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Betsy Chasse is a filmmaker, bookmaker and changemaker. She creates media that inspires you to have thoughtful conversation and transformation.
Her current projects include:
Empty Womb: A documentary on life without children. It’s a raw look at the feelings surrounding the inability to have children of your own and the disappointment of failed IVF.
Radical Dating: A documentary following 5 singles on their journey to find love after 40.
Find out more about Betsy’s other awesome projects and books at her website here: http://betsychasse.net
To get to her Meaningful Mom’s website, head here: http://meaningfulmommag.com/
Transcript:
My guest today is a author and a filmmaker. She’s written many books. She’s a mom. She is a thinker, a deep thinker, a joy seeker. I mean, I cannot say enough fun and awesome stuff about her. So I’m excited for you to hear this interview and y’all are gonna love her name. All right. Without further ado, here we go. Welcome to the art of living big. My name is Betsy Pake entrepreneur, author and personal success coach. This is the show that brings you stories and small ideas to help you live a big life. I hope this once a week podcast will inspire you, motivate you and encourage you to think differently about what could be possible for your life. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let’s go live big. All right, Today we have with us Betsy chassis, Betsy, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited you’re here. And, you know, I found you, I think I found you originally because you popped up on Facebook as like something else I might want to know like, you must be similar to some of my other interests. And so, you know, I was drawn to you because of your fabulous first name. But then when I learned more, I was really excited. So tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Well, first and foremost, I am a mom, I have two amazing kids. I’m a single mom. Um, and that is like my passion and why I do everything that I do. I’m a writer, I’m a filmmaker, I’m a mouthy broad, who wants to impact change in the world, you know, my mission in life really is that we have the ability within us to be happy. And I don’t mean like happy isn’t UI, but just like truly at peace and happy in our lives. And we need help on how to do that. And so my mission is to share wisdom and pieces of information that can help people live the life that they truly desire. Ah, so I i love that that’s very similar to how I feel about my mission, which is why I do this podcast. So I’m grateful that you’re here today. Tell me how when did you realize that about yourself that that was your mission? Like Did you know that your whole life that you’ve sort of had something? Or was that something you came to later on? It’s kind of funny. So my favorite quote in the world is by jack Kerouac and it says Be in love with your life every minute of it. And I think for the most part, even though I’ve had you know, we we all go through struggles and trauma and horrible things and wonderful things. And I’ve had all of that in my life. And yet, I always had this sense of optimism. My birth was formed, filmed for a documentary on natural childbirth. Um, yeah, I, I got the kids. And it’s ironic because they had followed another woman through her pregnancy. And then she had to have a C section. And so they kind of asked, Would anybody mind if we film them their birth? And I was the youngest of six, and my mom was like, whatever. Yeah, five minutes. Let’s go. And so I just sort of came out with Lights, Camera action shining. And I’ve always been optimistic, and and always had this nature of, even when everything around me is just falling apart and sucks just going okay, well, what can I make great about this. And so I think that that’s something that I’ve always had within me. And then, throughout my life, that led me to a crazy story, which I talked about my book about how I ended up making What the Bleep Do we know. And I think making What the Bleep kind of gave me the languaging and the data to explain why I’m that way. And that actually, anybody else can be that way if they choose to. So What the Bleep Do we know is a film that you did, right? That’s not a book. That’s one of your films. Yeah. So what’s the Yeah, no, it’s like, one of the biggest was sort of like the documentary that sort of kicked off. You know, the secret and this whole mind, body spirit, spirituality, cinema world. Um, it was made in 2004. And it was a huge success. And really, the theory the thesis was, your thoughts affect your reality I and used science and neuroscience, psychology, physiology, biology, quantum physics as a way to explain how your thoughts affect your life. Right.
Yeah. And I think that that’s so true. And, you know, it’s funny that you say that I and I’ve talked before on the podcast, you know, when I was 16, my mom died in a car accident, but I was telling some and I laugh about it. I’m not laughing. I’m just saying it’s funny because I was just having this exact conversation. And I talked about it on the podcast last week, that even though that happened to me immediately, I always I never had that moment of like, oh, like I always felt like there’s a reason there’s a reason there’s something. And I used it as a day to compare all others. So if some if I have a bad day today as for at 45, I go, Well, it wasn’t as bad as that day. He knows, like, everything went up from there. So I don’t know how we get that. But I know there’s a lot of people that wish they had that. So what would you say? What have you discovered on how people actually achieve that feeling? Well, it’s really funny, you know, having kids and being a parent is a great learning tool for yourself. And one of the things that I’ve learned is that my kids are not mean, they are their own beings. And I have two beautiful children, and one of them is an optimist, and one of them is pessimistic. And that’s not positive or negative, like the optimist isn’t positive, and the pessimist isn’t negative. That’s just their nature of who they are. Yeah. And what I had to learn to do is to really honor my pessimistic child’s inherent nature first. And so instead of judging that and going, Oh, god, look at how negative that person is, look at her law, and trying to make them feel badly about that. Honor who you are first, that’s going to make you feel better in and of itself, because instead of sitting around judging yourself going, so negative, and I’m so bad, and I wish I could be more happier, you’re already saying, God, I feel this sense of whatever it is fear, stress, anxiety, I tend to think of a negative first and once you become aware of that’s what your predominant nature might be. And right now, if you want to, you can begin to take actions to change it. But it starts with awareness. And I think that’s where people make mistakes, because they, they start to doubt, they start to get down on themselves for for who they’re being. And that in and of itself just creates more negativity. So step one, honor who you are. And if you’re kind of this person that tends to go, this really sucks and find the negative first, just become aware of yourself doing that. And then through awareness, you can interrupt that pattern because basically our brains, our computers, I know this sounds very unsexy and very spiritual, but we our brains are actually computers, and we’ve programmed them to operate in a certain way. And so we need to unprogrammed them, which is completely possible, and it just takes practice. So once you become aware of like, gosh, every time something comes up, I go to the negative First, I’d like to try to shift that. So the next time something comes up, even though you’re going to go to the negative first, just go Okay, thank you. Now, what would now let me look at a different perspective. Now, what can I find? That’s how can I find the positive in this and just begin to retrain yourself? It’s like really that simple. I know, it sounds like we’re supposed to do all this breathwork and meditation, and you know, shove a cripple crystal up our butt and whatever else. But really, like, that’s it. So it, so I love you, because you just said shove a crystal up your butt for one thing. And you all that are listening that are regular listeners, you know, I get sort of excited about our guests, but like, Betsy is really cool. Okay. So I love that the honor who you are, because many times we do something or we have that thought we don’t like and then we immediately say like, Oh my god, I suck. I’m so bad. I can’t believe I think like that. I wish I wasn’t like that. But I really like that shifting the way you’re thinking to go, you know what, that’s who I am. And that’s, that’s to me, that’s okay. I have space for that. And now I’m going to look at something different.
