A-ha! How to solve any problem in record time
3-principles coach Mary Schiller walks through her A-ha! method for solving problems by quieting mental chatter and accessing inner wisdom. She moved from chronic stuckness at work, failed business ventures, and creative blocks to sudden insight by relaxing into an observing state instead of overthinking. The method relies on simple practices: asking for an answer, pausing, and noticing physical sensations to let solutions surface.
Chapters
Hello, this is Mary Schiller, and we're just about to get started on this webinar. I see that a few people are here. Gavin, Melanie, Sabina, Genevieve, Molly, Mona, Jenny. It's great to see you. If you could type a note to me in the chat box letting me know that you can hear me okay, That would be great. Hi, Melanie. Hi, Jenny. Good to see you. I recognize a few of the first names. Great. I'm glad you can hear me, Jenny. Hi, Sabina. Nice to have you here. Hi, Ivana. Great to see you. Oh, this is fun. I feel like it's me and a bunch of my friends getting together and having a chat today. This is lovely. Thank you so much. I'll start in about 30 seconds. I'll give people a little bit of time to come in. It's just 2 o'clock here. Hi Molly, how are you? Great, thank you. It's just about 2 o'clock now. It's 2:01 here in New York City, so I am going to go ahead and start since you're all here, and I'm really happy to have you with me. Just really quickly, my name is Mary Schiller. And I am a 3 principles based coach and the author of The Joy Formula, Mind Yoga, and a new book upon which this webinar is based called Aha! How to Solve Any Problem in Record Time. And I'm not sure if that's backwards for you guys. It is for me when I'm looking at myself in this camera, but you'll get the idea. And, uh, I'm really happy to welcome you to this webinar. Basically, you are in the right place if you feel very stuck in a problem or you would like to know a simpler way to solve problems that maybe you haven't heard before. And so that's what we're going to talk about over the next 45 minutes or so. And it's a very casual presentation. I don't have any slides. It's just me on camera talking with you, and I'd love it to be interactive, so please feel free to type a message to me anytime in the chat box, and I will ask you for some participation as well at certain points. And at the end of the 45 minutes, I will invite you to consider a program that I'm offering that will take this conversation kind of to the next level, so stay tuned. For that. So thank you so much for being here. And I would love to start by, if you're willing to share this, by asking you to just type a sentence or two in the chat box for answering this question. Is there a problem in your life that you feel really kind of twisted around about? And if you're, if you're so inclined to share a little bit about what that problem is, that would be great. You don't have to reveal any personal details, but what is it that has you kind of tied up in knots inside and just feels like you can't move forward? You know, one of the sensations that I have sometimes when I'm in that state of mind is it's almost like somebody has put me on ice. Literally, I feel like I'm like this and I'm frozen in place and I can't move. It's a very strange physical sensation, but I'm wondering if you can relate to that in any way. It kind of feels like, you know, I'm afraid to move this way and I'm afraid to move that way and I'm afraid to move forward. And I, I just feel a bit paralyzed by whatever is in front of me. At any given time. So I would love to hear from you, what is on your mind? What problem are you looking at right now that has you feeling kind of stuck in place? So I'll give you a moment to type that into the chat box and I'll share one of mine as well. No volunteers just yet. Oh, there is Sabina. Dealing with multiple bosses at work but only one official one. Wow, have I been there. I totally been there. In fact, one of the last jobs I had, that was the exact setup. Ivana, yep, I can relate to that feeling of being frozen. I quite often get ideas but feel frozen in making it happen. Yes. Melanie, not sure I have a particular problem at the moment, but I sure know what you're saying from past experience. It's really not a pleasant feeling to have, is it? Because you really do— I'm speaking personally when I say you, it's really me— I feel a bit trapped. Like almost like there's some kind of physical barrier around me and I don't know how to get over it or around it or under it. Nothing looks obvious to me. Gavin says, I've been smoking for 58 years and it's taking a toll on my health. Some experts say not to stop as my body is now reliant on it. Well, that's a very interesting perspective, Gavin. I haven't heard that before. But if it's something that you want to stop doing, you absolutely can. And that's really what this talk is about, is showing us that even when we feel like we have an insoluble problem, something that just looks, you know, so massive, like smoking for that many years, or a situation like you mentioned at work, Sabina, where, you know, you can't change the circumstances and you're kind of trying to navigate it, but nothing is really working. You know, what we're talking about on this webinar today is something that can address any and all of that absolutely beautifully. Molly says, I'm tied in knots over being tied in knots. This habitual, habitual physical tension, trying to figure it out hasn't helped. That describes me pretty much to a T before I came across this new understanding of how to solve problems. And I'm gonna give you an example that is so poignant