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In this week’s episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy reminds us that we can become the version of ourselves that we need at that moment. How we do one thing is how we can do everything. We have the power within us to navigate bad news and hard times as well as the power to make decisions that will move our lives in the direction we want to go little by little. Take a listen and remember that the next step you take, you are ready for because it’s all yours.
Transcript:
Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everybody. Welcome to the show today. I’m excited. I’ve got all these little like updates that I wanna give you. Um, and I swear when I do this show the, the leaf blower lawn men do not come until I start this recording. So we’ll see. I can see them out there, but we’re gonna, we’re gonna hope for the best. Okay? Okay. Quickly before we get started, if you have seen, we have launched. A retreat in Belize in July. It is going to be. Really amazing. It’s called The Reimagined Life. And we are gonna move through creating a whole blueprint for you and how you really want to live your life. And so we’ve got workshops like twice a day, but the then the like in the morning and the evening, and then the whole day is full of snorkeling and laying in the sun and chatting and processing and journaling. And then in the end you move forward with. A blueprint for how you wanna move through the rest of the year, the rest of your life. So. Join me. We filled up really quickly. There’s only like, like half the spots are full already, so if you would like to come, please don’t delay. If you have questions, email us at support@betsypake.com. I will jump on the phone with you and answer any questions and see if it’s a good fit. I think it’s gonna be so fun and some of the ladies that are in already are. Women that I know from my program, some of them are people that I don’t know, and I’m so excited about that and I’m excited for them because I know they’re gonna make all kinds of besties in there. So, um, you can find the link to it in my Instagram profile, or you can go to my website under live events. You’ll see it there, but it’s gonna be at this really beautiful resort. And I heard that the snorkeling there is like snorkeling in a fish tank. Like it’s amazing. So. Please join me if you would like. All right. This week I went with a friend to a fashion show that was a fundraiser for Cancer Research and this center here in Atlanta. And, you know, I thought it was, it, it was so moving. Honestly, it, it, it, I was so honored to be invited and to be with her and her friends and to, you know, get, to get to experience the whole day. And the thing that I kept thinking when I was watching the fashion show, because it was caregivers, doctors and nurses, and it was women who had been through their cancer journey and it was family members and they were all modeling these really beautiful clothes from local boutiques, and it was really fun for that. Also my little, my little aggression, my microaggression towards the patriarchy was to call all of the men with the, they, they would carry a white rose if they were a, a caregiver. And if they were a man, I, I assumed they were nurses. And if they were a woman, I assumed they were the oncologists. And that was kind of fun to be like, oh, I wonder what kind of nurse he is. So. I’m watching this thing and I’m watching these women and I, it’s, it’s really so moving. ’cause you’re like, how do you move through something so big? Right? Like, how do you get presented with that? And so many of them were like, I had no idea this came out of the blue. Like, I wasn’t expecting this. And you know, I think with a lot of big things in our lives we’re, we’re just not expecting it. And so we can’t be prepared. For things. We can’t be prepared for everything. And what I started thinking about when I was watching them is, you know, of course like we go to like, oh my God, what would I do? What would I think, you know, who would I call? What would happen? And I realized that the women that were walking down the runway were likely different women that were told. That they had the diagnosis and that they didn’t have to be that final version of them in the beginning, it was going through the process that made them that way. Now, nobody wants to go through that journey in order to grow or to become a a, a, A D, I wanna say a different or improved version. I don’t know. Uh, that’s a subjective thing. But I think with all of our journeys, and you know, so many of you listen and follow me because you’re struggling in your marriage, but the version of you who has a clear decision, who knows the path she’s gonna take, who’s walking that path, isn’t the version of you that listens here today. And that’s by design. You’re not supposed to be. So it’s okay if it feels really scary. It’s okay if it feels like you can’t do it. It’s okay if it feels like overwhelming. How would I figure this out? Because you only have to figure out the thing that’s right in front of you and then you begin to become the kind of person who is able to walk through the journey. And I wanted to share that ’cause I just was thinking about it. I mean, the lens that I see the world right, is through this work in so many ways. And I thought it was just like such a beautiful example of, of victory, you know, on the other side of that. And it was really cool. Anyway, I was honored to be there. It was, it was great. You know, my birthday’s coming up. I, I’m about to be 55, I gotta say. I remember on my 50th birthday, I remember I brought myself to the beach. Yeah, my former husband went with me, but I planned it. I paid for it, luckily, and went to the beach. And I remember sitting by the beach going like, I am not gonna do my fifties like this. I, I’ve never been as miserable