I found pet Betsy Pake when I was scrolling on Instagram and I found her reel. The audio said, "Tell me something you wish more people understood." Betsy was basically saying that over 95% of what we do every day is actually our subconscious and that kind of hit home for me. Sometimes I wonder things like why am I procrastinating? Or why am I having a third glass of wine when I know I shouldn't? I wanted to have her on the podcast to talk about the subconscious and how it affects our goal setting. Check out our full interview!
Megan: Before we really dive into the topic, tell us about who you are, what you do, and maybe just a little bit of your life.
Betsy: I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm married and I have a daughter who is about to turn 21, which I can't even believe I said that. But yes, about to turn 21. I am an expert in the unconscious mind. So I am a trainer of neuro linguistic programming, which is really a study of the unconscious mind, and I have worked as a coach and as a keynote speaker for over a decade. I think the thing that makes me a little bit different is because I talk about the science piece, and how to really shift in the unconscious and why all of that works, the way that it works and why you're experiencing life the way that you are. But then I also think there's like a little magic to it all. I think that there is a greater guidance, and that we can tap into this positive source of energy and feel really good and have a lot of fun in our lives even when things aren't going exactly the way we wanted them to.
Megan: Wow. Why wouldn't I want to have Betsy on Toxin-free talk? I love it. So can you talk a little bit about the science because I don't know that much about it?
Betsy: Our conscious minds, like the part of you that's listening to this and making a decision or maybe a judgment about something that I've said or about my voice, there's this part of you that is that voice in your head, that's saying "This is what I think, this is what I believe." You're walking down the street and you're thinking, do I go in there? Do I not go into that store? Where do I park? All of that, conscious. Now, this is also the part of you that sets your goals. So it's the part of you that says, I really want to lose 20 pounds or I really want to build a business. The tricky part is that there is an unconscious part of you, and the unconscious part of you or the subconscious runs about 95% of everything that you do. Now I would even say it's more than 95%. I would say if it's 95%, then you have a lot of awareness. The reason your mind is set up to do this is because if I had to think through everything all the time, it would be very difficult. Like I get up in the morning, and I brush my teeth, and I don't have to watch a YouTube video to figure out how to do that. It's a habit, I don't even notice I do it. Unconsciously, there are so many habits running in the background, there are so many patterns, there are so many beliefs, and also your identity. This is who I am. This is how I see the world. That whole unconscious part of you has typically been programmed by the time you're seven years old. You get those from your parents and your grandparents, teachers and other trusted people in your life. They believe something and so then you believe it and that thing seems normal. Well, now I'm 50. Now I set a goal and the goal doesn't match what my unconscious mind wants. Let's just say, I want to lose 20 pounds. And I use that because that's something everyone can relate to consciously.The moment I'm not thinking about it, the unconscious mind just runs its patterns. So if those patterns are like the thing that got you to the place where you need to lose 20 pounds, then the moment you're not thinking about it, you're sabotaging yourself. And the awful thing is that then people beat themselves up and they say, I'm not motivated. I don't have the discipline. I'm awful. I can't do this. But it's not your fault. It's actually because your brain works really well. So I think that when we talk about goal setting, I always like to shift and talk about it from a totally different place. The biggest mistake we've been taught is that we like to set this goal and then we make a list of things to do to reach the goal, and there's a space for that, but I think that first, we have to go dive into the unconscious mind,
Megan: So how do you do that? Like how do you first dive into the unconscious mind?
