have been thinking about this in a different way. I started to think about what was the favorite version of me. If I look back over my life, I can think about times where I was the favorite version of me. But when I compared those times with. Was I perceived as being, I’m using air quotes, right, worthy or good enough? I don’t know. So the times where I was being my favorite version of me, I was so in myself, like I was so fully embodying [00:08:00] myself that I wasn’t even using the lens of perception. From some outside entity. Okay. So there’s a version of myself that’s like my best self, putting my best self forward. And there’s a version of myself that’s my favorite self. My favorite self is the times where I’m not even perceiving how other people would see me. I’m so fully embodied in myself. Those times are also times where I’m most present. Right. Which makes a lot of sense ’cause you’d be super present. Yourself so you wouldn’t be perceiving outside of you. So my favorite version of myself is the times where I am fully embodied and present. Okay. So now fast forward like a couple like a month maybe after all that, when I started thinking about that. And I come to you here on the show with like things that [00:09:00] I’ve been thinking about for a long time. So. I hear , a video comes onto my YouTube and you may know this guy Bahar. I don’t follow Bahar. I knew who he was when he came to my. My YouTube video. Lots of times I’ll turn on YouTube at night, like when I’m doing laundry or whatever, and I just have it on, and lots of times I’ll be listening to something positive, like I want something positive. So I’ll have like Abraham Hicks. Now, if you’re familiar with Abraham Hicks, then it would make sense why Bahar would come into the next video for you, right? So I just had it on and I wasn’t doing something else, so I wasn’t shutting it off. I didn’t skip past it. And so I was listening and a woman was asking Bashar about moments where she felt not good enough, and Bashar said, for what? Good enough for what? And [00:10:00] she said, well, like, just good enough. And he said, for what? To be yourself. Who else could be better at it? And , I got, I paused, so I’m gonna pause here. To, you’re not good enough to be yourself. Who could be better at it? So even if I’m being perceived as cringey or I’m, whatever the thing is that I’m doing, if I’m fully being myself, then there’s a zero chance that I’m not being good enough. I’ve eliminated the opportunity to not be good enough. Nobody else could possibly be good as good at being me as I am and nobody else could possibly be as good as being you as you are. And so are we gonna make mistakes? Are we gonna do things [00:11:00] that are air quotes, like cringey? Yeah, that’s me being me. Which makes me fully embodied and totally good enough because I’m fully experiencing life., I think that there’s this idea, and maybe it’s unconscious, and maybe you’ll listen to this and you’ll be like, I don’t have that, and if you don’t have that, I am so happy for you. Like I love that. Please call me. I think we all have these moments where we’re like, oh my God, why am I so cringey? Why am I so dumb? Why? Why did I do that? Or I look back on things in my life and I think, like, I, God, I wish I hadn’t done that. Why did I do that? Why was I living that way? Why was I making that choice? What was my decision process? But the truth, is that I was being f

In this episode Betsy hosts Adrianna, a mindset coach within The Navigate Method, to ask her what she does to make life more magical. This episode has the ability to change very big things in your life, enjoy! Transcript: 392 episode with adrianna [00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello, fellow Adventurers. Hi everyone. Welcome. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. So I’m gonna see how this sounds. About a month ago I got Invisalign. I feel like I talk weird. Nobody else seems to notice it, so we are just gonna see how this sounds. But if it seems weird next week, I will sound different because I won’t have these in. You’re supposed to leave them in an absurd amount of. Time, like 22 hours a day, which doesn’t seem like a lot until you realize that in the morning when you have your coffee and you’re hanging out, like [00:01:00] it’s an hour easy, and then you only have 30 minutes for each of your other meals. Anyway, I’ve so lost weight because I don’t, I can’t eat. And I don’t, I only have these tiny windows of being able to eat, but anyway. Straight teeth are in my future. And so that’s exciting. So I’m excited to be here with you today. I have a little interview and this interview that I’m gonna share with you is really a thought that was shared with me in our team meetings. So we have team meetings every week, and one of the mindset coaches for the Navigate method is Adriana. She’s amazing and I just, I love her brain. It’s, so good. And I love how aligned she is to where she wants to be and after we had that meeting, I thought about it for like a couple weeks and I had shared it with one of my friends and one of my girlfriends was like, I keep thinking about it. So then I was [00:02:00] like, I wanna tell you guys. So I had her jump on Zoom with me and just talked about it for a minute, but I want you to hear what Adriana does to make life a little bit more magical and. You know, that’s how I think you live a big life. So here you go. Here’s the little idea from Adriana. I hope you like it. All right everyone. I have a really special guest today that I’m really excited that she’s here, that she took a few minutes out of her very busy schedule, and I’m not kidding, she’s very busy. But my friend Adriana is here. Adriana is a coach inside the Navigate Method, and she’s really incredible. A couple weeks ago when we were . In our laser coaching group that we do once a week. I said something about Adriana and everybody cheered. , I was like, what? What is happening? It was so great. So Adriana, thank you for being here. