This week in Brida Café’s Crème Brûlée (every Wednesday, 20h CET), fear tried to sit at our table. It showed up dressed as traffic jams, ziplines, deep oceans, and even childbirth. But instead of running, we pulled out chairs, poured it tea, and asked what it wanted.

🚗 Sarah and the Monsters in the Fast Lane

Sarah began with her story of driving. At first, two-way roads and trucks the size of castles had her frozen stiff. She got her license but avoided the actual driving bit—until she realised practice was the only key. Weekends turned into weekdays, hesitation turned into habit, and slowly the monsters in the fast lane shrank. Lesson: fear doesn’t vanish, but it doesn’t have to steer either.

👶 Frank’s First Fear

Frank—never one to miss a good punchline—claimed his very first fear was being born. “It was warm, it was safe, why leave?” he quipped. But beneath the humour was a truth: every transition, whether it’s birth, a new job, or moving countries, feels like stepping into the unknown. Fear and growth are siblings that show up together.

🌉 Janita Takes the Leap

Janita confessed to being terrified of heights. Ziplining? Absolutely not. Until her honeymoon. Faced with the regret of a chance missed once before, she strapped in and took the leap. By the third (and longest) of fourteen lines, she wasn’t just surviving—she was enjoying the ride. Sometimes courage is regret’s antidote.

🌊 Sarah Under the Sea

She cannot swim, yet found herself walking on the ocean floor with a helmet strapped on her head. Fear bubbled up as the water closed in, but she chose to focus on the fish, not the fear. And that made all the difference.

📦 Strategies That Surfaced

• Sarah: Take the risk. Once you’re in the middle, fear gets bored and drifts away.
• Frank: Run away until you find others running too—suddenly you’re a team.
• Janita: You don’t conquer fear, you manage it. And management is already part of growth.

🥊 Failure Joins the Table

Of course, failure snuck in, as it always does. Sarah reminded us not every story ends happily, and that’s fine. Frank, quoting Tom Cruise, declared: “I have no idea.” Yet insisted commitment will find its way. He also invoked the Japanese method of kaizen: try, try, and try again—each time a little sharper, a little braver.

🍌 Fear in Fruit Form

• Frank: Durian—spiky, smelly, but sweet inside.
• Sarah: Banana—once her favourite but now hard to swallow.
• Janita: Prickly pear—thorny on the outside, rewarding once peeled carefully.

🪽 If They Had Wings…

• Sarah: soar ten minutes, panic later.
• Frank: give the wings to fear itself so it could fly away.
• Janita: skip traffic and fetch her son from school.

😼 Scaring Fear Itself

• Sarah: box it up.
• Frank: give it to a cat—because cats fear nothing.
• Janita: throw it off a cliff and let it feel what she feels.

“How do you face fear? Put it in a box—it’s smaller than you think.” — Sarah

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✍️ Or head over to Brida Haven and write about your own fears. Because in Brida, sharing really is caring.

If you were hoping for a neat recipe for success—sorry, Brida doesn’t do tidy. This week’s Lunch with Janita & Frank (Thursdays 11:30–12:30 CEST) proved that success is more like a buffet: everyone’s plate looks different, and someone will always sneak in dessert first.

🎨 What Success Looks Like (Up Close)

Rosie painted success as a collage: family roles, teaching wins, and stolen afternoons in the park. Bruce wanted usefulness and appreciation—the kind you can taste when someone actually notices your effort. The Mayor confessed his ultimate success was freedom—working where, when, and how he pleases. Fruitloop crowned her morning coffee as her daily pinnacle. Simple. Quiet. Perfect.

✨ When Mistakes Start to Glitter

Instead of treating mistakes as failure, the group reframed them as glitter—tiny sparks that mark the path forward. Like balloons filled with “tired” and “exhausted” that, once popped, revealed a positive message inside. Mindset isn’t decoration—it’s the scaffolding we climb.

🧭 From Info to Meaning

Yes, we detoured through “useless information” (wheels, doors, Dan Brown conspiracies, Bruce vs. AI censorship). Lesson: information becomes knowledge only when it connects to meaning.

☕ The Drink of Success

• Rosie: sparkling softness.
• Bruce: every glass a success.
• The Mayor: miss me with overpriced wine.
• Fruitloop: still—coffee.

“Success isn’t a universal trophy. It’s personal, messy, and evolving.”

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✍️ Write: Head to Brida Haven and pen your own definition of success. Your “useless” thought might just sparkle someone else’s path.

Step into the Mayor’s kitchen for a moment. Apron askew, kettle hissing, and a checklist so detailed it starts with: open fridge, take out milk, unscrew cap. Not because he’s forgotten how milk works, but because life—ever since that fateful accident (most of you know the story)—turned into a circus. And in this circus, he’s the clown, the lion tamer, and the tightrope walker all at once.

Two years of running Brida while holding a household together more than is normal for a husband, gave him one superpower: efficiency. Lists, routines, and multitasking became survival tricks. But lately, he’s caught himself slipping back into “caveman mode,” and he asked the question out loud: should he draw a line, or keep practicing the so-called “female mindset”?

