The Art of Living Big

Betsy Pake
  • 4.9 (196)
  • Relationships
  • Weekly

The Art of Living Big is a weekly podcast for women who are tired of putting everyone else first and are facing a big question: do I stay in my marriage, or do I leave? I’m Betsy Pake, founder of The Navigate Method, and I’ve sat with women in this exact place more times than I can count. For ten years and more than 400 episodes, this show has been where women come to get honest about what’s really going on, what they actually want, and how to make a decision they can stand behind, whichever way it goes. I’ll never tell you what to do. That call is always yours. My job is to help you hear what you already know. You’ll find conversations about people-pleasing, boundaries, fear, trusting yourself, and building a life that feels like yours. If you’re ready for real help with your decision, come talk with my team: betsypake.com/letstalk

  1. 3d ago

    441: I Was so Embarrassed I Wanted a Redo

    There is a difference between people-pleasing and growing. People-pleasing changes you to manage someone else’s feelings, and growing changes you because you looked at yourself clearly and decided that you wanted something different. In this episode, Betsy explains how a new acquaintance made her feel when she exposed an uncomfortable truth to Betsy, and how she chose to grow from it. 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. Hi, fellow adventurers. Welcome to the show. You might be watching this on video. Hi, you can see me now, which is a little wild to me because after 10 years of you just hearing my voice, and if you’re listening on a walk or in the car, you might notice that the episodes are getting a little bit longer, but we’re now doing this recorded. And so it’ll be on YouTube, and people can see it. And, uh, it’s interesting to me because historically I have done the show where I come up with, like, the idea or the thought that I wanna share, and then I close my eyes and just talk. And so it has taken me a lot to start practicing not, like, dissociating while I do it, uh, and allowing it to come. So I’ve jotted down some thoughts and notes so that I can stay focused, but, you know, we’re, we’re ma- I can do new things. We can do hard things. So 10 years into this podcast, and I want a little bit more time with you. So this episode’s gonna be a little bit longer, and we’re gonna continue on that, having them be less like 20 minutes and more like 45 minutes. This morning we recorded, or we took photos of the new podcast cover, so you’ll see that within the next month come. It was really fun, and I think it felt so much more like me. The podcast cover that is there right now was a cover from when I was married. It’s on the porch of my old house. I have my wedding ring on. When I look at it, it is … It, it looks nothing like me. It’s kind of strange. It feels like I’m, I don’t know, s- looking into a Old novel or something. And so I just felt like it was time to let that go, and with the 10 years and the new format and all the things. The one thing I do wish is that the background was a little bit better. I don’t have, like, a fancy podcast studio like many people do, but welcome to my office. So, all right. So today what I wanna talk about is I wanna tell you about something that happened to me this month, um, last month really, a little over a month ago. It’s a little embarrassing to be honest, but I’m gonna tell you anyway because I think it turned into one of the most useful things perhaps that has happened to me all year, maybe one of the most useful things for my future. Okay? I don’t regret where I’ve been, but I think this more matches where I’m going. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about what do you do when you find out there’s something about yourself that you don’t like? And in my case it was something that I didn’t even really recognize that I was doing, and somebody else saw it before I did, probably a lot of people saw it before I did, and then brought it to my awareness. And so maybe you know exactly what I mean. Like, maybe your sister said, “Oh, my God, you apologize for everything.” Or maybe your grown kids say, like, “Mom, you never say what you want,” you know? Maybe a, a friend at dinner laughed and said, “Oh, my God, you always do that thing.” And then everybody laughed, and you laughed. And then you went home, and you laid awake, , staring at the ceiling thinking about it. And, you know, it stings a little bit. It stings, I think, in a very specific way. It’s not like being criticized for something that you knew about. It is being shown something that you didn’t know was there. And for me, that thing was cursing. I know. I know. I’m embarrassed to say it. Ugh. I cursed, a lot apparently. I had… I, I literally had no idea, you guys. , I, I knew that I would curse every once in a while. Uh, lots of times I think I would throw it in, like, for humor. But I didn’t realize it was in my day-to-day, , just conversations and how I talked. And so listen in to this episode, because this episode isn’t really about cursing, it’s about what happens when the world hol- holds up a mirror and you don’t really love it. You don’t love what you see. And it’s about the fact that you get to decide what you do with that. I met this woman over a weekend. I had, I had just met her, and we ended up spending a couple days together, and I liked her so much. You know when you meet somebody as a grown woman and you think, “Oh, I really like… I want her in my life”? That’s how I felt about her. And at some point during those couple days, she mentioned cursing, and then towards the end she talked about it, and she talked about how she didn’t like it when people cursed a lot, and she said that it made her uncomfortable And, , she talked about that. But that was it. That was, like, the whole thing. She wasn’t mean about it. She didn’t say, “You curse a lot.” She didn’t say anything like that, but she was just telling me something about a preference about herself, the way that you do when you’re getting to know somebody. And I knew, I… , i knew without a doubt that she was telling it to me for a specific reason. I knew she was talking to me. Now, I wanna slow down this just for a little bit, because the,, the part that actually got me was I knew she was telling me that she didn’t like it that I cursed. Like, it was very clear, and it was clear to the person I was with, but I didn’t know that I had been cursing. So if you had asked me that morning, like, “Betsy, do you curse a lot?” I would’ve said, , “No, I don’t think so. I mean, sometimes, maybe.” For somebody that … I’m gonna say it like this, for somebody that prides herself on being self-aware, and I think I’m extremely self-aware, I truly do, I had very, very little awareness of this. And so it, it was shocking and unknowing that she was talking about me. And so the second she said it, I knew it was about me. You know, maybe it was her tone. I don’t even know what it was, but I knew. And it wasn’t like, “Oh, you’re just paranoid and you think everything’s about you.” No. So both of those things were true at once. I, I didn’t know I was doing it, and I knew for sure I was doing it. Have you ever had that, where somebody says something and your whole body goes, “Oh my God, this is about me”? But your brain is like, “Are you sure?” So, you know, I think there’s a point where, , your mind kinda wants to argue and your mind wants to say, “No, she could mean anybody.” But there’s also this part of you that already knows and is not confused by this at all. Ugh and I pay a lot of attention to that part of us in my work. It’s the part that knows things before we’re ready to say them out loud, right? And in that moment, it was very, it was very clear. Now, there are times, I know I’m talking to my dad, and I recognize that I curse, and I think to myself, “I just cursed. Also, I’m a grown woman, so it’s okay.” And there are times where I have conversations and I curse. It does sound like I curse a lot now, doesn’t it? There, when I curse, and I know it’s for effect. I know it’s, like, to make a joke or to… Okay? But in my day-to-day, like, regular speaking, I don’t know that I think about it. Okay, so I know some of you might be thinking, , “What? What’s her issue?” Like, who gets bothered by a little cursing, right? And, and you can think that if you want. You know, some people curse, and it’s part of their charm, I like to think, and I love that for them. And some people don’t curse at all. Both are totally fine. I once shared a meme in my stories on Instagram. A meme, so I didn’t write it. I shared it to my stories, and somebody reached out and said, “Please no cursing.” And I remember I got really defensive. And people tell me stuff all the time, and I don’t get all that defensive, but I remember I got really defensive, and I said, and I said something to her, which I’m so embarrassed I even said this. But I said, “I don’t tell you what to do.”, That’s my whole thing. I don’t tell you what to do. Don’t tell me what to do. It felt, I felt, um, weirdly triggered by it because, ’cause underneath I think there was this thing. Even though I didn’t write that thing, I knew that thing was how I would speak, right? So you know, some people curse, some people don’t. Both are fine. That’s not really the point, and, and it wasn’t really the point for me either. The point was that it made me stop and look because I didn’t like what I saw, and it wasn’t about her. It was about the picture of myself that she offered to me. And I, it, it made me so uncomfortable. So, so what do you do with a great big beautiful moment of self-awareness? I spiraled, you guys., I got home, I, I, uh, for four or five days, like I thought about it. I, I replayed it in my head. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I was embarrassed. I was in shock, honestly. I, I, I was simultaneously like mad at her for saying something, and, and mad at myself for not noticing. And then I was mad at the fact that I was mad. I wanted to do the whole weekend over and start over. I wanted to go back and be the version of me who didn’t do that. Then I wanted to like reboot my entire life. I, I, I, I wanted to go back to when I was 15. Like

  2. Oct 22

    440: What Are You Looking For?

