382: Finding joy in the snow

The Art of Living Big | Subconscious | NLP | Mindset

On todays episode Betsy shares some new ways to look at the “In between” and to find some joy even when things feel like they are going sideways.

Transcript:

Betsy [00:00:05]:
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, fellow adventurers. Hi, everybody.

Betsy [00:00:35]:
So I’m here. I’m here recording today in my office, and my dog is just such deep sleep and he’s snoring, and so we’re gonna hope for the best. Sometimes when I’m recording, I try and wake him up before I start recording, and then he’ll fall back. I feel like he falls back asleep deeper if I do that. So we’re just going to roll with it. I have a lot of things to catch up on because it’s been a couple weeks, you know, so I’ve got a lot of things to tell you, but I want to start off with the really important things, which is I cut my hair off. Yes, that’s right. And I’m.

Betsy [00:01:10]:
I’m sharing this with you as a warning. If you don’t have really thick hair. Okay. If you don’t have really thick hair, perhaps reconsider if someone is going to razor cut your hair. I just. I think razor cutting your hair can be. So I have a friend that does it and her hair always looks amazing, but my hair is not that kind of hair. And I have been trying to.

Betsy [00:01:36]:
It’s. It turned it into the biggest flyaway mat. And finally I just was like, I can’t. I’m just chopping it off. So, I mean, I chopped a ton off. It’s short. It’s. It’s a bob.

Betsy [00:01:46]:
It’s well above my shoulders. And I gotta tell you, it made me feel a little bit like jumping up and clicking my heels together. So I have cut my hair off. And, you know, anytime you cut your hair, amazing things start happening, like new things. I saw an interview with a guy recently, and he was saying that he thinks, you know, historically, when do we cut our hair, right? We cut our hair off. Like when we break up with a boy, right? But this guy was saying he thinks that when you get a new hairstyle, right? Or if you break up with a guy with your boyfriend and then you cut your hair off, it’s a way for you to look in the mirror and have a visual reminder that you’re not that person anymore. And this morning I looked and I had a visual reminder that I was not that person. And I thought, who’s she? Who is she that does something different? And I wonder, you know, if you’ve been here for a while, you’ve heard me talk about how I had this hypnosis, this custom hypnosis, and you can go back a couple episodes and start to hear about that journey.

Betsy [00:02:52]:
But I. I can’t help but wonder if the desire to cut my hair off, although there was a necessity because I felt like my hair was so thinned out at the bottom from this razor cutting. I have lived with it for a couple months, so it’s not like I was dying every day like I was living with it. But I can’t help but wonder if it then became uncomfortable to be in the suit that I have been in, because so much has changed from that hypnosis. Now I’m going to be sharing more, and I’ll share more, you know, as we do, as I do over the months to come. But this has significantly changed a lot of things. And like I said on the last episode, it’s still unfolding, but it still is unfolding. But one of the things I decided to do is my husband and I decided to sell our house.

Betsy [00:03:48]:
I have talked about my house. I love my little house. If you’re looking for the cutest little house in Atlanta, I. I have loved my house and I love my porch. I love it so much. There’s so many things that I love about this house. And we’ve lived here, you know, almost two years, but it is a bit of a drain. I think we have fixed everything.

Betsy [00:04:10]:
Honest to God, I have taken better care of this house than probably any house in my life. And when we moved in, I didn’t realize how many little things were left undone. Do you know what I mean? Like. Like an outlet that didn’t work or all the. Every single. Every single appliance within a few months had to be replaced. Know we had to get a new hav unit. We had to get the crawl space reinforced.

Betsy [00:04:34]:
We had to get the roof replaced, part of the roof. We had to get the roof internal, the attic reinforced. Like, there were so many things and so many of them weren’t like fun things that you could see, you know, I would have rather redo my kitchen, but instead I redid my bathroom, you know, got a new toilet, got all that. So there has been so many projects. And it’s interesting because when I owned my last house and then I sold my house and I decided to live in an apartment. Tons of people messaged me, and they were like, why would you do that? Like, why are you living in an apartment? And I said, it’s because I. Like, I just don’t want the projects, you know? And so I lived in an apartment. And then I was like, I’m ready.

