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Part one of Betsy’s trip to Iceland. Betsy is home from Iceland and begins sharing her journey from beginning to end. This episode is all about why she decided to embark on this journey, how she got there, and what she experienced along the way.
>>>Connect with Betsy on IG @betsypake
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Art of Living big podcast. My name is Betsy pake. I’m an author, a speaker and a trainer of NLP and hypnotherapy. And I’m focused on helping you understand and design your life with the power of the subconscious. This podcast is designed to help you think differently about what could be possible for your life. Now, let’s go live big
I was diagnosed with Tourette’s at 12 years old and put on medication at 21 I decided to come off the meds overnight meditating non stop for three weeks and the most incredible thing happened. My Twitch disappeared. I realized that my Tourette’s symptoms were a result of obsessive thinking and frustration, trying to work out things I couldn’t find answers to the medication reduce twitching, as it slow my brain down so I didn’t have enough brain power to find the answers to my questions about life. I think Twitch take a tablet fall asleep before found answers. The cycle repeated for nine years, someone told me about the secret. Then I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube and came across a whole world of people repeating the same thing that always had in my head. I realized that to come off the medication to regain control of my brain after hearing stories, that it was the medication that was causing the symptoms to to keep my brain in that current state of mind. So it helped the medication overnight process all nine years worth of thoughts literally in three days. But it’s a constantly So any thoughts entered my brain. And that’s where my Tourette’s disappeared for the first time, I was in total awareness. Now my goal is to empower as many people as possible on the planet with the wisdom and knowledge that I’ve worked out and have learned growing up in my head from excessive thinking. You can listen to my podcast talk with Oliver at talk with oliver.com I can promise you, I will be speaking about stuff that you will not hear the average man or person talk about. Because there’s stuff I’ve worked out in my head, unique to me, but every human being or resonate, because I speak the deepest, subconscious part of the brain. Because we’re all human at the end of the day. Listen now.
Hello, hi, welcome. Welcome to the Art of Living big. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. So today is probably going to be a little longer episode, I want to talk today I want to really dive in to my trip to Iceland, I just got home, it is a Monday I get home on Friday. So if you haven’t been following along on this show for a while, then or if you follow me on Instagram, you know that when you’re listening to this, I’ve probably been home for a few weeks. But when I’m recording this, it is just a few days. And so I’m still processing parts of the trip. And this particular episode is going to be about like the trip itself. Some things about the location, about the journey, the things that I saw, I also am going to have a downloadable of my itinerary. And the itinerary is going to be every place that we were to go some of the things we couldn’t see because of weather or things that came up with our schedules. But I’m going to give you the full itinerary because it is an itinerary that you could follow around the country. So you can get that let me say this before we get started just so that you have it in your mind, but you can get it from the show notes. So if you’ve ever heard me say that, like just go to the show notes. I know before I had a podcast and I would listen I would be like what the heck are these show notes so you might be able to see them like on iTunes as you look at this episode, but you can also go to my website and if you go to my website Betsy pake calm and you click on podcast you can go to this particular episode but the interesting thing is all of my episodes are labeled the URL is going to be Betsy pake Betsy pake comm slash a lb and then the episode number so our of living big a lb episode number. So I don’t know exactly which episode number this will be but that is how you will be able to find it. So you can just go there and you can download the whole itinerary if you want to see it. I have thoughts on who what could be a much shorter trip, you know, I was there for 25 days total 20 days with my group or 21 days with my group and so you know it that’s a longer time but but there are some of my most favorite things were close together and really easily accessible to Reykjavik, which is kind of where you would fly into so I have some thoughts on that too. So let’s just dive right in. Let’s dive in. So the other thing that I will say as a disclaimer, and this is something I’m trying to improve about myself, okay, but and you may notice this if you’ve listened to the show for a while, but if there are people’s names that I don’t know