    Your subconscious mind is very powerful and it can work for you if you train it. In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy shares five ways to uncover the hidden beliefs that steer your decisions about your marriage, career, and life. She closes with a simple daily practice to help you re frame your mind, that starts with “show me what is true.” The message here is without a little training, your brain may only be showing you one side. 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, fellow adventurers. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today So I wanted to talk today, which first of all, we are officially relaunching the show after 10 years, and I say relaunching. What’s different? There’s gonna be new podcast art. We’re doing this on video, so you can watch this on YouTube, and the episodes will be longer. So you’ll start noticing over the next few weeks these episodes becoming longer and longer. I got a lot of feedback from people that they really wanted a little bit longer episode, and I thought, “You know what? I’ve been doing it one way for 10 years. Let’s mi- let’s mix it up just a little bit.” So, okay. So I wanna talk about something that I have … A little magic from the universe is what I wanna talk about. Every morning, I go for a walk, and I take the same walk essentially. Th- there’s a couple different routes that I take. Sometimes it’s like an infinity sign the way that I do it. Sometimes it’s a circle, but the same w- routes every single day, and I have for years. I’ve lived in this place for years, and I lived just up the road for several years. So I’ve been walking the same path, the same sidewalk, the same trees, the same houses, the same cracks in the concrete, you know? And some days, I will switch up which sides of the street I go on, and some days, I will go reverse order. So it just depends on how I’m feeling. Some days, I do it all jigjaggity all over the place because I wanna keep my brain a- alert, keep my brain awake, and sometimes I’m not sure how long I wanna walk, and then once I get going, then I do a couple extra loops around. But essentially, it is the same walk. I could do it with my eyes closed. And so for the last week or so, I have been doing, I’m gonna say a little experiment. But it’s kind of, you know, just like you, life gets hard at times, and things are stressful, and I’m managing a lot of things, and I live alone. And although there are some really magical things about living alone, I highly recommend, th- it also can be a bit isolating, but also there’s like a co-regulation that happens when you live with somebody. Hopefully, you live with somebody that’s regulated and can help you co-regulate. But I think that’s one of the benefits of partnership, ? And I don’t have that, and although I have close friends that I spend time with, lots of times that’s on the weekends, and during the week it can feel a little bit isolating. And so in the mornings, I have been asking the universe, because I totally believe in asking the universe for,, something specific that you really want. Like I ask the universe, you know, I did an episode, my birthday episode, not the Q&A one, but it was, like, the one after that where I talked about going down to Florida, and I talked about how I asked my mother, angel mother, I asked the universe I want a birthday present from her. And, and voila, if you listen to that episode, that’s kind of a magical little story. So this past couple weeks, probably about, for about three weeks, I have asked the universe, , “Show me that I am loved.” And I have to say, you know, I feel like I get a lot of, interaction with people, like, online, and I, I, I’m not gonna lie, that is, it’s really nice. I feel like some, lots of times it’s, like, the same people that I kinda see in my inbox on Instagram, and I feel a, a connection to them. I know they listen to the show, they interact. We kinda get to know each other in that way. And so it is always nice when someone says, “I love your outfit,” . but it’s different than if you had somebody in your home, you know? It’s different than if you had somebody that was a friend that you met up with to get nachos. You know what I mean? So I have been asking, show me that I’m loved. , That’s it, just show me that I am loved. And I think my job in this is to be looking for proof, but also open to all the ways that that could happen. It doesn’t have to happen from a husband that comes in, you know? I had that, and it, I, I I had that, and it didn’t ever feel, it didn’t ever really feel like I was loved. So it, it could come from anything. It could come from seeing a friend and seeing a big, huge smile on their face. For a little while when I would see friends, for the first time if I hadn’t seen them in a couple weeks, just ’cause life and that’s how life is when you’re an adult, right? But I would turn on my video recorder on my phone. God love them for not being mad at me for this, but I would wanna see their face the moment they saw me. , I met my friend Elizabeth at a farmers market, and her face when she saw me, like, lit up. And, uh, my friend Audra, , her face lit up. , I… So I would take, I would take a little video, and then I would screenshot their face. I have it in a little album on my phone of Happy Friends, I think the album is called. But I know that either they need something, you know, they need to see they were loved, or I need to be a better friend if they don’t look ha- if they’re like, “Hi.” Like… So I want, I want them, I, I lo- I feel loved when people are happy to see me. That’s a, a way I feel loved. So, all right, so the other day, I’m out on my walk. I’m open to re- receiving love in whichever ways that it comes, but I am saying over and over again, sort of like a mantra, , “Show me that I am loved. Show me that I am loved. Show me that I am loved.” And I’m looking down, ’cause I’m walking, you know? And I live in Atlanta, so the sidewalks can be uneven. So I’m looking up, but I’m also making sure I’m noticing where I’m going. And someone at some point took a minute and wrote in wet cement on the sidewalk. And I was, as I was walking, literally saying to myself in my head, “Show me I am loved. Show me I am loved.” A little cat came up, and I thought, “Oh, maybe this is my little show me I am loved,” ’cause it followed me for a little while. And then I stopped, because someone had written in the wet cement three words, “You are loved.” You are loved. I stopped, I kind of laughed out loud because that … Well, first of all, that is very literal. Show me you are loved. You are loved. The only thing that was missing was Betsy. You are loved, Betsy. But I asked to be shown, and it showed me, like in my exact words, spelled out in concrete. Now, did that message just appear, like out of thin air that morning? Not very likely. Although, we could have a whole discussion about quantum theory and maybe. Is the cat in the box if you don’t see the cat? Like, I, maybe, maybe. But i- i- in the physical reality that I live in, , I would say cement doesn’t work that way. That writing has probably been there for a really long time. Or, the, the concrete looked maybe a year old, right? But I have likely walked past it dozens and dozens of times. And so why did I see it that day? And that is what this episode is about. Because I think that this is one of the most important things that you can really understand about your own mind, especially if you’re in the middle of a big decision about your life, or your job, or your marriage. Your brain is gonna show you evidence of what you believe. And so I wanna kinda dive into what’s actually happening here. So, l- let’s, let’s pause for a second, and I wanna just talk about what your brain is actually doing on, in every moment. So every second your brain is taking in a lot of information, and way more than you could consciously handle, right? It’s taking in like the temperature, the sounds, , the feeling of your clothes against your body, um, every word on every sign that you pass. Like you have had to be aware of all of it unconsciously in order for it to come to you consciously. But if you had to be aware of it all consciously, you couldn’t function, okay? So your unconscious mind has to take it in and process it, so your brain filters. It filters it, and it does it in about three different ways. It deletes, and it distorts, and it generalizes. So deleting is just like what it sounds like. Your brain just decides something isn’t relevant and so it never makes it to your conscious awareness. It’s just kinda like hanging out there. Y- you know, it’s like you just don’t get the memo. If you’re watching this on YouTube, maybe you didn’t notice I have a little pillow and something else right there. I don’t know what that little white thing is. Oh, it’s a little book, a little notebook. You might not have noticed it. I didn’t notice it when I started ’cause my brain deleted it. It wasn’t important, you know? Wasn’t important. And so how does your brain decide what is relevant? It is largely by what you already believe and what you’re looking for. So before last week, you are loved written in a sidewalk wasn’t really relevant to me. Deleted, right? The moment I started asking, it became relevant, and then it became available to me, right? I, I could go down a whole rabbit hole here ’cause I do wonder,

