In this YouTube monologue, Mary (recorded in Oxford) addresses viewers who feel the urge to make a change in their lives but are paralyzed by endless “what‑if” scenarios. She normalizes the anxiety as a universal human experience, arguing that because everyone goes through the same mental chatter, it need not be taken personally. Mary then introduces her core theory: when we first sense the desire to change, the change has already begun at a subconscious or behavioral level; we are merely catching up to it. She illustrates this with a personal example about expanding her YouTube channel, noting that she had already started creating more videos before she consciously declared the intention. Mary expands the idea to a broader biological perspective, reminding viewers that every cell, thought, and feeling is in constant flux, so change is inevitable and not something to fear. She concludes with a call‑to‑action, inviting the audience to share their own experiences of change and to reflect on the notion that change is already happening.
Chapters
Hello, bonjour, it's Mary, not in Paris, in Oxford on another gorgeous sunny day here. This is some kind of miracle how many days in a row we have had sunshine. And there's something that I know about you. I know this about you. You want to make a change. You want to make maybe a big change in your life, some aspect of your life. There is something bubbling up, there is something occurring, and you've got this thought of, I need to change this, I want to change this. Might be more than one thing, might be several things. And I also know that the other piece that's floating around in this idea of change is, oh my gosh, what if it's a disaster? What if this happens? What if that happens? What if it doesn't work out? What if, what if, what if, what if? Is that what's going on? It goes on for me too. That is a universal human thing. That what if blank happens if I change whatever— that is a universal human experience. And you know what's so beautiful about that? It means you can relax now because you don't have to worry about that anymore. That is a universal experience, meaning we all go through that process. When we are considering making some sort of change. And for me, that's quite a relief because it means, oh, it's not personal to me. So it means that I don't need to listen to whatever that personal narrative, that personal story is. I can just let that go on by, not pay attention to it, and go make the change I want to make. Pretty amazing when you think about the fact that you and I are having a unique experience around change in that we have our own ideas of what we want to change, but we're also having a universal experience of change, which is we feel nervous about it, we feel excited about it. And I find that so interesting. And I also find it interesting that any of us place any importance on those what-if-this, what-if-that kind of thinking because it doesn't mean anything. You have so many instances in your life that you can look back on where you made changes and you had all those what-if, what-if, what-if thoughts going on. Didn't matter, did it? You made the change and you dealt with whatever came afterwards. And sometimes it might have been close to what you expected, sometimes maybe not at all, In my experience, whenever I make a big change, I never know what's gonna happen. I think I do, but I never do. And so there's no reason for you to place any importance at all on those what-if kinds of thoughts. They don't mean anything. They are universal, and they can just sort of vanish into the ether. What's more important to pay attention to is that individual calling, that individual calling for what you want to change. And I have a theory about change that I'm going to share with you now that may really surprise you. In my experience, when we have this inkling of change, the change has already happened. What? Yeah, the change has already happened. We've already started to experience whatever the shift is. We've already even started to do the things related to the change, and we're just starting to become aware of it. The change has already happened and we're just kind of catching on to it. So that's another piece of this that I have found to be a big relief. It's like, oh, I want to make a big change in my business, for example. I want to spend more energy on YouTube. I want to develop my channel. I want to develop a big community here and have a lot more fun. Well, when I had that idea, I had already started making more videos. I had already started telling people what I was gonna do, and then I sort of proclaimed it out loud. So I'd love your thoughts on that below. Do you have that same sense that once you've kind of decided that you're going to make this change, the change has already begun? It's already become part of your Self with a capital S, and your kind of conscious mind has just caught up with what the change has already started to bring to you. I want this whole subject of change to be a lot less fraught because we are in a constant state of change. There is nothing about you in this moment that was the same as it was in the last moment, or since you started watching this video. Your cells are changing over. Your thoughts have changed. Your feelings have shifted. Your position in whatever you're sitting in or standing or whatever has changed. There is nothing about us that is ever in a state of absolute permanent stasis. We are always changing. Therefore, we don't have to worry about change. We don't have to be afraid of it. Sorry, I need to adjust my camera here for one second. There's a spider near me, and I am allergic to spiders. There we go. So we don't need to be so afraid of change. It's part of what we are. The change has already happened, it seems to me, by the time we're catching up to it. We can handle anything that happens after a change is made. We can make incremental changes, or we can make massive changes. It's all the same. How freeing is that to realize? Please share your thoughts with me. I'd love to hear from you, and I'll talk to you again soon.