how to say it makes me really nervous. don’t ever want to miss, pronounce someone’s name. And I’m realizing that that’s like something that I need to heal, I need to fix that. And like be a little, when I have guests on the show be able to say their last name, right? Like, I need to stop that. But all of that I found was showing up a lot on this trip. Because a lot of the places that we went to, obviously are listed or you know, pronounced in Icelandic and I don’t speak Icelandic. So I’m going to talk about some of the places and do my best. And then when you download the itinerary, you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about. Okay. So that’s my little disclaimer, this trip in general was like, a huge exposure of all the places that needed to be healed anyway. So the, the speech part, the saying words in different languages is just the very tip of the iceberg of the Icelandic iceberg. So the interesting thing, so if you’re brand new here, or you don’t know the story, or you haven’t heard about how I got to Iceland, I want to give just a really quick recap, because I feel like this is an important part of the story. So I was at the beach in January. And I really spending a lot of time there like thinking about what I wanted. For my life and and things that I wanted to experience. In this year, there was a lot of soul searching, I went by myself, and I was there for almost a month. And I like being alone. But also being alone for that amount of time, I really, really,
really get to know myself not got to know the parts of me that got wobbly in certain situations. And I spent a lot of time thinking about things that I really needed to think about that I had been avoiding. You might have things like that too, so you know what I’m talking about. And so, as I was there one night, I was sitting in bed, on tick tock, as one does, like scrolling through. And I came upon this video from this man in Finland, who was cross country skiing in the Northern Lights were above him. And what I now realized was like a time lapse video, right with the Northern Lights like swirling. And it was just, I mean, it was just so amazing that I watched the video, like 20 times, like, I watched it over and over and over and over again. I was crying like there was a lot of emotion, although I didn’t know what the emotion was. It was like a one thing. And at that time, you know, I had been at the beach for like three weeks. And I was trying to figure out what do I do next? Like, I knew I was there. I had gotten an Airbnb for a month. But I was like what’s next? And honestly, at that point, I really was struggling because I couldn’t come up with anything that made me feel excited. And I had actually had conversations a few days before I saw this video with some friends and I had journaled about it that I wasn’t going to continue to search. Because what I was doing was like I was going on the map, and I was looking like, well, it would be fun to go here. Or maybe it would be fun to go down to the keys or it would be fun. Like maybe I could do that. And I guess I could drive like I was trying. I was forcing, right. And none of it really. I mean, a lot of it sounded fun. Like, I mean, I’d go to the keys, like I’ll go to Arizona, like all of it sounded fun. But it wasn’t like the thing. Like I wasn’t like, excited, like I didn’t feel anything like in my soul going like, yes, I want to do that thing that sounds so fun. And, you know, on one hand,
we spend a lot of our lives not having that. Like, it’s not like I had been walking around the last 10 years of my life, like absolutely thrilled and excited for every new month to show up. But I had gotten to a point in my life. And if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ve heard me reference some of this. But we’re I knew I needed a lot of things to change. And I had become aware of a lot of things that I needed to heal. And I knew that I needed to do some things that were just for me, you know, some things that didn’t involve anybody else’s decision or anyone else’s influence, you know. And so part of that discovery process was when I was there at the beach, and I was like looking around and so those few days before I saw that video was was were a hard few days, because I was realizing that I didn’t know. And I had come to the point where I was just going to surrender to that. I don’t know. Early on in the month I had read the surrender experiment. If you guys I’ve ever read that book by Michael singer, it was really good. But I kept thinking back to that book. And about just like allowing and just surrendering and not trying to force anything. And I felt like that was really what I was trying to do, right. It’s like, force, what’s the next thing I was looking at the map and, you know, going to Google or trying to see all the things. But I got to the point where I was like, I’m not going to be able to figure this out. And so for a few days, before I saw this video, I just was like, I’m just going to allow it to come. And I just tried to stay really present. You know, I sat out on the balcony in Florida. And I mean, it was windy and kind of