  3. Oct 12

    439: Introduction to Joy

    You are made of stars. How about THAT? You’re what thousands of women before you held on for. Joy isn’t something that you have to go find. It’s never left you. It’s been right here the whole time just waiting for you to notice that you’re still breathing. So take the joy out of the waiting room. Notice it today, and then do it again tomorrow, and again the next day, and again the next day. What a great listen this week everyone, enJOY it! 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. Good morning. So we’re gonna do the show today , with with a lot of hopes and prayers that Dean Martin can be quiet. Gosh, he’s so chatty today. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but there’s nothing that makes me wanna jump right out of my skin more than a c- cat that’s overly talking. So sometimes when I get going, that calms him down. So we’re gonna, fingers crossed for this one. So I’ve been thinking about the show and really what I wanna talk about this week, and, – Years ago, I went and saw a speech by Rob Bell. It was called Introduction to Joy. And so I thought, you know what? Maybe I do my own introduction to joy. I actually think about that talk a lot. I don’t know that I remember specifically what he said, but I do remember him saying, “Life is but a vapor.” And then he sprayed a spray bottle of water, and I remember the lights and the way that it reflected. You could just see the spray and how it just went away, and it left such an impression in my brain. And so I thought, , maybe you have never had a proper introduction to joy. I have been spending some time with somebody, and I think I told you. I, you know, months ago, when I was doing the dating episodes, and I talked about dating, and, and how I had met somebody that was nice. And y- we were talking about things that make you happy, and things that… R- r- like how I see the world. And,, I think it’s been a little challenging for me, because I’m realizing, uh, I, I’m gonna say it like this, but I’m realizing maybe I’m a little weird in the kind of things that I think about. And I don’t know. I feel like if you’re here, you’re probably a little weird, too in the kind of things you think about. So if you were never properly introduced to joy, or if you have thought about all the things, and you wanna hear about all the things I have thought about it, then welcome. Welcome to today’s show. , I bought some tickets to some things that are,, at the Fox Theater here in Atlanta. So there’s this old, beautiful, beautiful theater here in Atlanta, and they have, like, a lot of Broadway shows and things like that that come. But they have a couple different events, well, a lot of different events at Christmastime, but a couple that I really wanna go to, and one of them is Mannheim Steamroller. Steamroller? Is that what it is? You know, they do, like, the Christmas music. They come just once a year, and I never get tickets, and then I’m always sad about it, and so I got tickets. And I was thinking about it, because, , Christmastime, we think about joy. We see the words. I think I have the words, like, in, in little wooden letters that I put on my mantle, or now in my apartment I put by my TV. We sing about it, you know? We see it on greeting cards and coffee mugs, but I don’t think anybody ever sat us down and said, “Okay, here’s what joy actually is.” So- I, I thought maybe this is an opportunity to do that. And, , as I’m doing this, I love the word joy, but also if you have been here for a little while, you know Joy works for me. Joy is her name, and she works for me, so I know as she’s listening to this she’s getting triggered ’cause I ke- I keep saying her name. But I always wished that was my name. Why isn’t my name Joy? It’s so good. It’s so good. So here’s what we’re gonna do. Get you some coffee. If you’re on a walk, keep walking. This one might be a little bit longer, and I think I just have a lot to say. Okay. So here’s what I see in so many of the women that I work with, and I’m gonna say it like this too, I preface everything that I talk about with I am the woman that I worked with, right? I, I once was the version of the woman that I work with. I mean, that’s why I do the work I do. I was talking with Elizabeth, who’s one of the coaches in my program, the other day, and she said something about let this pain that she went through, and I went through, and everyone that works at the Navigate Method has been through. But she said, “Make this pain have meaning.” Ah, and I, I really liked that. I mean, that’s why we do what we do. So I am the version, or once was the version, of the woman that I work with. And I think that when I see those women, so many of them are putting joy in a waiting room. You think, , “I will have access to that once the kids are settled,” or once a decision is made, or when the divorce is final, when the house is paid off, when you lose enough weight to be worthy of it, you know? When your mom is doing better, when everyone else is okay. And joy has become the reward that you get after you finish taking care of everybody. And y’all, the waiting room is full. It’s full of y’all. It has been full for a long, long time. So I wanna ask you this, and I want you to just answer, with the first thing that comes to your mind, but when was the last time that you felt joy without immediately thinking about what you should be doing instead? And I also am curious if, when I said, “When was the last time you felt joy?” if you were like, “I don’t exactly know if I know what it is.” I think most of us can’t remember when we felt it. We don’t know that we’ve ever felt it, ’cause we’re not totally sure what it is. How is joy different from happy or kind or good or any of those things? And I think we have gotten really good at,, being responsible. I think we’ve gotten really good at holding it all together, and then joy got sort of filed under, like, a later tab or, like, a when we have time, or the holidays, right? … joy became just the thing that we talk about and we write inside our Christmas card. So today, I wanna take joy out of the waiting room, and I wanna give it back to you. I saw something on Instagram a couple months ago, and I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’ve brought it up to, i’m we’re gonna call him T. I’ve brought it up to T, the guy that I’ve been dating. , In any given day, around 170,000 people die. So yesterday, 170,000 people died all around the world in one day, and 170,000 more are gonna die today. It’s about two people every second, so,, while I’ve been talking to you, a couple hundred people have taken their last breath. Some of them had dinner plans. Some of them had a trip booked. Some of them were gonna call their sister back this weekend. And some of them were gonna finally say the thing that is true, finally make the decision, finally take the class, or buy the red coat, or write the book. And you, you woke up. And I, you know, I don’t say this to be morbid or to make you nervous. I, I’m just saying it ’cause it’s true, and we forget it. We walk around like being alive is just the default setting, like it’s owed to us in some way, like there’s always gonna be another morning, and it isn’t owed. Not one of these mornings is owed to us. We’re owed nothing. You’re here today. You got this morning, and this coffee, and this moment to listen, and this breath today. And you might be like, “Well, I’m too young.” And likely you have known people who are young that died. I think about my mom. She died when she was 41 in a car accident. She didn’t expect that. She had plans. She had things left undone. She had thoughts she hadn’t expressed, ideas of things she wanted to do or share. Don’t you think that changes how today feels, knowing that 170,000 people didn’t get this moment? And then, of course, my brain jumps to there’s at least 170,000 people that miss whoever didn’t make it through yesterday. So I w- I want you to sit with it, but like I said, not in a heavy way, more like if you were kinda tapped on the shoulder and said, “Hey. Hey there. You’re still here. What do you wanna do with it? What do you wanna do?” And so let’s go back just a little bit further, because for you to be sitting here listening to this, your mother had to meet your father, right? I know you know that. I know you’ve heard that. But the right time, right place, and then your grandmother had to meet your grandfather o- on both sides. So I wanna pause for a second ’cause your brain might be like, “Well, yeah, I mean, they met somebody.” They had to meet the exact people for you, for you to be here. Then your mother had to meet your father, your grandmother had to meet your grandfather on both sides. Those specific people, in order for you to be here in the way that you are right now listening. If you go back 10 generations, you have over 1,000 direct ancestors. If you go back 20, it’s over a million people, and every single one of them had to survive long enough to have a child. Through wars, I don’t know, famine, plagues. We’ve lived through the plague. Through winters with no heat, childbirth without any hospitals, and not one of them broke the chain, not one. There were women in your family line who kept going when they had every reason to stop, women who buried children and kept living, women who had no choice at all and still found a way. And all of that, th

