Angels and More Angels

It's Not About You

Sam and Christine reach the fourth night of The Courage to Be Disliked, and the whole thing flips: you are not the center of the world. It sounds like a knock, but it turns out to be the good news. If whether people like you was never your task to begin with, then a huge weight you have been carrying was never yours to hold. They start with an idea that stings a little. Wanting to be liked is actually a form of self-centeredness. When you are obsessed with being thought well of, you are still stuck on the I, still making it about you. Real belonging works the other way around. Instead of asking what other people can do for you, you ask what you can give, and Sam ties that straight back to what she told her son when he was little: you are here to lift others. From there they get into one of Adler's most practical ideas, horizontal relationships. You drop praise and punishment, because both come from a place of looking down, and you replace them with plain encouragement. Christine and Sam love that the word courage is nested right inside encouragement. You are not rewarding a good outcome, you are helping someone find the courage to do their own work. Praise the effort, not the result. I love the colors you picked, what were you thinking when you chose those. The most tender moment comes when Christine shares what she told her daughter on a hard day. Go paint some rocks with encouraging messages and leave them at the park. Weed a neighbor's garden. Write your grandma a note. Because getting out of your own head and being of use to someone else is where self-worth actually comes from. And self-worth, Adler says, is what gives you the courage to live. It all lands on one honest line that ties the whole book together: I am of use to someone. In this episode: - Why you are not the center of the world, and why that is freeing - How wanting to be liked is really a form of self-centeredness - Commitment to community: asking what you can give, not what you can get - Horizontal vs. vertical relationships, and dropping praise and rebuke - Encouragement over praise, and the courage nested inside it - Serving others as a real tool for self-worth and mental health Quotes from this episode: "Your wanting to be liked by others is your attachment to yourself. It's not concern for others, it's nothing but attachment to self." - Samantha Bauer "There is a feeling of being part of something bigger, and it feels so good. Especially when you're contributing to it, you realize it's not about you. It's just bigger than one individual." - Christine Goforth "There's that word courage, nested right inside encouragement. In a horizontal relationship, you're encouraging someone to be courageous enough to do their own life tasks." - Samantha Bauer "It gets you out of your own head, and it feels good to do good for other people. That's a huge piece of community, and it's a huge piece of mental health." - 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-31-its-not-about-you.html Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

Discard Other People's Tasks

Sam and Christine are back in The Courage to Be Disliked, and the third night of discussion is the one that hits closest to home: the separation of tasks. The big idea is deceptively simple. Whether someone likes you is their task, not yours. And trying to manage everyone else's tasks, fixing, steering, worrying, is exactly what turns life into something heavy and full of hardship. Sam shares two real parenting moments where she caught herself mid-intrusion. Her son Max is hunting for an apartment for the new school year, and instead of weighing in on the listings, she landed on, "I believe you'll make the right decision for you." Her daughter cut it close on a flight, and rather than rescue or scold, Sam let her own the scramble. It's uncomfortable, especially as the kids get older and the stakes get higher, but it's also freeing. Their job is to be a backstop, not to live their kids' lives for them. Christine brings the boundaries piece home with a line from an old colleague of Sam's: don't let people put their crap in your backpack. Some of us are more absorbent than others, quietly carrying fifteen people's little pieces of baggage until our own load feels impossible. They get into denying the desire for recognition, why people-pleasing leaves you empty, the reward-and-punishment trap, and the stone rolling downhill that gets smoothed of all its unique edges. Real freedom, they land on, is the courage to push back against the pull to be liked and stay authentically yourself. In this episode: • The separation of tasks and how to spot whose task is whose • Two parenting moments where stepping back beat stepping in • Denying the desire for recognition without becoming heartless • Why people-pleasing quietly erases who you actually are • The stone rolling downhill, and what real freedom costs Quotes from this episode: "Whether you like me or dislike me, that's your task. You can't make someone like you. That is not your task." - Samantha Bauer "If you're trying to please everybody, you're pleasing nobody. You end up sacrificing who you are to live according to how other people think you should be living." - Christine Goforth "If you give in to the desire to be liked, you're just a stone rolling downhill, left smoothed out with all your unique edges gone. You're no longer authentically you." - Samantha Bauer "How exhausting is it to constantly seek validation from other people? You can't make somebody like you. The right ones will stick and everything else will fall away." - 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/4OngsZM3ofSq3xTUgpChfcAll platforms: https://linktr.ee/sistersinlawpod Episode page: https://sistersinlawofattraction.com/episodes/episode-30-discard-other-peoples-tasks.html Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