Well, in honor who you are right now, like we have this thing that like time and people get caught up in like past and present and future and time and Oh, I didn’t this way my whole life. Well, okay, well, like now is a new moment. And then now is a new moment. And then now is a new moment, like we have these moments. They’re like flying at us at the speed of light. And at any moment, we can go. Well, I was like that five minutes ago. And now I’d like to do something else. And we can change. People don’t realize that. They think that this whole part of what we talked about in the belief is that everyone thinks that this reality is solid. And that’s it. And this is my life. And this is what I’ve done with it. And I can’t do anything about that. And the reality The truth is that, you know, yes, you’re sitting in a chair, and it’s pretty damn solid, because otherwise you’re acid fall on the floor. But the truth is, in any moment, you can say like, I’m sitting in my my favorite spot right now, which is my favorite spot. But in this moment, like the cushions are pushed weird and my my butt’s uncomfortable. So I’m changing my experience. I love this spot. But in this moment, my experience is that this is uncomfortable. I can get up, move the pillows and change my experience. And that can happen instantaneously. So we can’t get locked into this notion that it is what it is and it cannot shift it can so honor the way you are right now. And make a conscious choice to shift a behavior that you’d like to shift. Yeah, I like that a lot. So when when you you did that’s your documentary though. What the Bleep Do we know and you created that was that your first first attempts at filmmaking other than being filmed as an infant. No, no, no, no, I was in the film business from the time I was born. I was an actress when I was a little kid. And then, you know, right in my early 20s, when all my friends went off to film school, I just started working in the film business behind the camera and, you know, was started out as a PA and worked all the way up to a producer. I mean, I’ve literally produce porn in my life, and used to work for Playboy and, you know, did all sorts of what I would call like horror, schlock, you know, late nights, Cinemax movies for many, many, many years. Yeah. What happened is that I, you know, I sort of I tell the story in my book, tipic sacred cows, you know, I reached up to the point where, you know, when I my 20s, I had a big chip on my shoulder, you know, I was a woman in a man’s world, I was a line producer, when there weren’t very many line producer females. And I finally said, I’m going to be a head of a studio. And ironically, I got headhunted to work for a major studio and a really good position that would have to would, the trajectory would have been in five or six years, if I had stayed to become a head of a studio, that’s where you’re at. That’s where that job would have headed, headed to Yeah, and before I took the job, I quit the movie business entirely. Because I realized that I had lost the love for it, that I was that my desire to succeed was more important than my love of the creativity. And so I Quit making movies altogether. And then I started a company that made gourmet dog treats. I don’t know why I started, I’ve never baked a dog treat my life, I just decided I was gonna make archery. And I did that for a few years, got, you know, got into porn stores across the country and did really well with that for a while and then realized that what I really missed was storytelling was the core, the art of storytelling. And at that same time, through a wild series of events ended up getting asked to make What the Bleep Do we know, which was a completely different movie when I was hired to make it. And it was really funny, because I often say that was the least which ironic that the least spiritual person on the planet got hired to make what became one of the most successful spiritual movies of all time. Yeah, that’s incredible. What an incredible like story, and I love that you seem to be fearless to go from one thing to another thing, because really, it’s just doing what’s making you joy, having bringing you joy in that moment, right.