Betsy: I want to think of a good way to describe this. If you think of a ladder, and rungs on the ladder, okay? The bottom rung of the ladder is your environment. So where I am, people I'm surrounded by, like how I live my life. And the next one is my behavior. So those two rungs, my environment and my behavior, are conscious, because I can leave my environment. I can food prep, I can join a gym, I can do all of those things. Right above that is my potential. By potential I mean what I actually think is possible for me. This is where we start getting into the unconscious. This I think is where it starts getting a little sketchy. Especially if we're talking about weight or we're talking about money. What do I think I'm worth? What do I really think is available to me? Above that, the next rung up is my beliefs, then my values, and then my identity. Those are all unconscious. Now, can we bring those into our conscious awareness? Yeah, we can, but not all of them. So what happens is that we are operating from those very lowest rungs and so everything that happens above it trickles down. So if I change my belief, it's going to trickle down and it's going to change my behavior. Many, many years ago I used to be a competitive weightlifter. I was an Olympic style weightlifter, which is the snatch and the clean and jerk. I won a bronze medal in the Pan Am's. When we would go on vacation, I would immediately book the hotel and then immediately call around to find a gym that had barbells so I could go and work out. It wasn't really a question. It was just like, I get the hotel, I get the rental car and I find the gym I like. I was an athlete, that was my identity, the highest rung on that ladder. So I didn't have to put effort in the environment or behavior, there was no efforting, because who I was was an athlete. Now, a couple months ago, I went to Key West with my husband and I was like, do I bring anything other than flip flops? Are we really gonna go for a walk? Because my identity has shifted since then. So to answer your question, how do I start? I start noticing, who do I think I am? Not like I'm a wife. I'm a mom, not roles. I'm talking like, who do I think I am? What do I think I'm worthy of? How do I belong in this society? In this world? What am I telling myself about this thing? And I think the internet is an amazing place to get this awareness. You get on Instagram, and you scroll, right? I scroll and then I see somebody that's doing something that I wish I could do, or that I wish I had, and I get that like clench, the restriction. And that is such a gift. Because that is when I go, Oh, there's something in there for me, but there's a belief that says I can't have it. What is that? And so we start to identify what's going on in our unconscious mind by noticing how we feel. That is the great guidance system, how do I feel? That's going to tell me what it is I really think about all of the things.
Megan: Yeah. So interesting. I'm going to just give an example. There are some people that when I initially talked to them about going toxin-free, they're kind of like, wait a second, I don't want this information. And I've noticed that over time, they may change their mind about it. But initially, like you're saying that scroll, where you're feeling like that immediate, I don't like this. But that has some underlying barrier there? You said, you recognize it, and then you try and figure out what it means for you?
Betsy: You know if someone is like, I have an aversion to this toxin-free message, then there is a belief deep down in there. It is a representation of what the world is and that doesn't align with how I think the world is. I mean, we saw this with the vaccine, with COVID. There were some people whose worldview included vaccines and then there's a group of people that that doesn't align with their worldview. Neither one is good or bad or right or wrong, it's the way you're viewing the world. So when something touches that, that's how I see the world and you're making that wobbly, that can be really disarming for people. But I think it's also an opportunity to say, what is there for me to learn here? Because it's okay if you think one way or another, but you find a way in the why.
Megan: I love your reels, and I always feel like I should be doing more reels, but I have that thought, I should be doing this but I'm not. And this goes to the whole goal setting of something I want in life and setting a goal but then feeling like I just can't do that.
Betsy: You know, I have hated reals. I have spoken out about my hatred for reels because I thought I had to dance and point out stuff. I've had fun with it recently but I'm not gonna dance. I love it If others do, but for me, I'm 51 years old, I speak about the unconscious or like, I am a professional. So again, it goes against my worldview of how I want to be viewed. And that's okay. A couple months ago, I had some meetings with some daytime talk show producers, and there was a woman that was also there around the same time, and we were in a green room area. She was early 20s and she was like,Tik Toking away. I love to watch the Tik Toks but I was like, I am not making Tik Toks. And, I mean, she was so good at it and had all these followers and had built a business from that. I could feel the clench. So I just got curious and she finally said to me, "You should just talk. Like, you could just talk." And I was like, "What do you mean? Like, I don't have to dance and point?" and she was like, "No, you just talk, just share your message." I will say that in the very beginning they were so bad. It was embarrassing. I decided that I was going to be the example, that I was going to do it so that other people could see that you could try new things and it was okay if you did it badly, because you'd get better. Then as I've gotten better, I'm like, look, it's getting better. It's still not good, but it's better, right? And I changed the story. So now the story isn't that you have to do something that's so unaligned with who you are. Now the story is, I get to just try and then see what feels good and then I can keep doing more of that.