to me because I dealt with it for so long. I'm a little bit embarrassed about that fact. Susan, I no longer enjoy my work but feel stuck. My intellect says stick it out for financial pension reasons, but my heart is not there anymore. It used to be. Well, Susan, you couldn't have done a better segue into what I'm about to say. It was like you were reading my mind. So I worked at a very large university here in New York City for several years. And I made the decision to work there for a couple of reasons. One was I had worked in higher ed for a long time and I was excited to work for an Ivy League university. That was new. So I thought I would enjoy the experience of working in higher education at an Ivy League school. Jenny says, I'd like to expand my social network. Gotcha, Jenny. And I also had tremendous benefits working there. And namely, you won't believe this, they don't do this anymore quite in the same way, but for every employee who had a child in college, they paid your child's tuition. So my daughter didn't even go to the same university I was working at, but they paid her full college tuition for each of the years that I was there. I was there 3 years of her college undergraduate, so they literally paid about $150,000 of my child's college tuition. So when you talk about benefits and things like that, Susan, I totally get that. So after my daughter graduated and I didn't need that benefit anymore, I noticed myself feeling really stuck. In this job. And I thought maybe it was the department I was in, so I moved to a different department and I was not having a good time there. So yet I moved yet again to another department and again was not feeling it, just wasn't happening. I moved again to another department, and by this time I was really feeling like, what the heck is wrong with me? Like, Why can't I figure out what's happening in this job? I clearly am not happy working here. And I've tried, you know, moving around and that's not working. I tried to, this was several years ago now, maybe about 4 years ago, I tried starting my own business on the side and was basically a failure at that. I was not good at it. And I know now it was because I was just doing anything I could think of to try to get me out of this job that I was in that I was so disenchanted with. And then about, I guess it was last spring of 2015, spring of 2015, I woke up one day, as it happens, and I had had a major insight into the situation. And I remember very clearly that for a few weeks before I had that insight, I just kind of accepted that I was working where I was working. And I had found these 3 principles that I talk about with people by then, and I realized that, you know, it, it really wasn't my circumstances causing this stress. It was some thinking I was having, and so I was kind of just, you know, going along and not really thinking so much anymore about how to get out of there. And I woke up one morning and I was like, I know how I can do this. I'm gonna go to this job board that I had looked at many times in the past but hadn't looked at in about a year, and I'm just gonna see what's there. So I went on the job board and there happened to be a very interesting freelance job. There that I applied for. I got the freelance job, and a few weeks after that, they asked if they could hire me full-time. And it was a very interesting job. It was something that I hadn't really done before, and I was really looking to take a new challenge on. So I said yes. So I jumped ship and I jumped into this new job. And even though, ironically, this new job didn't work out as planned and I ended up leaving there earlier this year, I learned something really important from that experience, which was I had been kind of— I described this in the book as like rifling through a file folder of old ideas to try to find a new idea. I had been literally jumping from department to department at this university thinking that maybe that was the answer. You know, maybe I just need to go somewhere else in here, but, you know, stay within the confines of this place. And every time I would think about maybe starting my own business on the side, I kind of would go through the same Rolodex of business ideas that I'd had a million times, and, and nothing had ever really come to fruition. But I had never thought about applying for a freelance job, believe it or not, and starting that way. And it was just amazing to me how easily I was then able to exit. Even like I said, though, that didn't end up being my be-all end-all job, and I'm now doing this full-time, which is much better. It was just an interesting way of seeing what happened when I kind of set aside all of the worried and stressed out thinking that I was having about being stuck. Um, I think one of the, the key things that I would love for you to hear during this talk, if you leave with nothing else, I would like it to be this: is the answer you are looking for is already available to you. It's just that when we are so consumed by the problem itself and our mind is really occupied with it, it's almost like we're driving a car with mud all over the windshield. You know, we're driving, we're driving, we're driving, we're going somewhere. We're not sure where we're going, but we're going somewhere, but we can't even see. Through the windshield. And all of a sudden, it's like we can kind of wake up and go, wow, I've been looking through this really muddy windshield all this time. I didn't realize that if I just hit this button over here, it would clear it off and I could see. Melanie, so we're not the driver, we're the passenger? That's how it seems to me, yes. That when I kind of mentally