But, you know, I don’t know, I think I want to get I probably give credit for this philosophy or belief system to my dad, who was a ridiculous dreamer. And so am I, you know, I’m, like, half the time I’m broke, and trying to figure out what I’m doing. But I’m always having fun. And I don’t know, like this idea that here we are in this life. And it’s friggin awesome, like, Look around you, like, look at this world, this place is a friggin trip of creativity and just random, amazing things happening, like from flowers that grow from the ground from a seed that is wild, if you think about what it takes to become a flower. That is, that is awesome. So I always have that, that energy within me, like life is like this amazing opportunities to just play here. Like I believe that, you know, who knows whether there’s a God, I mean, if there’s a dude up there, that’s god that’s like, Can doing all this stuff in I’m screwed, and that’s okay. Like I then I was totally wrong in my life, and I’m gonna rot in hell forever. But I, then, you know, what I look at is like, this is the plane of experience, you know, we have bodies, a lot of time in the New Age world, they’re talking about getting out of your body, which, which, you know, I get, but we have these amazing bodies in these brains and this opportunity to experience and feel and touch and smell and taste. Like use it instead of sitting around, stuck in a job we don’t love stuck in a marriage we don’t want to be in or whatever you’re doing. We get caught up, just like I said earlier on in this notion that I can’t change any of this, this is this is my life. And I just operate under Well, this did not work. Let’s try something else and kind of go with it. Yeah, I really love that. You know, I have a daughter who’s a teenager, she just is about to turn 15. And yesterday, we were just talking about jobs and having doing something that you love. And I was saying can you imagine, like doing something every day what that would be like so, you know, my point was to block out anybody that thinks she can’t do the things she wants to do and just stay focused. Because even if you’re not the greatest and you’re not good, everyone’s not looking at you and telling you you’re the best. You’re still living a life that you love instead of doing something else where it’s like terrible every day. And so I’m curious about that because you so you’ve, you know, you’ve created this life and and you’ve got kids, what is that? Like? Like being a single mom and doing all these great things? How does that affect other parts of your life? Well, everything is intertwined in my life. And you know, one of the things that happened to me almost six years ago, now I was, you know, when after I made What the Bleep, you know, I got put on this huge pedestal as somehow being a being that knew everything. And I kind of dug that for a while that was super fun. Like I love going and doing big talks in front of a roomful of thousand people, telling them all how to live their lives and be happy. And what was ironic was that a few years later, everything in my life fell apart. Like literally, I got divorced, I lost all my money, I don’t understand why crisis and things like that have to include losing all your money, but for me that they do, and, and so I, I lost everything. And what I realized was that I needed to redefine success, like there is a belief system that we all probably carry to some degree, that success means money, cars, fame,
all those things. Yeah,
for me, even with my kids, I just redefined what success meant. And so my kids, you know, are these interesting beings, because they live in kind of multiple realities. They live in the reality of materialism, and consumerism, and what’s going on in the world. But they also live in this their mom reality, which is, you know, Mom, today is going to be a filmmaker. And tomorrow, she’s going to be a writer, and who knows, tomorrow, she may be car mechanic, we have really no idea. But we trust that whatever she ends up doing is going to make it fun, she’s going to make it happy, and we’re going to be fed. And that’s what they kind of observe in their lives. And that’s how I see them in their own little different types of beings showing up as you know, they live, they just kind of attack life. And that’s all I really want them to do. I mean, for me, as a mom, I think my mission really is that if I can get them through their teens and into young adulthood, having understood emotional intelligence, then I will have been a good parent like everything else, whether what, you know what kind of what are the, whether we’re successful this year, or next year, we live in my car, like it really doesn’t matter. Like what matters is, you know, have I taught them how to use the tools that they have, in order to create a peaceful, happy, abundant life for themselves. Yeah, I love that. So what are your new projects? What are you working on now? So I spent a long time working in the sort of New Age self help world, and I love all that. But I realized that, you know, everybody’s kind of saying the same thing. And it’s kind of only reaching, you know, the people that like the choir, so to speak, the people that are already interested, right. So in the last year, I kind of made a little bit of a left turn from that a little bit. I mean, not really, because all my projects still have that that undertone. But right now, this last summer, I started a website called meaningful mom magazine, which is a place for moms who want more purpose and meaning in their lives, and not just in the sense of spirituality. But in all aspects of their lives. We’re living in a world where it’s not just enough to meditate for 15 minutes, and then go get in your SUV and pick up the groceries and go, you know, you have to like try to incorporate meaning and purpose in every aspect of your life. And so that’s kind of what that website does. And it’s written all by moms, for moms by moms. And it’s really fun. It’s really a fun website. Yeah. And I’ll have a link to it in the show notes so people can go check it out. Cool. And then I’m also one of the things that happened is I became a single woman over 40. And with kids, and I realized that my whole belief system around relationships, and marriage was completely like insane, you know, it was an old paradigm. And it wasn’t going to work in this in this paradigm. And it wasn’t gonna work for me. And I wanted to understand, well, what kind of relationship do I want? What is lasting love? What do relationships look like right now. And I began to look around me. And notice that a huge percentage, something like point 38% of the population is single and over 40. It’s the largest people ever. And the lot of people are looking for love. So I began to do a docu series, which I’m in post production now on called radical dating. And no, it’s not some crazy dating show where we set people up on blind dates. It’s really an examination of, we have five people that we follow in the show. And it’s an examination of their journey to connect with who they are, and then begin to find who they truly want and what they want in their lives. And it’s so important because that’s what we have not a lot of people over 40 have never been taught really how to do that. You know, like I said, I’m teaching my children emotional intelligence. But most of us never learned emotional intelligence. You know, we react, we operate from the place of fear. We choose partners based on you know, belief systems, fears, traumas. And that’s why we end up with this divorce divorce rates. So the doctor is follows these five people as they begin an examination of who they truly are, and what is it they really want. Imagine if you could just sit down and say, Well, what do I want without going well, I probably don’t ask yourself, What do I want? And then really say, you know what, I think I’m not gonna settle until I get that, right. That’s kind of what this is about. And so and so many times, I think, especially when we’re over 40, then we’re looking at Well, before I had like this thing, and I guess I liked that thing, but you’re not really thinking about who you are today. And what what it is you want and need in your life now. Right?
