In this vlog, Mary Schiller records Day 24 of her 30‑day "Following My Dreams" challenge from her Paris apartment on July 31, 2024. She shares personal updates—working on a novel rewrite and enrolling for an A2 French exam in October—while describing the sweltering heat and her home environment. Mary reflects on a recent online leadership class that linked personal frustration to poor leadership, and she illustrates this with concrete examples: the Olympic broadcasts that omitted medal ceremonies and suffered confusing commentary, and a corporate survey she found insulting due to delayed and poor communication. She uses these observations to examine her own journey of self‑leadership, questioning what a great leader would do in various situations, and urges viewers to identify areas where they can stop settling for mediocrity and step up. The video ends with a call for audience reflection and comments, expressing gratitude for the community’s support.
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Hello, bonjour, it's Mary, and it is day 24 of 30 Days of Following My Dreams. It is the 31st of July, 2024, the 31 juillet 2024, and you may notice that I'm in a slightly different setting today, and let me just briefly explain why. I am in my downstairs of my apartment. My husband is upstairs working. It is really, really hot here today in Paris. I feel so sorry for the Olympic athletes and even the spectators who have to be outdoors today. It was really bad yesterday, but I was traveling and things, so it didn't affect me as much. But today there was just no way I was gonna go out in this heat, so here I am talking to you from my dining room table. With my kitchen in the background. So if you hear a buzzing noise in the back, it's an air conditioner and a fan. Actually, there's another fan over there too, and an air conditioner upstairs. So today was interesting so far. It's about 2 PM. I have gotten some work done in that I worked on my novel rewrite again. I want to do some more of that after I make this video for you. I also signed up for the A2 exam, so that will happen in October. Very excited about that. So I'm going to put the pedal to the metal, as they say, and keep studying for that exam. So that's really cool. And then there was something else that happened today that was really, really interesting and rather profound. And so I wanted to share that with you in this video. I had signed up for a class with someone online, and I signed up for this class way before I knew that I was going to be going to the Olympics the past couple of days. So I wasn't able to join the first couple of sessions live. So this morning I decided to sit down and listen to the two sessions that had been recorded. They were 1 hour each, and one of them was specifically about leadership. And this person said something that was really, really interesting and rather profound, which was that if we are ever feeling some frustration related to something or someone or some entity, it's always because of poor leadership or leadership that is less than it could be and certainly less than it should be. And the speaker gave a couple of examples of that. But I really quickly came up with my own examples. I had one of these days where, you know, that phrase, I got up on the wrong side of the bed. That's basically been me today. Like, my frustration and irritation levels are just super high for whatever reason. It doesn't matter. But so the other thing that I wanted to do this morning was I wanted to watch the Olympic medal ceremony for the women's team gymnastics. I thought it would be really cool because the US won, and then I believe it was Italy came in second, and they'd never done that before. I was like, oh, it'd be really fun. So I went back to the replay from yesterday because I didn't get to see all of that. I got to the end and they didn't show the medal ceremony. I was like, Well, that's weird. Are they just not showing these? And then this morning I was interested to watch the triathlon since they finally cleared everyone to swim in the Seine. And again, I was watching the women's triathlon, got all the way to the end, and they didn't show the medal ceremony. And not only that, but during the women's triathlon, I found myself terminally frustrated by the poor commentating. It was like, it was impossible to know who I was watching on screen a lot of the time. Is this the leading group? Is this the chasing group? Like in the bikes, it was just so frustrating that I had to leave the room several times because I was just like, I can barely watch this. It's so poorly done. And so when I listened to this speaker talking about leadership, I was like, well, there's an example of poor leadership. Whoever was in charge of putting on this particular event, maybe the triathlon, or even more broadly, like, aren't you assuming that your audience might want to see some of the medal ceremonies? You know, that seems like an example of poor leadership. Another thing that happened this morning that was an example to me of poor leadership was I received a link to a survey from a company that I do business with. And frankly, I found the survey to be insulting because this company has made some changes recently, and it would have been great if they had asked these questions 6 months ago or even a year ago. And it seemed so, like I said, insulting that they were asking me this now. Especially when there's been zero communication going on, uh, in the interim. It just really struck me as another example of bad leadership. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I myself have worked very hard over the past few years to step up and be a leader, and I am in a continual process of doing that. Even this series of 30 Days of Following My Dreams and documenting it every day on YouTube is part of my quest to raise my game as a leader. I could have just done the 30 Days of Following My Dreams on my own and maybe send out some updates to the wonderful subscribers on my email list. But I asked myself the question, well, what would a good leader do? And I said, well, a good leader would document this and share it publicly. So, every time I'm presented with an opportunity or a new idea comes to me, I'm asking myself that question. What would a great leader do in this situation? What would somebody who wants to make their voice heard because they have something to say and they want to encourage people to do the same? What would that person do? What would she do? And so, that's the question that I would like to put to you today. Where in your life can you be a stronger leader? And I don't necessarily mean a leader for other people, although that's sort of a natural consequence, but more like self-leadership. Where can you stop settling for mediocre and step up? I have mentioned this before, I think in this series even, where I see so much mediocrity. And I am not pointing a finger at anyone else. I'm also looking at myself here. Where am I settling for less? Where am I buying into the story that asks us to be mediocre? Where— oh yeah, I think I spoke about this in yesterday's video, actually. You know, where am I buying into the idea that we can just sort of skate along and stay under the radar and everything's going to be fine and, you know, just get the bare minimum and don't shoot too high and You know, where am I still listening to that nonsense? Because that's what it is. It's absolute nonsense. And I don't want to listen to that anymore. And I'm wondering if you're feeling the same way that I am. I am not knocking people who make entertainment, for example, or who are making funny memes and whatnot, but I don't want to be part of that conversation. That's not what's fulfilling to me in life. You know, yes, I like the cute cat videos too. I'm a cat person. I love all that. But there's so much more that we could be saying and doing that will affect real change in this world. And so I myself am looking very intently at my own work, at my own writing, at my own videos, at anything that I am putting out into the world, and asking myself Is this what a leader would do? Is this what an effective leader, a stellar leader, would do? Is this activity that I'm engaging in something that is enriching not only me but the rest of the people on the planet? You know, we're in a position, you and I, where we have advantages that many people around the world don't have, and yet we are basically squandering our time you know, scrolling through whatever we're scrolling through and not really asking ourselves, what can I be contributing that will raise the level of this conversation, that will lead this conversation in a direction towards what we really want for the world, for humanity, for everything else? So I realize that the topic of this video may seem a bit heavy or heady or however you want to put it, But this is what is on my mind on this day in this challenge, and I am going to continue to look at myself from this vantage point, and I would love for you to do the same and share your thoughts in the comments. I also want to add that I have so appreciated you following along in this journey. It's meant the world to me. So thank you so much for being here, and I will see you tomorrow. À bientôt!