step into the back seat of the car and even lie down back there and not be so overly concerned with every single turn the car is making, I find that the relaxed state of mind that I'm in allows these fresh ideas to appear. Much more naturally. Just before I got on this webinar, I was listening to a recording of one of Michael Neal's programs on Hay House Radio from a few weeks ago on this very topic of solving problems. And he had an amazing analogy about walkie-talkies. You know how with a walkie-talkie, you have to press a button to talk and you let the button up to listen, right? And you have to keep doing that if you're going to communicate with someone. Well, what he said was, you know, most of us are so busy holding the button down and talking that we forget that we can actually lift our thumb off the button and listen. And we can listen to all of the— oh gosh, You know, we can be flooded with new ideas the moment we stop listening to all of this thinking up here, which I equate to pushing the button down really hard on the walkie-talkie or gripping the steering wheel. So I'm going to pause there for just a moment and see what you're hearing in there. Like Melanie said, you know, we aren't the one driving the car, we're the passenger. It looks to us like we have to hold on really tightly to problems. Um, I used to feel like if I didn't have a problem top of mind all the time, that I was going to somehow forget it. Do you know that feeling? Like, if I'm not focused on this thing, how is it ever going to get solved? How is this ever going to get solved if I'm not focused on it? And in that case, I was thinking that I was driving the car and I was looking through a muddy windshield, and I didn't realize that I could just go like this, leave my hands, you know, to go and relax, and new vistas would appear to me through the windshield. Melanie, I like that idea, not having to try to control everything, letting our wisdom naturally come through and offer guidance for whatever we need in that moment or situation. Yes, very much so. And I will share something else with you. You know, I spent a lot of my life— some of you may know a little bit about my story— in the throes of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And all during those years, several decades worth, I didn't know that I could listen to myself. I didn't know that there was a part of me that was trustworthy. I saw myself as someone who had been harmed and as a result was not whole, that was not wise even, that wasn't a reliable source of information and ideas and solutions. That's how I saw myself. I talked to a lot of people who have spent many years in a depressed state of mind who also reflect exactly the way that I saw myself, where if you, if you are continually In that kind of state of mind, it can seem like a leap to say, well, you actually have a reserve of wisdom in there that's totally reliable. But I am here to tell you that I decided that it was true. I actually remember hearing the words that I wasn't broken and that actually I was absolutely fine and I had everything I needed and I just knew that that was true. In fact, it really wasn't even a decision. It was more like I just understood somehow that that was the truth. And looking back, it's not so surprising because if what we're talking about is how we're all operating, If we're all operating with this same kind of reserve of wisdom available to us, then naturally it will seem true to us because it is. Molly says, it feels like the tone of that inner wisdom and realm of solutions is so much more exquisite and elegant than the more knuckleheaded typical thinking. Just getting a whiff of it now is so poignant, making me teary. Oh yeah. Yeah, what you just said really hit me because I felt like I was walking through life in a state, in that frozen state a lot of the time, where I physically even showed that that's how I was feeling all the time. I didn't understand back then that my natural state was one of well-being, of calm, of composure, of resilience, of wisdom, of answers to any problem I could ever run across. I didn't know that. And when I realized that that was really true, Everything started to change for me. Everything. And I've seen it happen over and over again with other people, is that once we realize that this kind of static of thinking, this voice in our heads, right, that is going all the time, really isn't who we are, and that we are way beyond that inner dialogue that we have all day long. That inner dialogue starts to get dialed down, and the answers that we're looking for start to appear before us. I have had times this year when I— this has really been the first year where I feel like I've really started to see this clearly for myself. I've had times this year where I have been overwhelmed at the way this system that we have been given as human beings is so responsive. You know, what I'd love for you to do after this, this call today is to experiment with this for yourself. One of the things that has really helped me is when I've run up against something and I just cannot see the forest for the trees, and I know I'm listening to all these old ideas and old stale thinking and stuff, I'll literally say something like, okay, I don't know, I don't know what to do here, so I could really use some new ideas about now. Like, right about now would be really good. So I'm just gonna put that out there. I would really love to have an answer for X. And I've been shocked at how quickly sometimes the answer will come to me. And one of the things, I think I wrote this in the book, was I was very frustrated in a certain aspect of my business one night