Right. And you know what, it goes back to that thing of we all kind of change and grow, you know, I tend to operate in life in the sense of this, isn’t it? Right now, in this moment is not the totality of my existence. It’s this moment. And so I leave room for growth and for change and for new experiences. And so I’m able to then instead of go when while I want this kind of man with this kind of car, I look at it well, what are the qualities that I want in a man so that I can we can do that together? And really examining that as opposed to well, gosh, I need a guy who can make this much money because of this. And those things that we tend to put more importance on, than really, you know, how can I create a relationship with somebody who’s going to grow and expand with me? And that we build a loving relationship? Without it doesn’t really matter? The external? Yeah, yeah. I like that. And I think too many times when we want, we know we’re looking for something, we also have to be that thing. Right? Because someone that has that thing is going to be looking for that in a partner. So if you want someone that’s kind and compassionate, be kind and compassionate like and and soon you’ll start to attract those people, you’ll be putting out that vibration, I think that will bring those people into your life. Where can people find that rat the docu series. It’s not up yet. We just finished filming, they can go to my website, or they can go to radical dash dating.com. We have a couple teasers on on YouTube, just search radical dating, they’ve gotten over 100,000 views so far. And that kind of introduces the processes that we put five people through a coaching program. And it’s really, you know, I mean, watching the footage, instead of getting like fake drama, like you get on most reality shows where there’s a lot of fake drama, and people are fighting with each other. Yeah. What you get on this show is real people really being authentic and vulnerable and truthful about their own hidden stories and how they’re letting them go in order to really live what they want. Oh, yeah, I really love that. And because you’ve got five people, you’ve probably got, like, a lot of different types of stories to write because nobody wants the same thing. That’s the greatness of it. Right? We have three women, one straight man and one gay man. Awesome. I love that. All right, cool. Now, so you’re a writer, a filmmaker, a dog treat maker.
So
what are some of your other projects? I’m super interested, you know, I really love the whole idea of investigating and focusing on someone’s life, like with the whole docu series, because I believe there’s so much that we can learn from watching other people. And sometimes we get kind of sidetracked with this. And I’m a my, my book is called start small, live big. And it’s about just going small. And I think sometimes we get focused on like the Kardashian big reality, yes, it’s not real reality.
But this
idea of looking at individuals and really studying how other people do things and what they think I think, is so valuable for ourselves. So right, what other kinds of things are you working on? Is that your big project right now? Well, that’s probably the project that the biggest but you know, I have lots of things, and I’m always creating something because I made, you know, I made my my life is about creating, um, one of the things that I did I, you know, I used to write for like Huffington Post, and all sorts of different places, you know, Yahoo shine all these places. And what I realized was that it was so diverse, and I was constantly posting in all these different places that it felt like I wasn’t really able to create a cohesive, clear message. And so this year, especially with what’s happened with, you know, our country right now, where we’re so divided, and it’s kind of insane. I mean, it’s not insane, it makes perfect sense to me why we are where we are. I decided to start a Patreon page, which is basically a membership site, where this year we’re gonna really start from the beginning. I mean, one of the things that happened in the last, you know, with the advent of, you know, the bursting of social media is that, you know, we’ve lost the ability to discern the difference between truth and fact and opinion, and theory and hypothesis and all those cool words. And so on my Patreon page, in addition to all the other fun and cool blogs and videos that I’m going to be releasing, we’re starting really a series to talk about how to think again, how to really understand the difference between Well, what is this thought that I’m having? Is that a factor is that a story that I’m making up in my head? Is that an interpretation? That’s based on past belief. So we’re starting a whole series on having that conversation. And I just finished producing and directing a short documentary called the empty womb, which follows a woman who went through IVF and was unsuccessful. And she created this incredible art installation of the same name, which is going to start traveling around the country. And the piece really isn’t about IVF. Although it’s her story, the piece is really about her desire to feel authentically and that what’s part of what’s I think happened with a lot of us is that we no longer feel, or we become so afraid of how we feel that we don’t talk about it. And or when we do talk about it, we’re shut down. And so that’s part of why we are where we are in the world right now is that, you know, you’re Everyone’s so afraid to say how they feel because they’re afraid to be judged. And we’re also busy judging everybody. Wow, she feels that way. And Robbie, who’s the artist Robbie Firestone. She’s so honest with her feelings around her anger and her pain and her grief around not being able to have a child and and having a hysterectomy, that it’s comfortable. But it’s beautiful. Because when we can learn to sit with another person’s authentic anger and rage and pain without judging it. Mm hmm. We are going to truly shift as humanity because that’s where no one’s that’s where we are where we are. Yeah, don’t you think? Like, I mean, there’s so many I would like to go back to why you think we are where we are. But I think that, you know, we’re touching on here is that we are so so quick to judge right? We’re so quick that and so many times we call them the trolls or the haters, but it’s it’s all of us even if we’re not typing it out. We’re judging as we see things instead of saying like that’s, that’s how they see the world or that’s their opinion of what’s happening in their life. But we jump to this thing. And I feel like it’s much crueler it’s, it is scarier to put your put yourself out there to say anything. Well, we want to be right, like, here’s the thing humans want to know. And they want to be right. And they want to be right. And they want to know more than then they’re willing to step back and discern the difference between opinion and fact. Because it’s a lot safer for me to know and have the answer and argue with you about it than it is for me to go Wait a second, maybe I don’t know. Because being in the I don’t know, is a really uncomfortable place to be. It’s funny, I did an interview for excuse me, um, the bleeping Herald, which is the What the Bleep newsletter which they’ve just revived. And, you know, they asked me Well, what is it? What’s different about you between, you know, now versus the Betsy that made What the Bleep and I said, The Betsy today can say, Ah, I don’t know, like, I could be making all this crap up for all I know. And I feel really okay with that. Like, I feel really okay with being able to sit with someone who totally disagrees with me, and may have some view that’s so far out far opposite of what I do, and hold the space, that it’s okay that they have that opinion, and that they might be right. And let’s look at that. That’s that is a really uncomfortable place to be. And that’s why we are where we are. Because we live in a world where people just want to be right.
