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Where are you saying yes when you mean no? Where are you pretending something is fine because it would be really darn inconvenient if it wasn’t? We have all been there. We know exactly the moment that we make these realizations, but what if you didn’t bury them? What if you spent some time designing a plan or asking yourself ‘who am I, who do I want to become?’ It’s pretty exciting to think about…
Transcript:
Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big.
Hello, fellow adventurers. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the show today. So, uh, it’s October. How is it October already? I swear to God, it just was, like, March, but now here we are I usually get up in the morning, and I love going for a long walk, and I get to see all the kids. I live next door to a school, so the apartment building where I live is next door to an elementary school.
And although there are a lot of car drop-offs, a majority of the people, I would say a majority, a lot, many many of the people bring their kids to school on bikes. And so there is a bike bus around here. There’s a ton of bikes that come in where kids are riding their bikes and the parents are riding next to them.
There is a, a way bigger majority of bikes with, the kids on the bikes. Do you know what I mean? Like, on the back or whatever. Uh, or, like, even carts that people are, like, pushing in front of the bike. So there is b- bike kids everywhere. I don’t know, there’s something really magical about walking in the morning, and where I walk is, like, a lot of trees and overhang, and it’s so pretty, and it feels good right now ’cause the air is getting a little cooler and all the kids are biking.
I don’t know, it’s just happy. About a week ago I was walking and I, I got, like, a little teary because I was like… You know sometimes you’ll look back on your life and you’ll be like, “That time of my life was so cool”? Well, I got a little teary ’cause I was like, “Oh, I, I’m in it. I’m like, I’m in it.” This will be a time that I look back and go, “Oh, that time of my life was so cool.”
And I won’t always live in this apartment, you know. I’m thinking now about when my lease runs out, buying a townhouse or something. I know things will change, and life changes as it does, but it’s really fun to have those moments where you’re like, “Oh, this is so good.” So I’m enjoying the chillier air, even though, even though it means winter is coming.
But it is October, and as the weather starts to change, I think I start thinking about, you know, like, all the… I think it’s because it’s school time. You know when school goes back in session, then you’re like, “I get to refresh. I get to think about things.” And I’ve talked about this on the show so many times, but I love, I love a good Monday morning.
I love the start to a new month. I love New Year’s resolutions,, I really do. And I have a practice that I’ve done a couple times a year for the past many years, and typically I’ll do it around my birthday. I like to do it in May because it’s sort of a reset, you know, for my, my next year around the sun.
But I also like to do it at New Year’s time. But right about now is when I start thinking Are the things I put in place in May, are those things happening? But even more importantly, I start thinking about January. Because I don’t believe January starts in January. Like, if we want change for 2027, if you’re like, “I am not living 2027 the way I have lived 2026 or 2025 or 2022,” whatever it is, then I think it has to start now.
I think that making shifts right now gets us in position to catapult ourselves forward in January, and we don’t have to. You don’t have to. So everything I’m saying, if you’re like, “Oh my God, I don’t want one more goal,” you don’t have to. This is, this is just me just being honest with who I am. Who I am and what I want.
And so I wanna talk about that a little bit today
I will say that some of the biggest shifts that I have had in my own life didn’t actually start on January 1st. They started in October or November, probably early October, you know, sitting down with a notebook when I finally let myself be really honest about who I was and what I wanted. And so today I wanna tell you what I’m actually working on right now in the fall so that when January gets here, I am ready for it.
All right. So this is what I hear from women all the time, and maybe this is something that you have said, maybe it’s something that you’ve said this week, , is like after the holidays, like we’re already getting into… It’s almost Halloween. I, I said– I’m actually recording this at the very end of September, and I said the other day, “It’s almost Halloween.
Once Halloween is here, then Thanksgiving’s here, and then Christmas is here, and then it’s all over.” You know? And so I’ll just think about that in January, or I’ll put that on my January list, you know? Once the new year starts, then I’m gonna get really serious about all this. I’m gonna, I am gonna really show up come January.
And, you know, that might be about your marriage. I know I had said that many times. You know, it might be about your health. It might be about working out. It might be about your business. It might be about friendships that you wanna reevaluate, maybe things that have been draining you for a long time, or a house you don’t wanna live in anymore.
Like, whatever it is, you know? You’ve already picked the date. You’ve decided January is when things are gonna be different. Or as you kinda go along and things come up in your mind, you’ll be like, “Oh, that’ll be a good resolution thing.” It’s kinda like when my kid will say they want something. By, by this time of the year if they’re like, “I really want those shoes,” or I re- I’m like, “Well, that would be a good Christmas pre- Christmas present.
Christmas is three months away, but it’s okay. That’s… I’m gonna put that on your Christmas list.” And I think we do that sometimes with ideas of things that we want for our life. When we put it into the future, I think it creates a bubble of possibility that feels really good. We don’t have to fail, and it can stay intact and h- a happy thought, something that is available to us, although not something that we’re working on right now.
