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Created by Roselis Cortez • Co-host: James Stanley
Seam Notes explores luxury as behavior
How you think, how you move, and the standards you hold when no one is watching.
This isn’t about status or appearance. It’s about composure, discernment, boundaries, and self-respect. The things that quietly shape how you live.
Through lived experience, we talk about growth, outgrowing environments, and learning to move differently without losing yourself in the process.
No performance. No exaggeration. Just real conversations about what it takes to hold your own.
New episodes every Wednesday.
Roselis (00:00)
This is Seam Notes. Tastes, standards, and the decisions nobody sees. I'm Roselis the creator of Seam Notes and this is my co-host James. You haven't had a quiet moment in weeks. You are not busy. You're hiding. That is the difference.
Most people keep themselves busy all the time. It's the phone, the TV, the apps, all the distractions. What we want to talk about today is what silence contains. What does it bring to you and what does it cost you to stay within that noise on a constant level? People are always filling the space, the time.
With noise, with distractions, 'cause they're very uncomfortable with just being by themselves or being quiet in solitude.
James (01:00)
And aren't we taught that? Doesn't society teach us to avoid, to not sit in silence, to binge watch Netflix, to stay on our phone and scroll. We are in a societal time now where we are taught that distraction is number one. Run to distraction. When is the last time you sat with self? Just in silence.
And most people probably have never experienced that in their lifetime.
Roselis (01:33)
No, I think that you're right, even in childhood. I mean today you see it all the time. Back when we were growing up, kids would go to school, they would maybe have one after school activity and then they would have a snack and play with the kids in the neighborhood. They had free time. Now there is band, there is the debate team, there is the this, the that, the other, that and then
They still have homework to do, and they're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy busy.
James (02:07)
And when they're not doing all of that, they're inside this thing.
Roselis (02:11)
Mm-hmm. Right. But that's what all that busyness has taught. To keep things going instead of enjoying the moment. Because I think that quieting the mind also helps us stay in the moment when we can be in the here and now.
James (02:33)
Well that's, so the whole point of sitting in silence and silencing the mind is exactly that is connecting to self, connecting to that peace of the quiet, of the the breath.
Roselis (02:47)
So how does your Buddhist practice look at the resistance of the stillness, of the silence? Correct. Because Buddhism, if I understand it correctly, teaches you how to be in a meditative state as you are going along in your day.
James (02:56)
The resistance interest.
In your day. Life is
Roselis (03:10)
Can
be in a meditative state while you are interacting with others.
James (03:14)
You are others.
It's called a meditation break, actually. When you're in the meditation break stage, you're in the gross mind and you're doing your daily activities, but you're trying, and I say the word trying, to stay in a meditative state in the sense of just being aware of the mind's thoughts. That's all it is. So you're awake and you're being aware.
Roselis (03:37)
So what does your practice teach about all the distractions of the noise? Like what does it tell us about the noise?
James (03:49)
That it's there. I want to back up just a second. Where does all the noise come from? Are are we even aware of the noise? Like you and I may be aware of the noise. ⁓ The noise of the mind. Noise meaning thoughts. Where our mind is filled with constant thoughts. So we need to examine are we aware of the mind? When is the last time you thought about what you are thinking?
Society teaches us that we don't think about that. We're not aware of the mind and its thoughts. Do I need to follow the thought right now that my arm is hurting or that I'm hungry? No, we do not. But nothing teaches us that we don't need to. And the thought is the noise, the thought is the distraction. So we sit in a society and we watch television. And now we have the ability to be so distracted that we can watch TV for hours.
Roselis (04:46)
In in one sitting. Correct.
James (04:48)
Right. Exactly. And totally disconnect. But what are we disconnecting from?
Roselis (04:54)
Yourself, right.
James (04:56)
And you're gonna say, well, I don't want to think about my stress, my kids, my pain, my suffering, whatever it is. So we tend to avoid those things. But we don't need to focus on those things. We're choosing to, by the way. We choose to follow that thought. The thought comes up, yes, I can choose to think about that, or I can just let the thought go, like an ocean wave. So Buddhist teaching, thoughts are like the ocean.
Roselis (05:25)
They come up
James (05:27)
We don't attach to it and it goes back down. Etc. We do not need to follow the thought. So the distractions, we are following them. Avoiding them is not necessary from a Buddhist perspective, because we're choosing to follow that particular thought amongst all of the thoughts. If you're going to follow a thought, would you not choose to follow joy, happiness, excitement, peace? If you had to choose all of the thoughts on the table, you would chose to follow those.