Yeah. So I want you to talk about that a little bit mark, that’s actually something I sort of struggle with. I do. Try anytime I have a disagreement with somebody, or they have a different view, I always say, well, their life experience is different. You know, they have a whole set of beliefs that come from their experiences. And that’s a whole, you know, lifetime of things I don’t understand. But I do have a hard time. And I think that the presidential election has brought a lot of this outward. There’s some times where I’m like I I want to understand, but I don’t even know where to begin. Like, it seems so
far out to me. Well, I
just had this really hilarious conversation with this woman on Facebook. Um, what so Meryl Streep goes out, and she gives that speech at the Golden Globes, right? I thought it was brilliant. Right? You know, that’s my take on it. Yeah. And then this woman posted an image of Mark Wahlberg saying, you know, actors shouldn’t talk about politics. And I was like, Well, wait a second. Why shouldn’t actors talk about we should all be talking about it. We should all express our opinions. We should do it in a space of compassion and respect. Yeah. What Meryl Streep did. She didn’t she wasn’t offensive. She didn’t call anybody names. She spoke from her heart authentically and openly without being mean or hurtful or childlike. And that’s the discourse part that we have to get. We have to learn to get like people get so bad they start calling each other names. Yes. We have to move away from that because that’s fear talking. When I know now when someone says to me, you’re a moron. I think to myself, wow, that person must think they’re really stupid because they’re trying to attack me so they can protect themselves. Right? Yeah. Conversation with this woman. And I just kept asking her questions. And what I try to do with people now is let’s stick to the facts. And that gets people really mad. Because if you state something, if you say, Well, the fact is she was, this is an award show, and she shouldn’t be doing that. Well, wait a minute, why? why shouldn’t you do that? Where’s the rules? Let’s get factual. And that can be really frustrating. But what’s interesting is that when I hold my, my ground on facts, people don’t usually change their mind. But I’ve noticed that it sort of starts to make them think about it a little bit, because that’s sort of the series that we’re starting on Patreon is like, you know, we have to be able to discern the difference between my emotional response and the facts. And right now, most of humanity is having a hard time with that. And that’s why we are where we are. And so that’s why we want to be right. Because if I’m right, I’m safe. If I’m right, I don’t have to change anything about myself, if I’m right, everything that I know to be true is okay. And I’m good. So it’s scary. And then there are times, like, for instance, in this conversation with this woman on Facebook, you know, she all of a sudden brought up God and all these things. And my instant reaction was, you know, I don’t need to have this battle anymore. She is who she is. She’s at where she’s at. And I’m just going to love her for it. You know, that people, you have to remember that people are where there are, right, yeah. You know, that’s okay. And it’s, and I also look at it and go, Well, you know, this is what she believes. And my job is to keep being me so that I can hopefully impact enough people that we can sort of let go of some of the fanaticism that we have on all sides. We’re all fanatical. You know, I’m I’m trying to live a life of not being fanatical about anything, because we’ve gotten into a place where everyone is really funny. A lot of people, I would say, everyone, that’s not true. Many people are very fanatical about being right. Yeah, yeah, I would say that’s true, too. I know for myself, I’ve found, like the unfollow or the friend button really helpful on Facebook, because it’s okay, if you have a different opinion than me, and you’re having a discussion about it. But when I just see like hate and spew, especially if I don’t really know you, you know how we tend to be friends with people on Facebook, we don’t really know. I just think I like I’m, I’m so good, like having a discussion, but I just see the hate. And I feel like I’ve seen more and more of that just like spewing hate. And that’s where I just like kind of cut it off, you know, and you just have to say, you know, block, Ayala will get scared doing that, like I remember recently, another friend of mine posted something pretty radical. And a lot of people unfriended her and then she was really upset the people in front of her and I was like, You know why? I mean, that happens. I have a fan page. And that happens to me all the time. You know, one week, I’ll have like, 7000. And I’ll say something and I’ll go down to 6000. And I’m like, okay, right. Yeah. Yeah, you’re narrowing down your audience is good. And, you know, I also try to be comfortable enough with people who are in disagreement. That’s me saying it’s really uncomfortable for most of us to be around people who disagree with us. Yes,
yeah.
Yes. And so I try to practice being around people. Like when I go I post something on my page and some person like this, one of these conversations about that Meryl Streep thing? Oh, my God, people were flipping their baskets over like, how dare milk Meryl Streep ruin their award show. And, you know, I didn’t unblock a bunch of them. You know, I only blocked one person who called me an idiot. And I just said to him before I blocked him. I said, Look, I’m going to give you an opportunity to apologize for calling me names. I’m happy to have a common intelligent discourse with you. But when you start insulting me, then I’m I stopped having the conversation. Right. And it was interesting, because they never responded. So I just in front of them, but the other people that disagreed, you know, the other thing I realized is I don’t enter a conversation with you holding the outcome that I’m going to change your mind.
Right?
