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Today Betsy will share with us some recent difficult events in her life. She shares her thoughts around how she has truly learned the importance of slowing down and paying attention to what you truly need in the current moment. She offers the idea that maybe taking care of yourself is actually the thing that keeps everything else afloat. So next time you find yourself on a trajectory of chaos, stop and just take care of yourself.
>>> 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. Hello, hi, welcome fellow adventurers. Welcome to the show today. So today’s show, I’m doing a coffee talk episode. So I have some things to share some updates to give you, I want to share some books that I’ve been loving some things I’ve been doing that you might want to do, I don’t know, it might inspire you to do something a little different this summer. And so I thought we would just get together and Coffee Talk is where I have coffee, which I’m doing this in the afternoon. So I’m having a pro, I’m gonna, it’s a premier protein talk, we’re gonna have a little protein drink, and chat about some things. So quick update, before I really dive in, I want to give a shout out to my amazing Podcast Producer, Sydney over at the creators attache. So you guys, if you’ve been here for a while, and you’ve heard my podcast, you know that I record. And then the way it used to be in the beginning if you’ve been here, so like for a long time, I would something would happen, I would have this epiphany or this idea or this like moment, and then I would record it, and then you would get the show. I mean, sometimes within hours, right. But if you would see me say something on Instagram, you might see the show or hear the show. And like the whole big explanation about the thing, you might get all that like within a day or two. But then when I started using the Podcast Producer, everything was pushed back. So you know, there’s a lot that goes on, you probably have figured this, but like recording, but then there’s a whole bunch of stuff that has to go on with the recording and syncing things up and uploading things. And like there’s just a lot of moving parts to that. And it takes them some time to be able to do that, and to deal with me and all their other clients. So the lead time has been six weeks now. I think because of the way I’ve always done the show, where I’ve talked and then immediately, like shared it, I was feeling really disconnected, right? Because I would go to Iceland, then it would be six weeks before the Iceland episode would come out. Which again, it makes sense, logically, it makes sense. But I was feeling like it wasn’t doing for me what it used to do. And so I reached out and talked to them. And they have agreed to cut that time in half. And so we’re only going to be three weeks out, which is honestly nothing. So now it will seem much more aligned with everything else that that is happening. I feel really good about that. And I hope that you guys do too, I hope that you can sense like a difference. And you feel like it’s a little bit more up to the timeline of things. So thank you for being patient with me over the last few months as I tried to figure out what really worked, you know, anytime there’s growth in anything, there’s going to be like good things and bad things and things you have to figure out. And one of the things that I’m sure you’ve heard me say before is when we, when we set a goal, or we have something that we want to do, we don’t actually have to believe that we can do it. We don’t actually have to believe we can reach the goal. We just have to believe that we can learn what we need to learn along the way that will get us to the goal. And I feel like this whole experience over the past like five months has been partly that, like I have this goal of listeners and episodes and where I want to be with my business and being able to make these adjustments. It was it was it was like an adjustment period, you know, where we were like what works, what doesn’t work? No failures, just some feedback. So I’m super grateful that they had were aligned with with that change, too. So anyway, so you’re listening to this, and he really wasn’t that long ago that I recorded, which is very exciting. So today, Coffee Talk episode, I want to just go over, like some things that have been happening and share some thoughts with you guys. And like I said, like some books and things that I’ve been doing. So the last, I’m going to say six weeks, six weeks, seven weeks, maybe really, really hard, really hard. And I think that Lots of times. Nobody talks about it when it’s really hard, right? We post the celebrations we talk about going to Iceland and how amazing things are. The last six weeks total total bullcrap, awfulness awfulness. So I’m going to give you a quick rundown on some things. I’m going to go into some other things deeper, and I’m going to talk to you about what I’ve kind of decided. And honestly, I didn’t talk about this before I recorded an episode, maybe three weeks ago and never gave it to the podcast producers because it was too much. It was like to down I hadn’t found the up side yet. But now I feel like I have and I’ve gotten in a little groove. So I’m going to share with you. So was a Saturday morning in the middle of April. And I was I rarely rarely touch my phone until I’m like up and I got my coffee. And then typically, I will get my iPad to journal. That’s kind of how I start my day. For whatever reason, it was a Saturday morning, and I think I grabbed my phone because I wanted to know how late I slept. And it was just like seven o’clock. And as soon as I touched the phone it rain, which if I hadn’t touched it, it would I wouldn’t have known that it was ringing. Do you know I mean, it was on silent for the night. So I feel like that’s a sign. I grabbed the phone and it immediately rang in my hand. And it was one of my girlfriend’s from home. And I could tell she was really upset. And she was driving. She lives in Washington, DC and she was driving home to Vermont where I grew up and she said Mimi is dying. No, Mimi is Mimi is my childhood best friend’s mother. But it was my mother’s very best friend like very, very best friend. Like they did everything together. I was like one of my mom’s really only friends. She had a very small circle. And so Mimi’s dying wasn’t just like, Oh, my child or a friend from high schools. Mom’s dying. Like it wasn’t like that. I’ve known me since I was four years old. And so I was like, what was seven o’clock? I immediately like was like, Okay, I’m coming. I don’t even think I finished like a conversation. I’m sure she was like what’s going on with Betsy? Because I was still half asleep, you know. And so I said, I’m coming and I shut off the phone and I went to the bathroom. And then I jumped onto Delta website. I bought, I looked and there was a flight that left at 930 in the morning. So I bought that flight. And I was like, I’m just gonna go I’m gonna buy a one way ticket because I don’t know how long I’m gonna be there. I don’t even know that I knew what.
