In this short monologue filmed in front of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, life coach Mary Schiller challenges the common habit of obsessing over one’s emotions. She argues that feelings are merely the by‑product of passing thoughts, which we cannot control, and therefore they need not dictate our actions. Schiller recounts how this insight liberated her—freeing up the majority of her time, reducing worry, and allowing her to engage with life without waiting for a particular feeling. She also reframes traditionally “negative” emotions (grief, shame, fear, etc.) as natural parts of the human emotional spectrum, worthy of appreciation rather than avoidance. Concluding with a practical invitation, she asks viewers to try a day of not caring about their feelings to observe the resulting shift in behavior and mindset, and encourages them to share their experiences.
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Hello, hello. This is Mary Schiller, author and coach of MarySchiller.com, coming to you once again from Paris, France. I think I'm going to switch hands here and see if I can steady the camera. I am sitting in front of the Hôtel de Ville here in Paris, which I'll kind of scan the camera up and around a little bit. Which is the gorgeous government center here in Paris. And I wanted to talk to you for just a couple of minutes today about our feelings. And I have started to say something to people about feelings that many of them kind of look at me and go, "What are you saying, Mary?" And that is that I don't care what I feel anymore. I don't care what my feelings are anymore. And let me explain what that means, if you can hear me over the ding-dong of the bells. You know, we spend a lot of time as human beings worrying about our feelings. We invest a lot of energy in trying to feel a certain way and not feel other ways. And that gets us into trouble. It got me into trouble. You know, I made an assumption for decades of my life that if I felt anxious or stressed, that that indicated something about my health, that it indicated that I had a problem that needed to be fixed. And, you know, this is so rampant, not just with anxiety and stress, but with feeling sad or even depressed, that people assume that there is something wrong with them if they have a certain feeling or a certain set of feelings. And we also spend an inordinate amount of time looking for the causes of these feelings and trying to fix those causes. So we look at all kinds of things on the outside of us. We look at people in our lives that we view as toxic or dangerous or whatever. We look at circumstances and we make an assumption that they are causing our feelings. And, you know, we have professionals— sorry if you can hear some wind here— we have professionals asking us, well, how did it make you feel when so-and-so did this or so-and-so said that? And it's just not true that anything outside of us causes our feelings. So What is the cause of our feelings then? Well, it's pretty simple. It's thoughts. The only thing that ever generates any feeling in us is a thought. And since we can't control our thoughts, no matter what anybody tries to tell you, we cannot control our thoughts. Therefore, we can't control our moment-to-moment feelings either. So I concluded that it didn't really matter what I felt because it was coming from a passing thought that I had no control over. So what difference did it make what I was feeling in any given moment? And I cannot even begin to tell you what a difference that realization has made in my life. It freed up about 90% of my time to start doing things that I wanted to be doing because I wasn't waiting for a specific feeling to show up before I took some action on something. It freed up a lot of worrying because I was no longer worried about anything I was feeling. It didn't matter anymore. And it got me looking towards what is real, which is what's underneath all of those thoughts and feelings that we have from moment to moment, and allowed me to appreciate those human feelings more as well. I started seeing all of the ones that we view as negative or bad, like, you know, grief or sadness sadness or shame or regret or all of those as simply part of this beautiful spectrum of human emotion that we have been given as a beautiful gift just for being here and just for being human. And I started to appreciate all of them and kind of reveling in all of them and not fearing any of them, including fear. I also started to realized that there was a much bigger element to life than simply my passing thoughts and feelings, that there was something way past that that I could pay attention to and listen to and, and enjoy. And that's what's beyond those thoughts and feelings. So I'd like to just ask you to see if just for one day you could stop caring what you felt, because your feelings don't actually matter all that much. They're reflecting a passing thought that you have that isn't you, that isn't a reflection of you or the quality of your life or anything like that. It's simply a passing thought that you cannot control. And just see what occurs if you stop caring what you feel, if you stop worrying about what you feel from day to day and moment to moment, and see what starts to happen in your life. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments, so please feel free to post them wherever you're watching this video. And thanks so much for joining me. Talk to you again soon.