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. So tell everybody just a little bit about [00:03:00] you so they can know who you are. And then I want you to tell us this thing that you said in our team meeting recently that I was like, oh, everybody needs to hear that. I love that. Yeah, sure. So I am , how do I even describe myself? , I’m , a student of life and throughout my life I was, , introduced to the idea of, , NLP neurolinguistic programming by my dad, but I didn’t know it until years later that’s what he. Used with his, , clients, students, patients, if you will. And it was so fascinating to me when I went through my own journey, it’s like in your twenties you think you know everything and you know, and then you realize as you’re getting, gaining more experience, like, oh, I don’t even know anything. Yeah, right. And I had a big move in my thirties and , and then in my late thirties, I,. Finally put my foot down for exactly what I wanted to find as far as what I wanted to do to help people in life. I have always been the go-to for advice. People connect with me in all of , the jobs [00:04:00] I’ve ever had, but it wasn’t fulfilling. I wasn’t like serving people in a way to really affect change long-term. Right? It’s like they had their moments with me, but they didn’t have the long term. So. I became a professional organizer, but I’ve named, that work for the soul and the space because what is in our outer world is a representation of our inner world. So now being,, certified as a trainer of NLP and using it in my own life, coming to understanding how, why maybe my dad and I had an awkward relationship it’s so wild to me that your dad did it. Yeah. Yeah. . Actually trained with one of the co-founders, right? So that’s really cool. It was, it was wild. To have this come around and have my mind like blown, like, oh my God, I now understand what he was trying to do to help me, how this works in my life, and what I started to do to peel back the layers of things that. Weren’t serving me that, weren’t good for me anymore that I could do. And it’s just changed everything. So [00:05:00] now,, I look at my life very differently and I look at it very purposefully and what I create. And so what I’d mentioned on our meeting yeah. Was, , that I call , the things that occur well, I’ll just say, I call them rich life stories, and when I think of the word rich, like there’s rich as in like chocolatey fudge, that’s rich. There’s rich as in your bank account has multiple zeros. There’s rich that you feel so loved by family and friends and you know that there’s rich in joy. So for me, rich life stories, what is that? It’s kind of akin to the romanticizing your life, but. It’s also way more than that because it’s a way of looking at even the smallest things like,, I live so close to an airport that I can fly easily out of, here to go to all of my,, fun events and things that I get to do. Yeah. So lemme kinda frame this though so people know what we’re talking about. So we’re on a team meeting and you were at an event [00:06:00] and you were saying that you missed your flight or your flight was running late and you had extra time or something and you said, but it’s fine ’cause I’m gonna make it a rich life story. And right off I was like, what do you mean whatcha talking about? Yeah. And when you started describing this, it’s like we have these moments in our lives. That can be seen as so routine or even as something that is a challenge or this screwed up my schedule or whatever. But you had this spin on it, and so tell me a little bit about how do you take a situation or a moment in your life and make it so that it is a rich life story? Yeah. So I was just the other day thinking about this. So maybe this will like on my walk, just a walk where I walk every day from my house out the front door, down the hill, and I can take any one of like choose your own adventure paths because there’s just umpteen different streets to go to. Yeah. And they all [00:07:00] kind of circle back around. And I was smelling orange blossom and roses and night blooming Jasmine. And it’s like you could pay attention to those things and or ignore those things. You could not even be o open. Your sense of smell could be completely blocked because your brain is so busy thinking about what you did during the day, but taking those moments of the mundane. Or the challenging, like, oh, I’m just gonna take a walk to clear my head. I’ve been so busy. I’ve been stuck to the computer all day, but I actually got out and it’s like, what a rich life I have that I live in the safest place. And it’s like all of, summer is coming out with , the trees blooming and the plants blooming , and all of these wonderful things. I have neighbors who say hello. I have people who don’t know you that like still wave as they’re driving by. It’s the little things like coming out of la. No one. Like they don’t wanna look at you, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a rich life to me, whether it’s I’m [00:08:00] in Hawaii or I’m in my own little town. Yeah. Because it’s the way that I look at it and it’s the way I’m open to how things are magical, you know? And it doesn’t matter. Like, yeah, I almost, I almost miss my flight and, or, you know, if planes are delayed or things like that. Like if