Betsy [00:05:13]:
Like, I’m ready. I did not anticipate the projects. Like, I really didn’t anticipate not only the number of projects, but the expense of the projects. And I don’t mean regular. I do not mean regular expenses. I mean, like, almost every month, I felt like it was like three to $5,000 in expenses just for upkeep, not the mortgage. And so we made the decision, let’s sell it. We’ve done a lot of things.

Betsy [00:05:38]:
It’ll be a great home for somebody else. Because she’s been so well loved and taken care of, and all the little things have been tended to, and now we get to go decide what’s next, you know, And. And that will be continued to be unveiled. And I do wonder if that has anything to do with the hypnosis. Do you know what I mean? So, so many things. I’m like, tracking back to this, and I think I mentioned on one of the episodes, but inside my program, inside my program, we have. There’s the navigate method that you’ve heard me talk about, and then people can continue on. And in that continuation program, we call it Voyager, and we are starting now to do custom hypnosis for everybody that comes that.

Betsy [00:06:24]:
Because I’m like, let’s really. Let’s. Let’s do some experiments here. Let’s see if we can get, you know, some. Some really big shifts here, really get to the root issues of problems and start to shift them so it changes who you are. And I think that started to change in how I was reflected in where I lived and what I looked like when I looked in the mirror. All these little things. So it’s been really kind of fun.

Betsy [00:06:50]:
And in that process, also, I have found, you know, anytime. And you guys have sold houses before, I’m sure. And, you know, you have to make it look like a hotel, right? You have to make it look like really, you know, very Zen. I. I went to California for a conference last week and got to see so many of my friends. And I’ll talk about that in a minute. But I showed them, you know, here’s the MLS listing. Look at my house.

Betsy [00:07:19]:
And they were like, oh, my God, it’s so cute. This is so cute. That’s so cute. And one woman said, do they use somebody, like, local to stage? And at first I was confused. I was like, what do you mean it’s a stage? Like a stage? Like, no, what? Like, I live there? And she was like, yeah, but I mean, all the furniture and everything, is it staged? And I was like, no, that’s mine. And, and somebody, like, across the table was like, oh, my God, I saw your pictures and I just assumed, assumed it was staged. Which, it brings me a lot of joy. That’s why I share that.

Betsy [00:07:48]:
It brings me a lot of joy. But it also means, like, things look rather sterile right now, you know, like, like, my furniture is super cute, but there’s not any pictures up. There’s not, you know, there’s very few tchotchkes out. There’s not a lot of things around. And so I was really thinking, like, especially as we’re about to roll into Thanksgiving and know, I, I don’t know, I probably need to ask my agent, but, like, can I put any Christmas decorations up? Like, I, I don’t even know, because you want it to look sort of generic so someone else can imagine themselves in the house. But here’s what I did, and I, I, I want to know if you had one of these growing up. So when I was growing up, we had this, this gold tealight holder that had, like, a cherub with a trumpet that sat on the top. And it had, like, these little bells and, like, things, like long gold metal pieces that, like, hung down.

Betsy [00:08:52]:
And then the tea light, you would light, and it would create heat, and the air would change, and it would push this little, like, fan, and the little, the little metal pieces would rub up against these bells, and it would make, like, a little chimy sound. And it was always out at Christmas. Do you guys know, you guys know what I’m talking about, right? It’s like this rotating tea light. Anyway, I started thinking about that, and I was like, you know, I just want one of those. I just want one of those. So I went to Amazon and I, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t even really find. I tried to just Google and I tried to find, like, what that, A picture of what that was, right, with the cherub baby thing with a trumpet, which I guess is an angel. But I, I couldn’t find, I couldn’t Google and find an image of the old one that we had.

Betsy [00:09:45]:
And I couldn’t totally remember it. So, like, there was some that I thought looked similar, but I couldn’t totally remember. But I found one on Amazon that is. It’s silver, so it’s not gold. And it has the little fan thing, but it has these, like, just hanging Christmas trees. And it was like six or seven bucks. So I was like, I’m getting that. And I got these Frasier fur Christmas candles that are little tealights that smell like Frasier fur.

