In this vlog, Mary Schiller reflects on day 10 of her 30‑day "Following My Dreams" challenge. She begins by thanking her audience for their support, noting how lonely the life of a coach‑entrepreneur can feel. She shares a core insight she gained from the "3 Principles": that thoughts and emotions are not problems that need fixing, and that recognizing this eliminates unnecessary suffering. She then describes how she deliberately broke her routine by cleaning her apartment, completing laundry, and tackling two intimidating tasks—regaining access to her immigration website account and beginning the Audible setup for her upcoming book, The Joy Formula. Mary also mentions continuing her French studies, working on a novel, and preparing content for Insight Timer teachers. Throughout, she maintains a hopeful, encouraging tone, emphasizing that struggles are simply experiences, not defects, and that taking purposeful action can make the day enjoyable.
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Hello, it is day 10 of this 30 Days of Following My Dreams. It is July 17, 2024, and I'm starting this video a bit differently today because I started today differently from how I have up until now. I'm in my neighborhood park and I'm using my little microphone here in the hopes that it will block out some of the noise. There's some construction going on nearby, as is always the case here in Paris and the surrounding suburbs. I want to start by saying a huge thank you for watching these videos, for following along, and for posting such incredibly helpful and supportive and thoughtful comments. I can't even begin to tell you what it means to me to have you here with me, because as you know, a lot of the things that we do, if you're an entrepreneur like I am, or coach or a coach entrepreneur, as I like to call us, it's lonely. And you sometimes don't know if anyone's paying attention, or, you know, not that you're necessarily doing all of this for attention, but I think you know what I mean. And so I just want to thank you for being here for me. It means the world to me. I also wanted to share some thoughts that I had after day 9, which was a bit of a rough one. First of all, the two people in my life closest to me were both having major struggles yesterday, and they're both fine. Everything's okay today. Whew, thank goodness. But the more important message that I want to share with you that impacts you as it has impacted me is that when we are having a struggle, it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with us. I cannot begin to describe what that simple idea has done for my life in terms of transformation, in terms of quality of life. It has literally changed everything. I came across this idea 10 years ago via something called the 3 principles. I've since interpreted that whole area in my own way, or come to see things in my own way, so I don't necessarily talk about the 3 principles in that regard. But I certainly credit them with showing me something that I hadn't seen before, which was that no matter what my experience is, no matter if I'm up or down, as we like to say in terms of our emotions, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with me that I need to fix, or that there's something I need to work on, or something I need to do specifically. Because that's not how it works. We have an experience from moment to moment that is not dependent on circumstances. None of that really matters at all. It's simply about whatever thoughts and emotions are flowing through us at any time, and none of those have to be problems. This is what I used to think. I used to think that basically all of my thoughts and feelings were problems that I had to solve. And that is how the traditional discussion around all of this is, right? It's telling us that there's something going on within us that is problematic and we need to address it, we need to fix it, we need to change it. And that is just not true. Every single feeling, every single thought we have is perfectly okay and doesn't need to be judged, categorized, seen as something that needs to be worked on. We can simply see things neutrally, experience things more neutrally. And so I have come to really embrace the truth around this, which is that we're supposed to have the thoughts we have, that we're supposed to have the feelings we have. We can embrace them all as part of this incredible human experience instead of trying to push them away and make our experience less human, I guess I would say. And so if you take something from this video today, I want it to be this: that if you are struggling, that doesn't mean that there is a problem that you need to solve. It simply means you're having a day that feels like struggle. We don't have to suffer along with that struggle anymore. What used to bring about the suffering for me was this notion that there was something terribly wrong with me and I could never fix it because I was constantly suffering. And when I realized that, oh, hey, actually there's nothing wrong with the thoughts and feelings I have, they're perfectly fine, the suffering piece disappeared. I still have all the same human feelings, all of the same human struggles and challenges and all that. I just don't suffer from it anymore. So that is my main message for you today. I have more to say that I will pick up later in the video, but I also wanted to mention that I started this day completely differently. I felt like I needed to do something to break out of my routine, so I got up a little earlier than I usually do. I started by cleaning the apartment. I did 3 loads of laundry, you know, changed the sheets, changed the towels, you know, vacuumed, all of that stuff. And then I tackled two things that had been on my to-do list for a few days and that were scaring me, basically. One was I tried to log back into my site— my account, I should say— on the website for immigration. I was locked out of it last week, and I had written to them saying, I'm locked out, can you help me? I was able to log back in.
Yay!
They still have not made our new official card that says we can stay here for another year, but that'll come soon. And then the other thing I did was I started the process of creating The Joy Formula, which is the first book that I published related to the principles, the 3 principles that I mentioned earlier. I started to set up the Audible version of that, the audiobook, which I'm very, very excited about. So that was a major thing I decided on, you know, whether to give them exclusive rights or not. I chose not to do that, and I started filling out all of the initial things on there, and I will start recording that ASAP. So I will now do a little spin around the park. I will continue to study the French. I'm having fun with that. I have some more work to do on my novel. I have some other projects that I want to make some progress on for the wonderful people in my community, especially those who are interested in teaching on Insight Timer. So it's going to be a fun day today, no matter what happens.
It is just about 5 PM on day 10. I decided to put my Paris 2024 t-shirt on this afternoon while I was working. What did I accomplish? Well, I accomplished a couple of things related to my novel. I figured out one, possibly two key things that need to happen in the setup, the early section. So I feel really good about that. There was a key detail that I was missing and I figured out how to deal with it. Sort of like putting a puzzle together, you know. Aussi, j'ai étudié le français cet après-midi. So I feel really good about where I am with studying French, especially at this level. I feel like I could take the test tomorrow and pass it, but it's fine. I'll wait till October or whenever the date is. Still need to sign up for it though. That's on my list for the next couple days. Also, I was really happy to realize that an offer that I am thinking about, um, making to my wonderful audience of coaches, I think is gonna be really awesome. I think it's gonna be absolutely amazing. So I started to write that up and get some wording around it. So feeling a little more in control of things today and just generally realizing that it's just all ups and downs and sideways, isn't it? And all of it's fine. It's all good. Thank you for being here. I'll talk to you tomorrow.