And, you know, I think that if you’ve decided that January 1st is when you’re gonna start working on some things that you have in mind, I want you to just think about what happens between now and then. And I know there is something a little magical about January 1st, I’m not gonna lie. But I think that when I think about January 1st, I think about, like, the changes that I wanna be in, the changes I wanna make, requires a different version of me than the version of me right now.
Otherwise, I would already have those things. And so from now until January is my time to become the kind of person who… Right? And I think that’s when magic can actually happen in January. So let’s talk about these dates, okay? January 1st, after my birthday, you know, when the kids are settled, after the, , holiday season, right?
Once things calm down. And those things can feel really important, I think so. You know? They can feel like a plan, like you have done some responsible thing and scheduled your change ahead of time, and I think that feels important, right? It feels like a plan. And so most of the time, though, I wanna offer you the thought that you’re giving a reason to put it off so that you don’t have to feel it right now.
And I say that with so much love because I have done that. Every woman I’ve ever worked with has done that. Prob- every woman has done it, every human. Your brain is really good at this, right? So it finds a date that seems reasonable, and it lets you feel like you’re doing something without actually having to do it yet.
And so in this, you could just ask yourself what, what specifically is gonna be different in January that isn’t true right now? And I think the honest answer is, is probably nothing, other than it’s like a fresh start. The, the busy holidays are over. And I think that when we really look at that, that date isn’t a plan, it’s just more waiting.
It’s just m- , like a validation that you can put it off more. I don’t know. You know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna say this. I kind of am inter- interrupting my, my flow here, but, , there are times when we need to put things off. There are times where we cannot focus on things that we can’t focus on, and there’s also times where we know we’re just putting off the inevitable, where we know there’s something we could be doing that would make our life different or better, and that’s what this is about.
If you have something in mind, whatever it is, that you’re like, “That would make my life better, but I’m waiting-” And, you know, if you’ve been here for a long time, you’ve heard me talk about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, and your conscious mind is a goal setter, right? It’s the part of you that says, “I really want this, and I really don’t want that.”
It, it makes a list, right? It’s the thing that, like, writes the New Year’s resolution thing. Your unconscious mind is the goal getter. It’s the part of you that’s actually running your habits and your reactions and your patterns. You know, it’s doing most of the work in your life. It, it is. You’re…
Consciously, you’re really doing very, very little. And so if you’re consciously thinking something, but you notice you’re not doing it, then I want you to just notice who’s actually running the show. And so your unconscious mind’s main job is really to keep you safe and to keep you alive, yet that’s the prime directive.
It… That really is it. It doesn’t really care what It doesn’t care what we consciously decided. It just cares that you lived through yesterday doing things the way you’ve always done them, and for your unconscious mind, that is really convincing evidence. And so I want you to think about what a New Year’s resolution usually is.
It’s your conscious mind. Like, one day you’re gonna wake up and have a whole new life. At least that’s how I do it. I, I’m like, “Yeah, but my whole life is gonna be better as soon as I wake up.” But then it’s your unconscious mind that wakes up on January 1st, and nothing underneath has actually changed. You know, you, you still experience yourself the same way.
You still have the same beliefs about what you’re allowed to want. And so, of course, it’s gonna pull you back into what you know. Like, that’s what your unconscious mind is supposed to do, and that’s honestly why so many resolutions are gone by the end of January. We always hear that. That’s a true statistic.
January 20th, I think, is the date because consciously we can focus and make changes for that long. It’s not about discipline. If you have ever had a New Year’s resolution and screwed it up, it’s not about discipline. It’s not ’cause you’re not disciplined. It’s really not. It’s that you tried to change what you’re doing without changing who you think you are.
That’s it. So that’s why I start in the fall. That’s why I start now. So January is where I design, you know? That’s when I sit down, and I really want to build the next year of my life and what it’s gonna look like, but I can’t do that really well if I haven’t gotten myself in position to do that, to, to deal with all the deeper stuff.
And so the deeper stuff is what I start working on right now, which means January is when I execute the design. Now is when I design. It’s sort of like- , what are the– like planting tulips. You know? You don’t plant them in the spring, you plant them in the fall. And then when it looks like nothing’s happening, all of the sudden you wake up in the spring and they’re just like up, and they’re just like up.
Why does that happen? They’re not around your mailbox when you go to bed at night, and then the next day they’re like full-fledged tulips out there. And so, so this is what I’m actually looking at right now. It, it, not so you can go, go like do a worksheet, but, but so you can, can see what I actually mean.
Okay? Because this is about deep identity kind of stuff. And so the first thing that I look at is how I see myself right now. Like who do I think I am? I know that sounds like so… Who do I think I am? But who do I think I am? Because we all carry a picture of ourselves around, and a lot of it is just junk that we have picked up a long time ago.