Betsy [00:10:12]:
And I have to tell you, there was this moment. I set it all up, and it’s cheap as f. You know, as cheap as can be. I’m sure I could bend the whole thing and just break it in half. But I set it all up and I was very gentle and I lit the candle and I just. I feel like I could have watched it. I put it on my bedside table and I laid in bed to go to sleep. I watched it.

Betsy [00:10:36]:
I Bet it was 20 minutes. Like, really, it was just, like, so soothing or calming. You know, sometimes if you watch, like, watch like fish in a fish tank. Do you know what I mean? Where it’s like, this is so calming. And I just watched it go around and round and it cast this really cool shadow on the ceiling. And I don’t know, just. It made me really happy and it made me think about sometimes we. We.

Betsy [00:11:01]:
We don’t have to have everything be totally perfect to have it really feel really good. You know, I. I think I was thinking, I’ve got to decorate this whole house. I want all my Christmas decorations up. Like, if I don’t have a tree and the thing on the hearth and the. All the things from I’ve had for 20 years, like, if I don’t have all of those up, it’s not going to feel like Christmas, you know, it’s not going to feel good. And it was. It was sort of leading me to a place where I’m like, this doesn’t feel good.

Betsy [00:11:33]:
And I thought my house was going to sell super fast. And it’s been over a week, week and a half now, and it hasn’t sold. And it surprised me. And it started to make me realize, like, I started to recognize, do I have resistance? Because there’s things I really love about the house. Like, I love the poor. You know, do I. Do I have resistance? Am I holding on so tightly that nobody else can come in? Right? And it reminded me of the saying that I’ve heard before that said, if you don’t learn to find joy in the snow, you’ll have less joy in your life and exactly the same amount of snow. And I thought, there’s joy in this.

Betsy [00:12:15]:
Like, this might feel like a transition it might be, like, the in between. It might be, but there’s a possibility of finding joy. I don’t have to have my whole house decorated. Like, I don’t have to have, like, a team of decorators come in. Not that I would ever do that, but that would be nice. Like, I don’t have to have, like, somebody come and create some winter wonderland. It really was as simple as me spending, like, 6.95 on this little metal tea light. That just brought me, like, a level of peace, I’m going to say.

Betsy [00:12:50]:
Like, that’s the only word I can use to describe it. And I don’t. It’s not like I have specific memories, although I have memories of looking at it as a kid, watching it as a kid. And maybe I was just. Maybe I spend a lot, a lot of time as a kid just staring into the flame, you know, like I do now. But, like, it made me realize that sometimes it’s really simple things. And if I want to sell my home, right? The outcome I want is to sell my home. If I want to sell my home, and I don’t want it to be a miserable experience because I’m living my life still.

Betsy [00:13:23]:
Like, how do. What’s the highest and best? How do I show up in this and feel the most gratitude and be so excited for the new people coming? And I don’t have to be sad. I don’t have Christmas decorations up because I can have one thing that I get end up. Like, I think I got more joy. I think I got more joy from that one thing. Because my whole house wasn’t full of stuff, and it wasn’t like, oh, the same stuff is up. You know, I got to, like, really focus and appreciate and notice and remember and experience this. This very simple thing.

Betsy [00:14:03]:
And I thought, I’m finding joy in the snow because that’s. That’s it. Like, that’s it. Like, there’s no outcome. Like, I think the outcome is selling my house. But once I do that, there’ll be something else. So there’s no outcome. It’s me just being here now, recognizing this in this moment and finding the most joy in it.

Betsy [00:14:26]:
And so I offer you that thought because you might be in the same place as me. Like, things are changing or you’re feeling a little bit like, in the. In between or the world isn’t going the way you wanted it to go, and you’re just like, now what? And I. And I firmly believe. And I know I’ve talked about this, and I don’t always Live it. I’m being honest. I don’t always live it. I try.