  4. Oct 1

    438: Preparing For the Next Version

    Where are you saying yes when you mean no? Where are you pretending something is fine because it would be really darn inconvenient if it wasn’t? We have all been there. We know exactly the moment that we make these realizations, but what if you didn’t bury them? What if you spent some time designing a plan or asking yourself ‘who am I, who do I want to become?’ It’s pretty exciting to think about… 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, fellow adventurers. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. So, uh, it’s October. How is it October already? I swear to God, it just was, like, March, but now here we are I usually get up in the morning, and I love going for a long walk, and I get to see all the kids. I live next door to a school, so the apartment building where I live is next door to an elementary school. And although there are a lot of car drop-offs, a majority of the people, I would say a majority, a lot, many many of the people bring their kids to school on bikes. And so there is a bike bus around here. There’s a ton of bikes that come in where kids are riding their bikes and the parents are riding next to them. There is a, a way bigger majority of bikes with, the kids on the bikes. Do you know what I mean? Like, on the back or whatever. Uh, or, like, even carts that people are, like, pushing in front of the bike. So there is b- bike kids everywhere. I don’t know, there’s something really magical about walking in the morning, and where I walk is, like, a lot of trees and overhang, and it’s so pretty, and it feels good right now ’cause the air is getting a little cooler and all the kids are biking. I don’t know, it’s just happy. About a week ago I was walking and I, I got, like, a little teary because I was like… You know sometimes you’ll look back on your life and you’ll be like, “That time of my life was so cool”? Well, I got a little teary ’cause I was like, “Oh, I, I’m in it. I’m like, I’m in it.” This will be a time that I look back and go, “Oh, that time of my life was so cool.” And I won’t always live in this apartment, you know. I’m thinking now about when my lease runs out, buying a townhouse or something. I know things will change, and life changes as it does, but it’s really fun to have those moments where you’re like, “Oh, this is so good.” So I’m enjoying the chillier air, even though, even though it means winter is coming. But it is October, and as the weather starts to change, I think I start thinking about, you know, like, all the… I think it’s because it’s school time. You know when school goes back in session, then you’re like, “I get to refresh. I get to think about things.” And I’ve talked about this on the show so many times, but I love, I love a good Monday morning. I love the start to a new month. I love New Year’s resolutions,, I really do. And I have a practice that I’ve done a couple times a year for the past many years, and typically I’ll do it around my birthday. I like to do it in May because it’s sort of a reset, you know, for my, my next year around the sun. But I also like to do it at New Year’s time. But right about now is when I start thinking Are the things I put in place in May, are those things happening? But even more importantly, I start thinking about January. Because I don’t believe January starts in January. Like, if we want change for 2027, if you’re like, “I am not living 2027 the way I have lived 2026 or 2025 or 2022,” whatever it is, then I think it has to start now. I think that making shifts right now gets us in position to catapult ourselves forward in January, and we don’t have to. You don’t have to. So everything I’m saying, if you’re like, “Oh my God, I don’t want one more goal,” you don’t have to. This is, this is just me just being honest with who I am. Who I am and what I want. And so I wanna talk about that a little bit today I will say that some of the biggest shifts that I have had in my own life didn’t actually start on January 1st. They started in October or November, probably early October, you know, sitting down with a notebook when I finally let myself be really honest about who I was and what I wanted. And so today I wanna tell you what I’m actually working on right now in the fall so that when January gets here, I am ready for it. All right. So this is what I hear from women all the time, and maybe this is something that you have said, maybe it’s something that you’ve said this week, , is like after the holidays, like we’re already getting into… It’s almost Halloween. I, I said– I’m actually recording this at the very end of September, and I said the other day, “It’s almost Halloween. Once Halloween is here, then Thanksgiving’s here, and then Christmas is here, and then it’s all over.” You know? And so I’ll just think about that in January, or I’ll put that on my January list, you know? Once the new year starts, then I’m gonna get really serious about all this. I’m gonna, I am gonna really show up come January. And, you know, that might be about your marriage. I know I had said that many times. You know, it might be about your health. It might be about working out. It might be about your business. It might be about friendships that you wanna reevaluate, maybe things that have been draining you for a long time, or a house you don’t wanna live in anymore. Like, whatever it is, you know? You’ve already picked the date. You’ve decided January is when things are gonna be different. Or as you kinda go along and things come up in your mind, you’ll be like, “Oh, that’ll be a good resolution thing.” It’s kinda like when my kid will say they want something. By, by this time of the year if they’re like, “I really want those shoes,” or I re- I’m like, “Well, that would be a good Christmas pre- Christmas present. Christmas is three months away, but it’s okay. That’s… I’m gonna put that on your Christmas list.” And I think we do that sometimes with ideas of things that we want for our life. When we put it into the future, I think it creates a bubble of possibility that feels really good. We don’t have to fail, and it can stay intact and h- a happy thought, something that is available to us, although not something that we’re working on right now. And, you know, I think that if you’ve decided that January 1st is when you’re gonna start working on some things that you have in mind, I want you to just think about what happens between now and then. And I know there is something a little magical about January 1st, I’m not gonna lie. But I think that when I think about January 1st, I think about, like, the changes that I wanna be in, the changes I wanna make, requires a different version of me than the version of me right now. Otherwise, I would already have those things. And so from now until January is my time to become the kind of person who… Right? And I think that’s when magic can actually happen in January. So let’s talk about these dates, okay? January 1st, after my birthday, you know, when the kids are settled, after the, , holiday season, right? Once things calm down. And those things can feel really important, I think so. You know? They can feel like a plan, like you have done some responsible thing and scheduled your change ahead of time, and I think that feels important, right? It feels like a plan. And so most of the time, though, I wanna offer you the thought that you’re giving a reason to put it off so that you don’t have to feel it right now. And I say that with so much love because I have done that. Every woman I’ve ever worked with has done that. Prob- every woman has done it, every human. Your brain is really good at this, right? So it finds a date that seems reasonable, and it lets you feel like you’re doing something without actually having to do it yet. And so in this, you could just ask yourself what, what specifically is gonna be different in January that isn’t true right now? And I think the honest answer is, is probably nothing, other than it’s like a fresh start. The, the busy holidays are over. And I think that when we really look at that, that date isn’t a plan, it’s just more waiting. It’s just m- , like a validation that you can put it off more. I don’t know. You know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say this. I kind of am inter- interrupting my, my flow here, but, , there are times when we need to put things off. There are times where we cannot focus on things that we can’t focus on, and there’s also times where we know we’re just putting off the inevitable, where we know there’s something we could be doing that would make our life different or better, and that’s what this is about. If you have something in mind, whatever it is, that you’re like, “That would make my life better, but I’m waiting-” And, you know, if you’ve been here for a long time, you’ve heard me talk about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, and your conscious mind is a goal setter, right? It’s the part of you that says, “I really want this, and I really don’t want that.” It, it makes a list, right? It’s the thing that, like, writes the New Year’s resolution thing. Your unconscious mind is the goal getter. It’s the part of you that’s actually running your habits and your reactions and your patterns. You know, it’s doing most of the work in your life. It, it is. You’re… Consciously, you’re really doing