and I was just so wound up inside about it. And I went to bed and I just said, okay, in the morning I really need to have something new. I really need something new. And when I woke up, I had emails from two good friends of mine related to my business saying, you know what, overnight I came up with this fantastic idea. I wanted to share it with you, something that might help your business. They were both like that. And I just thought, that can't be a coincidence. It just can't be. I don't know how to explain this, and I'm not pretending that I can, but that was an amazing experience for me. Absolutely amazing. So I'm going to pause there. I said I was going to pause and I kept talking, so I'm going to pause for a few seconds and see what is coming to you. Is there Do you, do you see that there is a source of answers that's available to you? And if not, that's totally okay. But I'm wondering if you can look back maybe at a past experience that you've had that kind of shows that to you. So now I will stop talking. Uh, Ivana says, I do, but I keep forgetting it's there. Yeah, I think that's a normal human experience, Ivana. I really do think that's normal. You know, I, I see this whole conversation that we're having about the 3 principles and then this one about problem solving as a continual waking myself up. You know, I will, uh It's like I'm mentally walking along and I hit something. And then I kind of wake up and go, oh, right, that's thought that's doing that, that's making this look like a big problem. And usually what triggers the kind of waking up, the reminder, is I'll have some sort of emotional or physical even symptom. Sensation that is not pleasant. And that's usually enough to kind of wake me up and go, oh wait, I'm looking at old thinking for the solution to this. Why don't I just kind of back up a minute and, you know, relax into who I actually am and, and see what happens then. I know that it can feel, uh, like it's not in your control. Uh, Jenny says, I do too. I think it's only working in some areas. Now that's a really interesting point. Thank you, Jenny. So I'll give you an example. Way before I knew anything about the principles I had a life situation that I really wanted to change. I wanted to be able to work from home or have a job where I could come home at the end of the day when my daughter got home from school. That was my goal at the time. She was around 7, and I wanted to have that kind of setup by the time she got to be about 12, when she was in junior high. I figured when she's in junior high I feel like that's a really key period. I want to be able to be available to her. And that was all I said to myself, was I really would love to be able to do that. And looking back, I can see that I kind of said that's what I'd love to have. I knew my life didn't depend on it or anything. It was just something that I thought would be really great. And I kept my eyes open. It was like my eyes were um, just by, by saying this is what I would really like, it was almost like my eyes were opened in a whole new direction, and certain opportunities started to kind of become obvious to me. I think they had always been there maybe, but I hadn't really seen them before. I started saying yes to certain things that in the past I wouldn't have because I thought, hmm, I wonder if that could lead me towards this goal that I have. Well, sure enough, almost to the day, it took me 5 years. Maybe if I had said I wanna do it in 3 years, I would've done it in 3 years. But it was really interesting how the solution to that problem just kinda kept showing up. I kept seeing things and saying yes, seeing another thing, saying yes. And that was way before I had an understanding of how this works. And Susan says, sometimes I feel sure I have a solution, i.e., my inner wisdom seems to be clear about things. Oh, but then fear comes in that makes me less sure, so then I stay stuck. Wow. Yeah, so yeah, that touched a nerve with me, Susan, because you know what I was saying earlier about how I had seen myself as someone who wasn't trustworthy. I didn't know that the, the answers that I needed were actually already in me. You know, like looking back on that situation where I wanted to be home after school, that was still during the time when I saw myself that way, but I didn't really— that was the piece that was missing. Like, if I had known actually really been aware of what we're talking about, I think that that would have been a whole different kind of situation for me because I would have— I probably would have done it even faster because as things presented themselves, or if I had a new idea about something, I would have been trusting of it. I would have trusted knowing where it was coming from. So to your point, Susan, I think there's two answers. I think it's that now I'm no longer seeing myself as a being who isn't whole and who isn't well. So anytime I have a new idea about something or something I'd like to do, I'm a lot more interested in actually looking at it and seeing what might happen. I don't dismiss it offhand. It now seems, you know, like a possibility. And that's not— and so here's the other component. So that's not to say that I don't have fearful thinking sometimes. I do. But when something comes up as a potential solution, I will really look at it, and if I have any sort of fear that comes along at the time, I know that that's really not something I need to listen to. It's more like, hmm, do I want to do this today or do I want to do this today? Hmm, I've got a couple of options. Which one looks the most interesting? Which one looks the the most fun. And I think fearful thinking is normal