chilly. Chilly, because it was Florida, but it was January. But I sat out on the balcony and the way that the condo was that I rented just angled perfectly where I could get a lot of afternoon sun, I was like, a lizard with my face pointing towards the sun, you know, for sometimes for hours, like just soaking in the sun and saying, I’m just going to be really present, like, how am I feeling? What am I feeling in my body? And when I think about certain things, how does that feel in my body? And so as things would come into my awareness, I would, I would check, I would do like a scan of my body and say, well, is that a yes? Or is that a no? And if it wasn’t like a raging? Yes, I just would I was I had just gotten to the point in my life where I just was like, I’m tired of it being like, okay, like, I didn’t want okay, anymore. I wanted like, fucking Yes. Like, that’s what I wanted. And I, and I really didn’t think I would find that, like, I really felt like, oh my gosh, like, I don’t even know if that. Am I asking too much? You know, am I asking too much. And now I know that that’s never asking too much, that that’s actually something that should be coming in and out of our lives constantly. And I’m going to talk a little bit more about that. But in all of that, I got on tick tock, and I, I’m not a tick tock er, although I have done one tick tock now, since but I, you know, I would just kind of scroll and just check things before I’d go to bed and people are so creative on there. It’s fun for me. And I, I know that the algorithm of tick tock is really fascinating. And it seems to understand you really, really well. And it seems like it narrows in things you’d want to see. Like really quickly. And that to me is also really fascinating. So, you know, if I, if I’m into like, changing stuff around in my house, all of a sudden, I start seeing all these, these house decorating videos, right? So if I’m into just watching people paint or be really creative, like I’m seeing a lot of that stuff. So anyway, I’m scrolling. And then I see, I see these northern lights, and I am overwhelmed. I’m crying, although I don’t totally know why other than it’s so amazing. I’m just like, oh my god, this is so cool. And it was the adventure of that of that like being so different from anything that I had seen. Now the video was in Finland, and I’ve been to Finland, but I went in the summer. And I didn’t experience that. And something about that just spoke to me for whatever reason. And I said out loud, I want that, like, I want that. And it wasn’t it. It was a combination of I want that. And I want to feel that, like whatever I’m feeling when I’m seeing this, like that’s what I want. Like that. It was almost like it was the feeling of that that I was choosing, you can probably hear it in my voice like it makes me emotional. I would like it was the feeling I was choosing now. Again, if you’ve been here for a while, for eight months before, like things in my life had been really rocky and there was a lot of upheaval and a lot of loss, and a lot of change. And I just was like I want like something magical. Like it was just time you know. So that was February 21. The next morning, I got on Instagram now. No I got on Facebook. Now if you if you if you follow my teaching, I am an expert in the unconscious mind. And what I know about the unconscious mind is that our unconscious mind speaks its language is emotion. What part of it is emotion, it’s imagination. And so I had given it a lot of emotion. If you think of let’s talk about our unconscious mind for just a minute. But if you think about our unconscious mind, and what comes in into our conscious minds. Right there, there’s a vast ness of my unconscious mind. My conscious mind is just a teeny tiny grain of that vastness. So how does my unconscious know what to deliver? To my conscious mind? How does it know what to make conscious, right? When I can make the unconscious conscious is when I have reign over my experience. So my unconscious mind knows what’s important, partially by emotion. So if I’m giving something a lot of emotion, my unconscious mind goes, that’s really important. Next time we see that thing, let’s make sure that she notices. Right, does that resonate? Okay, so now here I am, I’ve had a lot of emotion about the video, I go onto Facebook. And I’m scrolling and I come across a video or a post, I come across a post on Facebook, that a woman posted in one of my Women’s Entrepreneur groups. And I wish I had screenshotted it I think she’s removed it because I’ve looked since I think she got the filled up the spot and and removed the post. But what the Post said was, I am pulling together a small group of entrepreneurs, people that work remote, and we’re going to go to Iceland, to see the northern lights if you want information, just message me. And as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my god, like, Oh my God, and then do not ideas. Like I scrolled a little bit. Because I was like, Oh my God, that’s cool. And then I scrolled. And then I was like, Betsy, what are you doing? Like you, you, you placed the order? You decided that’s