  5. Sep 22

    437: 10 Year Anniversary Episode

    Looks like she made it, look how far she’s come! This episode marks a decade of The Art of Living Big, and in it, Betsy shares 5 things she has learned during that time. Well, let’s say she narrows the many things down to 5 stand outs. She asked me (Joy) to edit some of the ending but as you listen, you will know why I couldn’t. We don’t need to be shielded from emotion, because as we have learned from Betsy, that is where the real connection is made and when we get to see our growth. Speaking of connection, we really hope to see you in Punta Cana in January for the next retreat! Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. Okay, so you already saw the title, so you know. This is a really special show, probably not as special to you as it is to me, but we, you and I, have been doing this show for ten years. Ten years. I mean, ten years is a decade. It’s a whole lot of change. When I started this show, I was in my 40s, early 40s. I had just sold my CrossFit gym. I was married. I owned a house out in the suburbs. I mean, I’ve moved many times. I’ve been to… on lots of trips to many countries, changed a lot , grown a lot. So many things. Ten years of me sitting down with a microphone every week and talking to you. And I’ve been thinking, you know, about what to say for a couple of weeks now because I wanted this to be something good, you know? Something that was worthy of ten years. And I kept trying to write things out or think about, like, this big anniversary episode, and maybe I would have clips from earlier episodes and, and then I ran into all kinds of issues with that. And then I thought maybe it’s an episode where I tell you everything that I’ve ever thought that I never said. And then I thought, you know, I’ve gotten a lot of lessons over the last ten years. Lessons about podcasting or life or business or whatever. And when I really, really sat with this, the only thing that I actually wanted to say is, what I’m about to say, and I’m gonna cry probably when I say it but you, you were never abstract to me. Not once. Not in 10 years. I never sat down to talk, like, to an audience. I’m using air quotes. I ne- I never once pictured a number or a download or a, a abstract person. I, I pictured you. I pictured one person, usually in your car or walking or standing in front of the sink with headphones on because it was the only, you know, 10 minutes that you got to yourself every day. And there’s so many… I’m gonna cry. There’s so many episodes where I wanted to hold your hand when I talked. You know, I wanted to have coffee with you. I wanted to hear what was really important to you. And so in this episode, I thought maybe the best way to do, a 10-year episode , is to say that and to let you know how important it’s been to me that you’ve been here with me. And I wanted to share with you some things that I have learned in the last 10 years, and every single one of these things is actually about you. So I’ve got five things. So my first lesson here we go here. You have to start where you can start. So here’s the thing that I think most of you don’t know is that the first 50 or so episodes on this show were me interviewing people. I just reached out to people I liked, and I interviewed them. That’s all I did. And those episodes don’t even exist anymore. You, you can’t find them. They’re gone. If you went looking right now, and I did, I went to look, the, the archive just starts later after those episodes. And for a long time, I felt kind of embarrassed about that. Like, oh, well, in the beginning of my show, it did exist, but now it’s just gone. And the sound was bad, and I was interviewing people a lot of it was about business, I think I was interviewing other people because I , did not believe I had anything to say. But that’s not actually what was happening. What was happening is that I started where I was really comfortable. I couldn’t start with my own voice yet. I wasn’t there yet. And so I started with somebody else’s voice because that was the door that opened into this podcast room. And so I had to do it like that. I had to sit in that chair like 50 times before I could sit in the chair and do it alone. And nobody tells you that the first version of the thing is allowed to be a bridge. It doesn’t have to be the destination. It’s not even supposed to look like the destination. It’s just supposed to get you up from where you are to where you can see the next step. And so I want you to think about your own life for just a second and where you’re waiting to start until you can start the right way. Because 50 episodes that no longer exist, which is almost a year, that’s the reason this show exists. That had a bad sound. You could hear me breathing. I used to get feedback from people on iTunes. Like, “I really like her show, but I can’t stand the breathing,” the nervous questions, like the whole thing. That was the tuition that it cost me to get in the room with you And we don’t get to skip that part, and I don’t think I would have wanted to. It got me so much more comfortable, and it helped me know what I wanted to talk about, and it showed me how much I actually had to share. , It was such a great bridge, and you have that in your life, too. Okay. Lesson number two is, that I am the worst judge of my own work. Okay. So some of my very, very favorite episodes, the ones that I worked the hardest on, the ones where I thought, “Oh my God, this one is so good,” those are not the ones that you guys really liked. They’re not the ones that you guys wrote to me about. The ones that you wrote to me about are the ones that I almost didn’t publish. I have episodes where I got up in the middle of the night at, like, 2:00 in the morning and took it off auto-publish for the morning, ’cause you know we post them in the morning on Thursdays. And so I would set it up, and then I would get this, like, feeling of like, “Oh, my God, I don’t know if this is any good.” Those were the episodes that you loved, right? There have been episodes where I hit record on some random morning. I did… Do you remember I did a series of episodes where I was like, “I have no idea what I’m gonna say. I’m gonna turn on the mic and see what comes through from the divine “? And it was always something good. It’s when I just said what was actually on my mind, and then I sat there afterwards thinking, like, “I have such a vulnerability hangover. That was too much,” or, “That was too small,” or, “That was something nobody will care about.” And then, you know, four years later, I get a message from a woman who said, “Hey, I just listened to that one, and I sat there in my driveway and I cried. And then I went inside and said the thing that I’ve been wanting to say.” And she heard that one years later. And so what I have learned is that we are a terrible judge of our own work, right? I bet you are a terrible judge of yours, too. And the thing that you think is unremarkable about you is actually the thing that somebody else really needs. The part of your story that you’re embarrassed by is the part that makes somebody else feel less alone. You know, we just can’t see ourselves from the from the outside. I, I just don’t think that’s how it works, which is why you have to put the thing out anyway. Like, not because you’re sure, but because you can’t be sure. And so that is not a real option. We’re never gonna be certain, and you’re never gonna be a good judge because it’s too close to you Okay. All right, lesson three. You’re allowed to change the whole thing. This show is not what you thought it was. In the beginning, it was about all kinds of things, adventure, and business, and mindset, and living big in a big, huge, wide, general, very generic way. And as my life has changed, the work that I do has changed, and I started spending my days with, with women who were making really big decisions, and eventually women who were sitting inside a marriage trying to figure out whether to stay or whether to go, women who were exhausted from being agreeable. You know, women who have disappeared, I think, a little bit, you know, a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit over time, over a lot of years, and they can’t quite trace themselves back to when that started. And so the show got more specific, you know? And I know some people left. They did. When you get specific, some people go, and that is genuinely okay because the women who stayed got something, I think, a little bit better, and they got a show that was actually about them. And here’s the thing that I want you to take away from that is that you are allowed to change the whole thing. You’re allowed. You’re allowed to be 10 years into something and saying, “Eh, this isn’t it anymore. I’m not gonna keep performing a version of this that used to be true.” That’s not quitting. That’s paying attention. That’s listening to yourself. That’s moving forward. And I think a lot of times we get confused because we have been taught that consistency means never changing your mind about anything. But consistency isn’t about staying the same. It’s about continuing to show up really honestly, even when being really honest looks different than it did before. I remember how hard it was to say on here that I had finally left my marriage. Do you know if you listened in the very beginning, at the end of every podcast my former h

  6. Sep 10

    436: What Do I Tell The Kids?