on a birthday as that birthday. And I was at the beach, which is like my favorite place ever. And I have a picture of me like just pulling the. My hoodie down over my face because I was crying. I don’t know that anybody noticed, but I noticed it was so miserable. And this year I’m going to the beach on my birthday to look for my beach house, and that is really fricking cool. And so we get to make a choice. We get to notice it’s okay to be in the crap because then we get to make a totally different decision. And we get to become the person who can make that decision. So I’m gonna be going down to Florida, actually. And if you listen to my episode, several, maybe like a month ago about how to make big decisions and I was talking about making this big decision and I felt so strongly, it’s California. California is the thing, and I feel a little differently now. I have done a hella research over the last month. I got really into the research so much that it began to get paralyzing because here’s what I teach, is that you can’t make pros and cons lists. And then what did I do? So I was like, let’s make a pros and cons list. Let’s figure it out. And you know, I recognize that in every decision, and even with the women that I work with inside the Navigate Method, there are. Practical decisions that also need to be made. So the decision from your gut and the practical choices that surround that. And I’ll be honest, I did my Q1 taxes for my business and we had a huge tax bill, which was great. I, you know, very proud. I saved the money every month, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, although it’s always painful and. I put, I figured out like what the, you know, looked at the p and l and if I was in California, what that tax bill would be. And that was for one quarter. And then if I multiplied that by four quarters for a year, and that’s just on my business. And then to be practical, I’m 55 years old. I’m not 30 where I have room for a lot of, you know. Mistakes, I guess, or, uh, I, I have room for mistakes, but, but the, the trajectory is shorter for me to retirement, right? So I wanted to pay attention to those that felt in alignment to pay attention to that. And so then I started down this rabbit hole of Florida and where in Florida. And when I tell you you can go on YouTube and you can find a walking tour of every city you can find apartment. Um, walkthroughs, home walkthroughs. I mean, you could real estate shop, like you could do all the things from YouTube. It’s, it’s pretty amazing. And so I went up and down the coasts and, um, you know, my aunt lives in Sarasota. It. She’s only there part of the year and then it gets too cold. So she goes to Puerto Rico to her place in Puerto Rico. But I, you know, there is somebody there, right? So like. My dad would likely come down. He would see his sister. I would be able to see him. Like there was things about it. I have several friends that live in the Tampa area area, Sarasota area. There’s a huge airport there, which I, it was important to me. I want to be close enough to the water and be able to afford to be on the water. Like that feels in alignment to me. So I started doing all this recon, like paralyzing amount of recon. I cleaned out my little, I had like a little storage closet. With some things I had put in there and totally cleaned that out, narrowed everything down. I got my whole life into one bucket, you guys? One bin. One bin. And then I just kind of got where I was like, you know what? There’s things I really love about Atlanta, where I live, there’s things I’m gonna really miss. And I started noticing when I would make plans or I’d hear from a friend, I’d be like, oh, I’d really miss that. And so then I thought. You know what? I think what I’ll do is I’m gonna just buy a little condo in Midtown in Atlanta, and then I’ll just snowbird. I’ll spend my winters in different beaches. I’ll go to California one year. I’ll go to Florida one year, and I’ll just start checking it out. And I told my sister. And my sister said, but would you? But would you, or would you just sit in your condo in Midtown and wish you had taken the leap? And I was like, oh, you shut your mouth. You shut your mouth. It was so true. It was so true. So I decided to give my notice at my apartment, move late this summer after the trip to Belize, and I’m going down to find a place to live on my birthday on year 55. So we always have an opportunity to. Feel what we’re feeling and to be unhappy with where we are and to make a new choice. And to make a new choice. And I started thinking over the last couple days, like how with this new version of me, right, the version of me that walks the runway and is like through the storm and is now choosing my life, is this in big decisions? And small decisions, or am I just doing this with like big decisions because my life is in the tiny things that I do all the time. Now I’m gonna tell you a very silly, silly, silly story, but I wanna just illustrate what I mean. So when I moved into my apartment, I bought. A very well fancy for me, a very fancy espresso machine. I wanted to create a new ritual for my mornings. Okay? So I wanted to have like something different that I did. I wanted to have, and bear with me here when I say this word, but I wanted to have a hobby. Like I wanted to really understand coffee and I wanted to order. From private roasters, small roasters all over the country. So every month I get different beans from a different small roaster somewhere in the country, and I wanted to like really get into coffee. It felt really fun and it gave me something different to start my day so that I wasn’t thinking about what I would have done or how I missed my dog or, you know, any of those things that I, that I lost in, in the separation. And so. I, I got this coffee maker and, and, and had to get a grinder for my beans. Okay. So I bought a