Mindfulness That Meets You Where You Are with Samantha Gutowski
What if presence was not another thing to master, but the doorway to hearing what your life has been quietly asking for all along?
In this episode of The Resonate Podcast, Aideen sits down with mindfulness and executive coach Samantha Gutowski to explore how a six-day retreat in Chiang Mai sparked a lasting shift from constant motion to grounded, intentional living.
Sam shares how she translated retreat insight into sustainable 5 minute a day habits, using body based check ins, intentional boundaries, and honest self reflection to reshape friendships, deepen her marriage, and reconnect with what truly matters.
Key Takeaways
Presence does not require perfect routines, just small, consistent moments of attention
Everyone has a personal access point to presence, such as music, nature, journaling, or breath
Mindfulness includes staying with grief, anger, and intensity, not bypassing them
Naming emotions and letting them move through the body reduces their grip
The way you speak to yourself may be your most powerful mindfulness practice
If you are curious about practical mindfulness, emotional resilience, and living in alignment with your values rather than other people’s expectations, this conversation offers grounded tools you can begin using today.
Subscribe, share it with someone craving calm, and leave a review to let us know—what is your access point to presence?
Connect with Samantha
Website: www.beherenowbaby.com
Instagram: @beherenowbaby
Transcript
Aideen Ni Riada: 0:03
Welcome to the Resonate Podcast with Aideen. I'm Aideen Ni Riada, and my guest today is Samantha Gutowski. She is a mindfulness and executive coach who guides people to quiet the noise and realign with what truly matters. Her business, Be Here Now Baby, brings intention, presence, and grounded leadership into everyday life. Welcome, Sam.
Samantha Gutowski: 0:27
Thank you so much for having me. Such an honor. And I love the natural emotion that hearing those words bring to my eyes. I feel a little teary just hearing it sent back to me. So thank you for reading it so beautifully.
Aideen Ni Riada: 0:40
You know, I think this it's an interesting thing. This is something I've experienced with other guests as well and myself.
Samantha Gutowski: 0:47
Yeah.
Aideen Ni Riada: 0:47
You know, we write our bio and we're saying what we are or who we are. And then when someone reads it with a deep meaning of the truth of that, and you start to see that reflected back to you at that real power.
Samantha Gutowski: 1:05
Yeah.
Aideen Ni Riada: 1:06
It is emotional. It is. You know, because we are so much more than the person we live in our mind that every day is just one aspect of who we are.
Samantha Gutowski: 1:15
Yeah.
Aideen Ni Riada: 1:16
When you meet a client, this is who you are. This is, you know, Sam the executive coach, the mindfulness coach. I am curious though, how did you discover mindfulness and start to make that part of your work?
Samantha Gutowski: 1:30
Yeah. So to make a very long story short, I was not a mindful being. I was a happy being. I was a lively being, but I never found that mindfulness was a part of my life. Presence was not something that was common. I was go, go, go. I did not stop to really feel where I was and really be fully present in what I was doing. And I was a travel writer. So I was traveling all over the world and writing about places that I have been and sharing my experiences of travel with others. And yes, when I was on a mountaintop looking over at a beautiful view, I was present because it kind of forces you to be, right? It's impossible not to be. But when it came to everyday life, that's why I craved travel so much because I wasn't experiencing that full presence moment very often. And I was in Thailand for an assignment, and I thought, I'm gonna try out one of these mindfulness meditation retreats and write about it. I have some back when I was doing this job, I had some opportunity to create some of my own stories. So I went to this wonderful, wonderful retreat in Chiang Mai called Swan Sati. And it was one of those experiences where it completely changed my life. People say, like, oh, you're not gonna go to just a six-day thing and you're a completely new person. For me, I really was. Wow. I felt like my core was the same. It's not like I was, you know, complete 180, but I learned how to calm my mind and how to be kinder to myself and how to slow down and not look at my phone and live for me versus what I thought other people wanted me to do. So I learned what mindfulness was, and the the founder of this um wonderful retreat, Will at the end said, Okay, it was very easy to be present here in Qing Mai, no distractions, you're doing this wonderful, you know, you're you're being led through yoga and quiet time and silent mornings. And now the real work starts. You're going back to everyday life. And I was like, oh shit, like here we go. How will I how will I bring this into my life? And very, very slowly, and baby steps started to make some changes. And so mindfulness for me is is really less than a decade old, but it's something that hit me fast in a way that I realized I want to move through the world in a more mindful way, and just did it for me. I had no plans to make my entire living around mindfulness or teach anyone else how to do it. I thought there's no way I'm gonna do this for someone else. I'm just gonna do it for me. And then people started to notice friends and family say, you're more calm, you're more happy, you're more grounded. So that's really for me, it was a retreat in in Thailand and how mindfulness came my way. That's so beautiful. Thanks.