for everyone, especially if we're trying something new, trying a new solution to a problem. But I don't really let that interfere with me anymore because I know who I really am. So Susan, let me know if that doesn't help you. Molly, it's super obvious when I'm doing creative work like composing or choreography. I just stop and listen and the next thing shows up. I'm very comfortable with not knowing there because the next thing always shows up, but that's art. My life seems more scary and important. I'm going to share something with you that a fellow coach/friend said to me one time. I was having a discussion with her, this was several months ago, about money. And I said, you know, I seem to have no problem with writing, but when it comes to money, I can't seem to make that work. Like, nothing looks like a solution to me. And if you have read my book already, you'll understand that money was a big thing for me. And you know what she said to me, Molly? She said, you know that force of creativity that you have with writing? Well, it applies across the board. It can work in any area of your life. The only thing that is stopping you from accessing that is you have some thinking going on about it. That's all. That's it. The only thing that ever keeps us from having ready access to those answers is that we're listening to some momentary thinking. That's it. And that has been a game changer for me, even in the area of money, believe it or not, something I thought I would never be able to overcome now does not look like a problem to me anymore. That's not to say I don't occasionally have fearful thinking and stuff, I do, but I know absolutely that I can solve whatever is in front of me now. Before I didn't. Greg, do you believe it's possible to lose an insight if we keep reaching for the next one? I had a great insight around food a few months ago, They're not there now. At that point in time, I was having lots of insights in a row. It seems as if it didn't stick for some reason. Oh, Susan, glad that was helpful. And Molly too, if I didn't answer your question, let me know. You know, Greg, that's a great thing to ask. And I'll say this, which is, and this is something that I heard from, I think it was Linda Pransky. I went to a training in February with George and Linda Pransky and Barbara Patterson, and somebody asked that very question. I think it was Linda who responded along the lines of, once you have an insight, it's always there. It doesn't— it can't go anywhere. There's no, there's no exit for an insight. And I've had lots of insights that I can't remember, but I know that they're with me. And so I don't worry about that anymore. And I find that incredibly comforting. You know, this system that we— oh, great, Molly, thank you. The system that we have been gifted with, this operating system, if you will, that is the driver behind life and gives us this experience we're having, is so sophisticated. And so perfect in every way, uh, that I often am overcome by the sheer truth of that. And, you know, I think we've had a tendency— at least I have— I've had a tendency to think of myself over the years, more like I think a computer would be, you know, with data processing in my brain and things like that. And, and now I see human beings, and I see you, and I see myself as these infinite beings capable of so much. We don't even— we can't even begin to know how much we're capable of. We can't even begin to know what is available to us in terms of solutions to even huge problems we may be facing in our life, in the world. And the way that we can access that is so simple. The design is so simple and so elegant, as you said too, Molly. I think it was Molly who said, used the word elegant, that all we need to do is understand the role of our thoughts And once we understand that thought is creating this kind of moment-to-moment experience we're having, and it keeps changing, it keeps changing, we can step back from that and see ourselves as this incredible being. We don't have to get wrapped up in all of that static, because the solutions aren't there, first of all. And second of all, that's not really who we are anyway. It's a gift in that it's helping us to be here in this physical form and having us talk with each other, but it's not where we're going to find the answers we need to things. One other thing that I wanted to make sure and mention during this talk today is in the book, I describe it as sort of the secret behind the AHA method of problem solving, which is that at 8 o'clock in the morning, I have a problem. And at 9 o'clock in the morning, suddenly I don't. And I'm laughing because This is how my days go sometimes. Like, I'll get up and, and something will really look like a major problem to me, you know, and then my mind will go in another direction because I kind of stopped paying attention to it. And by 9 o'clock, it's like, what was I thinking again? What was looking so major to me? I can't even remember it. Has that ever happened to you before? Give me a shout in the chat if it has, because that is a really fun way of seeing this in action. Yeah, right? Yvonne and Greg say yes. It's really interesting how something can look so massive, like a big boulder in front of us, and then just because we decide to kind of not look at it for a few minutes, all of a sudden we turn around and there's no boulder anymore. It's like, what happened to it? I don't know, it's not there anymore. Gavin says yes. Paul, Sabina, yes. Paul, many times problems resolve themselves if we gotta get out of our own way of thinking. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes another person has a solution to the problem we're looking at. Or sometimes it's actually not a problem at all. We just thought it was. Melanie says, I'm wanting to get into creative writing, but struggling to come up with any creative ideas. See, I have a lot of thinking about it. So I keep setting it on the back burner and just trying to wait and be open to new ideas coming, but nothing yet. Do you think that could be a message that this isn't something I should pursue? Or do I just wait for a solution idea to come to me? For some reason, this is a puzzler for me. I get clarity in other areas of my life, but not this one. I can't seem to get started. So, you know, being a creative writer myself, I totally understand where you are, Melanie. And it's a problem that a lot of people have just in other areas. For you, it may be creative writing. For somebody else like Gavin, it might have to relate to— might relate to smoking, or it could relate to work like we were talking about earlier. But the cool thing is it's always the same solution to it. It just means that, for example, with me and money, okay, and this again is from that same friend slash coach who I had that money conversation with. She said, you know, for you, money is a code word for thought. When you have money going on, you are really caught up in thought. So for you, Melanie, creative writing is a code word for thought. You don't have a problem with creative writing at all. There's no problem there. You know exactly what to do. It's just that for the moment, you're looking at all this thinking about creative writing and seeing it as if it's a problem. You're, you're seeing, you're listening to a lot of thinking about it instead of realizing, oh, you know, it's thought, it's not real, and it's definitely not a signal of anything. It's definitely not that, especially if it carries with it a bad feeling or kind of a feeling. Definitely not something you need to be listening to. So what I have found helpful is that if I'm feeling kind of in a funk or not very creative or not whatever it is, the problem du jour, I will oftentimes say to myself something like, a thought will come to me like, you know, my thinking is telling me that I'm not very creative right now, but I really don't have to listen to that. I can kind of just go about my business. And do what I wanna do anyway. And I found that it's in those times that I'm able to access those resources when I kinda, when the volume of the thinking gets turned down, even if it's still there kind of buzzing around in the background, it just doesn't have the same effect anymore. So Melanie, let me know if you'd like more clarity on that. Paul says, sometimes we get too close to focus to the situation. Ah, yes. And need to step back for a wider angle, zoom out and see things from a new fresh perspective. That was totally me. You know, like I was saying before, I felt like if I took my eye off the ball, you know, if I stopped looking at something that somehow I wasn't gonna be able to fix it, like I was gonna drop the ball and it would go rolling off and then it would become a snowball and it would become this big horrible thing, even though it already looked like a big horrible thing. And it's in those times when I have that sensation of kind of the world closing in like this, I know in those moments that I'm listening to a lot of thinking and I just don't have to. I know our thoughts can be so compelling and I've even stopped or tried to stop using the phrase our thoughts because they don't even really seem like mine sometimes. They just are kind of coming in and I don't even know where they come from or anything. I don't— that's a little above my pay grade. So the more that I understand that thought is the mechanism by which I have this experience of being a physical human being, and I stop kind of listening to all the messages it's telling me, the more easily I can access these solutions. Melanie, thanks, Mary. That helps. I guess the missing piece for me is I feel like while I'm waiting for inspiration, I can't get going. So maybe I just need to ignore that thinking and get going regardless. Everybody give Melanie a round of applause. Yes, exactly. That's just another layer that you've got, and you can ignore that too. You can ignore that too. It's not telling you anything important. Yay. Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to take one more pause here and see if you all have any questions or comments you'd like to make, um, and, uh, I have one last thing I'll share with you, so I'll just give you guys a moment. Jenny says, I've experienced that when I get going, the answer comes. Yeah, isn't that interesting how that happens? Um, I agree, Sabina, hearing others' questions is helpful to me too. It's interesting, Jenny, how that happens because there's something about making a tiny little commitment, you know, towards making us— towards taking a step towards something. That's what I was referring to in that story about wanting to be home when my daughter was after school and just kind of making this note somewhere in the back of my mind or inside myself, you know, that was something I would like to have. Just even doing that suddenly seems to set this whole engine in motion towards answers and towards, you know, a goal maybe. Paul says, sometimes we don't have to wait for inspiration to get motivated. We first get started in inspiration and overcome inertia when we get motivated. Yeah, it's almost like the moment you decide, you know, I don't really have to listen to any thinking that's telling me I don't, I can't get started. I can just start anyway. You know, I have this phrase that runs through my mind, and I'm