Yes, the mind. Yeah. And, and I can say what I need to say. And if you want to say what you’re going to say, I open up, I sit with the possibility of going well, they might say something that will shift something for me, and well, and when you know that it’s not going to shift it’s okay to go. Wow, thank you for the conversation. Um, um, I can see that we’re both where we’re at. And it’s time for us to move on. Have a great day. Yeah, yeah. And that’s where the respect and really being comfortable with yourself because I think if you’re unsure about yourself, that’s when you get all like, woo worried about everybody else, right? Mm hmm. Yeah. Because we’re so afraid. Part of why we want to be right is because being right makes me say yes, yeah. And, and I and it, and then it hides me from awareness of my own shit. Yeah. Because when I’m right, I don’t look at my shit, right. Yeah, it’s But when you can sit with, well, I might be wrong. or there might be other ways to see this. So there’s a really interesting thing about What the Bleep is that a lot of people ran off with this notion that we create our reality, which means that I can manifest a Mercedes out of my ass at any moment by meditation. I hate to break it to everybody, but you’d have to be frigging like the most amazing manifester on the planet, to simply poof and have a Mercedes in your driveway, right? That’s not to say that you can’t create things like that you can. But it, the way that we create reality is not by like magically snapping our fingers and having you know, ship fall out of the sky, we create our reality by how we choose to perceive it, what we perceive, we believe, what we perceive we see. So if I perceive that the rain and the cold, it makes the earth look ugly, and sad that I’m never going to see the beauty in it. But if I go Well, see, I’m a sunshine person. That’s why I live in California, I love being grumpy, hot and cold. So when it’s raining, I usually wake up and like, Ah, it’s raining, but then I have to stop myself again, okay, instead of getting frustrated, because the traffic is going to be bad and getting frustrated, cuz you’re going to get wet, or whatever it is, look for the beauty. And then I see the beauty in it. So it’s all awkward, it’s all a choice. It’s all a conscious awareness in my brain of how am I choosing to perceive. So if I perceive this other person as stupid and enemy long, what’s wrong with the world, then that’s how I’m going to treat them. Yeah, and then I didn’t need to, I have to engage with Oh, my God, I have to fix this person. If I don’t fix this person, all is lost. So I’ve got to go into an argument with them. Well, I don’t operate that way with people, I don’t need to fix anybody, I don’t even need to fix myself. You know, I can change my mind. If I choose to, I can do something different. If I choose to, they can choose to do something different. But there’s no need to fix or change anything. And don’t you think like that’s come if you post something on Facebook, and there’s, you know, a whole bunch of people that post something, but underneath, and there’s a few people that post something negative or against you, that’s what you focus on. But instead, you could be focusing on all the people that agreed, right? Like you’re choosing how you see it, right? or false? Or you could go Hmm, what did that person that didn’t agree with me have to say like, I kind of liked doing that? Not some space, if it will let me get into an argument here. I mean, sometimes I’m super sarcastic and super funny on Facebook, like with the woman that I you know, I put did a post about this on my Facebook page, because, you know, I finally realized like, she’s talking about God. And then it says in the Bible that the build walls and all this stuff, and I was like, Alright, this is like, okay, yeah. That’s her belief. And so I just started to be really funny with her because that’s just what else can you do? But be funny, you know, I said something like, I hate to break it to you. But the Bible was written by men. And God, it was not a transcription from a speech God gave in an award ceremony. So like, let’s just yeah, let’s put all this into perspective here. So, you know,
but
I don’t mind. I don’t look at his negativity. So like, that’s the it’s a length languaging is no big. Yeah. So what happens is, when somebody says something that is, in disagreement with my belief system, I don’t think that’s negative. That’s a negative thing. And it’s funny, because, you know, people always say to me, Well, I love to do positive affirmations, and I love positive affirmations. I, like, Let’s all stand together and screaming, my ass is beautiful, 100 times in the morning. But here’s the truth. You can say positive affirmations as much as you want to. But if you don’t believe them with every ounce of your being, it’s not you’re just layering positivity over negativity because you have a positive and negative belief system. Whereas I look at my button, go Wow, my butt is kind of flabby and big right now. Okay. It’s that way because I’ve been sitting a lot writing and this and that. And the other thing, and I’m just gonna love it for the way it is not positive, it’s not negative it is. And if I want my butt to be firmer, let’s get my ass out and start walking a little more. You know, we have to get we have to, like we curate a lot of polarities positive, negative, right and wrong. And, and that’s where we get stuck. Yeah, so really being able to shift and find the space where you accept whatever it is. And then if you’re not totally happy with that, then you go ahead I can’t I it’s in within my control to make changes. Right. And I think that’s one of the things with manifesting, you know, is that I am a big believer in that but I feel like like that movie. The Secret was great, but I feel like it left out like action. Like you don’t just meditated on it and doesn’t happen, but you like start working towards that. You know, there’s like this huge section of manifestation that people miss. I think it’s funny. I interviewed Joe Batali you know who was the guy? Oh, yeah. The guy in the film who talked about the checks coming, right? And it was really funny because I said to him, I said, Oh, Joe, we have to talk about this exactly that conversation like Joe did not your butt and checks on it just magically appearing in your mailbox. He’s like, no, they left out the whole part of the interview, where I talked about the steps that I began to take. So I have the like, a favorite physicist, like everybody who’s cool some of the favorite physicists. And so mine is Ahmed Swami. And he was in the Bleep actually. And he has this little saying, and he says, look, you have to do bee do bee do, huh? And it’s very cute. I thought it was very Yeah, that’s very cute. But the point is, you have to do that you have to be and then you have to do and then to be so the being is checking in listening to your heart, checking, feeling it feeling it actually allowing yourself how does this feel to me? What is the experience that I’m having around this thought, this action and go, Oh, this feels really good. Then do do more? Listen, what do I do next with this, then? If the feeling is wow, this feels really crappy? And I don’t like that. Listen to that stop and go, Okay, well, I don’t like that feeling. Where do I need to go next? And then you do and then you be and then you do? And then you be? And that’s the dance of life? Yeah. Yeah, I really like that. And I always feel like there’s things that come to me. And I feel like that’s the manifestation part is the idea. You know, that’s the idea. And once I take action on it, then I have another idea that I take action on that. That’s really what I’m manifesting is the ideas to get me where I want to go. Well, and the idea too, is this, like, I talked about this in one of my talks where I’m, you know,