Like what Mimi was dying. I’m like, I don’t think I knew anything. I was so like, just shocked. And then I got my coffee. And then I called back and got the whole story. And, you know, Mimi was a little older. I mean, not like our parents are, you know, I’m 51. So like Mimi’s in her 70s. And she had a stroke. And so I got to the airport. Now this is where it all starts going haywire. Well, it probably started going haywire the night before when we had a stroke. But I get to the airport, they can’t find my ticket. Like, it’s I’m hardly awake. I’ve been awake for like 90 minutes. I’m at the airport already in Atlanta. And I’m so confused and upset. And I have a bag but I have no idea what I packed. And maybe you’ve had times like this before, where you’re just like kind of operating on like a auto pilot, but you’re not sure that pilot is completely capable. And they couldn’t find my ticket and the guy was so nice. And he like walked me back to a different agent to try to have her find it because I was checking in outside. And she he stood there with me and she was looking for it. And then she’s like it’s at 930 tonight. I was like, Oh my God 930 Tonight now, to get to Vermont is no small thing, no matter where you’re coming from. But, you know, to get to Vermont from Atlanta is you know, there’s like one flight that goes direct. Maybe maybe two, I think it’s just one there’s only one that leaves from Vermont. Direct to Atlanta. So I mean, I was like, I can’t take 15 hours to get there and go through New York. The lady was like I could get you on a flight. But you’d have a 12 hour layover. I mean, it didn’t make sense. I was like, just keep me on the same flight. I went home. I went and got my daughter and hung out with her and just loved on her, and then repacked my bag with some sanity and flew to Vermont where I met my friends and I sat in the hospital for six days, until me me past was really, I was really so grateful to be there. I wanted to be there for my friend and I, and maybe you’ve had this happen before to where you’re like, doing stuff, but you’re, you’re not really emotional about it, even though you know that you probably will be later. But at the moment, you’re just like being the support person. And that works to just kind of dissociate from it and be separate from it. But again, this was like a woman I’ve known my whole life, you know, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, I kept thinking, like, what would my mom do? If my mom was here? What would my mom say my mom was a helper. And so I knew that she would be doing what I was doing. So Mimi finally passed, she actually passed on my sister’s birthday, which may seem insignificant, but to me, it, it meant something. To me, it meant that my mom was guiding. Michelle, over Mimi, she turned into me when she became a grandmother. So to me that had significance, I felt like that meant something while I was there, and Mimi was passing my daughter, who you may have heard on the show, like a year before. And she’s struggled with some mental health issues and had been doing really well and was at art school, and just really loving it loving living in the dorms, loving friends loving all of it. And she had a mental health episode, I guess you could say, and landed in the hospital that very same day. So after flying there, in a bit of a panic, I had to turn around and fly home in a bit of a panic.