Roselis (06:00)
Absolutely. This may seem like an absolutely silly example, but in recovery, the suggestions talk about defects of character. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I walked in there and I was like, uh-uh. No. These are challenges within our personality because I have to give it a positive spin. I don't have to internalize it as a negative connotation. So
I give that example because you're saying choose and joy. I'm always choosing the up. Of course we have the choice.
James (06:37)
Exactly. So that's that is that is but do you understand that is a mind blowing statement. Shh. I can choose the way I think, hence I can choose the way I what? Feel. Right. Right. So we're not attaching what she was saying, you know destructive behavior? defect. So poo. So exactly are going to attach emotion, which we do, to a word. So there are certain words you already have shown.
Roselis (06:55)
Defects of character.
James (07:06)
That you react to, right? We can feel, we can choose to feel a certain way about a certain thing and have all the distractions and noise and not follow the thoughts. I would start there. Just be aware. What am I thinking right now? Where am I in my mind? Right. I'm watching television. I know people that do this, watching TV, they're on their phone, there's a laptop here, there's something on the stove. And I walk in and I'm like, my God.
I'm just relaxing.
Roselis (07:37)
How is that relaxing?
James (07:38)
How can you possibly be relaxing with your mind engaged in several activities at once.
Are you avoiding that you don't want to sit with? And I truly believe that most people aren't aware that we do that or that we're avoiding anything. That we have the luxury of examining the mind, the awareness to say, Yeah, let me look at what I'm thinking. Why am I thinking this? And it could be irrelevant thoughts. Like at night, I'm not a good sleeper. Right, right. And I stay up all night with random thoughts.
I'm thinking about the news article that I wrote and some random meal and the kind of car that I just heard go by and random Okay. All the thoughts, again from Buddha perspective, they're just ocean waves. Let them go. And as soon as I turn the mind to stone, they stop, now I go to sleep. We can do that all day long. And when you sit in the silence of mind, you'd be amazed what happens.
Connect to peace.
Roselis (08:41)
Okay, so for our audience, define what turning your mind to stone means.
James (08:47)
Stopping the thoughts. So I'm a visual person. You are a visual person. I know that. So imagine the stone. Imagine, if you will, you're walking down the street, you've got a million and one thoughts. And I'm not saying checking out. I'm actually saying connecting to self. You're checking in. So you're walking and all of a sudden, you know, too many thoughts in your head. And I do this on a sidewalk in New York City, mind you. And I'm like, bro, you're all over the place. And I just envision in my mind.
Roselis (09:11)
Okay.
James (09:17)
This rock, and I just go, I kind of grab it. And the thoughts just stop. There's none coming in and none coming out. And it obviously this takes practice. We you're not gonna get it like that. Even if you don't visualize, you know what a stone feels like. You remember the feeling of touching an inanimate object that is solid. That is your thought process. It's boom, it's solid, it's not moving. And then they just stop. Even for a second.
And the more you continue to do that and practice all day long, you'd be amazed how you can do it instantly. And they just stop like a tunnel. Imagine a train coming through and nothing going out, nothing coming in. And then peace rises.
Roselis (09:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I have to completely agree on the peace racing from that silence of the mind because I don't know how, I really don't. ⁓ but I have the ability to do that and just be in solitude and quiet within my mind with no
Bzib zim bombardment of thoughts coming through.
James (10:32)
And not feeling uncomfortable there. Like I have to go do something now.
Roselis (10:35)
Nothing and nothing and it's it's unshakable and it's undisturbed and I really don't know how I have been able to achieve this. I couldn't tell you one, two, three, but it is present in my life and it is such a gift. Mm-hmm. It is such a gift. 'Cause I don't think I don't sit there and go, my god, and what is this person thinking and what are they doing? What am I gonna do? And what happened to my toe? And I have a chipped nail and da da da.
None of that happens. Oh! I chipped my nail.
James (11:08)
Yeah, the false thoughts You didn't attach to it.
Roselis (11:12)
In and out, in and out. Nothing
nothing, nothing. Very rarely do I get there and it's usually when it triggers something that's from the past to some sort of emotion that hasn't been resolved. Because if I've processed it, mm-mm. Water of a duck's back. And it's just amazing to be able to be in that space. so you create that time of quietness.
James (11:23)
Emotion.
