Lift Others, Lift Yourself!

Sam and Christine pick up the high-vibe thread from the spirit guides episode and turn it outward this week. The question on the table: what does it actually do for your mental health when you serve other people? The hook lands in the first minute when Sam shares the line she used to tell her son Max when he was four years old and asked her why he was here. Her answer was simple: your job is to lift others.

From there, the conversation gets practical. Helping other people lowers cortisol, the stress hormone, and raises oxytocin, the chemical tied to positive social interactions and generosity. Translation: doing nice things for other people genuinely reduces your anxiety and your depression. But Sam and Christine spend most of the episode pushing back on the idea that service has to be a grand gesture. It doesn't. It's holding the door. It's putting groceries on the belt for the older woman behind you who can't quite reach. It's smiling at someone in the grocery line. It's the small stuff nobody talks about but everybody notices.

Christine tells the story of her older daughter Jules, who started doing affirmations in the car on the way to elementary school, then asked the principal if she could lead the whole school in affirmations every Wednesday morning. She wrote them out the night before, stood in front of her classmates with a microphone, and the whole school repeated her words back to her. Then there are the anonymous notes Christine's girls would write and have the office slip into other kids' lunch boxes. Thanks for being my favorite teacher. You're awesome. That's it. That's the whole move.

Sam shares about a recent Clemson tailgate in South Carolina, where she and her husband wore the wrong colors and got hauled into strangers' chairs anyway. The guy walked over, handed her husband a beer, and said: we really would like to get to know you, can you please sit? Sam also talks about the bonding that happens during work days with her women's guild raising money for Valley Children's Hospital, folding a thousand napkins side by side. The takeaway is small: this week, turn around in the grocery line and smile at someone behind you.

In this episode:

• The mental health science of service: cortisol down, oxytocin up

• Why the grand gesture myth keeps people from giving at all

• Christine's daughter Jules leading affirmations in front of the whole school

• Anonymous lunchbox notes and other tiny moves that change someone's day

• Sam's southern hospitality moment at a Clemson tailgate

• How serving others builds community and pulls you out of your own head

Quotes from this episode:

"I always told my kids, your job is to lift others. So much of depression or anxiety is being internally focused. If you could just get outside of yourself and go help, you shift." - Samantha Bauer

"We have this idea in our head that it has to be some big grand gesture. It doesn't. All you have to do is have your eyes open, be aware of your surroundings, and see where you can help." - Christine Goforth

"Helping others decreases cortisol, our stress hormone, and increases oxytocin tied to positive social interactions and generosity. It reduces your anxiety and your depression by default." - Samantha Bauer

"If everybody laid all their problems out on a table, you would take yours back in an instant. That's the perspective shift you get from looking up and out." - 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-26-lift-others-lift-yourself.html

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