Betsy [00:14:50]:
I try to remember. I try to notice when I’m not living it right? But I have moments where I’m not living it, which is in this moment. There are things to appreciate, and if I keep focusing on the things I don’t like, I’m adding energy, my life force, my precious, precious time and energy to the unwanted. And in the end, that’s not. Like, I think of this all the time. Like, when I’m an old lady laying in my bed, like, about to die, like, what do I. What do. How do I want to look back on this day, right? Not my whole life.

Betsy [00:15:28]:
Because honestly, that’s so abstract. Who can look, who can. Who can imagine being in bed in the old lady about to transition to the next great adventure? And you’re like, my whole life. You can’t even imagine that. I can’t even conceptualize my whole life. That’s already happened. But I can conceptualize today. And how do I want to live today or this week? What’s the main feeling that I want to have? What’s the highest and best? How do I act with the most dignity and bravery through all the hard things that are happening, right? So that’s where I am.

Betsy [00:16:10]:
That’s where I’m moving through. And I offer you that in case you are in a transition or an in between, or you’re about to go through a transition, or in between, or you just got through a transition, it’s always something. You’re either going into a problem, about to go into a problem, in the problem, or about to leave the problem. So there’s always stuff, but what if we can shift how we’re experiencing it so then the problem just becomes the adventure. You know, there are times where I will really sit. And I know you’ve heard me talk about this, and when I was in California, somebody asked me, they asked me, betsy, do you think everybody has access to that thing? Because I always talk about, like, this inner knower, this inner part of me, and I was like, oh, my God. Like, yes, that’s like, I got nothing special. Like, everybody.

Betsy [00:16:55]:
Of course, everybody, everybody, everybody. But when I’m going through a specifically hard time or a especially. That’s the word I want an especially hard time. And I sit and I go into my life force, right? My life force, my inner source, whatever you want to call her. Like, when I visit with her. Oh, she’s so pleased. Sometimes it makes me mad because I’m like, why are you so happy. This isn’t good.

Betsy [00:17:28]:
And I. And I feel her, and I feel like she’s like, no, no, this is the adventure. I wanted this. I wanted to experience the ups and downs. Let me have it. Let me. Let me find joy in it. It’s so fun.

Betsy [00:17:41]:
I love figuring out problems. That’s what she says. And then I say, you’re dumb. Let’s have it be easy. But it can be even in the hard thing. And I say this if you’re new here, I say this from somebody whose mom died in a car accident when I was at school one day. I say this from a woman who has a child, who’s been mentally ill and struggled for a decade. Like, I say this from a place who’s been.

Betsy [00:18:09]:
Woman who’s been divorced, who’s had struggles in her current marriage. Like, I am saying this not from a person that’s. I’ve had it so easy compared to so many. And I. Yes, I will say that I have so many privileges in my life, but I’m saying it from a place of knowing hard stuff, too. And when I check in with my deepest part of me, she’s thrilled. She loves the up and down. And when I know that, it really does make those hard things a whole lot easier.

Betsy [00:18:40]:
A whole lot easier. You know yesterday, and you’ve heard me talk about how I’ve gotten hate comments on the Internet, and it really used to bother me. Remember, this is what started the whole thing with the. With the going to the hypnotherapist, right? This is what started it. So yesterday I started getting this kind of vile hate. It was a new kind of hate. It was a new brand of hate, which was good because I was over the other. So I felt like, oh, well, now it’s time to step it up.

Betsy [00:19:08]:
Give me something a little harder, because I’ve grown accustomed to the other. But this was more sexual in nature and it was a little more aggressive. I don’t ever post anything political, but it. A lot of it was politically based, which was kind of weird. There was a lot of people calling me, calling me a boomer, which I thought was weird because I was like, well, I mean, I guess my hair is gray, like, not a boomer. And calling me a Karen, which also was weird because I’m not posting anything. I don’t think that’s Karen, but whatever, whatever. But I found myself being more activated.

Betsy [00:19:45]:
Like, not in the same way that I was at all, but more. I felt on alert. Like, I should check. I should check. I Need to be on alert, you know. And sometimes I worry about the things people post, honestly, because I don’t want the women that are part of my community and coming to my page to see something awful and feeling like it’s about them because they agreed with my post or they saw themselves in my post. Do you know what I’m saying? So like a lot of my vigilance is like, I don’t want anybody to see that and feel terrible. And some of it was a little bit aggressive about, you know, waiting for me.