    Honestly, to announce this week’s episode of The Art of Living Big, we just want to say LISTEN. This one addresses one of the most common questions women ask themselves and ask Betsy. She offers new ways to evaluate this situation; understand what children are actually living in, and how they read tension at home. Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show today. Okay, so today, I’m gonna do a show,, I’m gonna say, I’m gonna say it like, like this. Today, I’m gonna do a show that I don’t wanna do. I know. It’s not that I don’t wanna do it, it’s that I know it’s tricky, and sometimes it’s hard to do a show on something that’s tricky because things in life are so nuanced. So we can move forward together and do this show with the understanding that things are nuanced. This might or might not apply to you in your situation. You’re allowed to disagree with me. I’m not the overarching truth of all, of all truths. I’m offering some thoughts and some new perspectives here. So what I wanna talk about is about when you stay in a marriage for the kids, and I get messages, I get a lot of messages about this. And there is this version of one message that I get sort of over and over again, like a couple times, I was gonna say a couple times a week, but sometimes it’s a couple times a day, you know, who, from people on Instagram or, or, you know, people who found the podcast and then they go to Instagram. And they’re, they’re very careful in how they write these messages to me, and I can see,, I can feel all the pain behind it. And what they say is either, like, “I’m ready to go. I, I want to leave my marriage,” or, “I just decided to leave, and now we have to tell the kids,” or, “We told the kids, and it isn’t really what I wanted. It’s not how I wanted things to go. You know, even though I know in my heart of hearts this is the right choice for me, it’s really painful because I don’t know if it’s the right choice for my kids.” And that’s the one that I hear all the time. And, you know, before I go any further, I wanna pause. I wanna pause for just a moment because I’m, I’m coming in here, m- you know, as a, as a trained master coach. I’m coming in here as a podcast host that’s had a podcast for 10 years. I’m coming in here as a woman who actually left a marriage with a four-year-old. So I have done this also, and I know that it’s not easy. I could tell you a, a lot of success stories. I could tell you my own success story. My son’s dad is truly one of my closest friends. It’s not that I talk to him all the time. He’s remarried and has kids that are young teenagers now, but, but when we talk, I know he’s known me, like, the longest of almost anyone I know. He’s known me since I was in my 20s, and so… And he’s the father to my kid. And so, you know, years ago, he was on the podcast, and we, we removed a lot of podcasts that were interviews from early on. We did, like, a lot of interviews, , business people or o- other things that weren’t really relevant, and a lot of those people didn’t even have their businesses anymore, so it just wasn’t relevant. But I did a podcast with him, and I should bring that one back as, like, a special event. He’d probably come on today and talk, but I- I will do that. Th- you’ll see a podcast that will pop up that won’t be at the regular time, and we’ll just put that one in between because I think sometimes when we have evidence that things don’t have to go sideways, even if they start sideways, they don’t have to end sideways, that things can get better and be better. So, but I wanna get back to these messages that I get, right? So, you know, the last part is always like, even though I know, like in my heart of hearts I know this is the thing, I, I feel terrible about it. And so- You know, in those messages, I hear, like, two things sort of that are sitting right next to each other. One is, she knows, and she feels sick about it, and both of those can be true at the same time. They don’t cancel each other out. And, and, and here’s another thing that I wanna say before anything else. I had a lot of… This episode comes to you with a lot of disclaimers. But the other thing that I wanna say is, is guilt is not evidence. Guilt is not a signal that you made the wrong decision. Guilt very often shows up when a woman does something for herself after a prolonged time period of not doing that. So your body does not know the difference between wrong and unfamiliar. It just knows that this is not what we usually do here. So we’re gonna have this talk today about the kids, and I wanna be really careful about how I do it. And so I’m not gonna be telling you what to do. Like, I don’t know your marriage. I’ve never met your husband. I have never sat at your kitchen table on a Saturday night and watched what happens, you know, when he comes in in the afternoon. And, , a- and I’m not here to hand you any kind of verdict. And so if you have been listening to me for any length of time, you know that that is not the work. The work is that you decide. Not me, and not your sister, not your therapist, and you know that. You know that. But what I’m doing today is a little different, and so I want you to just know what you’re getting. I think that a lot of you are running one calculation in your head, and you’ve been running it for a long, long time, and it hurts every time you run it, and you keep running it anyway because you think that is the only calculation that there is So here’s an idea that I use with my clients a lot. I- in this, like, picture, okay? So you are down in the brush, right? You’re lost, okay? You’re lost in it, and you are sure that there is one pathway out, and you have been hacking at that one path so long that your hands hurt. And I’m upstairs, I’m in a helicopter, right? I cannot tell you where to go. I genuinely cannot see your life from up there the way that you can see it from down there. But I can see that there’s more than one path, and that is all I’m doing today, is offering you a couple of other paths, not because your thinking is wrong, but because the way that you’re thinking about it right now does not feel good to you. You’ve told me that in a million messages. I’ve gotten a million messages, and you’ve all said that. And you tell me that in every message, and I believe you. And so Here is the sentence that I hear the most, is people say things like, “We stayed,” or, “I stayed because of the kids.” And I want to ask you something that I think people forget about, and that is what are they staying in? What are they staying in? Because when we say we stayed for the kids, what that usually means is that we kept the house intact. We kept the location the same. We kept the Christmas card looking like the Christmas card, right? But your kids are not living in an address. They are living in a home with two people in it. The kids are the best readers of a room on the entire planet that I have ever met in my life They have to be, ’cause it’s a survival skill. They cannot leave. They cannot pay rent. They cannot drive. And so they get extremely good at reading what’s happening inside that house. And you know this. You know the way your house is when it’s fine, and you know the way it is when it’s not fine. And you know that your kid can tell from the way that you walk in and throw your keys on the counter. So think about what happens to your voice when his car pulls in the driveway. Like, does it change? Does it go up a half a step? Do you get careful? Do you sigh a lot? Do you scramble around and start picking stuff up? Do you jump off the couch if you were sitting down? Because they hear that. They’ve always heard that. They don’t have a word for it. You could ask them about it, and they wouldn’t be able to identify it, but they have years and years of data. And so here’s what I think is the actual thing, is your kids are not learning about divorce from you. They are learning about marriage every single day. You are the template. That is the model in the house, and that is the only one that they have gotten to see up close, likely. They have gotten to see what a woman is allowed to want, whether a woman gets to be tired, whether she gets to be loud or quiet. They get to see what you do when you’re unhappy for a decade, which is apparently nothing. You just get really quiet, according to the messages. And that is their curriculum, you know? Whether you label it that way or not, that’s what they are learning. So the question is, if your daughter came to you when she was 45 years old and described your exact marriage to you, sentence for sentence, right? N- n- just exactly what you are living, and asked you what she should do, what would you say to her? This is not me giving you an answer. This is just a question that I think a lot of us need to ask ourselves. If she came to you, what would you say to her? Right off the top of your head, what would it be? Okay, so now there’s another side of this, and this is something that I also hear a lot, and I wanna say it also very clear, ’cause I think when we hear it out loud, something shifts, right? And here is the fear, and this is a real fear, so it’s not something silly. I’m not making fun of this, okay? But this is what I hear. “If I stay, if I stay, then I’m in the house, then I can see if something negative is happening. I can smooth it ov

