The Importance Of Being In The Moment With Beth Fisher
A lot of people strive to finish their to-do lists and forget to just enjoy life. Just enjoy being in the moment. That you are alive and you have the curiosity to continue through life. Have gratitude towards God, and don't worry about your mistakes. God will still love you no matter what. Join your host Chad Burmeister and his guest Beth Fisher on how to live in the moment. Beth is a speaker, author, and transformational coach. Listen to her story and how she believes that it's okay to stop being so performance-based the older you get. Learn how to be with God at the moment in your life.
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Listen to the podcast here:
The Importance Of Being In The Moment With Beth Fisher
I'm with Beth Fisher and she can be found at BethFisher.com. She is a speaker, author and transformational coach. I love working with these folks because we all need to be transformed from time to time, every day sometimes. Beth, it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me, Chad. I’m excited.
You are in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and it sounds like it's still 95 degrees there compared to our 75 degrees. Hopefully, soon you will come back down by 20 degrees.
We are looking forward to it. I'm sick of sweating over here. The second you get out of the shower, you are still sweating.
I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, and lived there until age five but we go back there every couple of years, whether it's in the freezing winter or the hot and scorchy summer. It's always interesting to go back to Wisconsin, that's for sure. Let's dig in. I like to help our audience get to know you and the best way I have found to do that is to go back to when you are younger like 5, 6, or 7. What are some of your first memories? I don't think most people remember when they were two but I actually had someone say, “I have a vivid memory at age two.” I don't know about that.
Not two for me but definitely four and some of my early memories are standing in a front yard of the home in Northeast Ohio, where I grew up waiting to go next door to a party. They were older people, brother and sister twins, I believe, who was getting ready for a party. I was like, “What time can I get there?” It’s because I want to be the first one. It's interesting to me. This is your point, how from a young age we are wired and the things that we are doing and to this day, I still like to be the first one in all things.
Being In The Moment: Curiosity is always about how you can do things differently. Curiosity allows you to walk through something you had no idea what you were getting into.
As I continue on my journey, even in elementary school, I was always exploring. That's what I was doing regardless of where I was, whether I was inside of a school or outside. I would look for areas that were not in use, abandoned or interesting, and secluded and off-limits. I would find a way in. I wanted to know more. I was perpetually curious, who are these people? What is this place? I was always the girl asking why? “Why are things this way?” More importantly to me, “Why are they off-limits? Who decided that I would like to have a conversation? Who’s in charge here?”
It's funny because when I was younger, I was always punctual and on time. My best friend at age six, all the way up until about maybe several years ago that he was never on time. He’s a casually late guy. It was a learned behavior that some of the benefits that I saw of him going late and scarcity actually worked in his life. I oftentimes will be five minutes late to a Zoom call or even an hour late to a party. It's interesting to see what happens when we are younger to what happens over time. How does that tie into what you are doing now? Obviously, the word curiosity is the one that's going ding in my head.
I had 25 years of corporate sales and consulting in the for-profit business world. I was always going into organizations, industry agnostic, any shape and size, and saying, “Tell me why? Why do you do things like this? Why does this seem to make sense to you? How are you organizationally structured?” In January of ‘20, I shifted careers completely. Now I am, by title, the Chief Advancement Officer for a homeless shelter, Mel Trotter Ministries in Grand Rapids. I had volunteered here for several years.
I’m never expecting to be on payroll like on staff and I had taken a sabbatical to write a book and had every intention of going back to my corporate world. I was at a leadership conference and somebody here on staff said, “How's the book? What's going on?” I'm like, “I'm waiting for it to go to publication. What can I do to help?” She's like, “You know how to raise money?” I said, “Yes, what can I do to help?” She said, “No, send me your resume.”