excuse me, um, everyone’s really big on the whole vision board thing. And they put these things on the vision boards, like Mercedes and big houses and yachts and gorgeous men and awesome bodies. And that’s what they want. And I the step that people missing those is that, well, why do I want the Mercedes? What does the Mercedes mean to me? Oh, the Mercedes means I have financial stability. I’m successful. I’m respected on I’m doing good in the world, and whatever your meaning that you’ve attached, because see, we’re a meaning attaching machines have a meaning. And then whatever meaning we put on that is based on our own belief system about ourselves. So therefore, if I put that Mercedes on my vision board, if I’m not careful, I’m telling myself, you’re not any of those things. Until you have that. Yes, yeah, for me, you know, I used to drive this like little SUV that was just a total beater car. And I always just to feel bad about driving places in it embarrassed because it wasn’t a very nice car. And I finally realized, good. I’ve made super successful movies, I’ve written best selling books, you know, I have beautiful children, I have health unhappy, what’s not successful about any of that, like, it has nothing to do with the car that I’m driving. And what happened is, the minute I really allowed that belief about me personally, regardless of what I have in the world, to sink into who I am to really start to believe in my own worth, and my own value in the world. Literally, I kid you not my car, the engine blew up in my car. And I had to get a new car. Yeah. So I’m driving with my kids to go get a new car. And I’m literally my, my current car is like chugging to the to the dealership, like I wasn’t even sure we were gonna make it there is to fix it would have cost $4,000. And so we’re driving by the Mini Cooper dealership. And my daughter says to me, Mom, we should why aren’t we going there? That’s your favorite car? Because I love mini Coopers. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, honey, we can’t, I can’t afford that right now. We have to just go get another cheap car. Let’s not worry about it. She goes, this is what I love about kids. She goes, Mom, you always tell me you should go after your dreams. That’s what you should do first. And so why aren’t we doing that? That’s your dream car. So I thought, Okay, this is a good learning moment for them. Because what they’re going to realize is that I can’t really in this moment afford the Mini Cooper and that I’m still not going to give up on my dream in the Mini Cooper. So I think I’m going to give them a learning moment. Yeah, go all into the Mini Cooper dealership. And lo and behold, they were having some amazing sale, and we ended up driving out in the new Mini Cooper.
Oh my god, I love it.
But it started the important point about that story is that it started when I didn’t really care. Like I didn’t, my self worth wasn’t attached to any of that was attached to my own following of my heart and passion and looking at what I’m doing in the world every single day, versus what I’ve carved showing up in while I’m doing it, don’t you think everybody needs to really sit and re evaluate what they really think success is I think that trips people up over and over and over and that’s something I’ve been studying My my own I, I journal every morning about one belief, I have to try to get to the root of it. But that’s what I’ve been working on, like, what do I really think is success because I’ve done some cool stuff. But I always have that like, Oh, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. And that’s sort of where it comes from. And I like that, that you like, when you released it and saw the good stuff.
Then more.
Oh, sorry, I was taking a drink of my, my, my coffee because I’m like,
hang on one second. Um,
success is a is a doozy. It really is. Because we have spent our entire existence being programmed about what is successful.
Yes. And
we have these amazing stories in our heads around it. And for me, I still struggle with it. You know, I’m sitting here this last year was a really interesting year. For me, I was working on a big project that I ended up leaving because it didn’t. In the end, I realized that it that it was not going to stick to the mission that I had signed up for. And, and I made it myself a promise that no matter what, I was always going to go back to my personal mission. Like that’s how I operate in my life. Because I know, sure I could do things for money, I could do things for fame, I can do things for all that stuff. But even though I get all of that, if it’s not in alignment with my heart and mission, it’s not going to feel good. So I don’t care how much money I have, if it doesn’t feel good, yeah, walked away that project, and it really hurt me financially. Um, and it kind of had to do this major regroup. And it was very interesting because I sat down and I said, you know, I’m 46 years old, I’m going to be 47 next month. And I said, You know what, Betsy? It’s time for you. Because I had thought I had done the success work, right? I figured, okay, did the success work? This project came, everything’s great. And then I kind of went back to square one again. And I was okay with that. I said, Okay, you’ve got to get back to this redefining success for you, is when your heart sings, that’s what your successes. And it’s a constant reevaluation. People have this tendency to think Well, once I’ve done the work, I’ve done the work. No, you peel back a piece of the layer of the onion. But it still comes back. And that’s why we’re here. That’s our people always ask me, what’s the purpose of life very, I got, there is no end game, we aren’t going to finish. Like you’re rarely ever going to finish yourself. I don’t know anyone on this planet? Who says I’m finished. Right? So of course, it’s going to keep re coming up. And so this belief systems that you write down every day, you know, I bet if you go back to something that you wrote down a year ago, and spent more time with it, you’d see kind of still there. Oh, it just it just morphed into this. And oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. It’s never ending. And I do the same ones over and over again. You know, sometimes it takes a long time to even get a handle on the first layer. Right? Well, and people get discouraged by that. Because they’re like, Oh, my God, I don’t get to I think that’s fun. Yeah, I got to Yeah, I think it’s really like, okay, God, I thought I had that one. But I guess I don’t it showed up this way. Now. Wow. That’s it. I always think it’s interesting and fascinating. Like, well, that’s weird how it came this way. So I just this morning, I, I get to the same belief, a million different ways where I go, dang it. How did that show up again? How did that happen? Yeah, I did not know that one was there. Yeah. Well, I have this game that in the back of my book, tipping sacred cows, and it’s called my life sucks. And I play it all the time. And it sounds really silly and dramatic, but it’s kind of fun. And I suggest that people do this, not writing down, but record yourself. Because the things that at least I’ve noticed for me and a lot of people is that we tend when we when we tend to start writing, most of us are not disciplined enough to just free flow, right? We edit before we write. And so we’re already judging ourselves. But if you give yourself the space and time, there’s also a list of cocktails in the back of my book that you can do this with because, you know, like, I think the veil a little bit and having a little bit of wine or a little bit of willingness to just be honest and authentic. Sometimes you need a glass of wine before you can tell the truth. I’m not reporting that anybody go out and start drinking, by the way, but if people get mad at people to drink, I’m like, Well, not really. I mean, you don’t have to, I’m just saying yeah. So just that disclaimer right there, but the point is that, get yourself somewhere where nobody can hear you. And you’re totally free to say whatever you want, and then start with my life sucks. And then blame everybody. My life sucks because my parents my asshole brother and my asshole boyfriend. Blame everyone because the truth is, you’re subconsciously blaming everybody. Anyway, even if you’re not aware of it, and that’s the thing, it’s all about bringing your subconscious quiet shadow. I call them sacred cows from the from the darkness into the light. And so you run through the series of questions that I have you asked. And at the end of it, you can totally listen back to the recording. And you will be stunned. You’ll sit back and you go wow, in there I ranted about my best friend when I was 12, who said I was stupid. And I didn’t even realize that was hiding in the crevices of my heart. And there it is. And now I know about it. And now I’m aware of it. And it’s great. And I do that, like once or twice a week.
