There are no rules

Hey, am I actually live on YouTube? I have not done a YouTube live in ages, and I couldn't see the preview before I jumped on, so I'm adjusting myself here a little bit. So I have had so much on my mind these last few days, and I just decided it would be fun to come on YouTube and do a really short live video where I share one of the big things that I have been thinking about these last few days as I have been putting together a new program. And that is the fact that I don't know why everything looks crooked, but you'll have to forgive me for that. I guess I'm a little crooked today. Um, The thing that has been on my mind so much these past few days is the fact that we live by so many rules that don't make any sense. And I started realizing, you know, what if actually there aren't any rules and we've just been kind of going along to get along in a lot of aspects of life where we don't have to, where we can make different decisions. I was thinking back to 2016 when I was faced with a big decision in my own life. And that was very simply, do I venture out on my own and try to start a coaching business even though I had no experience as a coach, no training as a coach, no idea what a coaching business even looked like. I wasn't even sure how people charged for coaching. I had no knowledge of that whatsoever. I thought, do I go out on my own and try to do this? Or do I go the safer route? What looked like the safer route, which was to go get a different job because I had lost my job. And what was even more interesting about that moment was I was looking at it and said, set of circumstances that really looked bad. Like, you don't want to start a business with almost nothing in savings. My cat is causing problems over there, as cats will do. Starbuck! Hey, kitty! You know, you don't want to start a business without any real savings. You don't want to start a business with no backup plan. You know, most people would have looked at my set of circumstances and said, there is no way in the world that you should be starting a business as a coach. That's ridiculous. And I just said at the time, well, you know what, screw it. I'm doing this anyway. I know it's risky. I was 54 years old at the time. I didn't have any kind of retirement. I had nothing. I mean, literally. And I just was like, you know, I can't keep living under these weird, bizarre rules that society says I need to live by. I can't keep on pretending that I like going to work every day. I can't keep pretending that I want to do a certain type of work when I really actually don't want to do that anymore, just because it looks like the same option. And so I just took the leap and went full force into having a coaching business, and I've never looked back. And yet what I see over and over and over again in people that I talk to is this sense that it's not safe to do what is calling to you. That you have to stay in the box that you have created for yourself because that is the safe choice. That's the choice that society says you have to stay in. This is particularly true in the United States. I see people in jobs and all kinds of work situations that they really don't like because it looks like the safe option in terms of income, retirement, health benefits, all those sorts of things. And I am here to tell you that if you want to make a different decision, if you want to break the rules— because there are no rules— if you want to make your own rules, the answers will become obvious to you. The steps that you need to take will become obvious to you. And the reason I know this is true is because that is what life presents to us all the time, right? We have this idea that we've got to know the how before we can take a step. We have to know the entire how process, you know, from today through the next 5 years. You know, how am I going to do blah, blah, blah? That's not the way life works. The way life works is you make a decision and you take a step forward based on what you know right then. And then the next step after that becomes obvious. So whenever I see somebody struggling to really break out of a situation that they don't like, when I see them, you know, really tamping down their deepest desires and really being afraid to break the pattern, to break the rules that they have set for themselves and that society has set on them, I just want to say you will have the answer the moment you need it. The moment you need to know the how, the how will appear to you, because that is how we are designed as human beings. We always know the how when we need to know the how. You can look back at your life, I know, and see many, many, many examples of this. I certainly can too. I'll give you one example that I always think of, which was when my daughter was 5 or 6 years old. I was a single mom at the time and working a lot, and I said to myself, at— by the time she's 12, I want to have some kind of work situation where I can be home in the afternoon to help her with homework or to take her to after-school activities, because it felt like that age 12, 13, through high school was really crucial, and I wanted to be home. At that point in time, I had no idea how that was going to happen. None at all. I was working full-time, I was going to graduate school, and I was taking care of her and doing— I had a ton of responsibilities, and I didn't know how that was going to happen. No clue. Almost to the day, almost to the day when she turned 12, I had set up my life so that I was teaching online for a university, actually a couple universities, and also working as an instructor at my local university with a schedule that I could adjust depending on what I wanted. So I taught classes early in the morning, and then I would come home, do all my online things, and I would be done by the time she was home. Now, when she was 6, there was no way that I could have envisioned that path. But what happened was, along the way, every time something came to me that looked like an interesting possibility, I said yes to it, having no idea whether that was going to lead me exactly where I wanted to go. I didn't know. But this is how life works. And yet we forget this over and over and over again. We forget that when we set our mind to something, when we decide this is the thing that I want now I'm done with this old thing, I want something new, the how becomes apparent. Another example I can share from my own life is I was in this job that I really disliked, and for the longest time I kept thinking, well, the only way out of this job is to start my own thing, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. Confused about that. I had tried to start a business before and it didn't And I just didn't know what to do. So I just kept on this treadmill in this job and think, well, if I can't come up with the perfect business idea, then I'm going to just die and pop, I guess, in this cubicle. And so I was like, well, that's not good. And then one day I was like, hey, wait a minute, there are other ways out of this job. I could go into another job. I could do some sort of freelancing something or other until I figure out what I'm doing. And as soon as I had that idea, I'll never forget it. It was like within a few days at most. It might have even been the next day. I came across something online rather quote unquote randomly that was a freelance job. I interviewed, I got this freelance role. Soon after, they offered me a full-time job, and that's how I exited the old job. And so that job that I went into didn't end up working out. That was the job that I lost. But by that time, 6 months later, I knew that I wanted to be a coach. I was like, this is really calling to me. I want to talk to people about these really important concepts, and I want them to change their lives. And this is really meaningful to me. And so I knew at that point that that was what I wanted to do. So again, I didn't know how all of that was going to happen or who was going to show up for me or anything. But this is the trap that people get themselves in that I want us to break. Is that you have kind of been living— if this is you— in a set of rules that don't make sense for you anymore. And what I'm trying to explain here is that there aren't any rules. The only rule, if you will, is for you to listen to what is calling to you to do and to not worry about the how, because the how will make itself known as soon as you get there. That is how things work. So I would love to hear your comments about this because I think the, the piece of this that just gnaws at me every day is I see people all the time who are not living the life that they really want to live because they are living by an old set of rules, an old set of boxes that don't work for them anymore. And yet they are so afraid to break free of that and to actually say and do the thing they want to do, say it first of all, and then actually start the process. And what it seems to me is missing here is that we don't live or operate as linear beings in this way. There is no step-by-step formula to anything. Except that the steps will make themselves known when we need to take them. That is all that we ever need to know. So thank you so much for watching this video today. Please feel free to share your comments. If there is anything that I can do for you, don't hesitate to reach out. I'm just a direct message away on Instagram, @maryschiller, or you can always email me, mary@maryschiller.com. Thanks so much for watching. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye for now.