My curiosity is always, how can I do things differently? I was in a career that by all intents and purposes was comfortable, at 25 years, I'm at a large customer base, I enjoyed it, I love people, I'm an extrovert, and I know the business process. I thought, “Why would I change?” Yet there was a curious side to me that went, “Midlife is the thing I'm in it.” What would it look like if I didn't always do this? If not now, then when? I'm a big believer that God opens doors and our job is to walk through them. Easier said than done but I walked through this one and here I am. My curiosity allowed me to walk through something I had no idea what I was getting into.
That's neat 100% and I'm in the same boat, midlife. My daughter went to college and my son went in 2020. We went to the mountains on our first emptiness or weekend going. It was for one night randomly at the last minute.
It's a weird transition, even though you know it's coming. You know your kids are going to get older. It's not until you are in it and you look around and then you go, “Here we are. What do we do?”
Now, to your point about where you working, I'm still trying to figure out, where does God want me to help? It's a pretty wide net with Living a Better Story. I'm like, “If you want me to go wide, we will go wide but it's fun to listen and pay attention to what the message is and where to focus. Life often has curve balls that happen. I call it the gut punch. That's like, “This is terrible.” Is there one you are comfortable sharing with our readers and how did you make it through the other side?
I've got some to-do lists in my resumes. I like to tell people it's a checkered resume. Everything that I had on my to-do list was not always right. It's not a linear path. A lot of those things I did not see coming and therefore, I didn't know how to navigate and traverse exactly what I went through, which is why I care so much about giving back and helping people to get on stuck because I found myself stuck.
I grew up Catholic. I tell people, I tease them jokingly, “I'm Italian and Irish. I didn't have a choice but to be Catholic.” With that came a lot of Catholic guilt and I'm performance-based. I want to be the first person. I want to get all the A's. I want to be all of the things. The older I have become, the more I realize that it's not where it is that it's not important.
I went to college. I went to the Ohio State University. I'm living in the enemy state in Michigan. I married my daughter's dad. I married him right out of college. He moved with us seven hours away from family and friends. I have a new baby, a new job, postpartum, and didn't know what I was doing in life. I had this job and I'm like, “What's business?” “I don't know. I will figure it out.” He moved back to Ohio without us and I found myself in the middle of a divorce that I didn't see coming. I felt very guilty from this because I learned in Catholic school, “Thou shall not get divorced because then, thou will go to hell.”
That was what my ears, my performance mindset, taught me. In the middle of all that, when I'm picking up and one foot in front of the other, working, raising my daughter, she was not quite two. She was a year and a half old on my own. I had to move out of the house. I couldn't afford it on my own but I'm working on it like, “I'm going to do this.” In the middle of that is when I was diagnosed with leukemia. They said, “There's no cure for this. You are probably going to die. You are not going to make it.”
I was 25 with a new baby. Olivia was a year and a half old. I am a single mom and all I kept picturing was my baby growing up without me. She's never going to know me. I'm not going to be able to be a mom. I don't know what to do. I don't even know how to spell leukemia. I don't know why? Is it really cancer? I went through the period of grief in a whirlwind-like work speed multiple times.
I'm several years cancer-free. You have to have that experiential understanding because you can read all you want about it. You can hear other stories but it's not until you actually go through a process like that, that you find out how to give back and to share with other people. I know a lot of people as soon as I had a bone marrow transplant in Cleveland, Ohio. Thirty-five days, I was in the hospital. I was the only person that walked out alive. I was making friends with everybody else who was there for the same reason. I'm like, “We’ve got this, you guys, let's go.” One by one, they all died.
In my theological Catholic brain, I thought I was a sinner. I’ve got divorced. What did these folks do? I could not reconcile that. I have no understanding of grace, mercy and forgiveness. I didn't get that yet. When I’ve got out of the hospital, people would say to me, “I bet you are close to God now. I bet you stop and smell the roses, and you are appreciative of everything.” I think it was. I wasn't at that moment. I was 25, exhausted, I was spent, I wanted to be with my baby, go back to work, and I wanted to be independent again.
Being In The Moment: Some people start very performance-based. They want to be the first person to get all the A's. But the older they become, the more they realize that performance is not so important anymore.