what you wanted? And then it showed up? And you went, Oh, wow, there it is cool. And you kept scrolling. Now, and want to pause for just a minute there. Because how many times do we do that? Like, how many times does the thing show up that we want? And we go Oh, I’d have to figure that out? Oh, that might be some work. Right? That’s gonna take some figuring some effort, I’m gonna have to like, late, right. But the thing that we wanted, is right there. And so I, I was like, I caught myself. And I was like, Wait a second. Like before that post goes away, scroll back. And I messaged her. Her name was Julia. And I messaged her, she is from Italy. And I was like, I want some information on that. And she said, Can you jump on Zoom? And I said, yep. And she said right now, and I said, yep. And so that was February 22, that I got on zoom with her. And I checked the dates this morning, because I started thinking about it. And I was like, I think there’s some magic in the dates here. So, so go with me here. So it’s the 21st, I see the tick tock, the 22nd I see the post and I talked to Julia. And I say I’m in now I see I’m in I have no earthly idea. Like, I know I can work from anywhere. So that wasn’t a thing. But like, I mean, like we’re all going to meet in Reykjavik in a parking lot. So I’m going to meet eight other people that I don’t know, in a parking lot in a city I can’t even really pronounce in a place. I’ve never been in a country where I don’t speak the language. And
yeah, I have no idea how I’m going to get there. So I have to figure that out. And it’s in like two and a half weeks or three weeks that I go. So I had to just leap I had to just leap and say you know what, this is going to be an adventure, I am not going to expect this to all go smoothly. I’m just going to expect it to be an adventure. And I really feel like that whole way of seeing the trip helped so many times when things were difficult or challenging, or they didn’t go the way that I expected them to or didn’t even go the way that I wanted them to. I kept saying this is an adventure. Like I’m an adventurer, having this physical experience. I came here I believe I came here as a soul as a piece of source energy to have this physical experience. And now I’m having it so even when it’s down. Even when it is like a dip down. It is still what I came for. I didn’t just come for all the ups. I believe I came for the ups and the downs and all the in betweens. So now let’s fast forward. So now I come. I come home from my trip to the beach. I tell Craig, my husband that I have booked this trip to Iceland. I tell him the story. And he was like So did you book it?
Yes, yes. Yes, my friend. I did. And so I started just getting everything ready, right. I mean, I didn’t even own a winter coat so I had to do all that stuff. So the picture I’m trying to paint here is that this was it. This wasn’t like, there was Effort, Right? There was effort, the magic, the miracle came, I placed the order, I got the opportunity. But I still had to put in the effort. But when I saw it through the lens of an adventurer, the effort became part of the adventure became part of the fun. And there were hard things I booked my entire flight, and I screwed it up. So I had to cancel the whole flight. I was, I was trying to go to Iceland and not pay a $2,000 plane flight. So I had to go partway to I had to go to London, because I could use my delta points and then go from London to like, so I had to go through customs, like four different times on this trip, because I had to go through London and then go through again to get to Iceland. And then I had to when I came back, I had to do the opposite, right? So there was a lot of finagling, right, a lot of like, trusting and doing things that I hadn’t had to do before. Like, I didn’t have to make crazy, plain, strategic decisions on like, timing and all of those things in different time zones. And like, like, I know, this might not sound super difficult. But for me, it was a huge challenge. I was really challenged by that, like, challenged like, tears, and like, oh my god, am I doing this? Right? Am I doing this? Right? Does this make sense? Like, am I am I leaving enough time to get through customs to get my bag? Right? Because I have to. I got this flight to London. So I had to get off the flight to London and get my luggage, and then go through customs and then go back through security. Drop off my luggage with a different airline, go back through security. Go back, get back on another different airline flight and a different terminal. Get to Iceland go through. Do you see what I’m saying? So there was a lot? Like, do I have enough time? How busy is Heathrow? I’ve never been to London Heathrow airport before. So like, how busy at the time. So a lot of that. So I want to kind of prep this just to be like, sometimes the things that we really want the things that would really light us up. It they they can happen. And it’s not always simple, right? It’s not always simple. But it’s you taking the leap and saying I’m going to do it when I look back now having to do those things gave me so much confidence. And