All Problems Are Relationship Problems

Sam and Christine keep working through The Courage to Be Disliked, and this week the claim on the table is a big one: every problem you have is an interpersonal relationship problem. Strip other people out of the picture and jealousy, comparison, shame, and the fear of judgment all disappear. You can't be lonely in an empty universe. The shadows of other people are always there. It sounds extreme until you actually try to name a worry that isn't tied to someone else.From there they get into Adler's take that feelings of inferiority are not a disease, they're fuel. We're all born helpless, we're all beginners at everything, and that little gap between where you are and where you want to be is exactly what pushes you to grow. The trap is when it curdles into an inferiority complex, the story that you're just not good at this and never will be. Christine reframes it with one small word: yet. The flip side is the superiority complex, the chest-puffing braggart who's really just masking a lack.That all builds to the heart of the episode: life is not a competition. Everyone is moving forward, just at a different pace. Some are way ahead, some are way behind, but everyone's moving, and the only race that matters is your own. Sam gets vulnerable here, admitting she may have raised her kids to compete when she could have taught them to run their own race. They close on Adler's three life tasks, work, friendship, and love, and the idea that this is a psychology of courage and use, not possession. It's not what you were born with, it's what you do with it. You're in the driver's seat. In this episode: • Why all problems trace back to interpersonal relationships • Feelings of inferiority as fuel for growth, and the power of the word "yet" • The difference between healthy striving and a superiority or inferiority complex • Sam's honest confession about raising her kids to compete • Comrades, not enemies, and Adler's three life tasks: work, friendship, love Quotes from this episode: "It's not about being better than others. Everyone is moving forward, just at a different pace. The forward motion is striving and growing for yourself, not competing against everyone else." — Samantha Bauer "You are on your own path, living your own life. Everybody has a different set of desires and goals, so why on earth would you compare the road you're taking to something completely different?" — Christine Goforth "When you focus on competing with others, it becomes about winning and losing, and you start to see everyone as your enemy. The moment you see them as comrades instead, the world starts to look more positive." — Samantha Bauer "I don't need to prove to you that I'm right about anything. I choose my peace." — 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-29-life-is-not-a-competition.html Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