And we unenrolled all from school. Now, if you’ve been listening, if you’re new here, you might be like, okay, but if you’ve been listening, this was such a big deal for her to be able to go to SCAD and to be an art student, and she just really loved it. And the whole thing was very sad. It was scary. But it was also very sad. Now, you know, life continues to move on. And, you know, we enrolled her from school and moved her out of the dorms and worked figuring out the next steps. And then I immediately left to go to Sedona where I had a live training scheduled for NLP, which honestly was so much fun. The people were amazing. And it was incredible. And everything went wrong at the Airbnb. I mean, at some point, I know there’s other lessons to share about that experience. But I mean, I’ll just leave it like that. For now. Everything went wrong. power was out hot water heater, like I mean, a million things. It was it was a lot to handle, you know, there was a lot. So from the moment I got that phone call when I was in bed on that Saturday morning to now, three weeks later, you know that I’m leaving Sedona it’s been like trauma after trauma after trauma. And like things happening. While I was there, my CPA that I’ve had for a long time, fired me. She just said she thought I needed to move on to somebody else. I had so many questions. And there were so many things happening in my business. I understood. It was the right choice, and our contract was done. But it was still one of those things where I was like, Oh my gosh, not right now. So a lot of things happening and big things right? You guys like you’ve had times like this in your life where that’s happening? Or maybe that’s something that’s going on with you right now. And I kept thinking like, surely like things like this, like there’s something that we’ll snap out of like it’s just because I haven’t slept in my own bed and three weeks or it’s just that there’s like a lot to do or there’s a lot of stress or I kept thinking like there’s something this will shift this will shift. Have you been thinking about becoming a coach, but you’re not sure where to start? Are you already a coach or a therapist and you really want new ways to help your clients transform. I want to invite you into the alchemy Institute. It’s a place where we create world class board certified coaches trained in nlp hypnosis, deep streaming EFT and time techniques. With this knowledge you can upgrade your business and create your life. Go at your own pace with our on demand trainings, or attend one of our live events. You can get one More information at Betsy pake.com. Or head straight to the academy at the alchemy institute.co. I’ll see you there. So I came home from Sedona, and within like a day, our air conditioner went out our condo. And we had to, you know, we went and reported it and whatever. And the people that come and fix those things came and they couldn’t fix it and couldn’t fix it. Two weeks went by, and I live in Atlanta, it’s 85 degrees out and hot and muggy. And there’s an AC unit that they put in the window in the living room. So it’s hot at night. So I mean, I’m telling you, so now it’s been, like five weeks of nothing, but like, stress and overwhelm. And so the last day that the AC people came, and I had moved my computer, and I was working at the kitchen table, because it was the only place that was kind of cool, you know, because that window unit was in the living room. And they came and I, I backed up into a cup of water and spilled water all over my computer and fried my Mac. And I thought, you know,
it’s time to just surrender, it’s time to just surrender all of this and just slow way down, slow way down, and shift my focus, because it was really easy to focus on all the awful things, because honestly, there was a lot of awful things. And if you can imagine each of those things that I said, have numerous ups and downs within them that are also awful, and, and just a lot to figure out a lot to figure out. And so I decided I want to just slow way, way down. Nothing has to be perfect. And the only thing that I really need to focus on, honestly, is how I’m feeling. Now, this might sound crazy, because there was a lot of things to do around each of those things. I mean, phone calls and texts. And I mean, you know what I mean? Like a million different things to a million different people like really, I needed like a pit crew, right to help me. But the only thing that I truly believe this, the only thing that really matters was how I was feeling. Because if I was feeling good, I could handle that stuff. If I was feeling good, I could notice the things that were happening that were good. Because even when it’s bad and really bad, there’s still good that’s happening. And I didn’t see any of that. I will tell you, the first one to tell you that I was zoomed right in on the bad where I was like ruminating on it. Like why somebody tells me why, why why why is this happening? And so I had to just focus in on what would make me feel good right now. What is the universe trying to show me right now? I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I looked at each other and said, What’s the lesson in this? What’s the lesson in this? What’s the lesson in this? And can we be done with lessons. And so when I could slow way down, and say the things that actually would make me feel good right now is to take a bath, even though it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, the thing that would make me feel good is to go for a walk, even though it’s 930 in the morning and getting hot out. The thing that would make me feel good right now is to go to CrossFit, which I hadn’t been to in like years and years and years. But I was like to get on a barbell felt so good to me. I was like, I need it. There’s a quote by Henry Rollins, this isn’t it exactly. But it goes something like this. Friends might come and go, you know, things might happen. However he says it. I think he says friends may come and go, but 200 pounds is always 200 pounds. And I was like that’s what I need. I need steady. And right now something steady to me feels like 200 pounds, where I can go in every day. And I can No that’s going to be exactly the same. Same way. And so I started just doing those things. I started, like separating myself from the things that I didn’t want to do. And I have to tell you that some of the stuff I really needed to do, but I had to say I my capacity. Like I’m at my capacity. And right now this is what I need. You know, there really wasn’t anybody He who didn’t understand, you know, there really wasn’t anybody when I cancelled podcast interviews, or I, I cancelled, like virtual coffees with people. There’s a lot going on right now, I will explain to you another time. But I really need this space, is it okay, if we reschedule,
