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. S