Aideen Ni Riada: 4:53
I recognize that um that feeling though, at the end of something beautiful or like a vacation where you start to start to internally almost panic that you have to go back.
Samantha Gutowski: 5:04
Yeah.
Aideen Ni Riada: 5:05
Um I did a a retreat, it was with the Berkeley Psychic Institute.
Samantha Gutowski: 5:10
Oh wow.
Aideen Ni Riada: 5:11
So my sister was living in San Francisco. She sends me an email. Do you want to go on a retreat with the Berkeley Psychic Institute? I said, I'll need more convincing than that. And we went and we were we neither of us had done any courses with them or anything, and they were doing all these cool things like bringing the sun down into your head and creating these, you know, connections between us so that we'd travel together in one train, and we went for a mindful walk and all of these beautiful things. And on the way back, halfway back to San Francisco, we we stopped somewhere and I started to realize I actually need to go back. And I realized there were so many things I actually needed to change in order for me to feel this peacefulness and this happiness when I went back to my everyday life.
Samantha Gutowski: 6:02
Yep.
Aideen Ni Riada: 6:02
Because mindfulness isn't about avoiding life, is it?
Samantha Gutowski: 6:06
Quite the opposite. But it feels, you know, in that moment when it's something that's new for you. I'm I totally I I I can really relate when you say then you realize, no, actually, if you want the life that you maybe feel deep down you want to live, these changes do have to happen. And they don't have to be overnight. They don't have to, it's impossible for them to be overnight, really, in a lot of ways. But it was such a beautiful moment of saying, okay, there's not one way to live life, and you can try these different things, and you're not behind. You're right on time. So that sounds like an incredible experience that you had.
Aideen Ni Riada: 6:50
Yeah. And I think one of the things I didn't really know how to live mindfully at that point, but I did make some changes. I started to face things differently. Um, but one of the books that really helped me find that mindfulness was The Power of Now, Ekartal. Um, and I started to be more present in my body. Is that one of the strategies that you use a lot with your clients?
Samantha Gutowski: 7:15
Yeah. The that book is a huge part in my life as well. Something that I pick up. That one and the untethered soul are ones that I reference at least once a year. Like either rereading or a few chapters. But coming back into your body, and you did it just when we were doing the warm-up here of kind of setting intentions and checking in with our voice, is so often we're living our life and in anything that we're doing for others or outside of our body. I can have this and I'll achieve this in the future, versus how can I experience the now in my body in exactly what I'm doing, how I'm speaking, what I'm speaking about right here, right now. And that book is actually one that I picked up almost 10 years before I even went to this retreat. I had a friend reading it, actually, someone I was dating at the time, and I read a chapter and thought, what the heck is this? This sounds powerful and wonderful, but I am nowhere near able to even read a sentence of this and it making sense. And now I think I eat, breathe, and live those words. So, yes, coming into your body and saying, and it's it's it is so difficult for someone who's never heard that sentence even before, right? When you say, hey, come into your body when you're thinking this or feeling this, when you're moving through this, and they think, what does that mean? How would I, how do I even get there? And so it's the beautiful reminder of I want you to just try to humor me on what that even means and what that would feel like if you could try.
Aideen Ni Riada: 9:07
And it's an experience. I mean, you can't it's actually thinking about it doesn't get you there.
Samantha Gutowski: 9:11
Nope. I wish. I know a lot of people wish that it did, but you really have to to come into your body, you have to have all, you know, your all-awareness when it comes to that. That mindfulness piece really comes into play. And so we practice this with my clients, which is what is what would that again look like if you tried? And have you ever witnessed someone else really in their body when they're doing something? And then they'll say, Oh yes, I went to a um, I went and saw a performance, and someone was so in their body and and present and what they wanted to maybe share with the world. And then I think, okay, how do we take where you are and get closer to where that is? And of course it can feel really overwhelming, and that's what I love most about what I do is I take these giant dreams and hopes and goals and aspirations that people think about every day of their lives, and they say, Okay, now let's break that down into manageable, practical baby steps that you can do. How can you live in your body for just a moment today?