The Life Lie

This one is a direct follow-up to the Adler episode, and it goes straight after self-sabotage: all the quiet ways we get in our own way and never once call it that. Sam and Christine start with the sneakiest culprit of them all, comfort. Staying somewhere too long, not growing, telling yourself this is working for me when really it is just familiar. Sam talks about watching both of her kids leave comfortable situations in their twenties, her daughter Maddie moving to Dallas after her second year of law school and her son heading to Boston for training, and the line that stuck with her: you can always go and come back, but you can't always go. From there they get into the idea behind the title, pulled from The Courage to Be Disliked: the life lie. It is the story we tell ourselves to excuse the inaction and shift the responsibility off our own shoulders. I'm just not organized. I'm not a numbers person. I never have the time. They walk through the everyday shapes self-sabotage takes, procrastination, perfectionism, overthinking, second-guessing, harsh self-criticism, and the negative loop that runs on repeat in your head. Christine makes the case that if you have time to talk yourself down, you have time to pump yourself up, and that rewiring the pattern happens one brick at a time. Sam brings in Byron Katie's The Work and the simple questions you can ask to take a thought apart and see if it is even true. The best story might be Sam at seventeen, tutoring her softball teammates in math and refusing to touch a single equation until they fixed what they believed about themselves first. Mindset coach before math tutor. They close on a question from a Barbara Field piece in Verywell Mind that cuts right to it: is your behavior actually lining up with your goals? Sam's honest example is the diet that goes great Monday through Friday and falls apart every weekend. Nobody does the good-for-them thing all the time, and that is not the point. The point is catching where comfortable is quietly winning, and choosing to get back in your own driver's seat. In this episode: • Why comfortable is the most disguised form of self-sabotage • The life lie, from The Courage to Be Disliked, and the stories we use to excuse inaction • The everyday faces of self-sabotage: procrastination, perfectionism, overthinking, second-guessing • Fear of success is just as real as fear of failure • Rewiring the negative loop one brick at a time, with a nod to Byron Katie's The Work • Sam at seventeen, coaching mindset before math Quotes from this episode: "You literally created a problem that didn't exist by overthinking and second-guessing. You sabotage your own progress because you keep doubting everything you did." - Samantha Bauer "Self-sabotage is always wrapped up in something that disguises itself as beneficial in the moment, even though long term it's keeping you stuck and stagnant." - Christine Goforth "We didn't even start with the math. We started with how she felt about it. You have to fix the belief before you can ever do the work." - Samantha Bauer "If we have time to do the negative self-talk, we have time to pump ourselves up. For some reason our brains just naturally tend to find the negative." - 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://sistersinlawpod.com/episodes/episode-28-the-life-lie.html Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.

Adler, Trauma, and the Driver’s Seat

Sam brings a birthday gift to the conversation this week: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, a book that walks through the psychology of Alfred Adler as a back-and-forth between a young man and a philosopher. The very first chapter is titled "deny trauma," and Sam knows going in that the idea is going to be provocative. So she says it out loud anyway. The Adlerian claim at the center of it: we don't suffer from the shock of an experience, we suffer from the meaning we assign to it, because that meaning serves a purpose. Adler called the focus on purpose teleology, as opposed to etiology, which only looks at the cause. Christine pushes back, because trauma is real, and the two of them work through the nuance together. The point isn't that bad things didn't happen to you. It's that ruminating on why they happened keeps you stuck, while asking how you want to move forward is what lets you grow. As Christine puts it, we are not responsible for what happened to us, but we are 100% responsible for how we carry it. To keep it from getting too heavy, they pull in the Summer House reunion, where Sierra finally tells Amanda to stop letting life happen to her and get in the driver's seat. Amanda got comfortable in the victim role because, on some level, it served her, and that comfort is the same trap Adler is describing. From there it comes back to the whole point of this podcast: you are more powerful than you think, your thoughts run on a loop, and you get to decide what you make them mean. The episode also opens with a sweet listener story about a dad who taught his kids that kind thoughts don't belong to you, so if you think something nice, you say it. Next week, they pick up the thread with self-sabotage. In this episode: • A listener's story: if you think something nice, you say it • The Adlerian idea that we suffer from the meaning we assign to trauma, not the event itself • Teleology vs etiology, or purpose vs cause, without getting too academic about it • Why playing the victim can quietly serve you, with a Summer House assist • The difference between visiting your pain and living there • You get to decide what you carry forward Quotes from this episode: "We don't suffer from the shock of the experience, the so-called trauma. We suffer by the meaning we assign to it, because it serves a purpose." - Samantha Bauer "We are not responsible for the things that happen to us that we have zero hand in. But we are 100% responsible for how we carry through life after that event happens." - Christine Goforth "You could sit back and let life happen to you. But let's be honest, life is happening exactly how you want it to, because you're making decisions." - Samantha Bauer "We all have these narrations in our head, stories we tell ourselves. So often they're not true, and they're self-limiting beliefs." - 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://sistersinlawpod.com/episodes/episode-27-adler-trauma-and-the-drivers-seat.html Sisters In Law of Attraction is hosted by Samantha Bauer and Christine Goforth.