441: I Was so Embarrassed I Wanted a Redo

There is a difference between people-pleasing and growing. People-pleasing changes you to manage someone else’s feelings, and growing changes you because you looked at yourself clearly and decided that you wanted something different. In this episode, Betsy explains how a new acquaintance made her feel when she exposed an uncomfortable truth to Betsy, and how she chose to grow from it.

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. Hi, fellow adventurers. Welcome to the show. You might be watching this on video. Hi, you can see me now, which is a little wild to me because after 10 years of you just hearing my voice, and if you’re listening on a walk or in the car, you might notice that the episodes are getting a little bit longer, but we’re now doing this recorded.

And so it’ll be on YouTube, and people can see it. And, uh, it’s interesting to me because historically I have done the show where I come up with, like, the idea or the thought that I wanna share, and then I close my eyes and just talk. And so it has taken me a lot to start practicing not, like, dissociating while I do it, uh, and allowing it to come.

So I’ve jotted down some thoughts and notes so that I can stay focused, but, you know, we’re, we’re ma- I can do new things. We can do hard things. So 10 years into this podcast, and I want a little bit more time with you. So this episode’s gonna be a little bit longer, and we’re gonna continue on that, having them be less like 20 minutes and more like 45 minutes.

This morning we recorded, or we took photos of the new podcast cover, so you’ll see that within the next month come. It was really fun, and I think it felt so much more like me. The podcast cover that is there right now was a cover from when I was married. It’s on the porch of my old house. I have my wedding ring on.

When I look at it, it is … It, it looks nothing like me. It’s kind of strange. It feels like I’m, I don’t know, s- looking into a Old novel or something. And so I just felt like it was time to let that go, and with the 10 years and the new format and all the things. The one thing I do wish is that the background was a little bit better.

I don’t have, like, a fancy podcast studio like many people do, but welcome to my office. So, all right. So today what I wanna talk about is I wanna tell you about something that happened to me this month, um, last month really, a little over a month ago. It’s a little embarrassing to be honest, but I’m gonna tell you anyway because I think it turned into one of the most useful things perhaps that has happened to me all year, maybe one of the most useful things for my future.

Okay? I don’t regret where I’ve been, but I think this more matches where I’m going. So here’s what we’re gonna talk about today. We’re gonna talk about what do you do when you find out there’s something about yourself that you don’t like? And in my case it was something that I didn’t even really recognize that I was doing, and somebody else saw it before I did, probably a lot of people saw it before I did, and then brought it to my awareness.

And so maybe you know exactly what I mean. Like, maybe your sister said, “Oh, my God, you apologize for everything.” Or maybe your grown kids say, like, “Mom, you never say what you want,” you know? Maybe a, a friend at dinner laughed and said, “Oh, my God, you always do that thing.” And then everybody laughed, and you laughed.

And then you went home, and you laid awake, , staring at the ceiling thinking about it. And, you know, it stings a little bit. It stings, I think, in a very specific way. It’s not like being criticized for something that you knew about. It is being shown something that you didn’t know was there. An