In this July 18, 2024 vlog, Mary Schiller shares a day that began with a frustrating credit‑card fraud incident, highlighting the extra complications of being an American living in Paris. The experience sparks a broader reflection on the perceived scarcity of money versus the actual abundance of financial resources, and the mistaken belief that personal time is limitless. Mary describes an epiphany that money flows through her, allowing her to choose work that aligns with her passions, and she commits to eliminating aimless scrolling in favor of deliberate, enriching activities—illustrated by watching a WNBA replay with her husband. She outlines her plan to spend the day on meaningful projects, then updates viewers on two creative endeavors: a rewrite of a pandemic‑themed novel she began 12 years ago (inspired by her former role at Columbia University Medical Center) and the development of a new coaching offer for other coaches. The vlog ends with a call to action for viewers to reflect on their own time use and a promise to check back tomorrow.
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It is day 11 of 30 Days of Following My Dreams. It is July 18, 2024. We woke up to credit card fraud at 6:15 AM. Not something that I expected. And what was doubly frustrating was that we had experienced fraud on this credit card account— not the same card number because they replaced it— but like 2 months ago. And here we are again, even though it's a new card, new day, whatever. So took a while to get that sorted out because when you are an American living abroad It's just so much more complicated. People don't understand how hard it is to try to kind of live in two places even though you're living in one place, especially with the US, because it's just very challenging. I'll leave it there. But it got me thinking about something important related to this challenge and something that I think will apply to you because it applies to all of us. And it's basically that we can always replenish money. Money is infinite. It has no end to it. I've talked about this topic for a long time, and in fact, on Insight Timer, it's one of my top 2 courses on there about money being infinite. And yet we act like time is infinite. And in a way, time is infinite, right? If you look at the fullness of life, time itself is infinite, but not to us personally. And yet we act like time is infinite to us personally, and we act like money is not infinite to us personally. And I find that dichotomy— is that the right word?— interesting to ponder. Because people will spend time on things that they don't really enjoy, that are not really fulfilling, that are just literally wasting time, or that phrase killing time, when they could be doing something that is enriching to them in some way. This is how I felt for years in a job that I disliked, that I was there for the paycheck. I was not enjoying myself. I liked some of my colleagues, but it just wasn't for me. And I had this epiphany one day where I realized that I was the conduit for money, that money wasn't coming from a particular person or a particular place, but it was infinitely being funneled through me. And therefore, I could choose to do anything that I wanted, and I would find a way for money to be funneled through me, if you will. And that's where I'm finding myself now, which is that, as I've mentioned previously, I feel like I am on the cusp of something in terms of income, and that it's going to come to me in some new way perhaps that I haven't even considered before or hasn't happened before. And so my focus is really on spending time doing things that really ignite me, that light up that creative spark that we all have, also in infinite amounts. And I'm no longer interested in wasting time and killing time, you know, on binge-watching certain Netflix shows or whatever. It just does not interest me. If I sit down to watch something, it is extremely deliberate. For example, this morning— I won't say the score in case you watch Um, my husband and I sat down and watched the replay of one of the WNBA games, the Fever versus the Wings. And so after we had this whole big conversation with the credit card company, we're like, let's watch the replay. So we did that. Those are things that I do deliberately. I don't anymore spend time literally on anything that involves scrolling aimlessly That is just not part of my life anymore. And we always say, oh, I don't have time, I don't have enough time, but we do. Yes, time is finite in terms of I'm not going to live in this bodily, bodily form forever, but it's available to us. It's just leaking in ways that we actually have control over, and we can retake control over. So that is something that I am looking at even with myself. Even though I feel like I have cut a lot of those things, I know there are still things that I do that take up my valuable time that could be spent on things that are actually meaningful to me. So I am going to spend this day doing things that are meaningful to me, and I hope you will do the same. We're gonna check back in with Mary in just a moment and see what I accomplished on my dream projects. It is 5 PM here in Paris and I am calling it a day.
On the plus side, I made some headway on my novel, still this rewrite. Try not to think about how much is left to do. And I realized I don't think I've even told you what the topic is, at least generally, of this novel. Now keep in mind I wrote it about 12 years ago. It's about a pandemic, of all things. So with the knowledge that we now have, I need to make some changes to what I wrote. So that's actually kind of exciting to be able to put in some more true-to-life things, even though it was certainly an unpleasant thing for all of us to go through. You may be wondering, why would you write about a pandemic back then? Well, at the time I was working as a communications officer at Columbia University Medical Center in New York city, got to meet a lot of incredible people— Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel Prize winners. And one of the people I spoke to was the head at that time of the immunology department, and they studied viruses, of course. And I was talking with him, and he said, you know, if a virus breaks out somewhere in the world, they send it to us, and within 48 hours we know exactly what it is. I was like, wow, that's pretty interesting. And then I got to thinking, what if that wasn't true? What if there was a type of virus where that wasn't true? So, uh, that's kind of what my book is about. I also made progress on a wonderful offer that I'm putting together for coaches. I'm really hoping that they love it as much as I do. It's the thing maybe that's been brewing for a while that has been wanting to come to the surface. I don't know. Tune in tomorrow and also tell me what you're up to in the comments. Thanks so much for being here.
