Podcast
The Bet
Hosted by ThinkLaura · EN
The Bet is a one-year experiment with real stakes.
I'm testing whether I can build something so energetically solid in my thoughts, emotions, and internal frequency that reality eventually reorganizes around it.
The premise is simple. Focus less on controlling outcomes and more on the energy you choose to live in. Then see what the world delivers back.
Each week I document the experiment in real time. The decisions, the cognitive engineering behind them, and what actually happens when you bet everything on your energy being stronger than the strategy.
It's the unfiltered record of a coach and professor staking her business on one question: What happens when you refuse to bend yourself to the system and watch the system bend instead?
20episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Week 38: My Intention Reset Practice
1w ago00:15:38Tap to summarizeMemorial Day morning, Laura sat down staring at the trees, feeling like something in her life is shifting but unable to name what. Instead of forcing an episode topic, she opened her laptop and journaled out seven facets of her current intention. This episode is her speaking them aloud for the first time. Also: why intention and attention paired together might be the whole game, and a pro tip for tuning into your voice when you speak your own beliefs.Key takeaways: Intention drives attention, and the two together activate everything else. Thoughts are not yours and you didn't create them, so you get to choose which ones you let pass through. Half of every lesson is just surrendering to it. And your authenticity is the only way to honor a one-in-400-trillion life.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →BONUS episode: An impulse purchase that's turning into my summer project
2w ago00:09:26Tap to summarizeHere's some links if you want to explore further:Vaness' Signs & Omens Directory (top menu: Signs & Omens, click category to explore)Link to Inner Expeditions summer experienceConnect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 37: Being One in 400 Trillion
2w ago00:11:03Tap to summarizeLaura's been fighting a bug for over a week and documents the frustration of watching every tool in her toolkit fail to move it. The episode captures what she pulled out on her morning walk when acceptance, surrender, and positive self-talk had all come up short. Also: picking up the Instagram commitment right where she dropped it instead of waiting for a clean restart.Key moments: the sick spiral, the one-in-400-trillion reframe, and the decision to pick up and post vs. starting overConnect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 35 Part B: The Gift of Being Interrupted
4w ago00:05:42Tap to summarizeBonus episode: The Gift of Being InterruptedLaura runs a ten-minute errand that takes twice as long and documents what she built from the irritation in real time. A reframe she plans to keep for the rest of her life.Key moments: the post office drive-through comedy, fighting irritation and watching it get worse, and the practice she landed on for every future interruption.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 35: Month 8 Check-in
May 500:19:58Tap to summarizeEight months into the bet, Laura documents a shift she didn't plan or consciously work on. The relationship between her work and whether it will pay off financially has changed, and she only noticed after it had already happened. This episode covers a career milestone that validated years of internal work, a conversation she wouldn't have had six months ago, and a new framework for thinking about money and security. While recording, the doubt showed up. She documents that too.What You'll LearnWhat it looks like when the question of "is this going to pay off" dissolves on its own rather than getting answeredHow stopping the chase for external validation can produce the strongest external results you've ever gottenA reframe for financial security that separates the feeling you want from the vehicle you think has to deliver itWhy the moments after a high, when doubt and embarrassment arrive, are where the real growth decision livesFrom / To Pattern ShiftFrom needing money to be the proof that the work is leading somewhere → to letting the feeling of safety and security arrive however it wants to arrive.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 34 Part C: Walking & Talking Through Resistance
Apr 2900:25:03Tap to summarizeLaura takes you on the full loop of a problem she's been back-burnering all year: Instagram. What starts as a real-time walkthrough of every story she's telling herself about why she doesn't want to do it turns into something she didn't expect when she gets home and realizes this might not be a strategy problem at all. It might be an upper limit. The postscript at the end is where the real shift lands.Key moments: the fitness transformation parallel (refusing to lift weights but still wanting the body), the distinction between creating content and doing the reps to share it, and the reframe she catches herself in at the very end.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 34 Part B: More New Rules
Apr 2800:09:03Tap to summarizeLaura decides to completely drop the intro music, stop editing out background noise, and names why both decisions matter to her particular interests. A morning walk episode that doubles as a live demonstration of stripping complexity from things that don't require it. Also: a doubt about the September finish line, why she's choosing to re-record a Useful Thinking episode (but not this one), and the difference between a consumable product and a living diary.Key moments: the complexity metaphor, the September timer doubt and how she talks herself through it, the distinction between content that deserves her attention and refinement and documentation that deserves her raw authenticity.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 34: The Rules Just Changed
Apr 2700:19:48Tap to summarizeLaura drops in from her phone early morning to document a decision she can feel forming in real time. After weeks of mounting friction around the weekly episode cadence, she traces the biology of why her brain defaulted to that structure in the first place and lands on the realization that the container she built for The Bet has stopped fitting the person she's becoming inside of it. This episode is the sound of the rules changing as they change.What You'll LearnWhy your brain defaults to familiar structures when building something new, and when that stops serving youHow to recognize when a useful container has become a constraintWhat storing ideas in a mental parking lot actually costs your current energy reservesA reframe for visibility fear that turns your gifts from something you own into something flowing through youPattern ShiftFrom forcing documentation into a predictable weekly structure because that's how podcasts work → to letting the experiment breathe on its own rhythm because the person running it outgrew the original rules.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 33: How Good Can I Let This Be?
Apr 2100:10:57Tap to summarizeLaura checks in from a morning walk after returning from a trip and "feeling behind", expecting to find a problem to document and instead landing on something she wasn't prepared for: she's happy. Actually, genuinely happy. The episode captures what happens when someone who is wired to always be working on the next thing has to sit with the discomfort of not having a problem to solve, and why that might be the most evolutionary thing a human can do.What You'll LearnWhy the drive to always be fixing something is both a survival trait and a trapWhat it looks like when you stop searching for problems and let them arrive on their own termsHow to manufacture your own peace and joy without needing external conditions to cooperateThe biological foundation underneath everything we experience as emotional or spiritualThe Pattern Shift: From needing a problem to work on in order to feel productive → to letting happiness exist without guilt or the urge to complicate it.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →Week 32: Being The Steward of My Words
Apr 1400:23:42Tap to summarizeThis week Laura comes back to last week's Month 7 check-in with the clarity that arrived after the recording was already done. Two patterns surfaced in the days that followed, and both of them rewrote the meaning of the launch she had just put out into the world. From there, the episode opens into the loudest internal resistance she has hit in The Bet so far, and a decision to keep going while tightening the work at a more precise level.What You'll Hear:How a pattern can reshape a brand new situation to fit an old storyWhy the milestone moment so often arrives smaller than we expect, and what that actually meansHow to recognize mental looping as evidence you are at the edge of a new level rather than proof you should stopWhy daily speech carries the same weight as the work you carefully craft and publishA morning practice and a real-time pause that turn intention into a new circuitThe Pattern Shift: From treating the recorded, polished, “professional” work as the only words that count → to recognizing every spoken word as a vehicle that moves energy into the world.Connect with Laura:Instagram: @think.lauraSubstack: https://thinklaura.substack.com/Pod: Useful ThinkingHub: thinklaura.com
Transcribe →