when I talk, you know, as I keep going here about how different I am, that the moment I landed back in the United States than I was the moment I left the United States. It’s because of those small decisions that I had to make and those challenges that I had to overcome. So if I could just keep looking at those as I’m an adventurer, having an adventure, those challenges became the thing that was making me me. It was the thing that was was building me into the thing that I wanted to become. Someone had messaged me and asked me why I had gone to Iceland. Like, what was the intention? Like, did you know somebody? They’re like, why would you go? And first I was like, How do I even describe why do I go? And? And yes, I went because I saw the TIC tock and it was amazing. And yes, I went because the opportunity came in front of me. And I was like, Yeah, let’s do it. But I went because I wanted to expand, I wanted to get some confidence back that I felt like I had lost over the past few years. And I knew the fastest way to do that was to have to figure out a whole bunch of stuff all by myself. I knew the fastest way to do that was going to be to be with a group of people that I didn’t know, so that I could see who I was, and how I showed up so that I could see what parts of me what parts of situations and events made me feel wobbly, so that I knew where I needed to heal. I needed to be put in a position where everything was different so that the things that blend into the background in my everyday life become glaringly obvious that this is something to work on. And this is something great that you do and this is something where you can expand and here’s a place where you can learn and here you get to try something you’ve never done before. And and you’ll expand and build and your confidence will grow and grow and grow and it would be faster than doing it any other place. And so when they emailed me and asked me that, I was like for speed. Like I’m doing this for speed I’m doing this because I want to feel something because I want to feel that amazingness I want to feel that ah But also, because I wanted to expand as quickly as I could, and I knew that I had a lot of work to do, you know, as much as I do, as much as I know, there’s always there’s always layers to uncover. And I had gone through some situations personally over the past, you know, I don’t know, I could even say like, five or six years, and you guys have heard me talk about some of that, with my daughter getting sick and all that, like we’re, I had things in me that I needed. I needed to get back to the roots of who Betsy was, like, who, who Betsy was, who she is, but who was she before, all of those layers of things got piled on. And I’m gonna guess if you’re here, and you’re listening to this, that you know what I mean? That you have those layers too. And there’s like kind of this version of you, you know, like in your back pocket that maybe sometimes late at night, you take out a new look at and you’re like who her she had cool things, you know, cool parts about her have that I have abandoned or that have gotten moss on them, you know, or have gotten covered up with junk and responsibilities. And I wanted to strip that away as fast as I could. So now we’re 25 minutes in and I haven’t even gotten to Iceland yet. But this might be several episodes. So
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your next event? Are you part of an organization or a company that holds annual sales conferences or leadership events? I’d love to talk about the path to possibility and how to use your pain as fuel for your breakthrough. I leave guests feeling expanded, inspired and ready to break through personal barriers so that they can live big. Reach out to my team at support at Betsy pake calm or head to my website. Betsy pake calm for all the details. Alright, so if you’re going to go to Iceland, let me say some of the greatest things that I did that I did correctly in my my shopping spree before I left where I was like, I don’t even own a winter coat. I bought a winter coat. It wasn’t the greatest winter coat ever. If you’ve seen any of my Instagram pictures, you’ve seen it, but it was red, and I bought it because it was red. I bought it because I thought it would look really good in photos. And I know that might seem kind of silly, but I was so happy I did that I was so happy that I thought of that because the nature there the the waterfalls, the glaciers, it’s also overwhelming and it’s all very white. And I think if I had to choose like if I was going to choose like Betsy go out and pick your perfect winter coat probably be like, like a cream color. Maybe like cream with like the little like for around the but you wouldn’t be able to see me and so I was really happy with my red jacket purchase. Okay. The second thing is I bought a neck gator. Do you know what I mean? That like goes around your neck, you pull over your head and it goes around your neck and I bought one that was wool. Now, the wind in Iceland is insane. And when I was there, there was hurricanes, hurricane force winds. People that lived there, were saying to me