Betsy [00:20:28]:
Basically they were saying, I can’t wait till you die. That’s basically what they were saying. And that was start. So I really checked in with my inner knower and I was like, do you like this? Like, do you like this? This kind of up and down. And I didn’t feel the joy in her of the woo. This is fun. But I felt this steadiness of. I want you to notice.

Betsy [00:20:55]:
This is for you. This is for you to notice. What in you is left to be healed. This is a gift. Consider it like a 48 hour gift. What are you noticing? What are you learning? What are you finding out about yourself? Where do you need to go? Because right now you’re in a cocoon. Like right now you’re in the incubator, right? You’re. You’re not in the birth canal right now.

Betsy [00:21:21]:
You’re in the womb and you’re being formed into this next version of you. And you need to be looking at this and figuring out what there is to learn from it. And I was like, oh, okay, well that’s different than like you taking joy in the. In my hardship. It felt better, I guess. Or it felt more authentic, I guess. And so I’ve really been thinking about that. Like, what is this teaching me? There is something.

Betsy [00:21:51]:
There is. I don’t. Well, I don’t have words for it yet, so maybe it is not yet to be shared. But there’s something. I am in the cocoon, but I don’t know what the butterfly is. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s. She feels sort of like a moth.

Betsy [00:22:08]:
Like she’s just gonna be. She’s gonna be an old, worn out moth. But we’ll see if it’s a beautiful butterfly. But I don’t need to worry about that. I need to be where I am. Be where you are. And you’re in the goo. You know the.

Betsy [00:22:24]:
You’ve heard this a million times. The. The caterpillar goes into the cocoon and turns to goo, you know, turns to goo and then reforms. I don’t know if she cuts her hair off, but she changes. And then when she comes out, she’s someone new. And I don’t have to worry about who she is, what she looks like, what, how big the butterfly wings are. I just have to worry about becoming the best version of the goofy, learning everything I can in the goo so that when it does emerge, it’s everything I need her to be. And that’s what this is about right now.

Betsy [00:23:01]:
Although the feeling like they want me to die, that part didn’t really feel that good. And there was a lot of stuff about, like, blowjobs and stuff. And that just didn’t feel good either. Like, I just was like, can we not. Can we not have this conversation on my page? So there was just a lot of deleting and blocking. It’s fine if they said something that seemed violent. I reported it and then moved on. So, you know, in all of this, and I think with all the things that have happened and just our world right now, our world even.

Betsy [00:23:31]:
I mean, even since COVID Right. Or before, like, the status quo is that nothing is status quo. Right. The status quo is constant change and new things and just feeling. I think everyone feels, no matter who you are or where you are, I think everyone to some extent, feels this sense of unease, like. Right. Like what’s. What’s coming.

Betsy [00:24:00]:
I even said this morning, I need some things to be certain. And so I started really thinking, especially when I started getting these comments roll in. I was stomping my feet in the office, and Craig stuck his head in, and he was like, are you okay? And I said, I just am discharging some of this. And after he left, I put a really good song on, and I put my hands in the air and I just yelled because I wanted it verbal. I wanted the vibration of it in the world. All the good things that we’re doing, all the good things that I’m doing that my program is doing, the feedback that we get. I talked about specific women in the program and things they’ve said. That’s.

Betsy [00:24:37]:
That even when they say it, I’m like, holy crap, that’s amazing. Like, that’s an outcome. I didn’t even know what happened. You know what I mean? Like, that’s so cool. And I think that there’s something in this and, like, finding certainty. And I was. And that’s really what I was doing, was I was finding certainty in myself, in my knowing, in my experience, not other people’s. Experience of me on the Internet.

Betsy [00:25:03]:
But in my experience of myself, what is that and what does that look like and what’s true. What’s true for me? And, you know, this past week, I was in California, and you’ve probably heard me talk, and I went back in March. I went. I go twice a year with my coach. He has a live event, and there’s a whole bunch of us. And so it’s people that I see, you know, I see them every week and in our zoom calls and stuff, and people that I connect to through Voxer and Marco Polo and all those kinds of things. It was so cool to get to see them. You know, I haven’t seen them since March, and so to connect.