Aideen Ni Riada: 10:25
One of the things I noticed with myself, and I think different people have different access point to being in the moment, it's not the same solution for each person. Yeah. Um, and I recognized this one day. I was I was sitting having a meal, and a song came on, and I started to bop along to the song, and I uh basically my meal was secondary to the song at that moment. Yeah. And I realized how powerful listening was for me as an access point to being in the moment. Um, what kind of practical strategies do you suggest to your clients to help them find what makes their, you know, what helps them get back into that moment?
Samantha Gutowski: 11:06
Yeah, this is so important and I think so often missed because we think, okay, I want to be more mindful. So here's the list of ways I can be more mindful. That some random mindfulness code shared on Instagram, and I'm gonna try those out. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to be more present, and listening is some for is one for some people. Nature is a one that I always recommend first because a lot of people do find that they can be very present in a way that they can't anywhere else if they just go and walk on a trail or if you're in a city, sit under a tree in a park. What I love about this example is I have had a few clients say, that sounds like my absolute nightmare. I have no desire to be in the woods ever. And for me, I think, no way. Like nature is my favorite place to be. I could not be more present than there. And that's been such a wonderful part of that learning of coaching, of you think you know how clients will react or how the like I'm gonna show them something that will work. And then you learn, hey, this isn't this isn't for them. So again, going back to that, what we talked about earlier, which is I just want you to try to humor yourself of if you've seen someone else be present, how do you think you could get there? So I will start with a very basic list meditation, humming, walking through nature, journaling. Do any of those sound like something you wanted to try before? And they may say, you know what? When I journal, I do feel like I am not thinking about anything else in the world. Okay, great. So that's a way that you find presence. The person next to them might say, I don't feel present at all when I'm journaling. So for you, when that song came on, it took you completely out of everything else around you and you were there. Maybe you were thinking about the first time you heard that song, or maybe the rhythm or the words reminded you of something else. Like no, no matter what it was, you were there, and that meal was like, I'll get to it later. What I love about mindfulness is just how long the list actually is of how you can practice it. I have clients who will tell me I've never been mindful in my life. So I have no idea where to start. I've heard it's important, I heard it would be helpful, but I have no idea where. And then I'm always taking that as a challenge of I know they've been present before. They just maybe don't know what that looked like or they didn't realize it was that way. So I had a client the other day who loves looking for Potoski stones. Stones in general, but Batoski stones.
Aideen Ni Riada: 14:01
Well, for those who don't know Potaski stones. Oh, true, not everyone will know this. We have an international uh listenership here. So Potoski is a place here in Michigan where both of us live. Tell us a little bit about Potoski Stones, just to give the context.
Samantha Gutowski: 14:15
Yeah, so Batoski stones are fossils and they're only found in, I believe, Wisconsin and Michigan. I think probably I know up in the UP as well, maybe on the lines of Canada. Now I feel like I should know much more about Batoski stones. But they're a very special stone here that are that's only found in this part of the world. And if you have never seen a Batoski stone before in this story, just think of if you like searching for stones in general. So if you're walking the shoreline, you're rarely thinking about your problems. You're just looking for the stone. And it and it's any type of foraging as well. So if you forage for mushrooms or look for anything, you are so all there. That's mindfulness, that's present moment awareness. And so when people open their mind to that, they start realizing oh, mindfulness isn't just sitting on a cushion and meditating. Now, it's a beautiful way to practice present moment awareness. And I love meditation. But what I always encourage people to find is what does mindfulness look like to you? So I know that was a very long way of answering your question, but just encouraging people to, if they've been interested in mindfulness before, what interests them about it? Is it that they want to be that they they feel like they're go, go, go in their life and never have an opportunity to slow down? Do they feel like they aren't comfortable in their thoughts? Okay, how can we find a way to get closer there? So it's like a scavenger hunt with yourself. And we all know once you start doing this, it can feel a little scary. It can feel a little overwhelming of like, I don't want to be quiet with my thoughts. They're not nice, they're scary, they're overwhelming. And what I always encourage people to do is say, choose your hard. It is gonna be hard the next 10 years to always have those scary thoughts and never maybe acknowledge them and see what they're there to teach you and maybe help you unlearn or heal from. That's gonna be hard. Or if we're just gonna keep moving forward with them and doing nothing about them, that's gonna be hard too. So I love that mindfulness can open so many doors and heal us in so many ways, but we have to be willing to listen. And in order to do that, we have to find a way that we learn how to still still our minds, right? So for you, that music comes on, you're all there. You can do so much with that presence if you allow it.