Megan: Maybe that hits on the magic part. I love a little bit of magic and yeah, why not? Can you go back to a little bit more about goal setting in the subconscious? Let's say you have a goal. How do you set it and then how do you pay attention to that?
Betsy: A lot of people set goals and they do this smart goal, right? I'm all about a good smart goal. Do that if that feels good to your brain. But I want you to get aligned at the end of that whole thing. Let's say you set a six month goal. At the end of that six months, I'm at Starbucks and you're getting a coffee and I'm like, “Oh my God, did you do the thing?” And you're like, “Yes, I totally did it. It was amazing. I learned so much. I had some things that didn't go how I thought they were going to be, but I learned so much in that.” I want you to journal this out. Who are you? Because the whole idea of a goal isn't really to get to the end of the goal. It's to become the kind of person who lives the way that that goal gives you. So get really clear on who she is. What does she think? What does she say to herself? How does she walk? How does she dress? Who does she spend her time with? Where does she vacation? Who does she vacation with? What kind of podcast is she listening to? Because I promise you if you have a goal, let's just say it's weight loss because I feel like everyone's done that. You have a goal of weight loss. At the end of that you're not imagining yourself walking down the street afraid of Crumbl Cookies. Do you know what I'm saying? You don't even want the crumble cookies, that's who you are.
Megan: And that's who you want to be. You want to be the person that's not influenced. I mean, every time I am trying to lose weight, it's not necessarily about the size; it is about what I'm putting in my mouth. But it's also just the ability to be in control of that and not feel controlled by food.
Betsy: Yes. So at the end of your goal, really what it is that you want to be? A person who is intentional, and who's not compulsed by things outside of their intention. Who is that person? One of the things I find fascinating, like on Tik Tok, is that if people show a weight loss journey, everybody asks, how did you do it? What I do is I find really skinny people that have been skinny their whole life and I say, what is it you do? Like, how do you live? What do you think? Because you've been skinny your whole life but you eat all kinds of crap. I've seen it and you're always thin. What do you think? What do you think about money and about food? Food and money are so combined, by the way, but that's another thing. What do you think about eating? What do you think about social events and eating? What do you think about different kinds of food? I want to know how they think because there is something in there, that is a behavior, or a thought pattern, that's who I want to be. So again, who I want to be, my identity, the highest rung of that ladder. And when I can do that, then all of a sudden, the goal setting, the hustle becomes about who is the person that lives with freedom in that, and then I think you really start moving towards being that person. That is what everybody talks about with the power of now. That's what everybody talks about with being present. Because you can't do anything about all the crap you've already eaten, and you can't do anything about the future, but right now you can be the person you want to be. Like, in this instant, you don't have to wait. I have been on a bit of a weight loss journey myself. I used to be an athlete, and then my daughter got sick, and I ate chocolate chips in the closet, because that made me feel better. And you know, I thank my body for just getting some fat on it so that I could cope. I needed that. Then when it was time, I wanted to shed the weight. I want you to notice I didn't say lose it because I always find things that I lose. But I wanted to shed that weight. And so I really got clear on who she is and how do I want to experience her? What are the things that I don't want to try to lose weight? I wanted to shed the weight and become who I was. I did a lot of mindset work before I even evaluated what I was putting in my mouth. I did a lot of mindset work. Then once I started, I found that I would walk by the mirror and I was kind of surprised that I looked the way I did because in my head I was already very different. I think that when we can make that shift when we are already that person, the rest of it just becomes very simple.