I’m the one who holds it all together. I’m a problem solver. I’m not a risk-taker. I’m the one everybody counts on. And I think that may all be true, but some of it might just be old, and then you make it true. It’s who you had to be at some point. And then we never really go back to check to see if who we were told we had to be actually fits with who we wanna be or how our life is now.
And I have learned that if we walk into January with that old picture of ourselves, that we’re just gonna build the same old year again every single time, and then it’s so frustrating. I remember when I first moved into my apartment a couple years ago, I have used this app called Day One. It’s a journaling app.
And I would write in it every day for like 15 years. Almost every day. Like I was really consistent. I’ll, I will say over the past year I have not been as consistent. I write in it a couple times a month. I feel like I’m happier, and there’s not as much to write about. But I, when I first moved into my apartment after I got divorced, I would look back, ’cause it’ll show you, this is what you wrote five years ago, and six years ago, and three years ago, and 10 years ago.
And my God, if it was… I mean, I was so annoyed with myself because it was the same stuff over and over and over again. Like six years would go by and nothing was changed. Little things would be different, but the core wasn’t different. And honest to God, it was until I worked on the core that I was able to actually catapult my life forward in a totally different way.
And, you know, for me, that meant leaving a really unhappy marriage. But I can almost pinpoint the day that that shift happened for me, and I had done a great deal of identity work that day. And then all of a sudden I was like, “Oh, whoa, wait a minute.” And I remember, I have girlfriends that I Voxer with.
Voxer is like an app, like a walkie-talkie app almost, where you can leave messages for each other. And I have a very best friend that I’ve had forever and ever, and we Voxer alm- like every day typically. Sometimes not on the weekends, but s- but many times on the weekends. And I didn’t Voxer her for like a couple days because I was really processing where I was.
‘Cause I was like, “I’m in a different place.” And I remember after a couple days I messaged her and said, “I’ve been thinking about it for two days and I’ve decided to l- to leave.” And it was, it was a, it was like a key had unlocked, but it was identity work. And I’m not saying if you do identity work you’re gonna leave your husband, but you’re gonna do the thing you know to be true for you, whatever that is.
And so, you know, when I think about an old picture of myself, I need to upgrade that picture before I can even start working on the things that I need to be able to make changes. And so here’s the thing that, , that I kinda do when I look at what’s happening in my life. I’m gonna preface this by saying it’s not the version of your life that you tell people about.
It’s the version of your life that you’re actually living. And I, I wanna say that in a different way. It’s not the version of yourself that you would like to be true. It’s the version of yourself that you’re actually doing every day. There are times where I have said like, “Health is so important to me.”
In fact, I think I said that the other day, “Health is so important to me,” and you know I haven’t been to the doctor all year. Like, I haven’t been to a checkup. Like, is health that important to me if I’m not going to the doctor? And in my head even now as I’m saying this, I’m like, “I just don’t have time. I don’t have time.
I don’t even… I’d have to figure out with my insurance who…” I pay them kajillion dollars a month for my insurance. I should use it. I say it’s important, but it’s not, because I’m not doing it. And there may be other things that stop that process, but I want you to think about not the version that you tell people about, but the version that is real You know, w- where am I tired?
Where am I saying yes when I mean no? Where am I pretending something is fine because it would be really darn inconvenient if it wasn’t? You know, where do I think health is important, but I’m not acting on it? And I think, you know, those take some courage because you have to be willing to see something that’s true.
And I know for myself, I cannot design something new on top of something that I won’t look at. And so I have to really look at how I wanna live, not h- not what I want to accomplish, but how I want to live. What do I want my days to feel like? Who do I want around me? What do I want my mornings to be like, and my afternoons, and my weekends?
How do I want friendships to be and close relationships, r- romance, money? And for me, a, a lot of that is, like, afternoons with friends and a life that feels really relaxed but still really driven. And I didn’t always know that about myself. I had to really pay attention to get clear And then I had to really look at what my standards were for myself and for others, and what my values were.
Like what matters to me now, not what mattered 10 years ago, not what somebody else told me should matter, and not what, like, should matter, you know? Like, not what the internet or society tells me should matter. You know, society told me for my whole life, and you likely feel this too, that the most important thing was to get picked, have a relationship.
And when I decided to just be alone, that was really going against a lot of who I was told that I was. It took some undoing, and when I did that undoing, and I’ve talked, I’ve had an episode out here about, like, no longer orbiting around anyone else. When I could finally orbit around myself is really when all of the sudden I was like, “Oh, you know what?
I would like to have a partner in my life, but only if they’re a unicorn, and amazing, and been therapeutized,” and all the things. But that came from me orbiting myself. That came from me knowing what my standards and values were, what mattered to me, and not what am I just not doing anymore? What am I not accepting?