Aideen Ni Riada: 16:58
Yeah. And it's an exploration, like you said, a scavenger hunt, it doesn't have to be something heavy or too serious. And I think when we look at kids, right, they they they're very present in the moment, and it's they're in play, they're in their joyful plays. So we can start somewhere joyful. Um, we can start it doing things that are the easy things, yeah. And but you know, life can be hard, and I know that you support people through very difficult times as well. How can you transfer something like mindfulness into a time when you're at your you're feeling at your worst or when you're dealing with something really traumatic?
Samantha Gutowski: 17:39
Yeah. My work has, you know, brought me to many different focus points in the last five years of being a mindfulness coach and focusing more on that. Um, I always thought, I never thought it would look a specific way, like this is the only way I'm going to coach, but mindful grief has been a huge part of my business the last few years. I had shared a video on Instagram of just what it looked like for me to grieve mindfully. I lost my aunt, one of my favorite people in the world. And this was right before, right when I was starting my business. So it's not like it was yesterday. And I still very much am grieving her and miss her terribly. And what I've learned is, and this takes time. So if you're someone that's recently grieving, someone that you love, um know that this is going to be hard to honor right in the moment when it's happening. I just I just try to always remind people to allow the feelings to come how they need to. And the the reason I'm saying this is because grief is again just like mindfulness, not a one-size-fits-all. We all grieve differently. But when it comes to hard feelings, right? So being mindful, like you said, for joy, even though it's hard, it is much more enjoyable than being mindful for grief. But what happens is if we don't honor what's present, if we don't honor the feelings that are coming up, the best way to, even though grief may stay with us for a long time, if we don't honor what's really coming up for us, we will trip over it later. It will always be there. Now, again, that doesn't mean the hurt of that person being gone goes away, but it means us honoring what we felt and really saying, okay, I'm gonna schedule grief today. So this is how this kind of started for me. When I would miss my aunt, I would put on one of her sweatshirts because I was able to keep a few of her her um pieces of clothing. And I would literally put it on my calendar you are gonna, you're gonna grieve your aunt today. Because if I didn't make time for it, it will still come randomly. I mean, right? You can't control grief. You can't say, I'm going to schedule it once a month, so then it won't come up randomly at the grocery store. But what happens is I fully allow myself to honor that. So again, mindfulness, the definition. The the present moment awareness with no judgment. It is so rare for us to experience grief and not judge it. The hum us as humans, I feel bad for this. I feel terrible for for maybe taking time for this. I feel silly for still missing this person. It's been years. But grief is really, you know, I love the quote: grief is love with nowhere to go. Oh you loved this person so much and you can't tell them. So how can you sit with that? So again, to answer your question, how do you be present for hard moments? The short answer is you just do it. And the more detailed answer is you hold yourself with so much love and compassion when you do it. So that 10, 20, 30 years from now, you can say, I'm proud of myself for feeling that and for being present for it. What I've learned for me personally and for helping clients that are going through grief is so often they try to move past it. Because a lot of people say, with time it gets better. With time it gets better. So I'm just gonna keep moving. I'm gonna keep going forward. But what I've I've learned is that if we really hold space for it, it has so much to teach us, which it might be wow, I miss talking about this person. I haven't said their name in a long time, so I'm gonna do that for me today. Or I haven't thought about all the happy moments in a while. So the the the hard parts of being present for grief also bring forward a lot of joyful moments that typically get missed because we're just moving past it. So that's a very basic explanation of being present for hard moments. But what we've learned, and I'll tap into a little nerdy science for a second, is our emotions are last so much shorter if we actually feel them. And I'm talking about the hard emotions here. So if you're frustrated and you just keep saying, I'm fine, I'm good, I'm not frustrated. It typically likes to linger a little bit longer and you're telling everyone you know about it. But if you stop and say, I am really frustrated, I'm gonna be present for my frustration, that really hurt my feelings. I felt really silly when someone talked to me that way, and it made me feel embarrassed and I didn't like how they talked to me. I'm holding myself with love. I'm putting my hand over my heart and saying, I'm gonna be present for this frustration. I'm gonna take a deep breath. Typically, that frustration likes to say, okay, thank you for honoring me. Now let's move forward. Now, when you hear that for the first time, if you've never done that, it feels like, what the heck is that? But again, we have the science now to prove if we're if we really honor our emotions, they last between 60 and 90 seconds. Typically, we attach and bring them with us for weeks or hours or months. So mindfulness allows us to be present for the good, the bad, the ugly. And it typically allows us to honor them enough to be able to say, now I gave them what the attention they deserve, and I can move forward.
