In this 30‑day self‑development vlog, Mary Schiller reflects on the midpoint of her "Following My Dreams" challenge (Day 15, July 22 2024) and shares three concrete lessons she’s learned. First, she emphasizes the need to "fight for your focus," urging viewers to own the responsibility for their attention, recognize when it drifts, and deliberately reset it through breaks or other activities. Second, she describes "active self‑listening," explaining that hearing an inner idea is not enough; one must act on it—she does this by maintaining Google Docs lists for novel ideas, video concepts, coaching offers, etc., ensuring thoughts are captured and later acted upon. Third, she discusses "breaking and replacing patterns," describing how she instituted daily 15‑minute slots for novel rewriting and French A2 study, mirroring how athletes create and adjust systems. By disrupting old habits and installing new, non‑negotiable routines, she builds supportive structures for her goals. Throughout, she mixes English and occasional French, uses personal anecdotes (WNBA, husband’s Hall‑of‑Fame award), and invites viewers to reflect on which tip resonates most.
Chapters
It is day 15 of 30 Days of Following My Dreams. The date is July 22nd, 2024, le 22 juillet 2024, and I just wanted to have a different kind of experience today, having a chat with you from my cozy loft space in my apartment. I was also asked to speak a little more French in my video, so I may sprinkle a bit in if I can remember to do that. So first of all, thank you for joining me for this whole process, adventure, journey, challenge— I'm not even sure what to call it. For today, I thought I would share 3 things that I have learned from this process so far that might be helpful to you. So numero 1, and I'm using the French way of saying de toi instead of like in the United States where we go, uh, excuse me, 1, 2, 3. So, numero 1, you really have to fight for your focus. Fight for your focus. I'm telling you, the way that the world is, at least the way that most of us live, we are tempted all over the place to be diverted from what we actually want to be doing. I have definitely noticed that during these first 15 days. In fact, it's probably the biggest thing that I've noticed is that even though I consider myself to be a very focused and disciplined person, I am still unfocused and undisciplined more than I really want to be. So this is something that has really gotten my attention, frankly, and has made me much more aware of how I'm spending my time. I talked about this before, but I just noticed that there are certain things that I come across online that take my attention away, and so I've had to really fight for that focus, to really let go of things that take my attention away from what I actually want to be doing with my life now. And it's so easy, so easy. I'm saying this because I have done it before this challenge, and I've certainly done it during the challenge. It's so easy to just dive down some rabbit hole online somewhere, and before you know it, you know, an hour has gone by and you're like, what have I been doing all this time? I haven't been doing anything that relates to what I say that I want in my life. This is ridiculous. And I don't mean to be judgmental. I have said this before, I don't listen to judgmental thinking. That's not what this is about. It's literally just about being aware of the fact that focus is our responsibility. It's really our responsibility. So if I ever catch myself putting that responsibility onto someone or something else, I immediately take it back and go, nope, that was me, that was on me. If my focus was diverted, that was something that I was responsible for, and I'm fine with that. I will take that responsibility. So basically what I have begun to do is just pay attention to those moments and those times when my focus seems to lag, and I ask myself things like, is it because I've been spending too much time on this specific project and I need to take a break? Then I take a break and I go do something else. I make myself some food, or I go outside, or whatever it is. And so I guess my biggest message around número 1, fight for your focus, is to accept responsibility for it and know that when you are feeling unfocused, you do have the ability to take control of that and bring your focus back to what is really important to you. Número 2, número 2, the This is a biggie, and it's something that I've been talking about at length during these videos, but I'm going to go into more depth right now, which is when we are trying to listen to our Self, capital S Self, and really hear what is calling to us to do, we have to listen actively. Listen actively. This is not a passive experience, in my opinion, because what can often happen is we will have an idea for something that occurs to us. I know that you've done this, and you're all excited about it in the moment, and then you just let it go. You don't act on it in any way at all. Well, to me, that's really the essence of living more from our true self is that we have to listen actively, meaning listen and then act on what we're hearing. Because if we hear something in our head or in our heart or wherever that space is within yourself, whatever that looks like to you, and we don't actually take any action on it, then it's going to stay there it's not going to go anywhere. Perhaps the timing isn't right for it, which is fine, but we need to do something with it. For example, I have a document in Google Docs with a running list of ideas that occur to me. If it's related to something specific, for example, this novel rewrite that I've been working on these past 15 days so far— it's got a long way to go still— I have a document just for my novel, and I'll— if I have an idea for something, I just open the Google Doc like on my phone or wherever I happen to be, and I write it in there, I type it in there, and then I know I have it. I have another list of ideas for YouTube videos. I have another list of ideas for coaching programs and offers and things like that, book ideas. So even if I can't act on it in that time frame of whenever it occurs to me, I'm still doing something with it. It's not just disappearing into the ether. What's been so interesting about this for me is that sometimes I have heard an idea within myself and I have acted on it quite fast, and then I will go back to one of these documents and I'll see it there from like 2 years ago. So just because we don't act on something immediately doesn't mean that we can't be active with it. I'm really hoping this is making sense because this is big for me. This is just big because we have so much beautiful potential living within us. And of course, we can't do everything because we don't live forever, although we can live forever. I'll talk about that in another video. That's something that's on my idea list, so stay tuned for that in another YouTube video. But we can be active with what occurs to us and not just say, "Oh, that's a silly idea," or, "Oh, I could never make that happen." Well, maybe you actually can. All right, are you ready for the third thing that I'm going to talk about in this video that I've learned? Numéro trois is break patterns, disrupt patterns, however you want to think about it. We are all in a rhythm every single day. And lots of times when people have told me, if I've been coaching them, you know, I feel like I'm in a rut, it's because they haven't broken a pattern that they have literally been living maybe for years. So this has been crucial for me over these past 15 days because before that I would have this idea of, oh, I'm going to spend 15 minutes working on my novel rewrite today. But I never actually did it. And setting this aim of giving myself time every single day to work on this novel rewrite has broken that pattern. It said to me, okay, then for the next 30 days, this is what you're doing every day. And I just accepted it. I said, okay, this is the way it is. And that's kind of the other piece of this, is when you break a pattern you simply decide there is no wiggle room here. This is simply the way that it is. Every day I spend at least 15 minutes working on my novel rewrite, or every day I spend at least 15 to 20 minutes working on my French for the A2 exam. The A2 exam, you know, whatever it is, we have to— once again, going back to what I said in Numéro 1, we have to take responsibility for breaking these patterns that aren't working well for us and then saying, okay, this is the new pattern and I'm going to stick with this no matter what. What can happen as a result of breaking patterns and setting up something new is you start to develop almost a new system that starts to work well for you. As you may know or may not, I am a huge basketball fan. I've been really enjoying the WNBA games. Games this season, and I was thinking about athletes. My husband is an athlete. He's actually receiving an award from his high school, uh, here in a few months for Hall of Fame presentation. But anyway, that's another topic. But I was thinking about how athletes don't just randomly do things. They have systems that they have found that work for them, and then when those systems and patterns stop working for them, they set up a new system, a new pattern that does work for them to stay in good condition and all those things that they need to do to be good at their sport. Well, you and I can do the same thing in any aspect of life where we want to make a change. It's not about success or failure. I've talked about this before too. It's not even about setting a goal. It's more about saying What can I do differently today? What new system or pattern can I put into my daily life that supports me, that supports what I want to be doing, that supports what's calling to me? So those are 3 things that I have learned, and I would love to know which one stood out most for you. Thanks for being here, and I will be back with you tomorrow with day 16. Au revoir, à bientôt!