and one. I’m going to talk later about how I had to go see a doctor but he even said to me like this weather. Well he said the weather is shit. That’s what he said in English because it was one of the few things he knew in English. But the weather was so treacherous then there wasn’t normal. They said it had been years since it had been like that. So the wind was crazy. And having that neck gator allowed me to pull it up like over my cheeks because the wind would blow the little pellets of snow and it would feel like needles, you know, and we went and I’m going to get into where we went but we went to a place called the Black Beach was which was amazing and so windy that like it looked like I had a sunburn when I got home you know from all the wind burn basically. So the neck gaiter the third thing that I bought was I bought these Ugg boots that were like for negative 32 degrees like they were super warm and they were waterproof and all that. But these zipped up the middle. And at first I was like these are ugly, but when I was looking at the UG website it was like the best ones because they were waterproof and they were so warm and all of that But I was like, the zip up the middle looks kind of weird. But I bought them the greatest because when you have all of this stuff on right, the big red jacket I had on my wiki wiki pants, you know, like my, you know, when you walk like a wiki wiki, you know like those like snow pants, the the gator, the hat, the big mittens, then to put boots on, and having to like, bend over and do all the ties and stuff. No, not me, I just had to zip them up. I think everybody was jealous. By the time they if, if they noticed, if they noticed they were jealous because it made it so so easy. So those are my tips. If you’re traveling anywhere, and you have to buy a red, buy a jacket, buy a red jacket, get your neck gator and get some boots, the zip. So those were my really big things. So you know, one of the things that I talked about, just I don’t know, a few months ago on the show was about life being in session. In fact, I think that episode was me flying in, and how life was in session because there was so many kids on the airplane. I think I talked about that whole thing. This whole this whole trip life was in session. And so as I’m thinking about it now, I’ve been home for just a couple days. And so I’m still processing, there is part of me, there is, as with anything, there are parts that were so incredible, life changing amazingness there were parts that were so beautiful that it took your breath away, there were parts that were so hard that I was challenged. And that’s where I grew and got a lot more confidence. There were parts where I felt so wobbly about myself. And there were parts where I was constantly meeting teachers, you know, something would happen, and I would meet somebody or somebody would say something in my group. And I would be triggered, I would feel that I would feel like a clench, or like a wobbly Ness. Now not always terrible. I’m not like it’s, but I could, I could sense it. And so I knew there my teachers are here, like, this is where I need to be because this is where my teachers are. If somebody really triggered me, I was like, Oh, I have found my teacher for the next few days. Right? So I share that because we all have things like that, you know, we all have times like that, where we’re in a situation that’s maybe really uncomfortable or different, or we don’t know anybody. And when we’re something is being reflected to us. When something is being shown to us, that makes us feel wobbly. When I say wobbly, we have our version of the world re our version of what we think the world is like. And when someone comes in and says that’s not that’s not true. That’s not my version of the world. It it can cause us to go Wait, is that? A minute? Wait, it’s not? Because that’s how I always thought the world was. And I think that traveling abroad does this for you in a much deeper way. It does it to you in a way that’s that it gets into the core values of what you what creates and what makes up your reality. And the things that make up my reality as, as a woman as an American, right, as someone that lives in the United States, someone that lives on the East Coast, like there are all different parts, right? It means something different. If you grew up in California than if you grew up in Vermont, right? It there. It might be subtle. We probably have a lot of things that are the same, but there are differences. And there are things that we believe about that. And so me going there with a whole group of people who were not from the United States, I was the only one. In fact, everybody else was from Europe. So their experience was totally different. But because they all had, I would say a more common experience. My experience became what felt to me like the outside experience. And I noticed it right away that I felt as if reactions to me. Maybe we’re a little different than reactions to other people who have this shared experience. There was definitely a feeling of they think they know me based on what they know about the United States.