Betsy [00:25:43]:
And a couple of the girls, we went to the spa and, like, there’s this big spa at the hotel and, like, just to have those connections. And I think that right now, what all of this may be driving us towards is connection. That is our certainty, right? It’s not this like this. I’m going to say it like this because this is what it felt like all of a sudden, like a radio wave, right? Like all the Internet, all the static, It’s a radio wave, like a wave pattern in the. In the. In the air. But we’ve got to find our people, you know, we’ve got to find our support systems. We’ve got to find that structure and find that center for ourselves so that when all the things are going, we can stand up and yell out loud what we know to be true about ourselves.

Betsy [00:26:40]:
And we’ve got that grounding force behind us to say, yes, you’re right, that’s correct. I see that in you, too. Like, I can reflect that back. And I think more and more, us finding our community is going to be more and more important. And, you know, I’ve been trying to think about ways to do this. One of the things that I’ve heard inside my program a lot is women saying, I wish they’re, like, the way that people learn, you know, I’m going to say it this way. My program really teaches people to think different. And the way that they think then starts to change the kinds of people that they want to draw into their lives.

Betsy [00:27:23]:
And they have said, I wish we could. I wish we were all in the same place, right? I wish we had a community. I wish we had a live event, which that’s something I’m going to do for them because so many people have asked me for that. And I started thinking, like, there’s enough people that listen to this show, that we could do some sort of gathering, right? Where if I was there and gathering, you all, you all could meet each other because you’d all be in that area. You know, I had to speak in Baltimore, I don’t know, a year ago or so, and I invited a bunch of women to. I invited anybody come and have lunch with me. And so a whole group of people came and had lunch, and then they all got to meet each other, and they’re local, you know what I mean? So I’ve been thinking about this idea of connection and finding our people. And although I do that virtually, how is another way to do that? And what could that look like? So in this.

Betsy [00:28:23]:
In this environment, right in this incubator that I’m in, and maybe you guys are in too, what is the grounding piece and how can you find your people? And what does that look like? And then before I close up, I want to just remind you, if you have been following along on Instagram, maybe you’ve booked a call with our team and, you know, the navigate method wasn’t something that you were ready to do at that moment or you’ve been curious about learning more about it. If you go to Instagram on my. On my bio, it’ll say, subscribe. It’s 10 bucks a month. And I do a Q A in there every week. I think what I’m gonna do is a coaching call every month. I’m trying to figure that out, like, where I would coach one person and then have it to share just to the people that are inside the subscription. So somebody could get specific help.

Betsy [00:29:17]:
Because I know from doing the work that we do in groups, one person says something and everybody’s like, oh, my God, that’s me. And so I know helping one person specifically with an issue could help tons of people, but I’m always posting Q&As. Like, I’ll always answer questions. I usually post kind of a theme around what our weekly meeting was, so people know that. And then yesterday, I posted something that was a little bit more teaching. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that because I only have access to reels and stories in there. And so, like, how do I do that in a way that I can get the most information in? Sometimes my concepts are longer than a real. But I’m really trying to figure that out.

Betsy [00:29:58]:
But somebody was like, oh, this is so good. This is exactly what I needed. So I was like, okay, we’re on the right track here. So I think we’re getting this figured out, so come and join me over there. Like I said, it’s only 10 bucks a month. You can cancel at any time, but it’ll give you some extra access to me. And I really hope to be able to do some fun stuff with people there, too, to bring us together in another way and in a deeper way. So.

Betsy [00:30:19]:
All right. Thank you so much for being here this week. I love you guys. And I have ideas for next week’s show already. So I’m excited to share with you a little bit more and I will talk with you soon. See you 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.

Betsy [00:30:42]:
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 TikTok. It’s just my name, Betsy Paik, and that’s my website, too, betsypake.com and you can find out all about the work that I do, having me speak for an event that you might be helping 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.

Betsy [00:31:27]:
Thanks again for listening and I will see you all next week.