There were all these expectations on how I was supposed to be feeling and I didn't feel those things. For me, I had to get through it from the standpoint of allowing myself the grace and space to say, “They might mean well but you are doing okay. You are with Olivia, you can go to the grocery store again, you are here and alive. Just give him thanks.” Gratitude for me has been a huge game-changer as well as being present in the moment. I know it's cliché but before that, I was always like, “I'm going to do these 86 things on my to-do list. I want to achieve and succeed,” then I'm like, “To what end? I am here. I'm alive. Now is a new day. I get to do new things and enough will be enough.” As soon as we accomplish the next thing on our list, there's always another thing to put on there always. That is a rat race but I don't want to be at anymore.
It's funny because every weekend, I always push things to the calendar and there are still things. There were probably twenty things on Saturday morning but yet I will look at it, and then Robert White, who's my business partner in Living a Better Story says, “I want to update my website. When do you have time?” I'm like, “I'm flying to Atlanta on Wednesday. Let's do it on Saturday.” All those twenty things can move easily to another day.
Life still happens. We still need to accomplish those tasks but they don't take priority over the more important task. That's why it’s Saturday morning, usually from about 6:00 to 10:00, when everyone else is sleeping. The thing I noticed on your website, which is neat and the timings, of course, God always plays these chips nice but it says, “You are one decision away from back on the right path and living like you matter because you do.”
A friend of mine who is from Atlanta, Darryll Stinson, put a shirt out that says, “You matter on it.” It's black and white. I'm like, “That's a good one.” My wife shop at Target and she sends me pictures of a book and pillows. Target has a thing called You Matter now. This grouping of people saying, “We matter.” No, you matter. Every one of us matters. We all have our own unique needs, requirements and unique fingerprint in life. Thanks for sharing.
A lot of our readers go through stuff in life. Maybe someone has leukemia or they are going through a divorce and you had the double. You made it, you fight and you figure it out. I heard you talk a little bit about faith. Between 25 and now, at what point did it clicked for you to go, “God, you are good.” When did that happen?
A couple of things. I also looked at the part of my resume where a month before my bone marrow transplant, I’ve got remarried because until death do us part could have been Tuesday. I had no idea. I could not think clearly, I went, “Okay.” Somebody said, “Swoops in and saves the proverbial, dying damsel in distress.” I'm like, “Sure. Okay.” I was married for several years thereafter.
In my mid-30s or late 30s, he left because this is the real me. I understand that because when you are making decisions like that, “When you are not on a solid foundation, it's shifting sand,” the scripture says. People grow and change and yet, when you start from a place of I don't know this person, this is what I think that I see, who I think they are and that's not true, then the rest becomes difficult.
As I continued to move out of transplant and become more physically okay, I went back to school and I’ve got a couple of Master's degrees in Theology because I was like, “I don't understand this situation. Why am I here? I had survivor's skills. I didn't know that was a thing.” In my head, I kept thinking, “Why did my buddies at University Hospitals of Cleveland undergoing transplants? Why are they all dead? Why are they not here now raising their kids?” I felt conflicted. I’m like, “I'm a learner. I’ve got to go back to school, figure it out and ask all the curious questions.” I drove a lot of the professors nuts. I would debate and I said, “Who said? Who thinks that just because this is written this way, that it means this thing?”
I’ve got into scriptural translations and it was refreshing to me that I was allowed to ask the questions, honestly. Sometimes it's enough to be in a space where people will allow you the thoughts because I grew up in a rigid, “This is the way. That's it.” I didn't feel heard. That was when I started to understand God's character and his nature. The fact that there are 66 books in scripture and it's a story. Can somebody tell me that was the beginning of the middle of that, then I read the thing? I knew a missalette. I was like, “Paul is a real guy. That's cool. I didn't know.” I dove in and I could not stop quenching that thirst of telling me more. What do you mean I'm okay? I'm forgiven. This divorce thing is going to be okay. This is more of God loves us unconditionally.