Aideen Ni Riada: 23:48
I love that. There was something you mentioned um earlier as well, was the judgment. Because if we have an emotion, like I think anger is one of the ones we really judge quite a lot. We we feel angry, we're like, oh, I shouldn't be angry, and you pretend that you're not angry, and it just comes out maybe in your tone of voice a little, or you know, we we kind of repress it. Um do all emotions kind of trip us up in that way if we judge them? Like, what would you say to to help someone to start to accept those uncomfortable emotions and not judge them so harshly?
Samantha Gutowski: 24:25
Yeah. So, first, what I always say to them is you're not silly or wrong for thinking this way because our society has set us up to say, don't be angry, get over it, push past it. Uh, and most of us grew up with that, either seeing it in in real life or in movies or on podcasts, whatever it is, right? And then what I would say is, what would you say to if you have a child or a niece or nephew, right? Not everyone has children. I personally don't, but this works really well with me for nieces and nephews too. So if you have a two-year-old that you just love dearly and they're the light of your life, and they say, I'm really angry, that hurt my feelings. Rarely, if you're a loving parent or aunt or uncle, would you say, Yeah, get over it. Right? Now we've all had that said to us. But maybe people that have loved us and really seen us and given us the attention that we deserve would pick you up and they would hold you and they would say, I'm so sorry that your you your feelings were hurt. I'm gonna give you a hug and hope it feels better. And then usually once you push that, put that kid down and they felt that love, they're right back to building their blocks. They're good to go. So, what I would recommend, and this is if you ask me at the end of this episode, what's the one thing I hope people take away, it's this start talking to yourself like you would your best friend or your daughter or your niece or your spouse, like someone that you love and want to hold with compassion. So if you say, I'm really angry, and I feel like I need to judge myself because I should just get over it because life is good and it's not that big of a deal. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, right? That that voice in your head, this is why I love the untethered soul. They talk about being a witness to your thoughts.
Aideen Ni Riada: 26:27
That's the book you mentioned earlier.
Samantha Gutowski: 26:29
Yes. And what happens is once we start talking to ourselves in a way that is kind and loving and compassionate, then all of a sudden we can be really we can be we can move through the way, we can move through the world in a way that feels like life is hard enough. So I might as well be nice to me and what my experiences is. Because if you ask anyone honestly, even someone who maybe has a life that has more privilege than someone else, and you say, Would you say that there are hard parts of life? Yeah, life is hard. There are so many things that are changing constantly, and things that we are learning, and and we're judging ourselves or what that looks like. So if it is, if life's already hard enough, how can you start to speak to yourself in a way that makes moving through life more manageable, more enjoyable? So those big feelings of judgment, and again, this is there's no special potion, there's no special affirmation to say, there's no trick to start doing this, but it's just getting really serious and really disciplined about how you speak to yourself and how you handle life. Now, there's so many things that can come with that, right? So if there's limiting beliefs or trauma from when you were a kid that you had to make sure that everything was okay, you may have deeper work to do. And there are so many wonderful people out there to support you in that as well. But I would say for the majority of us, or most people who experience little T trauma, right? Frust frustrations that are valid and relative, but still hard, we can start right now, right in this moment, to say, I'm just gonna start speaking to myself in a kinder way. I'm gonna, if my friend said, I'm having a really hard day, but it's ridiculous, I shouldn't be mad. If that's one of your best friends, I guarantee you it'd say something like, No, of course that that hurt your feelings. Let me listen to you and hold you. How can we start doing that for ourselves? Is we just try. We try a little sentence, we try just a little shift in what that looks like. And it's one of my favorite things to watch. People start talking kinder to themselves. This was for me my largest leap in my growth. How I talked to myself in the mirror when I got ready, how I talked to myself when someone said no to a proposal for working with me. How I said to myself when I said something silly as someone in the grocery store, you know, why'd you say that? Versus, hey, you said something that wasn't your best self. That's okay. It's not the end of the world. So hard to do, not easy but simple. And you can experience so many benefits with that.