  7. Sep 3

    435: The Thing You Almost Said

    On this week’s episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy shares some big news and while doing so, notices her reflex to downplay this news that makes her proud and happy, almost so that it can be smaller. Are you editing your feelings? Are you minimizing your accomplishments to make them more comfortable around others? Betsy shares steps to recognize when we are doing this and advises us how we can turn it around. Also, stay tuned near the end for the announcement of the 2nd retreat! Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. I have had a really busy week. Tomorrow… Well, I’m recording this on a Wednesday. You guys’ll hear it on Thursday. And tomorrow I’m gonna be on NBC. So I did this last year, and I’m recording a couple episodes, doing something live for them for their noontime show. You know how, how cities have, like, their local Atlanta station and then they have, like, a little local show? Whatever. It’s still very exciting, and I’m trying to pick out my outfits, so, that’s my big personal update that I’m doing. But I, I have had this conversation, and in fact, I’ve had this same conversation a couple times with a couple different friends, and I think it kinda came up initially because we were talking about this NBC thing. I know that it’s not- Well, I, I’m about to say something, and what I’m about to say is the exact thing that I’m trying to teach you not to do. Okay? So I noticed that when I was talking about it, I was explaining that, you know, I recognize it’s, it’s not like I’m on Oprah. It’s, it’s the local daytime Atlanta show. Do you see how I tried to make that seem less? Smaller? Just, like, a little bit not as big of a deal? ‘Cause I don’t wanna feel like it’s a great big deal. It’s not that big of a deal. But also, it is, and it’s really fun, and it’s, like, a cool thing that I’m so grateful to be able to do. And I love the host of the show. She’s so fricking cool. And last year when I was on, it was so fun, and it was nice to get the video and to have it for my website, and I’m talking about two different topics, you know, in related to our, our work here. And it, seems exciting. I love to talk about it. We’re gonna talk about when you drop your kids off at college and you have nothing to say to your husband on the way home. And for a recorded episode for later, we’re gonna record a segment on why women are turning to AI. So conversations I really wanna have. So why am I trying to make it smaller? Why am I doing that? And I was talking to this other friend of mine, and we were just, like, catching up, and same kinda thing, and she was talking about some things she was doing and some big trips she was doing, and she tried to make ’em seem a little bit smaller. And a lot of the women that I know are entrepreneurs, because I’ve met them through entrepreneurial groups, and they’re all really successful. Like, I look up to them so much. And this one friend was talking about how she … how much money she makes and what her goal is for the year and some struggles that she was having. And I noticed that she was trying to- Like, uh, dummy it down a little bit, you know? And it was just the two of us. Like, we’re on the same page. We both want her to be wildly successful. And, you know, when she noticed that she’s around people who have less successful businesses or maybe make less money than she does, that she does things to try to make her life sound smaller than it is. She’s not lying, but she’s just not saying it all. She’s, like, editing. You know, trimming down the things she’s getting to do or saying, you know, “It’s not that big of a deal, it’s not Oprah.” I mean, the same things I’m talking about, and it’s so fascinating to me, like, why we do that. And even here when I’m trying to tell you about this and teach you something about it, w- I only te- I always am talking, I am… If you have been here a little while, you know this, but if you’re new here, I am with you on the journey, so I am teaching stuff as I’m learning it or things that I have learned along the way. But this is something that is continuing to come up, and I think a lot of us do this in little and small ways. So I wanna talk to you, and I want you to think about the last time that you, like, almost said something and then you didn’t. And not, I don’t mean something mean, but not something you’d regret, but something that was true. And, you know, maybe it was about how you actually feel about your, about your marriage. Maybe it was about how much money you make or how much you want to make. Maybe it was somebody asking you how you’ve been, and you had a real answer that was, like, right there in your mouth like marbles and you wanted to say it. But instead, you’re like, “You know, it’s been busy. The summer’s busy.” You edited it. Edited? Yeah. You edited it in, like, a nanosecond, and it w- it probably happened so fast that you didn’t even experience that as a decision. And, and, you know, it was an unconscious decision, not really a conscious choice. And the thing that I want you to notice about that is that you didn’t edit it bec- I’ll never get used to saying that word. You didn’t edit it because it wasn’t true. You did it because of how it might sound, and that’s a, different thing entirely So I think we have a word for this. We call it humility. You know, don’t brag, don’t make people uncomfortable, read the room, you know, be, be gracious. Nobody likes a woman who takes up too much space, you know? And look, you know, there is a real version of humility. There is. It’s the thing that keeps you, you curious. It’s knowing that you might be wrong. It’s, it’s not needing to be the center of every room that you walk into. It is a version that is good in that. And so I don’t wanna argue against humility as I just described it. But somewhere along the way, a second thing got handed to us that we call humility, and that second thing isn’t about being curious or being open to being wrong. It’s about being small. It is a version of you that says, “Whatever you have, don’t say it out loud. Whatever it is you want, keep it to yourself. And whatever you are carrying, carry it in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anybody.” And that’s not actually humility. That’s, I don’t know, some really heavy form of management. And so I wanna ask you to ask yourself who exactly is that managing? And here’s how I’ve come to think about it, and I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while. If you guys have been here, you’ve heard me talk about how I read that book,, it’s called The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good. And in that, she talks about the seven deadly sins, how we think those are tied to the Bible, but they’re not. It’s actually tied to the patriarchy, and they are a way to keep us in check, to keep us in line. So a woman who makes herself small is a woman who is easier to be around. She’s easier to be married to. She’s easier to employ. She’s easier to have as a sister or a mother or a friend. She doesn’t disrupt anything, and she takes up exactly the amount of space that’s already been allotted to her and, and doesn’t ask for anything more than that. And that is really useful. It’s, it’s just not useful to her. But it is useful because think about what actually happens when you downplay your life to make someone else comfortable. Nobody gets richer. Nobody gets happier. You know, the, the person that’s sitting there across from you doesn’t feel better about their situation because you shrank yours. All that happens is now there are two people in the room being smaller than they are, because if you stayed big, would they grow to meet you? You didn’t give anybody anything. You just, you just modeled something. And if you have daughters or nieces or younger women that watch you, you know, they, they learned it, too. They learn it quick. We learned it quick, right? And you don’t have to actually name it or, like, say a thing about it. We pick it up And here’s what I want you to think about this, because a lot of you listening are in the middle of a decision about your marriage, right? Some of you have been in the middle of that decision for years. I like to think I’m not alone. When I was in indecision for years and years, and years. But I want you to consider that this same habit is running inside that too. So I want you to think about how you talk about your marriage, like to your friends or to your sister or, you know, even, like in your own head when you’re just, like, going for a walk or you’re in the car all alone. Like, do you say it like it is? Or do you tell it in a way that sounds reasonable? Because there is a really particular thing that I think we do, and I hear it all the time, is that she will describe something that is genuinely painful, and then she’ll immediately follow it up with, “Oh, but he’s a good dad. But it’s not like he’s a bad guy. But I’m sure I’m not easier to live with either, you know? I know a lot of people have it worse.” And, you know, I, I mean, every single one of those things might be true. I think that’s what makes this little pattern so sneaky. Because if you watch what the words are actually doing, it’s, it’s taking the thing that you just said and shrinking it back down to a size that doesn’t require anybody to do anything about