Being a mom has been the greatest blessing of my life but also allowed me to understand God's unconditional love for us. No matter how much Olivia messed up when she's a teenager, no matter how many times I wanted to knock her out for not listening to me for not obeying my rules like, “This is a story. I’ve got it, God. Thanks.”
There's an online website and it's called OnPurpose.me and it puts competing purposes against each other until you finally land on your 2 or 3 words. Mine that gave me the chills when I’ve got to the end of it several months ago or so was Embracing Grace. That's my whole mission in life is to let other people know what you experienced. Pastor Travis Hall out of Atlanta, who's friends with Darryll Stinson, in fact, help save Darryll to be honest, because he was not doing good at an early age. I met with him and he actually did a four-person group meeting on Embracing Grace.
When you start from that, “God made you perfect.” We all fall from that 100% of the time. There's not one person who hasn't really except for one. It's amazing when you shift that mindset and lean into that. It's funny because my grandfather sent me a list of ten things and the one at the end is my favorite. The first two, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, and soul, love your neighbor as yourself, and then I often say, “If you forget all the rest, that's okay. Remember the first two.” Number ten says, “Remember that God loves you very much, no matter what.” That's what I have always told my kids, too, “No matter what.” We are all going to mess up but that's okay. You are a person.
I don't do any Enneagram studies. I'm much a three on the Enneagram. They are followed by an eight, which is the social justice mindset but I'm much a performer. People who are wired like this also hear that to say, “I have failed.” If they don't hear that, no matter what part, when they mess up, it's like, “That's it. I'm no good anymore. I'm not performing. I'm not knocking out of the park. I'm not first anymore. I am lesser than.”
Thinking about what you are doing now and your daughter is 24, is there something that if you could wave the proverbial magic blonde wand and that would change everything in your life or is it as it should be?
It's as it should be because on some level now, it's a misnomer because the chase is a misnomer. It's about showing up authentically, continuing to do that day in and day out that that's the actual accomplishment. That's hard enough as it is. I now have this unwavering faith that by doing that, everything is supposed to happen what was going to happen. Had you asked me this question years ago, I had been like, “Here's my list. I want to do this.” Some of those things I have done it doesn't make me any more or less than what I was before I made the list.
When I used to get asked, “Are you successful?” I had to pause for a moment and think, “I will be successful when?” To your point, when you finally wake up and realize, if you go 30,000-foot down and look from heaven and go, “You have written four books, you have made a lot of money. Both your kids have BMWs, shut up. You are doing exactly what you need to be doing.” It's fun when you can snap chalk and realize that, “Every day I wake up, I'm happy to be here, no matter what it is. Even if it's hard, it's okay.” We have the same thinking. This is a new question that I started asking because I met with Timmy Bauer in Florida who's a kids' book author and he's writing my kid's book now, in fact. His question that he suggested that I add is tell me a story when God showed up in your life and you knew it was undeniably God?
Unsurprisingly or it should be unsurprising by this point in our conversation, when my second husband left me because that's what happened, I went to the church where he and I were a part of for about 12 or 13 years. I had left the Catholic church. He did not want to go through Catholicism. We went to a church for no other reason than proximity. Our collective kids were young.
I knew it was important to worship together. It’s a block from our house and the underlying domination was United Brethren but for me, it was a teaching church. It was like, “Here's a scripture. Let's read it. Let's process it. Let's put it into real-time.” I was enamored with it. I went to Israel and started teaching. That was when I was in the Master's program. I was entrenched in that church.
Being In The Moment: Be thankful that you're here and alive. Today's a new day and you get to do new things. Stop thinking about the next thing on your to-do list because it's a never-ending rat race.