Aideen Ni Riada: 29:38
That's awesome. And it reminds me of uh a practice that my meditation teacher suggested to a big group of us, who think there was but maybe 40 or 50 people, and he said, no self-persecution for one month. And I thought, I can do that. I mean, I knew that I didn't look in the mirror, and like sometimes you might see in a movie where someone's like berating themselves in the mirror and saying, Oh, you're a terrible person. I knew I wasn't saying that, but within two days, like very quickly, I realized what I was doing was I was debating and um criticizing myself for things that I had done a day earlier, like I said the wrong thing, and I'd be thinking to myself, Oh, I shouldn't have said that, and how could I have said it differently? And oh, I might have hurt their feelings, and I would be replaying something and being not able to let it go, and not there was no solution, there was no way I could go back to that moment, right? So I had to let it go, and and I I'm usually pretty good at saying sorry when I when I can, but like that, if you if you do the wrong thing or it could have been per more perfect, sometimes we can't go back and change it. We have to be able to let it go. So that's that was a really important practice for me. Yeah. And after a full month of not, you know, of catching yourself and choosing to be kinder to yourself, you don't tend to go back to where you used to be.
Samantha Gutowski: 31:03
Yes, it it is very true. So many people say, but yeah, but what do I actually do? Right? So, like, what's the action of that? And you just said it perfectly. It's the catching. So it could be a sticky note on your mirror that says, Member, we're talking nice to ourselves, or an alarm on your phone, or you could share it with a friend, like, hey, can we keep each other accountable? I want to talk nicer to each other and and to ourselves. I mean, and once you start doing that, you realize how you move through your day differently. Again, life is hard, and we're actually choosing to make it harder in the way that we're talking to ourselves. Now, we most of us don't even realize it. So, again, this is not a shame thing. This is not like, how dare you? The majority of us are talking that way. So then it's more of again that self-compassion of do I want to move through my life with this constant overthinking, negative thinking, or do I want to try to just pay attention and see if I can shift it? So, uh exercise that works for me is I'll be saying, you know, how could you have thought that way, or why did you think that would be okay? And it still happens, right? And then I'll say, Oh, no, no, no. Like I'll do this, like I try to make a fun, like, oh wait, oh wait, Sammy Ray, we don't talk to ourselves that way. I you would never say that to a friend. Let's try to be a little bit nicer to ourselves. Let's just see how that goes. Be very practical, very kind and playful with it. All of a sudden the shoulders soften and you smile and you think, oh yeah, life's too short to be mean to myself. So that's just if I could help every human being in this world just start to be a little kinder to themselves, just that, I think that we would see such beautiful benefits and changes in our world.
Aideen Ni Riada: 32:50
And for yourself, um, mindfulness obviously has changed your life, but now that you actually have it as a part of your work. What kinds of other things did you allow into your life? Because now you were starting to be kinder to yourself and starting to really be more here.
Samantha Gutowski: 33:08
Yeah, that's uh that makes me smile really big because I think of how my life has changed. And again, my life was not miserable before. I'm not saying that this is I have a completely different world, but for me personally, when we think about finding our voice and the things that you and I have talked about, what that looks like. I was someone who went to bed most nights thinking there's gotta be something else out there for me. I feel like I like what I do and I'm having fun what I do, but with what I do, but there's something deeper that I want to be of service, or I want to be able to hear more people and love more people, I want to help more people. So, what I've allowed into my life because of mindfulness is to actually allow myself to do that. And it sounds small, but it's so huge. Once you start talking nicer to yourself, once you allow yourself to be more present, you start to realize that you are deserving of a life of um for me, relationships built off reciprocity. I personally had a lot of friends that I would give and give and give and listen to. And I love them. It's not like they were bad people, but they were more draining for me than um they didn't fulfill me or I didn't leave feeling energized, right? So for me, my relationships changed in a huge way. My friend base, and I think this is part of getting older in general, but it got a little smaller, but the quality just 10x, right? I also allowed myself boundaries. I didn't used to, I wanted to make everyone happy. I wanted to make sure that everyone else was good with how I was living. This is friends, family, old teachers, right? How can I make it sound like I'm doing something cool and impressive? So mindfulness allowed me to say, Hey, are you okay with you? If the answer is yes, then we have to try really hard. And it's not easy to but to let go of what those opinions are. So my marriage improved. I introduced mindfulness