Roselis (11:42)
I mean, like for me, with there's things that I do on a daily basis that help. The morning pages, the fact that thoughts come in and they go like I just shared, that that's something that is a part of me and I'm so grateful for it. And that's probably why I sleep so well. In my youth, I'm not gonna deny it. Yes, of course. But after I've processed all these things and I think that one of the things that happened and I wanted to share about is
And we shared this in the last episode, is I spent a year of quiet. And it wasn't that I was sitting in that like or doing a stone or anything like that. It was I needed to be more still because I was healing physically from the autoimmune that loves to inhabit my body. And
James (12:38)
So life came in and said,
Roselis (12:39)
And said, Okay, you gotta sit right. And so I did and I was very blessed that I have a husband that can help and that I have an assistant that helps me with my work, that I had a partner in real estate that was able to do the showings. And I was able to still be involved, but in a very limited space that allowed for
solitude and quiet and introspective time which is how Seam Notes came to be because I had that period of time. Right. Right? And so the other things that I do that protect my quiet is I mean on my phone the notifications don't go on. Unless I how I unless I absolutely need it to, then I'll switch to come in.
James (13:20)
Notifications. All day long?.
Roselis (13:32)
If there's something really important, I'll switch it to come in otherwise. And then at eight PM everything shuts off. It doesn't it doesn't it doesn't even register the the the messages unless I go into that app and then they'll pop up. But otherwise, I don't even know they're there. Yeah, I do and I don't want to be there because I want to be able to have that time for me. I'm disengaged. Yeah, yeah. You know, I give my clients parameters.
I tell them unless we're in the middle of negotiations or it's like something that is somebody's on the other side of the world and we only can speak at a specific time, after seven I'm not available. That's it. And before nine AM I'm not available and I'm not gonna respond. And it's just that simple. 'Cause otherwise it takes all your time.
James (14:23)
What would you say is the benefit from doing that?
What did you learn maybe from that?
Roselis (14:29)
Mm.
It all leads to self love and self preservation and self esteem and self everything. You know, and and really being able to tap into the the inner you that we keep talking about, That quietness really is so important. Those moments are so key.
James (14:38)
Peace.
For me and I 100% agree. So from a Buddhist perspective, I found the path quite a long time ago. And I've been practicing twenty years. But in the last handful of years, I've really just dived in both feet. And it's changed my life, bottom line. Sitting in silence is a blessing. As an only child, I am good about being by myself. I'm an Aquarian Aquarians can be very aloof at times.
Roselis (14:57)
That's what I want you to share with us now.
James (15:23)
I'm either the life of the party or I'm just sitting by myself. I'm good. But in those moments when I sit in silence, usually in a meditative state, but even out of the meditation break, it's just blissful to have the mind go. Instantly I am no longer attaching to the self that I perceive and all of my challenges. And I was telling Roselis when I sit in a podcast, something switches and I'm no longer attached to self.
Meaning James is not thinking about the million and one things I could be thinking about that all are about me and mine. And then I get here speaking to you wonderful people, and the mind calms down. All those thoughts go away. So I'm sitting in silence while we're doing this. And it's magical. And anybody can do this. I hear it all the time. my mind is too busy. Nobody's mind's busier than mine.
You can calm the mind. And the benefit is the peace will arise. And when you do that, you'd be amazed how your life will change. When I walk out of a taping for a podcast, I am bouncing. I'm so light and I feel so good. And I caught it the other day taking out all the noise, thought. Which I love to do. Right? Which is not about me. You know, my benefit to doing seeing notes is it's definitely about giving back. But
Roselis (16:39)
And you're focusing on other vs. self.
James (16:50)
If one person, if a light bulb goes on for just one living being, we've accomplished the goal.
Roselis (16:57)
Accomplish what we wanted, we set out to do. Life changes in an instant. So how do you roll with it? How do you pivot? I was having a discussion very similar to this recently with a dear friend of mine and
He said something that I had to write down because it was so beautiful. He is an artist. You can look him up. His name is Nathan Brujis, B-R-U-J-I-S. and he said silence is a necessity. The space between the sound is a huge part of the music. I thought that was so beautiful and so simply said and it said so much.
James (17:22)
Brujis
Roselis (17:38)
Thank you, James. That was really good. Lots of nuggets in there. This week carve out ten minutes of intentional silence. No phone, no TV, no radio, no distractions Just you alone in the quiet. Pay attention to what surfaces.
James (18:03)
Hmm. Exactly.
Roselis (18:06)
Simply that.
is Seam Notes Luxury from the Inside Out. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week.