People knew us and valued relationships there but when he left me, I didn't get that same sense. I went right to the church and I was weeping, I went to the pastoral care folks. I said, “What do I do? I don't want to disappoint God again. I don't want this. Help me through this.” The counsel that I received, the very first thing was, “You can never get married or have a physical relationship thing.” I'm like, “I'm not thinking about that.” First of all, I'm in the middle of a divorce. Clearly, it’s not top of mind. I was crying and I felt like all I wanted was the love of Jesus and what I was being told were rules. Now mind you again, I'm going back to school during this time.
I'm understanding scripture a little more so it's like, “If an unbeliever leaves, let them leave. There were some references,” then he said to me, “By the way, you can't teach the class you are teaching for six months because that's the healing process.” That is what I felt inside of me, this overwhelming sense of confidence, love, and my voice, I don't know how to say it. Otherwise, it was like the Holy Spirit within me. It’s how I can explain it, I looked at him and I said, “In what chapter and verse might I find that rule in?”
That's when I felt like, “There is a difference between religion and relationship.” Jesus is not going to love me any less because I didn't follow some man-made rules. By nature, I have some discussions but at that moment, I was wiped out and so weak. I did not have it in me to push back. I didn't have it in me to question or be curious but I had something rise up within me that said, “Let me show you who I really am.”
High five to Timmy for giving me that question because that's right. That is awesome. Have you watched The Chosen? That's 100% in alignment with everything you are talking about.
I was actually at the NRB Conference in Dallas. Dallas Jenkins was there. The creator of The Chosen and it was amazing. I get goosebumps talking about it because that is the part for me when I started to understand who God is, personification relationship. I read The Shack years ago and I thought, “Jesus is our friend?” I'm not trying to bust on the Catholic church because I love the sentimentality and the tradition of it but I didn't hear that message. I heard an angry God message like, “You mess up and you say one Hail Mary than you are supposed to, you are going to go to hell.” I'm a performer. I didn't want to do that.
To me, it's 70% of buyers are away from pain. You have been in sales and that's great. Let's say, “If you do this, then you get that and you avoid this level of pain.” Thirty percent of what my teaching was towards pleasure. You buy a Rolex not because you have a broken watch but because it gives you an image or whatever. The Catholic church has built for 70%. They weighed buyer and that's not how Jesus came into the world and that was not his message.
I have a friend who's part of Living a Better Story who read the blog. The one thing he recognized is all the people's disciples weren't the best people out there. They were whatever. They just had interesting backgrounds. That was an a-ha moment for him. I talked to a guy who was in jail years ago on meth, so was his wife. They had a kid and he finally said, “I was broken,” and then finally, he was, either going to take a razor blade and go into the bathroom and never come out or give it all to God and say, “I'm broken. I can't repair myself,” as Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.
He goes, “I did it,” and then God directed all of it from there. When it's like, “You’ve got this, buddy.” It was that easy. He makes the decision already. Try it. If you could go back to age twenty and say one thing, I think of back to the future, what was the one thing you would tell yourself if you could? The second part I like to ask is, think about twenty years in the future and you talk to yourself there, and then come back to now. There's A and B in that question. What do you tell your twenty-year-old self and what would you tell yourself now?
I would say stop drinking copious amounts of alcohol. I went to Ohio State. I grew up in a very small town where everybody knew me and then I went, “See you. I'm out of here.” I succumb to peer pressure. I would tell my twenty-year-old self, “Just be you as you figure this thing out. There's no rush. Get away from your to-do list and from the people that you know at your core are not people that you are in alignment with, and go be you because those people will show up.”
Now think about twenty years out and it's an hour's exercise. We are going to spare the readers for the hour exercise and it involves a real visualization and getting on this beard that takes you into the future. You see yourself and you talk to yourself. When you do that visualization, I visioned like, “I had a full beard. I think I was 10 pounds lighter,” but then you come back to now and you go tell yourself those things. There's so much in there like, “I’ve got it. I need to do a bigger thing than I thought I did.” If you do that exercise, what would you tell yourself now?
