427: Embrace the Process

Do you ever wish you could fast forward your life through the hard parts just to get to the good stuff? In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy reminds us that getting forged during the tough times is actually part of our reclamation. Skipping over that part would be a disservice to our growth, resilience and strength. Maybe that is where the saying ‘no pain, no gain’ came from? Enjoy the listen and embrace the process:) Transcript:  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy P, 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, everyone. Welcome to the show today. I have been doing… I, I’ve been on w- I’ve been on what I call a podcast tour. So I have been on a podcast tour where I am guests on people’s podcasts. I’ll be sharing those so you can listen if you’re interested, but it’s been really fun. We’ve had dozens of them scheduled, and I have been doing, , it feels like a podcast a day. I did one yesterday. I did one this morning, early this morning. And so as I’ve been doing that, there has been something that’s been coming up, and I thought, “You know what? This keeps coming up in all these conversations, and I feel like it’s a really good conversation to have together here on the show.” And I think even if you are , if you’re listening , and you’re thinking like, “I’m single,” or, “I’m happily married,” this, the… I, wanna say it like this, like the, root of what I’m saying can kind of overlap lots of situations even though the dynamic that I’m gonna explain it in is gonna be about your marriage, okay? With a- w- your partnership, your relationship, whatever that looks like. And I’m gonna try and relate back to other things just so you can kinda see how this overlays lots of things, as, as things do. You know? Nothing is in a vacuum, as they say. So one of the things that keeps coming up in these conversations is about what I hear from so many women, and it is that they know that they would like to leave their husband. And they say like, “If, if you could just wave a magic wand. , I just wanna be down the street in my apartment and settled and be through this thing. I don’t wanna have to actually go through this thing. I just wanna be done with it.” And I hear this over and over and over again, and I have said this. I have said this so many times in my journal. When I look back in my journals, it’s, it, , there is c- so often, like these exact words. , “I am so clear that I don’t wanna be here. I’m so clear that this feels terrible, and I don’t wanna go through what I have to go through in order to get to where I wanna be. And if I could just snap my fingers and be there, then absolutely that is what I would do.” And I think, you know, I think this process is hard. Any time you are moving from one place to another place that you wanna be, whether it’s a big move, leaving a relationship, changing your career, it is hard. And being in the middle of it is hard, and deciding you’re gonna step into what you know is gonna be like a little hurricane before you get to where you wanna go is really hard But what I realized when I started hearing this repeatedly is that there is something underneath that wish. There is something that’s really important, and I want to talk about that. You guys have … You may have heard me talk about this earlier in the year, but on January 1st of this year, I woke up and I was, I was mad. I was I woke up, like, big mad, and I don’t ever wake up mad. , I don’t wanna say ever, never, ’cause I did one day on January 1st, but I, I That is not a typical thing. Like, I’m pretty, , springy out of bed and happy-go-lucky. But this year, I woke up and I was mad. And I woke up mad and I thought, “This is really weird,” because I love, , the, the beginning of a week, the first of a month. Give me the beginning of a year, , I’m like, fresh starts. Like, I love all that stuff, you know? I love setting goals and I love, like, all, of what n- New Year’s means. And so it was weird to me that I felt so angry, and the first thing I thought was that I was mad at my former husband. And that was a weird feeling, because I don’t really think about him. And I realized that I was The, the feeling felt so im- , urgent. It felt very urgent, and my instinct really was, like, it’s the first of the year. I have the day off. There’s a lot to celebrate. I need to just put this aside. Like, brush it asi- you know how we do., I’m gonna focus on other things. And then I thought, “No, no, no. Let me sit. I wanna get, I wanna get big, big mad. I wanna figure this out. , Why is this at my doorstep?” And so I sat. Like you may know, I have my, my thinking chair. And so I sat in my chair and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I let myself feel it, all the places it was in my body, where it was settling, h- what it felt to me like it looked like, like, how the weight of it, like, all the things. And after some time of noodling through what was actually happening, I realized something. It was that I wasn’t mad at him. I was mad at me. I was mad at all those times, all those different circumstances where I should have stood up for myself, where I should have risen from my seat and said, “No more,” and walked away, where I should have said something and I didn’t. And what I recognized after some time was that in each of those situations that I was mad at And that morning, it just, all these instances came into my mind, and what I realized was that each version of me in those situations I was remembering, that version of me that stayed in that difficult situation, was a version of me that was adapting and changing. And she wasn’t always adapting and changing to my detriment. You know, when I, thought back of all these instances, and I was… I thought, “I’m mad at him for this, and I’m mad at him for that, and I’m mad at him,” and I realized I was mad at me for not standing up and leaving. I was mad at me for allowing someone to treat me that way. And when I really sat with it, I realized that I was growing into the version of me who could finally choose herself. And when it was finally time to leave, the version of myself that was resolute and clear and ready for what was next was forged because of those moments. She didn’t stay longer because she was unable. She stayed longer because she ne- needed to be fortified to be able to make a different choice. You know, th- just like you in your marriage or at your work or whatever it is that you’re going through, there are so many moments, you know, when, when you think like, “I knew something wasn’t right. Like, I felt it. I had the knowing, but I didn’t act on it.” And I think that is what had made me so mad on January 1st. I was mad at all the moments that I had the knowing and I didn’t do anything. But it really changed everything when I got this different perspective, that those moments, those versions of me that stayed even though I knew something was wrong, they weren’t weak. It was me adapting. It was me gathering evidence. It was me becoming a version of myself that would eventually be the version of myself that sits here now. So when I felt the anger on January 1st, I,, I was angry at all the places where I had the knowing and didn’t act But those versions of me weren’t weak, they were adapting. . We think of adapting like it’s something that happens to us, like it’s defeat. But adaptation can actually be one of the most powerful things that you can do as a human. It is how we survive. It is, it