But my inner feeling was, they don’t know me, because the United States isn’t what you get from media, right? Because it’s different if you live in Vermont than if you live in California than if you live in Florida, than if you live in Montana. So there’s no way to encapsulate that in a, like, You’re from the United States, like what that is. And so I felt that right away, and I am still processing because the, the, because I love those people so much. I love who they are. I love what I learned about them. I love what I learned about myself as a reflection to how they thought. And it was really challenging for me, I think, more challenging than they understood. And they probably had a lot of things happening in going on with them, too, that I didn’t understand. So I want to be clear that I’m not saying I was right, and they’re wrong, or they’re right. And I’m wrong. Like none of that. Just different. And so, you. So I love it, because it if it had been all a whole group of Americans, I would have had a very common experience. But because it was so different, it was so different. So so different. Okay, so that was a big theme. So as I talk about things, you might hear a little bit in that theme. But and so that’s kind of like the backstory to it. Um, I noticed that my behavior would be a little bit different, like, I record this show. I mean, I’ve had this show for five and a half years, like I’ve recorded a lot of episodes, I have talked a lot in an empty room to nobody, like for a long time, right? Knowing you guys would listen to at some other point, right. But for some reason, I became very self aware, self conscious. And you may have noticed it over some episodes where maybe I just didn’t sound totally like myself. And I think that was a reflection of like being in this environment. Like, who am I? How do I show up, we stayed at Airbnbs. And so many of them, the walls felt very thin. I’m going to talk about where we stayed. But I felt like everybody can hear what I’m saying. And the things that I talk about on this show, aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, you know what I mean? It’s not everybody I have, there’s a lot of science, right? I am an expert in the unconscious mind. And I, and I believe a lot of what I know, helps explain some of like, what I called, like, the woowoo side of things. And I love that I love the magic of that there’s a piece of this that is unknown, right? I love the magic of I could watch it tick tock and then the next day see the invitation to have the experience that I saw on the TIC tock. Now, I explained that when I told you about that I explained it as this is my unconscious mind noticing. And I believe that yes. And I like to believe there’s a little bit of magic there too. I like to believe that I’m part of source energy coming to have this experience. And that was an experience that wanted to be had through me. And so things were lined up. Right. My my compulsion to go on to Facebook at the moment that I did helped me to get to that spot in the right moment. Right. So like, although there is so much science, I like the magic. You guys have heard me on this show talk about Abraham Hicks. Right, you’ve heard me talk about like, I mean, I’ve had my friend Trish from Episode 208. Right talk about, like talking to to her spiritual advisors. And I’ve had I mean, I’ve had a lot of the woowoo side on here. So I’m with a group where they was fun because they didn’t know any of that stuff. They didn’t know who Abraham Hicks was or any of those things.
But there I am talking, having this conversation in a room where I felt like the walls were very thin and I think you can hear it so what did that tell me? Was that there is me showing up fully as like I’m doing this show have had a podcast for five and a half years like that. That version of me like which was shrinking a little bit and and the reason why I get to choose what the reason was but I have my thoughts on the reason is because one of the things that we always hear as People from the United States as Americans, is that Americans are so loud. Like we show up. Everybody knows somebody did say that, to me. I’m like, if you’re an American, if you’re from the United States, and you’re in a, in Europe, we know right off that you’re American, like, we can just tell. And, well, my response to that is, well, we can just tell your European two kids were different, like you can tell. But as I’m sitting there recording, I’m like, I don’t need to be too big. I don’t want to be too loud, I don’t want to show up as too much, right? Wanting to like shrink a little bit. So that I almost felt like I was there. Like, I want to represent us in a way that shows that not everybody is the way that maybe they think now, a lot of that may have been in my head, I want to say that again. But these are the things that I was starting to experience. So you might notice that in the show over those few weeks that I was recording while I was there. And then all of us coming together, there is a process that all groups go through. In fact, I will do a show I won’t bog down this show with that. But I’m going to do a show just on the group dynamic of what happens in groups when we get together. And basically, I mean, you can kind of imagine it, our group was together for 20 days, we ended up being like kind of 21 days, because we all stayed together an extra night, but 20 days, you don’t know each other. So in the beginning, you’re trying to establish who you are, right groups are trying to groups have particular functions and processes that they go through as they develop into a cohesive group. What came out on the end was a really cohesive group of people that, like genuinely cared for each other and had a really incredible time. I do also wonder if my experience was a little different from everyone else’s based on
