290: Are Your Experiences Defining You or Refining You?

Maybe right now you don’t really like where you are in life or how you feel. What do you do with that discontent? In this episode Betsy talks about feeling inspired, setting intentions, actively participating in creating our reality, and the value in every experience. She also shares a great practice with us concerning the power of “that’s right.” >>> Connect with Betsy on IG @betsypake Transcription: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Art of Living big. I’m excited to be with here today. I am in Iceland still and, of course the wind is howling. I feel like this is a common theme. The wind is howling. You know what’s so funny is when I got here, if you followed along on Instagram, like I was bundled, when I tell you I was bundled like I had fleece long underwear, you know, and sweatpants. And then what I call my Wakey wakey wakey wakey pants you know when you walk and they go by Wakey wakey is everyone hear calls and wiki wikis now to which I love. And then like wool socks, big boots, or had like two layers underneath my big puffy jacket. I’d have one of those wool things around my neck, you know, to cover my face, a hat to cover my ears and then I’d have my hood up and mittens. Okay, so this is how I started the trip. And I’ve wondered like how do people live that’s here. It’s so cold and so windy, like oh my god. And I know I grew up in Vermont, but me and I’m like this is like next level windy. You know, a couple times when we’ve traveled, I literally haven’t hardly been able to walk. And I’m not exaggerating. We were on the black beach one day. And I had one moment where the wind was howling and pushing you. And I was trying to get back to the van. And I stepped into the snow and it went up to like my mid thigh. I’m so sure Anyway, like I was like, oh my god, next foot all the way down. So I thought I got a push from my hands. And so I pushed for my hands, my hands went in. And the more I tried to get out, the more I dug myself deeper, it was like quicksand. It really really was. And I thought, Oh my God, all those times where I worried about quicksand. As a child, I used to spend a lot of time thinking about quicksand. This was why cuz I would be in this position. I started thinking about Harry Potter, you know, when they’re in that thing of have all the ropes or whatever, you know what I mean? Those vines that like suck them in, they have to just relax. And then they I was like, I do I just relax, like, what do I do? And so I started to yell, I started yelling, I really can’t get out. And there were people like two feet from me, but they couldn’t hear me because the wind was howling. I’m telling you, I had like a moment, it was only a moment or two, where I felt a panic. Like I’m gonna die with my arms and legs in the snow cheek pressed up against the ice, I’ve got to get out of here. And when I finally got my footing and got out, guide, hightailed it back to the van, like I really left everybody, they were still on top of the bank, and like we’re looking in that the beauty and I was like peace out, I gotta go. I gotta get back to where I feel safe, right, where I don’t feel so wobbly. And so, you know, that experience was very, very real. And now that I’ve been here a couple of weeks, I’m like, do we need a jacket to go out, we stopped to get some food the other day, as we were traveling from one spot to the next we’ve traveled, we are traveling to like six different spots doing the whole loop around the whole country. And when we got into the little cafe, there were a couple local kids that were there, like teenagers, one of them had a tank top and shorts on and boots.