I had to let go. And I think this is part of the lesson for me is that I had to let go of, like, people pleasing and making everybody happy. And when I was in Sedona, I was trying so hard to make the owners of that place happy. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t make them happy enough, without making me unhappy. It took four days for me to get power in half the house, I didn’t have power in the bathroom, I didn’t have power in the living room. Like it took four days, because I was trying to accommodate them. And I didn’t want them to pay extra on the weekend for an electrician, like, I can’t even tell you the lessons that I have learned in this, when I was able to just give myself what I needed. I believe that if I hadn’t done that, then things would have just continued. It’s like the wave, the wave pattern had started. And I was just riding that wave and continuing to get what was on the wave. And I had to stop the wave by stopping what I was doing, and go wait a second, I’m realigning my energy. I’m re recalibrating everything. So I want to say a couple different things. One is just slow way down. Ask yourself, what do I really need? If I was bad? If people if nobody could be mad at me? What would I do right now? Like, that’s been a huge one for me. If if I wasn’t bad, and nobody would be mad at me, what would I do? And then I’m starting to work towards those things. You don’t have to do it all perfectly. You don’t have to do it all.
And it’s okay to put yourself first. And you know, that’s something that I’ve talked about. And I think I’ve thought that I did. But over the past few years, I’ve noticed there’s been a lot of times where I’ve had the opportunity to learn this lesson. And I didn’t really learn it, the lesson of like, stop accommodating everybody else for everything. And it’s okay to have a boundary or to put yourself first, I’ve started to do it over the past year more. But this was like the fine. It was like, if you don’t learn it now, then this is it. Like, we’re going to give you 5 million things. And you’re gonna learn how to assert yourself and get what you need. And that’s exactly what happened. So in the middle of all of those really hard things, there’s been a lot of really good things in there too. But if I hadn’t stopped and slowed down, I don’t think I would have been able to identify them. So I want to share that. Because I wonder if there’s things happening in your life? Maybe not all those things, but things right? And are you paying attention to what it is that you really need? Like what you really need? And I say need because I think sometimes we think well, I want that. But maybe it’s that you really need that. Maybe it’s that you really need that space, or that alone time or that help or to ask somebody to do something for you or to take somebody up on the offer. Right? How many times do people offer Oh, let me know if I can help but you don’t really ever say it. Maybe you don’t think they mean it? Or like maybe we’re just trying to accommodate everybody else, but ourselves. I don’t know if that resonates with you. But I feel like there has been this huge. I feel like and I think I said this last year too. I feel like I kept saying right now feels like last year like when my dog died and then my in laws were in that awful car accident. I don’t know if you guys remember this, but there was a lot going on all at once. And I kept saying I feel like I’m being birthed, like I’m in the birth canal. And I’m being birthed into something new and that’s exactly what this feels like. And it feels like that acknowledgement of like what do I need? I don’t have to make everybody else happy was like the final push into like a new reality. It almost felt like I was glitching like I was stuck between two realities. I know that sounds kind of strange, but I felt like there’s something happening here. That’s Different than just life happening. You know. And I think there’s a lot going on in the world right now, I think there’s a lot of energy in the world right now. I think it’s easy to put ourselves last because we’re just trying to keep everything afloat. And I wonder, and I offer you the thought that maybe keeping, maybe taking care of yourself is actually the thing that keeps everything else afloat, I can’t do any of those things, I can’t go and support a friend, I can’t support my daughter, I can’t support the people in NLP class, I can’t support, like keeping my home, air conditioned, or dealing with people to help me do that. Like, if I’m not taking care of me. Like, if there’s nothing for me to give, I can’t do any of that. And I know that we hear that all the time. So I’m just offering it to you in a different route, to see if you can see this just a little bit differently. That way, if you’re on a trajectory of chaos, the trajectory of chaos is what we’ll call this past seven weeks from now on, then stop and just take care of yourself. Just stop everything, just tell everybody else they can figure it out. Like what’s going to happen. I can’t stress this enough. I think this is a key. I think this is a key that maybe as women we all need to learn. Alright, so in all of that, of like, what do I need to do? What do I need