In this 10‑minute solo video recorded in a sunny Paris park, Mary Schiller (age 64) reflects on the concept of "re‑starting" one's personal and professional life. She explains how, after a decade of life and business coaching, she realized she had been operating in a role that didn’t feel authentic—essentially living inside a box built by external expectations. By honestly assessing her innate gifts—writing, editing, teaching, and technology—she decided to shift her focus from coaching to leveraging those strengths, especially through ghost‑writing "authority mini‑books" for clients and launching new Amazon‑based offerings. Mary shares the excitement of seeing clients succeed with these mini‑books, describes the emotional journey of letting go of an old identity, and emphasizes that everyone already possesses the capability to restart and rebuild without needing to conjure new self‑belief. She acknowledges fear and doubt as natural, encouraging viewers to simply acknowledge those feelings and keep moving forward. The video ends with a clear, empowering call‑to‑action: you have permission to restart now, and you can create the life you truly want.
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Hello, bonjour, it's Mary Schiller, also known as Mary in Paris, and I am recording this video today on the most glorious day here in Paris. It's absolutely beautiful, not a cloud in the sky pretty much, or the ones that are there are beautiful, and I am in a park that I used to frequent all the time when I was living in this particular neighborhood and I was running an errand over here today, and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna sit down in this park and record a video for you about a topic that has been on my mind for quite a while, and I haven't talked about it, at least not as openly as I'm about to. So what is this topic? It has to do with restarting. Re-starting. If you're in you're in a place right now where you feel like you have been doing business or living in a way that doesn't totally feel like you, it's okay to restart. It's okay to stop, and then it's okay to restart. And what do I mean by restart? Well, I'll just share my own experience with you. My own experience of this is that within the last few months in particular. This has been brewing for quite a long time, if I'm brutally honest about it. It's probably been brewing for about 2 to 3 years. But in the past few months, I've realized that if I am going to continue working for myself, which I really want to do because I enjoy it and I need the income and it's fun and exciting and all those things, I have to get real with who I am and what I'm about and what my skills are. Because I think a lot of us, especially if we're trying to work for ourselves with our own business as a solopreneur like I am, I think a lot of us get stuck in a box that doesn't actually feel like us, that feels like something someone else has built and told us that we have to squeeze ourselves into until it becomes so uncomfortable that we either quit or we feel like quitting or we're just miserable, and we're trying to continue to follow these rules that people have set out for us. But in actuality, it's never going to work, or it might work for a little while, and then you realize, you know what, this just isn't me. I, I can't live like this. I can't work like this. I can't try to earn money like this. And you end up feeling very much like someone who is not living authentically, and that is not what we want. Obviously, we want to live as our true self We want to express ourselves. We want to spend our days doing things that we enjoy, not things that we don't like doing. And so for me, what that has meant is— I wouldn't say going in reverse, that's not what it is— but it's recognizing what my skills and talents and my innate gifts are. Those have to do with being a writer, being an editor, working with words, teaching people how to work with words, teaching people all kinds of other things related to technology and online courses and things like that. Those are skills and talents that I have been honing for more than 30 years now, which is crazy to think about. I am 64 as I'm recording this video for you, so that's definitely possible. But my point is that I have been coaching people for the last 10 years. I started in 2016. I started as a life coach, and then I kind of gradually went over to business coaching because I saw that I could help people in that way. I could help them get their coaching businesses off the ground, and I have thoroughly enjoyed doing that. I still have an amazing community on school called Calm Money Moves, but the focus of that community is going to start changing because I've seen that my skills need to be applied in a different way, a totally different way. What has been so exciting about this whole process of coming to this realization and now restarting is that I've seen how my skills can be used in a way that's unique, that is interesting, that is truly unlike anything anyone else is doing out there. I've been very jazzed by the results my clients have had from the mini books, as I call them, these authority mini books that I have ghostwritten for them. As I'm recording this, I am releasing something brand new which I will talk about in separate videos that has to do with writing your own mini book, because for me, having books like that on Amazon has been the most rewarding thing I have done in this business, not just in terms of money earned because clients have found me through these books, but because of the fact that they have impacted so many people in a positive way. And so when I look at myself, when I look at my talents, when I look at what comes naturally to me, it is everything related to writing, editing, creating, teaching. And those are the things that I am going to be relaxing into going forward, and I'm leaving the rest behind. I don't see myself as a coach anymore. I see myself more as the things that I just described. And the people who work with me will learn a different way of approaching business than what they're hearing elsewhere, because I have a different approach, and it has worked well for me, and it worked well for the clients who have started, for example, to use their books to build a foundation for their business. And so that's where I am starting from today. If you are wondering, you know, is it possible for me to let go of things that I've been doing? Is it possible for me to stop and then start again? Is it possible for me to build or rebuild something? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Course it's possible. We are so capable. We have no idea what we are actually capable of, and it's so exciting to me to be able to tap into that capability and creativity on a daily basis. If you really stop to look at yourself as a human being and what you have already achieved in your life, what you've done, you won't even believe it. If you were to actually write out all the things that you you have achieved. First of all, it would take the rest of your life to do that, but it's shocking how capable we are and how little we recognize that capability. That's another message that I want to get across to people in the coming months and years as I restart my business, is that we don't need to worry about things like self-belief or trust or any of those things because there is no reason we have to conjure those up. We have what we need, period. We always have. We've always had an answer to every challenge that we've faced. We've always been able to find a way to accomplish what we want to accomplish. We've always been able to emerge in some way, shape, or form from something that has been difficult, a situation that has been difficult, or whatever it is, because we're still here and we're still talking and we're still creating and all those wonderful things. It's an exciting time. Are there fears that come up now and then? Sure, but I don't care. That's normal and human and fine, and I embrace all of those feelings because it's what makes us human. We don't have to worry about that either. We don't have to wrestle with fear or doubt. We can just kind of wave at it, as I like to say, and thank it for showing up and just keep going. There's no reason to give it any more attention than that. And just know that all of those feelings, as strong as they are, are indicating your own power, the power that you have, the power that you're made of to create, to restart, to rebuild anything that your heart desires. So that is my message for you today, is that yes, it is possible to restart. It's possible to rebuild bigger and better. It's possible to have the life that you really want. You have permission to live the way you really want to live, and you can start right now.
