In this motivational talk, Mary Schiller, a coach and author of The Joy Formula, shares her personal journey from feeling trapped in corporate work to discovering that true freedom is a mental state, not a set of external circumstances. She recounts a pivotal moment in Central Park in 2015 when she realized that she was already free, regardless of her job, finances, or age. This insight led her to quit a restrictive full‑time position despite having little financial safety net, and to pursue freelance work, coaching, writing, photography, and travel. Schiller explains how detaching from the belief that money equates to security allowed her finances to “take care of themselves,” and how embracing this inner freedom has given her peace and purpose. At 54, she declares herself living proof that it’s never too late to live the life of one’s dreams, encouraging listeners to recognize their own innate freedom and act on their passions.
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Hello there, this is Mary Schiller coming to you live today with a brief talk that I have called It's Never Too Late to Live the Life of Your Dreams. And this topic is near and dear to me, so I will start by kind of explaining why. Before I do that, let me just say that I am a coach and I'm also author of a book called The Joy Formula, which you can find on Amazon. You can also find me online at my website, which is www.thedailyprinciples.com. I'll give you a little bit of background, and I think my own story kind of illustrates where I'm coming from on this whole topic of living your dreams and that it's never too late to do that. So for many, many years, I would say upwards of, I don't know, 25, maybe something like that, maybe, maybe a little bit less, maybe 20. I had this notion in my head that the only way I could really live the life that I wanted to live was by either finding my true purpose in life or by working for myself or some combination of the two. And what I was really looking for, I realized, was a sense of freedom. I really just wanted to be free, and I felt like all of the things that I had been doing, especially for work, were hemming me in in some way, that I couldn't really be myself. I just, I couldn't really do what I wanted to be doing with my time. And a lot of the messages that I was receiving from the world were indicating that to me. I found a lot of books and programs that promised me financial freedom or promised me freedom from, you know, working for someone else, and so that would lead me where I wanted to go. And so for all of those years, that's kind of the story that I bought into. Needless to say, I didn't get very far. I would try to follow various programs and I would try to, um, do what people told me to do in order to have that kind of freedom and live the life that I wanted to live, and it just didn't work at all. Then I found myself in a job that I really didn't like. I started out okay in like 2007. Things were all right for the first bit of time that I was there, and by 2013 for sure, I was really ready to do something else. I didn't feel like I was using my skills at all. I felt very constrained by the organization that I was working in, and, and so everything was kind of pointing towards I need to do something else. So I decided to try to start my own business on the side. And so I started a website and writing type of business and also some video. And I was making some headway on it, but it still wasn't working very well and it Instead of feeling like a joyful experience, it felt very pressurized, and I felt like I was working 24/7 and just wasn't enjoying myself very much. So at some time in 2014, I called that quits, and I just said I'm not going to do that anymore. At the beginning of last year, 2015, I made a decision that that was the year I was going to leave that organization that I was working for. And I need to maybe say that I am not a wealthy person by any stretch of the imagination. You know, what comes in the door goes out the door just as quickly to pay the bills. And I'm also now 54 years old. I was 53 when I made this decision that, you know, I really wanted to leave that organization and and try to do something else. And I was still feeling very hemmed in by this idea that, you know, if I could just get out of this job that I was in, that I would feel free and that my life would be what I wanted it to be. One day in the spring of last year, 2015, I remember it very distinctly. I was walking through Central Park on my lunch break from my job. The office where I was working was right across the street from the park, and I had a major realization that was so impactful that it really changed the course of my life from that day. And that's really what I want to share with you. What I saw in that moment was that any notion that I had that I wasn't free was completely and utterly made up. It was a bunch of thinking that I had been listening to that had just convinced me that I wasn't a free person, that I was somehow constrained by my situation or by how much money I had in the bank. And it just hit me like a bolt of lightning that actually I'm free right in this moment. I thought to myself, if I don't want to go back to that office right now, I don't have to. If I wanted to go home, grab my passport and a couple of personal items and head to JFK, and buy a plane ticket somewhere using my credit card, I could do that. I realized that I could spend that afternoon taking photos with my iPhone or going home and working on a book project. I, I just suddenly saw that there was no limit to what I could do, even in just that moment. And this incredible sense of release and freedom just flooded into me because I saw so clearly that it wouldn't matter if I had been in a prison cell in that moment. I could still feel a sense of freedom because freedom only ever comes from one place. And that's from my own thinking. If I see myself as not being free to live my life the way that I want to live it, that's only because I'm listening to some momentary thinking right then that's telling me that. And so I also started to see this sense of freedom related to finances. You know, we're told that we need to have a certain amount of money in the bank, I guess, to have quote-unquote financial freedom. And I realized right then, well, there are plenty of people who travel the world who have almost no money. They just figure out a way to do it, and it happens for them. There are plenty of people who have far less than I do in terms of financial support and are able to live the lives that they want to live. So why isn't that possible for me? Well, the answer was, of course it is. So what happened after that day was kind of amazing, and I really attribute it to this realization that freedom is something we all have. We're just sometimes not seeing it because we're listening to thinking that tells us otherwise. Shortly thereafter, I was hired by a company to do some freelance work, and about a month after that, they offered me a full-time job which had a lot of things about it that I was attracted to, including the fact that the work itself was very interesting, the company was interesting, and I could do the work from anywhere. So suddenly my location wasn't even a constraint, and that was kind of amazing in and of itself as well. And then something interesting happened, which was about 5 months into that job, I realized that it wasn't the right place for me. There were some things that just didn't fit well with me and with my sensibilities, and I made a decision that I couldn't stay there. And this was a particularly interesting decision because I didn't have much savings in the bank. My husband had also not been working for several months due to a family situation where he had to quit his job and go be with a relative. So I was leaving that job with, when I say very little safety net in terms of cash, that would be putting it mildly. But something interesting has occurred since I did that. I had no fear about it. I had no misgivings about it. And ever since then, that was in late January, I have spent all my time all my time doing things that I really want to be doing, talking with amazing people, writing interesting projects including my own, engaging in coaching with some wonderful clients, creating things that I've always wanted to create, doing photography, Planning some interesting trips coming up. And the amazing thing is, since I haven't been worried about the finances, the finances have somehow taken care of themselves. And I think it's because I no longer have any attachment to this notion of freedom and security with how much money I have in the bank. And without that concern, I truly have felt the freedom that is innate within all of us to do what we really want to be doing. I woke up this morning and I felt such an amazing sense of peace because I realized that 'Even if this were my last day on Earth, I would be doing something that I enjoy doing, which is, in my case, helping others by sharing an understanding of the principles behind our experience.' And I thought to myself, you know, I may be 54, almost 55, but I am living proof that it's never too late to live the life of your dreams. All it takes is seeing that you're free to do that. You can get up tomorrow and do whatever you want to do. You can do whatever you want to do. There are no constraints. Even if it looks like there are constraints, it's only thought that is trying to convince you of that. And that may seem hard to believe. It may seem like kind of out there. But I can tell you from my own experience that once I saw the role of my thinking in this whole notion of what freedom was, and that freedom was something I already possessed and that each of us possesses, it changed everything for me. I hope that this talk has been helpful to you. I would love to hear your comments, so please feel free to post them here. And I hope you have a beautiful day and really can connect with this idea that it truly never is too late to live the life that you want to be living. Thank you so much. Talk to you again soon.
