Is This Lie Holding You Back? Then let's fix it!

Hello, bonjour, it's Mary Schiller, also known as Mary in Paris. I am coming to you today from the lovely Jardin du Luxembourg, which is not hard for me to get to from where I live, and I love coming to this park. It's absolutely beautiful, and it's very, very big, which means that I can often find a quiet spot to myself. But it is lunchtime here, so that means that you will be hearing park sounds like people and birds looking for food scraps and a little bit of breeze that's happening right now. I was inspired to take a seat for a few moments and talk with you about a major lesson that I have learned since following my heart's desire to live in Paris. And it's something that is really big. I mean, not to get too dramatic here, but it's a very, very big realization that I really wish everybody could have. And that is that we have been conditioned to think that if we go in the direction of our dreams, if we live the life that we really want to live and we pursue our passions with gusto and basically just say, you know what, if it doesn't fit me anymore, I'm letting go of it and that's that. I am done with compromising. I'm done with saying yes when I mean no and no when I mean yes. And, you know, I'm giving self-permission to really be myself and be authentic. We have this idea that if we do that, that our lives are going to become incredibly unstable and that we're going to lose all our money, that we're going to lose our relationships, that we're gonna have basically chaos going on if we decide to do that. Most of us have been taught from a very young age, from all sorts of people and places, that stability is the ultimate, right? Stability. We want financial stability, want relationship stability, we want home stability, we want all kinds of stability in our lives. And following our passions, our heart callings, as I like to describe them, looks like the complete opposite of that for most of us, doesn't it? We are told to go get the stable job. We're told to find a home and purchase it and live in it forever. And nowadays that's not as common, but it's still at the root of what a lot of us have been taught. And what I have discovered, which is so a breakthrough for me, it's hard for me to even describe it to you, but I'm going to do my best, is that when we actually live the way we want to live when we do what we want to do, when we go where we want to go, when we stop constraining ourselves, guess what happens? We don't need this quote-unquote stability anymore because we are stability. We start to discover that in everything that we do, in everything that we pursue, in every direction we go, We are the stability that we are craving, that it doesn't come from a house, it doesn't come from money, it doesn't come from a job, it doesn't come from a relationship, doesn't come from anything. It's already in us. We are it. It's not just that we have stability, it's that we are this stability. What this means is is that when we go in the direction of what we really want, we start to experience this innate stability more and more and more, so that taking bigger leaps, if you will, doesn't seem so scary anymore. Any fears that we have start to really fall into the background to the point where they're barely audible. And are completely inconsequential because we know that we are the stability that we were seeking before. This is huge. This is huge because I like to say, you know, we are the net. When we are jumping into something, the net isn't something that has to appear in some way, like stable job or whatever it is. No, we are the net that we are jumping into. How this has played out for me has been really interesting because I have done lots and lots of things that I never thought that I would be able to do because I very quickly recognized that all I needed was within me, that I didn't have to worry about not having an answer to a question because I could look back on my life and see that I already had that. I always had an answer to any question or challenge that came up. So for example, going through the process— processes, I should say— of living in a foreign country, you have to take a lot of steps, and they can look daunting. But the truth is that even though some people might see our lives as unstable because we have immigrated to another country, we are living on a visa that needs to be renewed every so often, and, you know, all of these other things, none of that feels unstable anymore. It feels like something I've done and something that I can continue to do. I'm sure that you can think back on your life and recall examples of when you did something for the first time and you didn't know if you could do it, but you did. Maybe you stumbled through whatever it was, like I'm continued to do with the French language, but you still did it and you felt fine when you were taking part in the activity or whatever it was. That's exactly what I'm talking about. So if you are kind of falling in line with this narrative that says if you follow your dreams, your life will become unstable and, you know, you won't feel secure anymore and all of that. That is just not true. It's absolutely false. I truly wish that I could shout this message from the rooftops because it's made all the difference. Whenever I have gone in the direction of something that I didn't know or understand or whatever, and I had that rush of excitement— and, you know, other people might call it fear. I don't really even call it that anymore. To me, it just looks like life now. But whenever I'm going in the direction of something that is new and unknown and, you know, I'm about to discover something, I don't feel unstable. I know that I am stable. Me. I am stability. I am all of the answers that I need. I am the solution to any challenge that comes up. And so, you know, the idea that we have to somehow give up on what we want in order to have stability. It's just not true. I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine a while back who was saying that he could never live the way I do because he needs stability. And I really wish I could have explained this idea to him, but in the moment it didn't feel like the right time to have that kind of conversation. And so I just let it go. But even with finances and everything else, you always have what you need when you need it. Again, we have this idea that we have to somehow hoard stability in the form of money or anything else that we might feel the need to do that with. And stability is not found out there somewhere. It's you, it's me, it's innate, it's not going anywhere. So if that's something that has been keeping you from following your true course in life with the things that are calling to you to do, please, I encourage you to let go of this notion that somehow if you do that, everything will go crazy and things will be unstable and you won't be able to handle it and there'll be chaos. You'll find that it's just the opposite. I'm living proof of this. So many things have improved in my life since I started to say no to things that I no longer want and yes to the things that I do want. My relationship with my husband has improved. My ability to generate income from something I love has improved. My overall health and all of that has improved. And I don't think it's a coincidence. I think it's because this is how you and I are meant to live. We are not meant to continually push down and push down and push down these things that we want, and we're not meant to fall into this story that what we really want is stability and that's what we should strive for. It's just not true. We don't need to strive for anything that resembles stability or safety or security because we are those things. Again, we don't just have those things, we don't just have stability, security, safety. We are those things. So today, if you do one thing, let it be something that seems a little scary to you, that seems like, ooh, this is really something I want to do, can I do it? Do it, whatever it is, even if it's something really small, just do it. And you'll see that instead of rocking the boat with it in a bad way, you're rocking the boat in the best way possible because now you're discovering more and more of who you really are, and that's what it's all about anyway. Thanks so much for being here. I'd love to hear your comments. Please share them with me, and I invite you to subscribe before you leave. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye for now.