  8. Aug 27

    434: 3 Things I Needed to Know to Redesign my Life

    If the following blurb from this week’s podcast doesn’t hook you, the fact that Betsy closes with an easy exercise that could help you make the change you have been waiting for will. Here it is…’You don’t have to have it all sorted out before you’re allowed to claim it as yours. You can be in the middle of the mess and still build something with an intention and a purpose. You already know what your habit list is, so say it out loud.’ See?? Take a listen and enjoy. Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. All right, so, so today’s episode is, is sort of, I don’t know, specific, I’m gonna say. Aren’t all the episodes specific? But I got a message on Instagram, and, you know, sometimes I’ll get messages, and they are like other messages that I’ve gotten. So it’s easy to do, like, a podcast episode on them because it’s a really common question or a common thing people are going through, or it’s something that I know from my own life, right? And so when I got this question, though, I was like, “Oh, that’s actually a really good question, and I don’t know if anybody’s actually asked me that before.” And so what it was, it, it wasn’t like a coaching question. It was more like a logistics question. So what she wanted to know was she wanted to know how I did it. So she said, “It seems like you’ve rebuilt your life, and it seems really happy. But it also seems like you’ve rebuilt your whole life. How did you know what to build?” I was like, I mean, I didn’t even know what to say, ’cause how do you answer that? How do you… H- how did you know what to build? So, I kept thinking about it, and I thought, you know what? That likely deserves its own episode because the, the honest answer is that I, I did not know. Like, there was no plan. I think sometimes people look at my life now, and they assume that there was some kind of blueprint, and there was not. But there was about a year of me getting it wrong, I say wrong with air quotes, in a bunch of different directions, and so that’s what today is. So today I wanna name you a couple things. Three things I picked, even though I could come up with, like, 15 things, but three things seems like a good amount for a podcast. I wanna give you three things that I wish somebody had said to me at the very beginning of all that, because I think they would have saved me a little bit of time. And honestly, this is the work that I do, right? I went through something, and I wanna save everybody a bit of time by explaining it. And so, you know, I think that when we make a decision, I remember when I made my decision to leave my husband, I gotta tell you, e- every day over the past couple weeks, I’ve been like, “I’m so glad I did that. I’m so glad I did that.” But I think when we get to that place where we make that decision, at least for me it was not this. Like, I don’t even care what happens. I mean, of course I cared, but I don’t even care. It’s just not this. I was fully, fully 100% on board with just living my own life as a single woman, like, happily forever, and that is great for me. You know, will I be single forever? I, I don’t know, but I… That’s the way I wanted to build my life, right? So it wasn’t like, “I’m gonna leave this big hole here for somebody to fill. I’m gonna do everything but this thing and hope somebody else h-” Like, uh-uh. Like, I was gonna f- build my life. I was gonna make my health the way I wanted. I was gonna make my financial life the way I wanted. I was gonna make my home the way I wanted. I was gonna make my friendships the way I wanted. I was gonna make my activities the way I wanted. Like, I was gonna build my life for me. And so here’s the thing If you are sitting somewhere in your house or in your car, I know you’re in your car. You’re sitting in your car in the driveway, but a lot of you do a lot of thinking in your car, and you may have had this feeling that the life that you’re living was designed by somebody that was a, a younger version of you, somebody that you don’t totally recognize anymore. And maybe it’s not a bad life, you know? That sometimes is the part that can get really confusing, because it might not be that anything is, like, wildly on fire. It’s just that when you look around and you look at your calendar and you look at your house and you look at your weekend plans and your friendships, you can trace every single piece of it back to a decision that you made a long time ago for reasons that were probably good reasons, probably good reasons at the time. But now you’re standing in the middle of this, like, midlife, which I kinda hate when we’re, like, midlife. Ugh, like it’s this big thing, but it is. It is. So now you’re standing here, and in the middle of all of this saying, “Would I choose this again?” Right? Would I choose this again? And I know some of you are listening to this from inside a marriage where you have not decided anything, and you are not sure if you want to. You know, redesigning your life is not the same thing as leaving your life. Those are two really different projects, and I don’t think we have to get them all tangled up together. Some of the biggest redesigns that I have ever had in my own life and that I’ve watched other people have happened inside marriages, inside relationships, even inside marriages where people stayed. You know, the- the woman that- that changed everything about how she was living, and she did it without moving out of her house, is a possible, is, it, that is a real thing. So take these three things and put them, like, wherever they fit in your life because I’m not pointing you in any specific direction. Stay, leave, maybe you’re single, like, all the things. Okay. That is my disclaimer ’cause I never tell you what to do. Okay. All right. So the first thing that everybody tells you when your life comes apart or when you decide to take it apart, you know, on purpose, is to get clear on what you want. I had this conversation with somebody the other day, like, being really clear and having a clear vision. You know? Making the list. Do the vision boarding thing. Like, what do you want your life to actually look like? And I sat down with a blank page and that question, and I could not answer it, and I don’t mean, like, I struggled with it, and I don’t mean, like, I wrote a couple things and they weren’t quite right. I mean nothing. Nothing came I just sat there, and there was no big idea, no big yearning or pulling. I just remember thinking, “Ugh.” Like, I just… I’m, I’m getting out of something I knew was a no. No. Hell no. I knew that, but I didn’t know what was next, and I remember thinking, “Oh, is this a problem? Like, is this the problem?” Because I had been answering that question on behalf of other people for so long that I did not have my own answer anymore, and every time I tried to write something down, I could hear how it would sound to somebody else. I could hear my ex, I could hear my family, I could hear the version of me that was supposed to be handling all these things. And so the list that came out started sounding like a woman being really reasonable. It did not come out sounding like me. And, you know, I think a lot of you have had this exact experience, where you thought, “I don’t know what I want, , and, and I can’t get to the core of it, and that must mean something’s wrong. Must mean something’s wrong with me.” You know, like, you’re the woman who can’t figure out what she wants, but that is not it. I don’t think that’s it. If you have spent any amount of time, you know, 20 years, whatever, being the person who gets to make sure that everybody else is okay, of course you cannot produce your want list on demand. Like, that is a skill, to be able to imagine something different. I mean, imagine something different. Like, it’s not just imagining something you’ve seen other people do, okay? So hang with me. You can imagine things that you’ve seen other people do, and you could be like, “Sure, I could see that as being a thing.” But what about imagining something different? Something you’ve never seen anybody do, in the way that you wanna do it. And that skill is a skill, and it’s probably got really quiet ’cause you stopped using it. And so here’s what actually worked, and it, it was the opposite of, like, direction. I stopped asking myself, “What do I want?” And I started asking, “What am I saying yes to out of habit?” Because that was a question that I could answer. I could answer that one immediately. I knew, like, immediately. I was like, “Oh, well that’s a habit. This is a habit. That’s a habit.” And I had a whole list of habits in, like, just a couple minutes. ‘Cause you always know. You know, you know that one. You know the thing on your calendar that you dread, but it’s always there. You know the friendship that you have that you keep just out of loyalty or ’cause you’ve had them for so long, even though you feel like the version of the friendship that actually felt good was gone a long time ago. You notice the way you spend your Sunday afternoons, the things you wanna participate in, the way you keep your house, right? Nobody asked you to keep your kitchen or your bathroom or any of those things the way that they are. So you know exactly what those things are. And I think this is why this works a little bit better, is because you

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About

The Art of Living Big is a weekly podcast for women who are tired of putting everyone else first and are facing a big question: do I stay in my marriage, or do I leave? I’m Betsy Pake, founder of The Navigate Method, and I’ve sat with women in this exact place more times than I can count. For ten years and more than 400 episodes, this show has been where women come to get honest about what’s really going on, what they actually want, and how to make a decision they can stand behind, whichever way it goes. I’ll never tell you what to do. That call is always yours. My job is to help you hear what you already know. You’ll find conversations about people-pleasing, boundaries, fear, trusting yourself, and building a life that feels like yours. If you’re ready for real help with your decision, come talk with my team: betsypake.com/letstalk

Information

  • Creator
    Betsy Pake
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    332
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Betsy Pake
  • Show Website
    The Art of Living Big

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