Megan: Yeah, that's really cool. Love it. Okay, so how does the subconscious affect someone who won't even set a goal because they're too fearful that they won't hit it? Maybe this is like the pre-contemplation phase. If you're familiar with the stages of behavior change, go back to the weight loss goal. Maybe you're thinking I probably should lose 20 pounds, but you're not committed to it.
Betsy: So they're pulling from the past. Because if we were in this present moment, and I had no past and no future, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't have anything to pull from. If someone was telling me that, I would say, "When's the first time that you decided that you were going to fail?" I use neuro linguistic programming, but I do a lot of shifting, how people are seeing that and that work can go really quick. But I think some questions that you can use for a listener is to ask, what am I pulling from? What is it that I'm really afraid of? For example, I know I didn't do reels because I was afraid of looking silly. I wasn't not doing reels because I didn't think they wouldn't work or because it was too technological or whatever. I wasn't doing reels, because I didn't want to look silly. I'm pulling that from somewhere. So I asked myself, what's the story around that? And, you know, I had a story and so I told myself the story. And then I asked myself this, how is that story serving you? That story was keeping me safe. It was keeping me kind of hidden because Instagram wasn't showing my photos, but to like 14 family members. Nobody was seeing my photos so it was keeping me really safe. And you know what? Maybe that served me. Then I gotta ask myself, is it okay to let that go? I was ready to let that go. So then I got to pick, what's the new story? Because I have an old story, but if I want to do this, then what do I want to be in a new story? We get to choose. They're all made up anyway, your memory is like nothing, it doesn't work. So you have to create something new. Our reality is so malleable, just choose what you'd want to believe. I wanted to believe that I could make really great videos that people would see and they'd feel inspired. Whether they worked with me or not, I didn't really care. That wasn't the intention. It was to have a little bit of fun and to give a new idea, like something that they hadn't thought of before. So then that story became kind of inspiring and then making the reels didn't seem quite as overwhelming. Understanding what your story is around it is going to be the key for people listening, a way that's attainable to make that shift. What's the story? How is it serving me? Do I still want that story? And then what's the new story? Then I can live off the new story.
Megan: It's kind of mind blowing. I have experienced how the story that we have in our heads about ourselves, like if we told that story to somebody else, they probably would interpret it in completely different ways and it might not necessarily be negative. But what I also loved about what you said is how is this serving me? You looked at that almost in a sort of a positive way. It's serving me, it's keeping me safe. It's protecting me and being okay that it's served its purpose. And am I ready to change that story?
Betsy: The unconscious mind is always serving you. It's always coming from a place of trying to protect you. Maybe every time you visit Aunt Mildred, you come home and you eat a pound cake. Whatever you do, your unconscious mind is doing that because it thinks that's helping you. Maybe at one point in your life, Aunt Mildred drove you bananas and made you question who you were and if you were loved. Coming home and eating the bound cake helped soothe you, and that's great. But now, that pattern might not serve you anymore. Aunt Mildred might be gone and the pound cake isn't helping you so now you're like, I get to release this. This was an old thing that really helped me at one point. I'm so grateful for it. I know after I gained the weight after my daughter died, I wrote my body a letter. And I said, Thank you so much. Because it was extremely stressful for many years. She was very, very sick. And I didn't get cancer. I didn't get anything like that, all I got was some fat on me. That's it and I can get help for that. I needed the soothing and that was a great way to soothe. I wasn't fat, I just had fat. And then it became really easy to shed that because that wasn't who I was anyway. It just was necessary for a little while. Which I think kind of brings us into this idea of giving yourself so much grace for everything that's already happened. You were doing the best you could and now you know better. Now you have new things you want and you have a totally new way to look at it.
Megan: Yeah, I feel like a lot of my listeners who maybe are new to toxin-free living, they might have a little bit of guilt. Like, for example, I did not know about a lot of the toxins when my daughters were little and I held guilt onto that, because I was worried that I was hurting them for their lifetime and their health because of the exposures that I didn't know were not good for them. But again, you have to just let go.