Because your standards are really where your identity shows up in real life. You know? They’re how you know who you are when things get complicated. And when I’ve done an honest amount of work around that and gotten clear, then January becomes much simpler. And then I’m not making resolutions, I’m designing.
I’m an architect. I’m an architect of a life that I want for the woman that I actually am right now. Okay. So now I wanna talk about something. I wanna shift this just a little bit and, and I wanna talk about you, and I wanna talk about who you know you are, and maybe a big question that you’re sitting in.
Now, getting ready for 2027, if you’re listening to this in 2026, but if you’re listening to this at any year, getting ready for the next thing, the next month, the next Monday, the next quarter, the next year, doesn’t mean that you have to make any big decisions about those things by that date. Okay? So hear me on this.
I, I’m not saying you have to make some big decision. What I’m saying is that you can’t make clear decisions that are big decisions if you don’t know who you are anymore And for a lot of women, myself included, that is exactly what’s happened. We’ve been so busy holding everything together that we kind of disappear And now here we are in October, the holidays are coming, and for a lot of women, the holidays are busy ’cause you are the holiday.
You are the magical, magical, mystical piece of it. And so you’re going to feel all of it a little more over the next few months. So you can just let that happen to you, or you can use the time to come back to yourself, to get clear on how you really see yourself, what you really want your life to feel like, and what your standards would need to be in order to create that life.
Because once you know that, you’ll be able to hear your own self and your own answers, you know, whatever that is. So like I said, you don’t need the new year, you don’t need a birthday or a Monday or whatever, but the best time to start becoming the next version of yourself is before you want to become that version.
I think there’s just, like, a little extra magic at this time of year. You know? E- everybody’s gonna start talking about a fresh start. Everyone’s gonna start talking about resolutions or their word of the year. Honestly, I, I love the word of the year, I wanna say that, but I also love resolutions and I love…
But I think the word of the year gives us an out from feeling like we’ve failed on resolutions. But we haven’t failed, it’s just we’ve been doing them wrong. And I would love for you to be able to show up to January 1st just already knowing who you are, just knowing that this is the version of me that I am stepping into.
Okay. So there’s a couple different ways that we can go about this. And actually, if, if you are struggling in your marriage, if you’ve been trying to figure out what to do, if you’ve been sitting on that question of, do I stay or do I go? I, I lived that question for, like, a decade. Ugh. And I know how hard that is.
And so I also know that deeper identity work with support is the way to get clear on what’s right for you. Now, I wanna say something. The people that come into my program, the Navigate Method, they, they don’t all leave. A lot of them stay. They find themselves and then realize that the relationship…
Everybody that comes in, I’m gonna say this, everybody that comes in, the relationship that they have ends. They don’t necessarily leave the partner to create something new. They create something new, or they say, “This is complete, and I’m gonna create something new for myself So if you wanna do that work with me, then that is what we do.
We take a look at how you see yourself, what’s going on, what you really want, what your values and standards are, so that you can get really clear on your marriage from a place that you’re actually present in your own life. So if you would like to do that work, I’m gonna give you two options, okay? You can go to my website.
You can book a call with us right from the website. You can watch my video that sort of explains what we do, and you can book a call from that. But also, in January, I am taking a group of women to Punta Cana, you’ve probably heard me talk about this, for a process called Breaking Ground. It is four days together to really become the architect of your own life.
It’s January 21st of 2027, and that’s where we can do this deciding, right? That’s where we can start designing how things go. And again, you don’t have to start January 1st. You can be prepped, and you can be ready, and then on January 21st is where we design it and figure out what we need to do. And that’s not just about a marriage.
That, you don’t even have to be married. You could be happily married. That is about, hey, my life I want to reclaim, and I want to become an architect. And w- I’m gonna teach you over those three days, in the beautiful sunshine, by the way, where we will have a pina colada in the afternoon. But I’m gonna teach you how to become an architect, what that means, and what are the steps to do it.
And there’s a link on my website, or you could just message me anywhere, and I will jump on the phone with you and answer any questions. So think about it. If you would like to really make shifts right now so that by January 1st you can be off and running in a life that feels aligned, then reach out to us.
Come into the Navigate Method if you’re struggling with your marriage, or come to Punta Cana. Take a little… I always say the best investment I have ever made on things in my life are when I invest in myself. I’m a sure thing. I, but I, but I know that about myself. I’m a sure thing, so if I put money into myself, I will get my money’s worth, and I want you to be like that, too.
So just reach out to us. We’ll be happy to direct you to the right place. But even if you don’t, there’s so much information here on the podcast. There’s so much about redesigning and realigning so that you can have the identity that you need to be able to reach the next level of where you’re going. And I think when we can do that, that is how you live a big life.
All right, everybody, I will see you next week. Have a great week. I love you so much. 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.