going to censor it slightly for you. When I start writing something, I say, there's a phrase that comes to my mind all the time. It says, I am free to write the worst stuff in the world right now, because nobody's going to see this but me. Whatever that voice in my head says about how horrible a writer I am, it doesn't matter. Because I am free to do whatever I would like to do right now. And that's really how I see this whole system we're in, is that we are allowed to ignore those thoughts that come in that tell us we don't have the answer, we don't have the ability, or we're, we're stuck, or we're this or we're that. That has nothing to it. It's not even air. It's nothing. And what is something— what is something is who we actually are. That has substance, and that we can always, always rely on. Always. Well, if it's all right with you, then I would like to invite you to a couple of different things. One is that— oh, thanks, Molly. One is that I'm offering my one-week problem-solving class for the third time. It's been wonderful so far in the first two sessions that I've held been just wonderful, great interaction with people. And I ask people to bring their toughest problem, their most sticky, thorny problem to the program. And we spend 3 hours as a group on a call, not like this, it's on Zoom so we can all see one another for 3 hours and we have a lovely session. Then we have a week of Facebook group discussion and then we have one more 3-hour call at the end. And since you have registered for this webinar, whether you're watching live with me or you're watching the replay, if you decide to enroll in my next session of that, I'm adding a one-to-one call with me, a 1-hour one-to-one session with me. So if you're interested in that, the dates are September 25th it's a Sunday, through October 2nd, which is another Sunday. So the calls will be on those two Sundays, and there is a link, uh, in the offers section below to the course page. I also see that Gavin has asked a question about smoking. I'm sorry, I didn't see that, Gavin, so I'll address that in one second. Um, so, uh, if you would like to learn more, you can click on that link, and I'll also put it in the email that will go out with the recording of this webinar. And I can also show you— oops, no, it's not there, never mind. I was going to show you on my screen, but I put that, that screen away. It's also linked from my website, thedailyprinciples.com. If you click on classes You can go there and see that. I would love to have you join me in there. It'll be great fun and lots of insights and really wonderful conversations. Usually I have time also for people to be coached in those group calls, which can be very, very helpful. Like you were saying, it's helpful to hear other people's questions. It can be very helpful to watch a coaching session. So again, that class is September 25th through October 2nd. And like I said, you'll be entitled to a one-to-one with me if you decide to register. And the other thing I want to mention, and this is kind of exciting, and it's one reason why this webinar is a little bit shorter than I normally would have it. I got a note shortly before I got on here that Michael Neal wants me to call into his Hay House radio program at the top of the hour. So if you happen to be online and you want to listen into that conversation, it's all, it's going to be about problem solving and innovation. That's at heyhouseradio.com. And you can listen live to that with just a free registration. There's no charge for that. Great, thank you, great. I appreciate that. Oh, Gavin, yes, same question as earlier. And if you want to email me anything privately, if something came to you that you didn't feel like you wanted to share on this webinar, Gavin, if you want to follow up with me by email, please feel free to do that. You can always reach me at mary@thedailyprinciples.com. And yeah, I'm available, you know, just give me a holler and I will do anything that I can to support you. Does anybody have any final thoughts or questions about anything that I've said or anything about the one-week program that I mentioned? Uh, Doran, so glad I made the webinar, very, very helpful. Oh, thank you. Yes. Oh, thanks, Greg. That's very nice. Thank you. Thank you so much. And again, the link to the class is in this little offers tab at the bottom. And I will also send it out in the email with the replay of our discussion today. Thank you, Ivana. Thank you, Sabina. Thank you for being here. You know, it's really a joy for me to have these conversations. I learn a lot from what you tell me, and I always feel like I get more benefit than anybody because your questions prompt new ideas in me, and it's just very exciting. Jenny, thank you for being here. Melanie, yes, it was lovely having you as well. So feel free to reach out to me anytime, mary@thedailyprinciples.com or mary@marieschiller.com, my other site. One of these days I will merge my entities online, but for now I'm kind of all over the place, but you know where to find me. And if you haven't bought the book yet, I, I Really appreciate your support if you already have, and if you haven't, you know, take a look at it and you might find it useful. If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can read it for free on Kindle. Oh, great, Ivana, thank you so much. Thank you, Melanie. All right, I'm gonna sign off so I can do a little bit of prep for this call that I'm gonna have in a few minutes, and I hope you'll join me in our problem-solving class if you can make it. I would love to continue this conversation there. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye, everybody.