Betsy: Well, and to look at that version of yourself and say you were doing the best you could. That's what got you to where you are. Now, if you weren't doing the best you could you never would have gotten to the point where you knew you needed to be toxin-free. So how great that you didn't know.
Megan: That's right. Because otherwise, I wouldn't even have a curiosity to look into it.
Betsy: They are your teachers. Our children are here to teach us. We're not here really to teach them anything. They're teaching us, it's helping in our growth.
Megan: It was a lot easier for me to get that point as my daughters became older. When they were little, I was just in this state of frustration and it was not easy. When they're teens, I actually see how they're teaching me all the time. Even if we go through something really frustrating. It makes motherhood a little tiny bit easier when you look at it through that framework. So how do you bring in magic?
Betsy: You know, I think that sometimes people get stuck. Or they're in between. They're like, I don't really know what I want. I hear this all the time. Or it's Groundhog Day, like every day is the same. I always say this is amazing because magic operates in the unknown. Magic is allowed to come in when you don't know what's going to happen. If you know what's going to happen, then it's something that's probably already happened. The magic is actually in the moment and you looking at the moment. There's something called the double slit experiment, and you can google that and go to a YouTube video that will explain it. But basically, when we are looking at something, the thing changes. That's science, that's real. But that's also so magic. Because if we're in the middle of something that's really difficult and I can look at it and I can be really present, I can feel what I'm feeling and I can notice what I'm thinking, I can hear what I'm saying to myself, it creates this space for magic. I think that there are signs and things that happen to us all the time that tell us we're on the right path or to just keep going. I believe that we have guardian angels and that they are here to guide us. I have a really good friend that's very much into her guardian angels. She's been on my show a couple times, but she always says a
“Ask for help.” Just ask for help. Am I asking for help so I'm setting the intention and then my Spirit Guides are swooping in to help me? I like to believe that. Also, am I setting the intention so my unconscious mind knows what to show me? I believe so much that our unconscious mind is connected to that higher source and that the unconscious mind is our portal into that. You hear people say this all the time when they sit and meditate on how they got so much clarity. Because they're connected to the thing that has all the clarity. So I think that the magic is just in the moment. I have to bring myself back to what I am experiencing right now. I'll get nervous about something moving forward that hasn't happened yet. What about right now? Am I safe right now? Am I good right now? There's so many things on the news that can upset people. They talk about the recession every other second on the news. If you're exposed to any of that, I always say, but is it happening to me right now? No, I'm safe right now so I'm not worried about it because all I'm worried about is right now. And that's where the magic starts to happen.
Megan: Yeah, I love that. Is there anything else you want to share with my listeners?
Betsy: I mean, there's so many things, but I just appreciate being here. Give yourself so much grace for everything you've been through, appreciate your journey, because it was teaching you so much. If you felt stuck, or you felt like oh my god, I'm not motivated, or I can't do the thing. Relax. It's perfect, divine timing. You were supposed to hear this and get a new perspective on it and now you have a way to move forward in a totally different mindset.
Megan: Love it. Well, how can my listeners find you?
Betsy: So I am everywhere by my name, which is at Betsy Pake. So my website is www.betsypake.com. And I have a little guided meditation on my site for you. If you find that belief, and you're like, I really want to shift that belief, this meditation will guide you through that shifting. So if you go to www.betsypake.com/beliefs you can just download it for free.
Megan: Awesome. Well, we will put that in on my website where I post the podcast. And I just want to say thank you so much for being here and really teaching me more about the subconscious, but also reminding me about staying in the moment and knowing that that's exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I hope that you now have a little bit more knowledge about how our subconscious really plays a big part in what we do every day.
Find more about Betsy here:
www.betsypake.com/beliefs
WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM/BETSYPAKE
WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/BETSYPAKE
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bpake/