Cue Fruitloop, armed with sparkle and schedule. Her advice? A routine is your lifeboat. Multitask only when the tasks belong together (laundry + soup = brilliant, taxes + toenails = disaster). And yes—sometimes you just fake the confidence until even your mirror applauds.

But here’s the golden pineapple in all of this: emotional batteries. They don’t magically recharge while you soldier on. Ignore them, and suddenly you’re yelling at the cat, crying into pasta, or—like the Mayor—confiding in the toaster. The cure? Radical rest. Step away from the laundry. Book the hairdresser. Sit. Breathe. The world will keep turning, promise.

And the real revelation? Perfection isn’t the goal—it’s a myth with slick marketing. What matters is balance. Partners who cover each other’s cracks. One cooks; the other cleans. One melts down, the other cracks a joke. Fruitloop sprinkles pixie dust in her household, the Mayor keeps the matches dry in his. Somehow, imperfectly, it works.

“Perfection isn’t the goal—it’s a myth with slick marketing. What matters is balance.”

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👉 What about you, dear Pineapple? What’s the loudest lion in your circus right now—and how do you keep your balance? Share it in the Brida Café or bring it to our next Peeling Potatoes session.

What makes someone question the very rules of the game? Ritesh’s conversation pulled us straight into that space where ambition meets awareness.

The Dilemma

City life in Bangalore promises opportunity but delivers debt, 15-year mortgages, and paycheck-to-paycheck stress. In contrast, his village already has land, a house, hospitals, and roads. The cost of living is lower, life is freer, and remote work makes “location freedom” possible.

The Paradox

A salary multiplied tenfold over the years didn’t change anything. Why? Because expenses multiplied too. Lifestyle inflation is the silent trap. The middle class copies the rich, buys more, borrows more—and stays stuck.

The Philosophy

Ritesh’s rural upbringing shaped his compass: Save resources for the long term. Respect the effort behind every grain of rice. Live within your means. Avoid dependency—on jobs, loans, or geography.

The Dream

Retire early—not to stop working, but to start living. Imagine having the time and space to focus on what you truly want, without bills dictating your every move.

The Gap

Urban consumers live in a bubble. Food appears from an app. Waste is normal. Farmers, by contrast, know the sweat behind every seed. Only education and direct experience—working in the field, even for a few hours—can bridge this empathy gap.

Your Pineapple Lesson

• Money without awareness = more pressure.
• Freedom means fewer dependencies, not more possessions.
• You can design your life to step out of the rat race.
• Understanding where your food, clothes, and resources really come from changes how you value them.

This wasn’t just a chat—it was a masterclass in turning background into philosophy, salary into wisdom, and rural lessons into urban survival skills.

In Atlantic Corridor this week, Ismar (Campo Grande, Brazil) invited us to rethink legacy. Not the marble-and-medals kind—but the sort you leave in people’s habits and horizons. It’s the tone you set at work when pressure rises. It’s the way your kids copy your patience—or your shortcuts. It’s that colleague who never met your mentor, yet quotes them without knowing.

What We Noticed

• Quiet leadership: Legacy compounds in small moments—consistent fairness, a calm response, one extra minute of listening.
• Trade-offs: Ambition without guardrails burns the candle and the room. Boundaries protect both results and relationships.
• Local roots, global view: Pride in where you live doesn’t fight with curiosity for the world; it fuels it.

Questions We’re Sitting With

• What behavior of mine do I want copied when I’m not in the room?
• If my calendar is my sculpture, what does it say I value?
• What can I do this week that my future self—and someone else’s—will thank me for?

“Legacy isn’t what people call you; it’s what they keep doing after you’ve gone.”

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We have a new challenge for you! Share your favourite exercise or routine and let’s get the residents moving. We can all learn something from someone in the process…

• Sylvie, France: Cycling (E-bike), running, tennis—and lots of house & garden work.
• The Mayor: Long vineyard walks, grape “quality control,” noticing how familiar places change when you really look.
• Nathalie, South Korea: 3–4 workouts weekly (run, hike, cycle, upper-body, evening stretches). The hardest part is starting—then it flows.

Fruitloop asked playful questions, Residents answered, and the Mayor asked his Chaos Tamer:

• If your brain had a door, what would the welcome mat say? “Wipe your feet, but leave your assumptions outside.”
• Aliens invite you to their planet—try alien food? Absolutely. Worst case: indigestion. Best case: intergalactic MasterChef champion.
• Pet life-advice? Cat: “Nap first, judge later.” Dog: “Sniff everything.”
• Switch lives with a cartoon? SpongeBob. Lesson: eternal optimism (even with an angry squid neighbor).
• Only podcasts forever or a new genre daily? New genre daily. Curiosity applauds.
• Someone believes pizza grows on trees? “Delicious orchard! Four seasons: Pepperoni, Hawaiian, Veggie, Cheese?”
• Friends with a chicken? Yes—if you’re willing to cross the road without asking why. 🐔