Yeah, I love that. And I like the doing it out loud. I like I journal, I interview myself, so that it’s almost like I’m witnessing an interview, sort of like the podcast interview. And it takes the emotion out of it for me, because I’m not in it. You know, I’m just like watching two people get interviewed. And it’s always surprising to me what comes up. But I am saying it out loud as I’m typing.
Right. That’s good.
But yeah, so I find that that interesting, just to tape it. That’s a really good idea. And the other thing is, I would say I would only look What the Bleep do I know. But I would say you said one thing that struck me and I just wanted to share with you my feedback on that. It takes the emotion out. I would like to say for me, I let the emotion flow. So if I’m in my playing my my life sucks game and I hit on something, and I really want to cry about it. Yeah, yeah. I let it come out. Because the other thing that we have a tendency to do is hold everything so tightly, and we don’t feel the emotion. I was watching a piece of footage from my radical dating show the other day, because I’m editing. And this woman, her name is Joanna Kennedy. And she’s one of our people that comes on the show. And she said something that was so profound to me. In the moment, she said, the emotion that we try to avoid is the emotion that traps us. And yeah,
I like that. Yeah.
Like, if you think about it, like, you know, so many people say, oh, being angry is bad. Being resentful is bad. Look, anger and resentment are feelings. This is what I taught the woman Robbie talks about in the empty womb, you know, she says, Look, I am jealous and rageful because you have a child and I don’t, that’s how I feel. So I could sit around and pretend I don’t feel that way. Because it’s going to make you feel more comfortable. And it’s also going to make me feel comfortable. Because I don’t want to sit and say I’m jealous and resentful that I didn’t get to have a baby. But the minute I’ve just be with, I’m jealous, I’m resentful. Let me just be with that for a minute, be honest about that. I’m less likely to act on it, you’re more likely to act on jealousy, rage, anger, when you try to suppress it because it has nowhere to go but out. So I wonder your cuz you’re making me rethink, I always do it that way where I tried, because I always feel like I can be more investigative of where that’s coming from and get to the middle of it. And there are other times I do stuff where I you know, where I’ll be okay, having all the feelings, all the feelings. But with that is a time where I really try to step out of it. But I wonder what would happen if I didn’t. And I think I started that practice, because I do it every morning. And I don’t want to start every morning like emotional overflow. You know what I’m saying? So I, but I’m wondering now about that, maybe that’s something I need to consider. You know, there’s a time and I learned really this game from a teacher who was working with me while I was going through my divorce. And every other day, I would call it oh my god, this is gonna happen to me take my children away, the sky is falling, this is gonna happen, and this is gonna happen. And she finally got so sick of me, like, just sitting there and my fear and doubt and that she said to me, I want you to go because my kids were going to their dads that weekend. And she said, I want you this weekend to do nothing but sit and dream and imagine every single thing that is going to happen and take draw it all the way out. So if your fear is, I’m going to lose my children experience that like really dig in and just think about what that feels like and imagine scenarios in which that’s happening. And she was like, I’m like you really want me to do that. And she’s like, yes, like the whole nine yards. Yeah. And so, okay, I’ll do it. And I wrote about this in Montreux magazine. It’s a problem. And I did it. And what happened is that it took me like 15 hours, just sobbing and screaming and railing, and I fell asleep. And I woke up the next morning. And I called her and she said, so are you still here? And I said, Yes. And she said, Are you still alive? And I said, Yes. And she said, How do you feel? And I said, I feel like if any of those things happened to me, I’m still be okay. Yes, still alive. And so it took the Boogey Man out of all of those emotions. All of those fears, all of those doubts. And it just, it gave my body an opportunity to experience them and release them to the place where I was really able to process through my divorce without any of those things happening. And with peace,
yeah, powerful. Yeah.
So, gosh, and I appreciate you being here. We’re already at 55 minutes. I love you. There’s so much we could talk about, I feel like you need to come on every week. So. So we do have an online community. It’s at SS lB community.com. It stands for start small live big community.com. That’ll take you to our free Facebook group. So you can join us there. And Betsy, you’re going to pop in there for the week, and check in and answer any questions. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, awesome. I feel like there’s so much more we can learn from you. I’m gonna make sure that we post some of that good stuff and links to all of the places people can find you in the show notes so everybody can look for that there. Thank you so much for your time. I knew when I read your story and read some of the things that you wrote that you were going to be awesome and fun and you did not disappoint. So thank you so much for taking time to be with me today.
Oh, thank you so much. It’s been fun.
Thanks for spending some time with us today. Remember to jump in on that online community at SS lB community.com. And, as always, here’s a little message from my husband.
That’s it.