grinder. It wasn’t cheap. I don’t know if I’m just really cheap, but I was like, it was a couple hundred bucks for this grinder, you know? And it was great. It made great coffee. I was, I was pumped. And then last week it died. It like completely died and I’m like, I’ve only had it like, not even 18 months, you know, 18 months, 20 months. I don’t know. I just was like, why is this dead already? I did a little Google search and found out that that isn’t really a, a grinder that you can use every single day, and I used it multiple times a day and lots of times my kid would come over and I’d make coffee for them and so it was getting used a lot and you know, a good grinder. Slices the beans instead of crushes the beans. And that’s what makes it better. ’cause it makes the water flow food better. Anyway, the whole thing just jammed up. Like it just was going tick, tick. And it wasn’t, and it wasn’t gr nothing was coming out. I tried to fix it. I ordered parts. I mean, I did the things. And then I thought, you know what? For my 55th birthday, I likely am not gonna get anything. My dad might send me flowers or something. He’s very sweet. But I was like, I’m likely not gonna get anything, so I’m gonna buy myself something. I’m gonna buy myself a fancy grinder, but I’m gonna get a grinder. That’s. Gonna last more than a year, I’m gonna get a grinder. That’s like a substantial piece of equipment that I’m gonna have for 10 years. I know this sounds, I don’t have a lot of, I don’t have a lot of things that I do, but I was like, I want a really nice grinder. And so I found the kind of grinder that I wanted, and Eureka, I think was the brand anyway, they had it in Chrome. They had it in this like enamel white, that was really pretty. And they had it in Ferrari Red, it’s Italian. It was Ferrari red is what it was called. And I was like, oh, I want the, I want the Ferrari red. Like I, as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my God. And then I thought, that doesn’t go in my kitchen. Which I live in an apartment. My kitchen can be anything I want. But I was like, that doesn’t really go. And I was like, I don’t know. And then I think I put it unconsciously through a filter of what other people would think if they came over. Now hardly nobody comes over. Gosh, why is that my filter? Because that was the filter I was handed as a young person, right? So I put it through the filter of like, well, what will people think? It doesn’t match. It doesn’t go, I got this like weird red appliance in my. Coffee bar, you know. No, I wanna pause ’cause I wanna say I get that this is insignificant. Like I get that this isn’t, you know, uh, some big catastrophe. I just am saying in the small things. In the small things. And so I put my hand on my heart and do what I tell people to do and I, and I just really breathed into it. And if it was just me. What do I want? And right off I was like, I want the red one. I want the red one. And so that’s what I ordered. It wasn’t the safe option, it wasn’t the option that goes with anything. It wasn’t the option that maybe made the most sense. Like if I buy a place at the beach, do I really don’t? I want neutral appliances, or chrome or white is so cool. No, I want the red, I want the Ferrari red. That’s what I want. I want Ferrari red. And so that’s what I ordered and I found a small distributor in upstate New York to buy it from and then didn’t buy it on Amazon. And so that felt really good to, to give my, my money to a small business. So when I talk about like these big things like moving to the beach and like where do I go and how do I. Distinguish between what I want and what’s the right thing. You know, I’m using air quotes, or if I wanna make a change in my relationship or my marriage, or whatever those things are for you. How you do one thing is how you do everything. And I was like, I have to really pay attention if I want to build a life that is fully mine, that fully embraces the me in all of this. Then I have to pay attention to the little things too until it becomes second nature to just choose what I want and move forward. So that’s the story of my Ferrari coffee bean grinder. I’ll post it on Instagram if you follow along over there. I will. I will make sure to let you know if you wanna know how to do this like this, like deep work of like, how do I know what I really want? I have a, a, a path for that. Like if you go to my website, it’s called the Bridge. You can comment on anything, like on my Instagram or whatever. Just put Bridge and it’ll send you a link to it. But if you go to my website under, I think it’s like work with me, it’ll say the bridge and the bridge is like six chapters to move you towards this deep inner knowing about six different chapters of your life. And so I ask like there’s a little audio to listen to, kinda like a little mini podcast. I have a little. Process for you to do. And then you’re gonna take what you learned one sentence and you’re gonna move it to something I call the honesty map. And then you’re gonna fill out your whole honesty map, and at the end, you’re gonna be able to create a little declaration for yourself and about where you are. So check out the bridge if that. If that appeals to you, but definitely check out my Ferrari red coffee grinder. I think it comes next week, so I will post about it. Um, and yeah, thank you so much for being here today. I know this was like a short little catch up with all the things I wanted to tell you, but those are the things that I wanted to tell you. All right, have an amazing week. I will hopefully see you in Belize and if not, I’ll see you next week. Alright, bye-bye. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at Betsy Pake and on my YouTube channel. Remember, the world is vast. Your potential is endless, and your life, it’s yours to shape. Until next time, keep reaching, keep exploring, and keep living big.