into my relationship when I got back, and so grateful for my loving, open-minded husband who is the uh spreadsheet engineer mind. He's not first to be like, okay, let's talk about this emotional check-in. But was very loving and open to seeing how that could shift our relationship. So it's allowed more conflict resolution, kind conversations when we're having hard weeks, checking in with one another. And overall, it's just allowed me more happiness and allowed me to say, what is the life that I want in this one wild, wonderful life that I get, right? What do I want that to look like? And when you start to make these small shifts, they do start to open other doors to, oh wait, I actually don't want that. So I'm gonna close that one. And then this one over here that's open, I'm gonna walk through that way. I being honest, could go for an hour of how mindfulness has changed my life. But I think for me, the biggest one is going to bed at night and saying, Oh, I have happy tears because I got to watch someone, um, and I'll get emotional right now just thinking about it. I don't know if you have to be a mindfulness coach for 20 years to not cry about seeing client wins, but for me, I I might always be here and I'm and I'm grateful for that emotion. But I just had a client who came to me a year and a half ago that said, I don't think I'm worthy of love. I don't think I'm worthy of being nice to myself. And I said, That's okay. I'm grateful that you're honest and vulnerable. But do you want to try to maybe believe that you are? And a few weeks ago, I heard her say, you know what? I am worthy of a beautiful life. And that power, that work of unlearning, and she's in her 60s, so it's never too late to start to be nice to yourself and live the life that you want. Or another client that says, you know, I I want to stop saying every year that I want to spend more time with a family, my family versus work. And then they finally say, I just booked my first vacation in five years because this is important to me too. So those types of moments will always just excite me to keep doing this and and encouraging people to say, Hey, we can live a world that yes, you're making money, and yes, you're making a living, and yes, you're doing these things that maybe you felt were really important, but also feeling like your heart is fulfilled and that you're doing something that feels like there's some sort of work-life rhythm or excitement and what feels good to you. So yeah, I feel like I could sit here and just name a bunch of wins for me and clients where just try it. Try the present moment awareness and see if it helps you in any way.
Aideen Ni Riada: 38:31
It's beautiful. Well, we have to start wrapping things up. Yeah, Sam. I'm really sorry. No, we could be here for hours. We could because there's so many, there's so many aspects to it, because I think you can bring mindfulness into the tough moments, the joyful moments, into decision making, into conversations with friends, and in any moment it's going to deepen the presence, it's going to deepen your self-awareness and your understanding. Um, there's a gift in that, a really big gift in that. And I I love the work that you're doing.
Samantha Gutowski: 39:08
Thank you.
Aideen Ni Riada: 39:09
Is there anything that you'd like to say to the listeners before we start to sign off? Anything you'd like to remind them or a final piece of advice?
Samantha Gutowski: 39:18
My only reminder, or maybe even just I don't think I've said this yet, but mindfulness meets you where you're at. So if you're someone who's listening to this and you think this sounds awesome, but I have no idea how to get there, or I don't have time to put this into my my life. I teach practical mindfulness, which is five minutes or less a day, is what we start with. If you choose to grow that or choose to just keep five minutes, great. But mindfulness meets you where you're at. So if you feel like this is my life, and some people come to me and say, My life's on fire, how do I introduce mindfulness to it? It's the perfect place to start. Start. Or if you feel like, hey, my life's pretty calm, but I want to be more present for this. It is there to help you start to just anchor in your breath and your inhales and exhales and just notice what comes up when you're doing that. Typically, we think we don't know what we need to do or where we need to go, but we're just not present enough to listen, quiet enough to hear what our inner knowing knows, or maybe some thought that we heard years ago that's been in the back of our minds. So allow mindfulness to meet for meet you where you're at. Take a little nugget from this and think, oh, I'm gonna make a list of things I'm intrigued about mindfulness, ways to, you know, meet present moment awareness and create your own journey in that. Versus my friend said that this mindfulness works for her. I'm gonna do that. And if it doesn't, writing it off. See what works for you. So just remembering that it is, it may feel foreign or new, but it is approachable if you let it meet you where you're at. And mindfulness is always there to do just that.
Aideen Ni Riada: 41:08
That's beautiful. Thanks again to Sam Gutowski. Um, I'll be including her contact details in the show notes and encourage you to get in touch with her, find out about her work. We're both here for you, and we're very grateful that you've been listening. Thanks again from Aiden here at the Resonate Podcast with Aidan. Goodbye.