Christine heard a parable a few weeks ago and immediately texted Sam about it, so this episode opens with the story of the Mexican fisherman. An American investment banker meets a fisherman who works just a little while each day, then sleeps late, plays with his kids, takes siestas with his wife, and sips wine with his friends in the evening. The banker lays out a fifteen to twenty year plan for him: bigger boats, a cannery, a move to New York, an IPO. And after all that? Then you could retire to a small coastal village where you'd sleep late, fish a little, and sip wine with your friends. The fisherman is already living the life the whole plan is supposed to earn.

Last episode was about why living in the here and now matters. This one is about how. Sam and Christine get into being versus doing, and Christine shares her own version of the fisherman's choice: staying at the family restaurant through college and into motherhood while regulars kept asking when she was going to get a real job. It paid real money, it gave her time with her baby, and her sister's friend once said she always looked so happy. Maybe she had it figured out a long time ago.

Then the practical part. Christine shares the trick that's helped her daughter with anxious thoughts: name the voice in your head, so you can tell Bertha to take a hike. You are not your thoughts. You're the observer of them, and not all of them deserve your attention. Sam adds Gabby Bernstein's two words for the moment a spiral starts, choose again, and Christine brings a phrase she just heard that stopped them both: shopping for pain. You can visit those thoughts, but you can't live there.

In this episode:

• The parable of the Mexican fisherman and the Harvard MBA

• Being versus doing, and why you can live the life you want right now

• Christine's years at the family restaurant and the "real job" question

• Naming the anxious voice in your head so you can tell it to take a hike

• Choose again, and how to stop shopping for pain

Quotes from this episode:

"A life well lived is always complete. Whether that's twenty years old or eighty years old, that life was complete if you're living in the moment. Because the moment is the life." - Samantha Bauer

"Be careful which wolf you feed. The wolf of fear or the wolf of happiness and positivity. Whichever one you feed is the one that's gonna grow." - Christine Goforth

"Just be aware of your thoughts and realize that your thoughts are not you. They're manufactured thoughts in your brain that do create your reality. So you can create a different reality just by shifting your mindset." - Samantha Bauer

"When I find myself shopping for pain, that's when I know I need to come back to myself, because there is nothing wrong in this moment. Why am I going out and looking for it?" - Christine Goforth

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sisters-in-law-of-attraction/id1848757802

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OngsZM3ofSq3xTUgpChfc

All platforms: https://linktr.ee/sistersinlawpod

Episode page: https://sistersinlawofattraction.com/episodes/episode-35-mindfulness-how-to-do-it.html

Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

What is your problem right now, in this exact moment? Not the one you're bracing for. Not the what if. Right now. Most of the time the honest answer is nothing, and that question is the spine of this episode.

Sam has plenty she could spiral about. Her mom's health is uncertain, and her son Max is heading into his last year of college. She still made the back to school run to Target, picked-over shelves and all, and got him a few things for his backpack. When the sad crept in, she caught it. Life is a series of moments. Dance in this one.

Christine road tested the same idea on the side of a highway. Two blown tires on the electric car, a hundred degrees out, kids and dog in the back, two and a half hours waiting on a tow. A year ago that would have been a meltdown the whole way through. This time she noticed the panic, named it, and moved through it in about fifteen minutes. Safe, air conditioned, help on the way. No actual problem in the actual moment.

They also get into the flip side: what it feels like when presence isn't optional. Sam spent a week in LA helping her husband through a trial, and the rest of the world simply switched off. No headlines, no scrolling, no fifty small emergencies. Her new favorite sentence came out of that week, and it works on everything from a buzzing phone to adult kids: I can't care about that right now.

If your brain loves to sprint ahead to the next disaster, this one is a good anchor. The worry is optional. The moment is not.

In this episode:

• Back to school shopping for a college senior, and catching the sad before it takes over

• Why we steal the present by worrying about the past and the future

• Two blown tires, and noticing the spiral instead of riding it

• Reaction versus response, and why the gap between them is the real work

• A week in trial with room for nothing else, and what full presence feels like

• Being your kids' backstop, not their standby

Quotes from this episode:

"Life is a series of moments. You gotta dance in those moments of life, and you can enjoy it as long as you live in the here and now." - Samantha Bauer

"It's a Tuesday and you're in your bathing suit watering your lawn. You have the time off right now. It's okay to enjoy this." - Christine Goforth

"If you're in that moment, there are no problems. You have simply what is in front of you. The only problem is something your brain has created about a fear of what's gonna happen next." - Samantha Bauer

"A reaction is the history of how you've behaved and done things. Your response is who you really are now, and it takes a lot more practice for that to become automatic." - Christine Goforth

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sisters-in-law-of-attraction/id1848757802

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OngsZM3ofSq3xTUgpChfc

All platforms: https://linktr.ee/sistersinlawpod

Episode page: https://sistersinlawofattraction.com/episodes/episode-34-you-are-not-your-thoughts.html

Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

Sam and Christine finally close out The Courage to Be Disliked, and it's the piece that landed hardest for Sam. The philosopher's claim that life isn't a straight line from here to some finish line, it's a series of moments. A string of little dots you live one at a time. Draw a line with chalk, put a magnifying glass over it, and you find it was never really a line at all.

From there they get into the difference between kinetic and energeia, between climbing a mountain just to plant a flag at the top and actually being in the climb. You can reach the summit by helicopter, but then you missed the whole point. Sam shares the stage analogy that floored her. Shine a bright spotlight on the here and now and you can't see the back of the house, which is the future, or behind you, which is the past. Dim that light and suddenly you're living in the past or the future instead of right where your feet are. Christine ties it back to something they say all the time. In this moment, you have no problems. You're fed, you're housed, you're safe, you're here.

Then comes the part they both called a mic drop. Life in general has no meaning. Whatever meaning it has, you assign it, nobody hands it to you. The guiding star that keeps you from losing your way is contribution to others, and when you dance in the here and now in earnest, the meaning of your life becomes clear. Change yourself, and the world changes with you. It's a warm, honest wrap on a book Sam calls transformational, and a reminder that the value was never in the destination. It was in the dancing.

In this episode:

• Life as a series of moments, not a straight line to a finish line

• Kinetic versus energeia: climbing the mountain versus just reaching the top

• The spotlight and the stage, and why the here and now goes dark when you look ahead or behind

• Life has no built-in meaning, you're the one who gets to assign it

• Contribution to others as the guiding star, and how changing yourself changes the world

Quotes from this episode:

"If you live in the here and now, then a life that ends at twenty and a life that ends at ninety are both complete." - Samantha Bauer

"Right here in the moment, at my table with a microphone talking to you, what problems do I have? In this moment, you have no problems." - Christine Goforth

"Life in general has no meaning. Whatever meaning it has must be assigned by the individual. You are the only one who can assign meaning to your life." - Samantha Bauer

"The value is in the work, not the outcome. There's no winning or losing at life. The value is in the life you've lived, whether that's twenty years or ninety." - Christine Goforth

Listen and subscribe:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sisters-in-law-of-attraction/id1848757802

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OngsZM3ofSq3xTUgpChfc

All platforms: https://linktr.ee/sistersinlawpod

Episode page: https://sistersinlawofattraction.com/episodes/episode-33-dancing-in-the-here-and-now.html

Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.