you’re in an airport, you are around the possibility of meeting the most amazing souls. So instead of like, oh my God, like I’m late, I’m gonna miss my connection. It’s like, well, what am I meant to be here for? Like, what do I get to go and do now? Who am I gonna get? What is here for me? Yeah, yeah. What’s here for me? I mean, I noticed that when I come from that perspective of like, how is this gonna be a rich life story for me, of what I’m capable of doing, like the fact that I’m even in an airport getting to travel is a rich life story. ’cause not everybody gets to do that, right? Yeah. Yeah. So. If I operate from that, that’s what I exude. And it’s how people start to respond to me in ways that it’s like, it’s such [00:09:00] a good vibration. Like, I’m smiling, I need you. I’m, you know? Yeah. And even, even if we, you know, it’s like you have to understand too, how you are speaking to somebody else, how you’re responding to them even if they aren’t meeting you with that same high level mm-hmm. We don’t go down to that. We send them like the most support and the most love that we can. And just try to make their day a little bit better. I was checking into a hotel, there was a long line, okay, so I’m gonna stand here, I’m gonna look around, I’m gonna enjoy the fact that my luggage made it, you know? And I got to the. The front desk person, and she just had a struggle with the person in front of me. I heard her say , I can sense that you’re, not happy right now, so let me give you your waters and why don’t you come back? , She basically like sent him off on a timeout. And she got to me, she was still down. She wasn’t looking at me. She was, , frustrated. I could tell, and I just thought, hmm. Okay. How c

In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy reflects on the power of nervous system healing and how it’s been showing up in her everyday life. She shares the concept of the “Thinking Chair” and how intentional reflection can help us uncover deeper truths. Betsy also introduces the idea that many of our “problems” aren’t really problems at all…just things not going as expected, and how reframing them can lead to growth. With updates on The Navigate Method, the Navigate Chronicles on YouTube, and more, this episode is full of inspiration and practical takeaways for anyone on a personal development journey. Tune in to explore how small shifts can lead to big breakthroughs. What You’ll Learn: How nervous system work can create real, physical change Why intentional stillness (like a Thinking Chair) matters A new way to think about your “problems” How to find evidence of your healing in everyday life Links Mentioned: Learn more about The Navigate Method: www.betsypake.com Subscribe to Betsy on YouTube (search “Betsy Pake” to find her channel) Connect on Instagram: @betsypake Get your CozyEarth sheets and Pj’s at 40% off using code LIVEBIGBETSY at https://cozyearth.com/ Transcript: 391 Is it really a problem [00:00:00] Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hello everyone. Welcome to The Art of Living Big. I’m excited that you’re here. If you’re new here, welcome. There’s a lot of episodes to listen to. I’ve been getting messages from people asking like, which specific episodes should I be listening to? Or, which ones would you suggest first? And I always suggest just starting from where we last left off every episode. Is typically like a little story and then a lesson, and hopefully it applies to your life and entertains you a little bit as you listen. So. I have a bunch of little things to [00:01:00] talk about today, and one really big thing that I’m really excited about is we have someone new on our team that’s gonna be helping me. I’m so excited to be able to show up a little bit more regularly. In fact, I’m thinking, is there a way that I can begin doing this every week again, because I really liked having episodes every week and, I still have so many things to share. If you haven’t checked out the YouTube channel, make sure you go over there. I think if you just search my name, you’ll find me. But I’m doing the Navigate Chronicles, which is something that’s coming up every week inside the Navigate Method. And even if the Navigate method. Isn’t for you. You might find something helpful in what everybody’s talking about. You know, I think so many of our problems and concerns and all of those things are just so universal. That there’s always something to connect with. So this week, like I said, I have a couple fun things to share with you and, a thought. So if you ever have [00:02:00] listened to my episode on the Thinking Couch, you can just search for that. It’s only a few months back. the Thinking Couch and now I have a thinking chair is really just a place where I go to spend time to think. You might do this already. You know, you might go for walks and really think, you know, you don’t have podcasts on. Maybe you do if you do. I celebrate that if you’re listening to me while you’re walking. But you know, you might have moments where it is meditative, it might be doing laundry or. Going for a walk or in your car, or sometimes those thoughts or deep thoughts kind of come to us when we’re in the shower. It’s in the times where we have some space, right? And so what I like to do is create that space by sitting in my thinking chair. So I have a chair that’s in my office that I use specifically to be able to just think about the things that are on my mind. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about that. You know, one of the things that we teach inside the Navigate [00:03:00] Method is this idea of regulating our nervous system on purpose and learning how our unique nervous system works. Understanding ourself and what shows up for us. In any instance, you may operate totally different than somebody else. In that same instance, you may have a fight or flight response where someone else would have a freeze response. You might not be bothered at all, and then you’ll notice you’ll be bothered later. Your heart will race, or you’ll just notice you’re really tight. You might notice that in your shoulders or your neck sometimes. That’s where I get it, where I’m really tight. I don’t even realize that I’m stressed or that my nervous system is activated until I notice those signs. So we teach how to really understand all of that inside the Navigate method and, how to. Tone your nervous system, kind of like going to the gym and how [00:04:00] to be able to move past some things so that you can regulate around the things that activated you in the past, and so that those things don’t activate you in the future. It’s super powerful and I don’t think we can do any work on. Relationships or our lives really, without taking into consideration this component of our nervous system. You know that book, the body keeps the score. Well, that’s what it is. Like even if our brain can conceptualize things, our body. Keeps the score. Our body knows and remembers what has happened. And so giving that some healing is just so important. One of the things that I’ve talked about, for years on the show, is going to float. Have you guys done this before? So you might know what I’m talking about, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it is floating in a sensory deprivation tank. So you could just Google like float tanks. Like float tanks near me. [00:05:00] And it’ll come up with some float tanks near you. There’s several in Atlanta and I think I’ve been to all of them, but I have one that I really like and I have not been in, I don’t know, maybe like about five or six months. Yeah, five or six months, maybe even a little bit longer. I had a membership for a long time and I would go a couple times a month really regularly. Floating is where you get in this pod typically. It’s dark, so it’s totally dark in the room, the air in the room and the temperature of the water is your body temperature and the water is 10 times saltier than the Dead Sea. So you actually float. As soon as you get in the pod, you get in totally naked so there’s nothing touching your skin, and you lay down and you float and it’s totally dark and there’s no sound. Even just thinking about it, I can feel my body take a big, deep breath. It’s [00:06:00] so wonderful and relaxing. Now, about six months ago, I had this really weird interaction with the, owner. It wasn’t even that big of a deal really looking back, but. He was not feeling well. And just said something really rude to me and I just, I couldn’t bring myself to go back, you know? So I took quite a long break and then I regulated my nervous system around it. I decided I wanted to go back. I still had, active floats that I could take, that I’d paid for, so I went last week. And one of the things that I would tell people is when you get inside the float tank, you know it’s gonna take a little while to relax. It’s gonna take a minute for you to catch your breath and to actually remind your body that it’s safe to just relax and slow down, and it doesn’t have to have any armor up. And typically when I would get in the float tank, I would take many big, deep breaths trying [00:07:00] to remind myself, of this safety and that I was in a place that I wanted to be and I could just float. And then I typically float for 90 minutes. So about 15 or 20 minutes before it would be time. To get out. I could feel my body start getting ramped up. It’s like it almost knew, okay, we’ve just got 15, 20 minutes left, like we gotta get ready. Almost like this armor that was beginning to go up. Anyway, I didn’t really think all that much about it. I kind of thought that was. A process that you went through when you went to float. Like you’d have to take some big deep breaths. It would take a little while to chill out and then before you got up, your body would kind of know and it would start, adrenaline and reactivating so that you could get up. Right? Not so, you know, as we heal our nervous system and our body begins to know that we’re safe things. That typically you thought were normal, start to [00:08:00] feel different? They start to show up differently. And when I went to float last week, I was so shocked at how when I got in the the water, I immediately relaxed. There was no deep breaths, there was no waiting for my body to UNC Unclench. And interestingly, there was no activation at the time. I would be getting ready to get out of the pod. In fact, I didn’t know it was time to get out until the , it’s like this French lady’s voice. She says, hello, it is time to get up. I didn’t even know till that ding happened, and she started talking and I was like, wow. I immediately went into a relaxed state, which tells me that my nervous system. The, threat level is so much lower, right? And I say threat level, that’s a term that we use inside the navigate method to determine where [00:09:00] we are in terms of activation or our nervous system being on guard, for example. But my threat level, and we use, the, analogy of like a big bucket of water. So if you’re always kind of stressed and the water in your bucket is really high. Then something happens at work in your relationship on the road with the road rage or whatever, and it doesn’t take long for that water in the bucket to get to the place where it’s about to overflow. And because our bodies are so amazing. Yo