Forgive yourself sooner. I would say self-forgiveness and believe that narrative instead of all of the constructs, the world's narratives, the world's expectations and assumptions about you because you know who you are. You have always known that and it's okay to get off track but get back on sooner. The way to get back on track sooner is to forgive yourself for the mistakes that you have made. Those who know better do better. I didn't know much when I was fifteen, I thought I did but I would tell myself that keep going be, be forgiving and be gentler with myself.
My daughter had a picture on her 15th or 16th birthday and there's a picture of her on the cake. She then posted a picture next to it of when she was like 5 or 4. She was a model-looking kid and she goes, “The only thing that's changed is the number of candles on the cake.” She always knew who she was. She knows who she is and that's a deep level of understanding as a young kid. That last question and is, what role does faith play in your journey? I'm pretty sure I know the answer but this is always a fun question.
For as verbose as I am like for as many words as I can throw out at people, whenever I don't have one that frames the level and the magnitude of how important it is. I would be lost without it, utterly lost. I remember when I was sick, my mom said to me, “I don't know how people who are not believers get through times like that.” She's like Matthew 11:28 is what I hang on to. “Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.” We get weary.
Life is hard and we get exhausted. Chasing things and wanting more. All the things that we think will to your point, give us that pleasure that 30% or whatever. It's fleeting. It's not true without faith if there's always going to be something else. I don't have enough words to say how everything is because God is all and that to me is the baseline for getting up every day and doing life.
I can hear the song, “Come to me all ye who are weary and I will give you rest.” It's fun when my grandparents always demonstrated it. My parents, in January 2021, I was up in a tough situation and I went to their house. I actually stayed in the bedroom that I grew up in for about 7 or 8 days. Every day they would bring down a meal, the Bible verse and here read this book. It's like, “Come to me all ye who are weary.” They were purpose-built for the prodigal son to come home and be there.
That trajectory is why Living a Better Story is a thing now. That's why I built an app called 77Pray that launched not too long ago because of that demonstration. Think of the ripple that we can have as people showing God's love and Jesus’ love. Beth Fisher, what an amazing conversation. I feel like we are brother and sister and I just met you.
I love when God does this. It’s provenance like, “Here we are.”
I'm glad you have embraced grace and embracing grace. My new mission in life is from the movie, The Chosen when they show the gray fish swimming in a circle. I didn't know Jesus is also a bit of a rebel because you can see that in the movie. He's obviously to go against the grain of all the great fish. That's what he is and that's why people like us are important in the world to cause other gray fish to realize that there's more to life than two groups against each other and all these other stupid things that people create. We are all one. If you want to reach Beth, I can tell she would be an amazing coach for you. If anything of this resonated with you, which obviously did me, reach out. It's BethFisher.com. Beth, it’s great to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.
Thanks so much, Chad.
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About Beth Fisher
A status-quo disrupter, Beth empowers others on their journeys to show up and be who they were created to be. Mostly that’s because for years she did not do that herself. She succumbed to societal labels, expectations, and assumptions instead of being her true self. That is until she was forced to.
At age twenty-five, in the middle of a divorce after less than two years of marriage and mom to an eighteen-month-old daughter, Beth was diagnosed with leukemia and was told she was going to die. She had no idea what to do. The only thing she thought she knew was that she “got cancer” as punishment from God for being divorced.
After surviving a Bone Marrow Transplant, subsequent twelve-year marriage and (another) divorce, Corporate America, the Boston Marathon, and being shunned from several churches, Beth went back to school and earned two master’s degrees in Theology so she could “get the real story” about life—instead of the stuff other people had tried to get her to believe but she had always questioned.
Beth left her successful (and comfortable) corporate consulting career, wrote a book (Remorseless: Learning to Lose Labels, Expectations, and Assumptions Without Losing Yourself) along with its companion Workbook (get it here), and went to work at a local homeless shelter where she had previously taught devotions; i.e. taught people that they matter—no matter their present circumstances, past choices, or what others wrongly think about them.
A life-long teacher at heart, Beth loves to preach and is an engaging speaker and transformational development coach. You can see her resume HERE but again, you should really just meet her.