the things that I’ve already told you. So I’ll do a show just on group dynamics and how that’s built, that could be helpful for you in other areas of your life, too. So anyway, so these are the kinds of the things that are happening. So I get there. I’m with this group, I’m recording the podcast, I’m noticing all of these things happening, right? So all of the the changes and ways I’m wanting to shrink, or how I’m showing up what I’m doing in the group dynamic to establish who I am in this, right, who am I? How do I show up? What do I believe? What are my values, right? How do I live? And so all of that was really, really eye opening and super interesting. Okay, so now let’s get on to like the trip. So when you go to Iceland, Iceland is like an island, there’s about 350,000 people that live there. So not a lot of people that’s in the entire country. Most of them live in Reykjavik. And then there are a couple of other large cities I say large again, the entire country only has about 350,000. So the bigger cities along around the outer edge, I don’t really think anybody lives in the middle is from where I understood, but there is a road called the ring road and this ring road you can travel it all the way around the country on the coast. And so what we did was we traveled on the ring road we all met up in Reykjavik which is the main city and then we left from there and we stopped at five five or six different Airbnb ease in the downloadable there is every Airbnb we stopped at and stayed at pictures and all that good stuff. So what I think is that these places that we stayed my thought on it as we stayed at more and more was that maybe they were like summer houses. I mean, they were all heated and all of that beautiful amazingness but I felt like they were like second homes, if that makes sense. So um you know how if you have like a cabin, even if it’s heated and air conditioned or whatever, it’s it’s me. I don’t I felt like the walls were thinner like I don’t think like reg regular homes were like that I get the feeling that these were built like second homes. That’s just the feeling a couple of them we stayed at were like log cabins. Do you know what I mean? So several of them have hot tub had hot tubs, which was really fun. And one of them had a sauna. So definitely places to get cozy and warm. One of them had a fireplace. One of them had heated bathroom floors, which I found to be delightful after being in the snow and all of that all day long. So so what we did was we traveled along this ring road and you We stayed at different Airbnb ease all along the way. And then we would stay anywhere from, you know, two to four nights. And then we would explore from there. So we had days where we worked, and then days where we explored, and then days where we traveled from one location to the next. And those days we explored along the way. So sometimes, those were like really long days in the car, but like jumping in and out. So the trip itself may have been like four and a half hours that we had to travel. But it would take us all day, because we would stop at different places. One of the things that struck me the most in Iceland was the
the enormity of everything. Like I felt like, everything was so big, and at first, like it was all beautiful and amazing. But it was after I saw a little car drive, I say a little car, it was a normal car. I saw I was looking at this mountain. I was at a gas station, I’m looking at this mountain, and I’m like, Oh, it’s so pretty. Everything is so pretty. Like everywhere you look, it’s just stunning. And then I was like, what is that. And then I was like, that’s a car. And then I was like, Oh my God, that mountain is huge. Like it hadn’t gotten put in to perspective, right until I saw a little car traveling. And then I was like, I thought that was just like a big hill in front of me like a big, like a mountain in front of me. But it was like all mo in front of me. And so every place you looked, it was sort of deceiving. But it was so huge. There’s a photo that I posted. I think it’s on my Instagram now. Um, but it is me in front of a waterfall, and I have the red coat honor, you’d never be able to see me. It’s not that the picture is taken that far away, as much as it’s that it was taken in order to fit the entire waterfall in the photo. And I am standing at the bottom of the waterfall, like not too far from the bottom of the waterfall just looking up at it. And I’m so tiny. It’s so tiny. And it’s because everything is so huge. So that was one of the things that I really, really noticed in Iceland was just how, how big everything was. Okay, so let’s start now that I’ve got, here’s what I’m gonna do, we’re gonna close out this episode, because this has already been 45 minutes, you get the the backstory now. So you know kind of how this goes kind of the dynamic of what’s happening. I’m going to start in the next episode with like, the very first place that I stayed, and kind of how I met up with everybody and go through that whole process. So thank you for being here with me on this show. And I will see you on the next show and we will continue our journey through Iceland. Hey, thanks so much for listening to today’s show. And thank you for sharing the show with your friends. I love when you guys do that. I appreciate it so much. And thank you for leaving me a review on iTunes. I know that it matters because when I go to find a podcast I always look to see what the reviews are. So it really means a lot to me that you take a minute to like figure out how to even make that happen. Now, if you want to find me find me on social media, I’m usually on Instagram, starting out on Tik Tok. It’s just my name Betsy pake and that’s my website to Betsy pake calm and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be hoping to plan or getting trained inside my alchemy Institute. But to make it really easy, if you want me just shoot me a DM shoot me a direct message on Instagram and I will be at your service. Thanks again for listening. And I will see you all next week.