to learn? What do I need to do to take care of me, one of the things that was really coming up for me was, was that I really wanted to, I wanted to read more. And even though like sometimes I’d be walking my dog or I would be in the car, those would be times I could listen to a book I needed to be entertained. Now, the first book that I listened to was Gabi Bernstein’s new book, happy days, I thought it was really, really good. So much of it is the work that I teach that I was it was a little like, I fast forwarded through some parts, like where she described some healing modalities that I train people on. But I thought her story was so good, right? Because we can find ourselves in our story. And she talks about her experience with being a new mom, and having postpartum depression, and really about how the triggers of like her past how that was playing out in her present life. It was really fascinating. If you guys aren’t familiar with Gabby Bernstein. She is like a spiritual teacher. And I think sometimes we think people like Gabby or, or Brene Brown, right that their lives, like they don’t have issues like they have it all figured out. And they don’t. And so her talking about it, for me was really helpful to just hear, especially because I was in the midst of the seven weeks of
the chaos trajectory, whatever we decided we’d call it. So that was a really good one. Then after that, I was like, I need to just be entertained. Do you know what I mean? Like I am done reading things that are going to help me I just want to be entertained. So I listened to greenlights. It’s Matthew McConaughey his book, you guys, it was so good. And he reads it. And he’s an actor. So it was great to listen to. It was really good. He has had a really interesting life. And he’s funny, and the book is really entertaining. I listened to that in like two days, I walked Henry, like a million miles because I wanted to keep listening. So it was really good. The other one that I listened to is the David Sedaris book. I want to be able to tell you which one it was, it was one of the more recent ones, I think it was here, let me open up and check. The thing is with David Sedaris, is that I feel like all of his, like any of them could be the book. Do you know what I mean? Like all of his books are so good and so funny. I went and saw him just a few, I don’t know, two months ago or something, I went and saw him live and he’s very funny. It was Calypso by David Sedaris, and it was hilarious, like truly hilarious. Like, I was laughing out loud. I listened to that. It was like six hours. I listened in one day. I cleaned my house, like I mean, it’s like doing anything so that I could keep listening. So I want to share that one. And then the last one that I’m reading right now is a book that I’m actually reading. I’m not listening to it, but it’s a book by Anne Morrow. Lindbergh is Charles Lindbergh’s wife, and the book was actually written 50 years ago. So you may have already heard it. You may have read it. You may be like, how did you not know about this book, Betsy? I feel like when I saw it, it was one of those things where somebody said something to me and then I Googled what they said. And then I linked to something else and it linked to something and it was like a rabbit hole kind of thing, but it was the perfect thing in the book is called gift from the sea. And it’s about this woman and who goes to the beach for two weeks to find herself. Gosh, that sounds familiar to me two weeks to find herself and, and writes about it. And she finds herself in all the different shells that she finds. And so each chapter is a lesson from a shell. And it’s a really, really good, I feel like it’s a kind of timeless book where, I mean, it’s been around for 50 years. And so clearly, it’s a lot of people found it timeless. But even though it’s a 50 year old book, well, she was talking about women and the things that we struggle with, and the things that she was feeling when she was at the beach and overwhelmed with her family. And it was the same kind of things. You know, I was like, gosh, there’s such universal things that never, that never, like time doesn’t take away. Now, she was talking about how you can get over, over into like the radio, or magazines, or anything. Now we’d be like social media, but it was still just so applicable, I wanted to share that. So a gift from the sea. So a lot of really good stuff in all of those. So all right, I am by the time you’re listening to this, I may be, I may be just coming back, or maybe just leaving to go to Key West. So one of the things that I was like, I need to foot put my feet in the sand, like I need to get my toes in the water. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of travel over this past this year. I mean, I’ve gone somewhere, like constantly, I’ve been going places, which has been really fun. But also I was like, Do I like can is it worth me spending more money to go down and Qs because Qs not like the cheapest place to go. And I love it there. But I was like, that’s where I want to go. And so my husband took a couple days off from work, and we’re gonna go down, I used every delta point and you Hill in Mile everything, so that I could make that happen in a really affordable way. And so I’m quite pleased with all of my miles and points and honors programs and all the things. So I will get to get my feet in the sand. So I hope that this summer, you can slow down. You can ask yourself, what if? What if nobody would be mad at me? And I wouldn’t be bad. What would I do? What would I do just for me. I hope that you find some good books that make you laugh. And I hope you’re able to put your toes in the sand. Because that’s how I think you live a big life. Thank you so much for being here with me. Thanks for experiencing all of this with me today and and just for listening to the show. I love you so much. I’ll see you guys next week.
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.com. 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.
