In this on‑location monologue filmed in the Tuileries Gardens, Mary reflects on the nature of courage. She challenges the common self‑help mantra that courage must be built by repeatedly pushing beyond one’s comfort zone. Instead, she argues that courage is an innate, infinite quality present from birth; we never lack it, we simply choose whether to act on it. Mary dismisses self‑judgment about “being brave” or “not being brave,” suggesting that decisions are merely choices, not measures of courage. She illustrates her point with personal stories—fear of a high dive as a child and moving overseas—as examples of listening to oneself and acting, rather than summoning extra bravery. The core message invites listeners to reframe their internal dialogue: recognize that they already possess all the courage they need, stop judging themselves, and let that awareness guide new, authentic actions.
Chapters
Hello, bonjour, it's Mary in Paris. I am in the Tuileries. It is a busy lunch hour as I am sitting here, and I actually was not intending to film a video, but something's been on my mind for the past few days and I thought it might be helpful to you if I talked about it. So a few days ago, I was listening to someone talking about courage. Now, my whole adult life, people have called me brave, courageous, all those kinds of things. And it has always kind of hit me wrong. I don't really know how else to describe it, but anytime somebody said that to me, I was like, mm, it just didn't sit right with me. And so when I was listening to this person talking about courage, it reminded me of what I have discovered about courage in recent years. So this person that I was listening to was basically saying that in order to be more courageous, you have to take action that pushes you past your comfort zone, that that is the way that you develop courage, that, you know, it's not necessarily about doing something consistently, it's about doing something that's really, you know, outside your norm all that kind of thing. And that the more you do that, the more you break free of those supposed rules that you have set for yourself, the more courage you develop. And I was just like, no, I'm sorry, but no, I'm not even sorry. No, that's just not right. Because what I have discovered over the past few years is something completely different about courage that I don't hear many people talking about. The truth about courage is that you have all the courage you will ever need. You have all the courage you could ever imagine needing the moment that you are born. There isn't anything that you need to do to develop courage, to make it stronger. I don't even know what all of the buzzwords are on this topic, but what I know for sure, and you can prove this to yourself, I'm gonna tell you how in a second, you never lack courage. That's never a problem. Never, ever, ever. Here is how you can prove it to yourself. You can look back on your life and you can recall times when you needed a bunch of courage and it showed up for you. It just was there. That's how you know there isn't anything you have to do to develop courage or to make it stronger, build it up or anything like that. It's there when you need it. Now you may be saying, well, Mary, you know, what about times when I didn't do something because I was afraid to? Well, you just didn't do something. Like, do we have to put any sort of judgment on stuff like that? You just didn't do it. Like, for example, if you were like me when I was a little kid. At least at first, I was scared to death to jump off the high dive in the pool. Like, I was a very good swimmer, always have been, but I was not going to jump off that high dive. There was no way I was going to do that. And then, you know, eventually I decided, oh, you know what, this actually might be fun. And so then I did jump off the high dive and it was all great. I don't see that as lacking courage. I don't see that as something like fear taking over or anything like that. It just looks to me like I didn't do it at one point and I did do it at another point in time. And that's the end. If you've been around me at all, if you've listened to any of my talks or seen my videos, you'll know that I go nowhere near judgment. Like, we are just not about judging ourselves. That has no purpose whatsoever. We can simply say, I did something or I didn't do something, and that's it. We can just leave it there. So if you're saying, well, yes, there were times when I wanted to do something but I didn't because I wasn't brave enough, I don't buy into that story at all. You were brave enough. You just decided it wasn't for you, or whatever reason it was, you just didn't do the thing, whatever it was. So I would like to really shift the whole conversation about courage to something that is a lot less judgmental, that demands a lot less of us in a way, because there's nothing that we have to do to get more courage and to develop courage. We already have it. We already have all the courage we will ever need. What would happen for you if you started acting that way? You know, if you started to see, oh yeah, actually I have courage anytime I need it. Might you do things differently? Might you do certain things that you haven't done in the past because you thought maybe you couldn't? Well, now that you know that courage is innate and is infinite, How might things change for you? I can tell you how they changed for me, if it's of any interest. It helped me to make some massive changes in my life because I realized that all of the times that people pointed to my courage, supposedly, they were actually just pointing to me making certain decisions, listening to myself, and acting from what I really wanted to do. And to me, that's what life is for. If you're in a position where you can listen to yourself and you can act on what you're hearing, what's calling to you, then you don't need courage in order to do that. All you need to do is listen and act upon it. And when I have been told, oh, you were so courageous to, you know, move overseas or whatever, The reason why that doesn't sit well with me is because it doesn't take courage. It's simply listening to ourselves and acting on what we hear. You don't need to build up courage. You have all of the courage you'll ever need. You've always had it. It will always be there for you, and you can start to make different decisions now without any sort of self-judgment.