is how we evolve. It is how we become whoever we need to be for the next moment. And I want you to think about the different versions of yourself. You know, not the versions that people see, the versions that you know about. You know, the versions of you that maybe knew something was wrong, but didn’t have the language for it yet. I found this in my marriage, that having the language for things made really complicated, hurtful experiences make more sense. Language is so important, and I think there is a version of you that likely didn’t believe that you deserved better, right? There’s a version of you that rationalized and minimized and made excuses. There is a version of you that people-pleased so close to the sun that you disappeared a little bit every single day. Do you see what I’m saying? Those versions of you aren’t, failures. They’re like … It’s like a way station, ? They’re the place where you had to learn something, where you gathered a whole bunch of evidence, and where you built the muscle of knowing that something didn’t feel right, even when you weren’t ready to act on it. I think that distinction is really important, because we can know something but still not be ready to act on it, and that is an okay place to be. What’s important is that we are honest with ourselves about our knowing. And every single one of those versions of you are necessary. , Every single moment of, staying small, every single moment of adaptation, , every single moment of where you knew but didn’t act is really important, because they led somewhere. So I couldn’t have gotten to the place that I got without being in the place that I was. That version of me, I feel like I’m kinda going around the horse a million times, but that version of me was made up of all those other versions, right? She was the accumulated learning of a woman who had tried everything else, and she was the resolved version of someone who had finally, gotten to the point where staying was more painful than leaving. And that is the thing that I think women are missing when they say, “I just wanna be divorced without going through the process.” And I understand, , I get it, the process is hard, but the process is also what makes you strong. The process is what forges you. And, you know, when I, when I say that, I think about, like, pottery. You know, like real pottery. When a potter makes a piece of pottery, a bowl or a cup, they don’t just decide it’s gonna be a bowl and then it’s a bowl. They have to work with the clay. ? They do that thing on the wheel like in Ghost, right? They, have to feel places where it’s too thick and it’s too thin, and sometimes they have to squish it all down and remake it and start over. And then you have to be really careful and take it into a kiln, right? Where it’s, , thousands of degrees, and the heat is what makes it hard. It’s the heat that actually… I mean, the, it’s the pressure that gives it the shape, but it’s, the heat of it that makes it strong So going through that process, like I don’t wanna go through it, that’s, it’s, it is the reclamation. It’s the good part. It feels bad, but it is the part that is making you into the version of you that is the beautiful piece of pottery. And if you’ve been wondering about your marriage for a long time, or a big decision for a long time, if you’re someone who has felt the knowing and not acted on it yet, or if you have been waiting for permission to leave, or waiting for something else to happen, or if you’re somebody who’s, , in the process right now, and you’re in the middle of it, and it is hard, I want you to know that every version of you that adapted, every version of you that stayed through something hard, that was you becoming something. That was you gathering evidence. That was you building the strength and the clarity that you would have what you needed for what came next. And, , I think about this sometime as I’m making this decision to move. , It’s hard. There’s a lot of things that I’m weighing. There’s things that I never even thought were important until I got to the place where I had to decide. There are versions of me that I have imagined that I’m not sure if they’ll exist in one place or the other. And so I know that going through a move, like I don’t wanna pack, I don’t wanna… All of that is what it’s gonna take to get to the other side. The expense, the, struggle, the hard work of doing it. Now, remarkably, it is remarkably easier than leaving a long-term partnership. But in so many ways it’s similar. But what I’ve learned, and what you learn when you go through any hard thing, it’s that if you could just have waved a magic wand and gotten through it, you wouldn’t be somebody who could sustain it. You’d, be a different person, and not the kind of person who could be on the other side. I know that I’ve gotta go through making this hard decision on whether to move or not, which I know is a very small thing, but it feels big. It feels big. And I’m not so much worried about making a right or wrong decision, but I am worried about all the work it’s gonna take to get to wherever I wanna go. And I know that when I go through that, I will know myself better, I will learn more about myself, I will know that I can survive minor inconveniences and hard things, and that I can make a decision, and I can stick with that decision, and that I can have a voice, and I can do things that I wanna do. And that is the process. That’s what the process gives you, and that’s what going through it creates for you. So if you have been in the wanting to leave but not in the processing place right now, “I wanna leave, but I don’t wanna go through the process of leaving,” I want you to know something. The process, it isn’t punishment. It’s, it’s not a tax that you have to pay to get to the other side. It is a process that is the thing that makes you. It is the thing that takes all of those other versions of you, all of those other moments of staying small, and gathering, and knowing, and it turns them into something unbreakable. You’re not weak for having stayed. You’re strong because you stayed. You’re strong because you learned, and you’re strong because you finally got to the point where you were ready And so if you’re in that right now, and you’re tired, and you’re scared, and you’re grieving, I want you to know that you are being forged. Every hard conversation that you show up to, every piece of paperwork, every moment where you have to be stronger than you thought you could be, that is the pottery wheel. That’s the kiln. That’s where you becoming the version of yourself that can build a new life is being forged. So you already know this on some level. You already know that you just can’t skip ahead over the hard parts. I wish we could and end up on the other side unchanged. I remember saying to my sister, “I don’t want this to change me. I don’t want to be changed.” And she said, “You already are.” And I thought, “Oh, so true.” Maybe going through the hard part is a way of reclaiming ourselves. You already know that becoming someone new takes time, and heat, and pressure. And you already know that the strength that you’re gonna have on the other side of this is something that you have to earn. And I want you to listen to that knowing. I want you to trust it. And I think when you can do that, that is how you live a big life. Thanks so much for being here with me this week. I love you guys so much. I will see you next week 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.