In this video, Mary Schiller records a casual, vacation‑side monologue from Kauai, Hawaii, in which she shares a pivotal insight that transformed her life. She observes that Western self‑help culture obsessively focuses on fixing "my life"—a narrow, self‑centered perspective—by pursuing better relationships, less anxiety, more money, etc. Two and a half years ago she realized that this "my life" does not truly exist; instead, there is a vast, infinite "Life" (capital L) that she is part of. Using a beach‑sand metaphor, she explains that fixating on individual grains (problems) limits experience, whereas looking up at the whole expanse reveals that every grain is acceptable. This shift led her to abandon all self‑help techniques, books, and PTSD management strategies, discovering that simply being present within Life provides a calmer, more fulfilling experience. She recounts her personal history with PTSD, noting that dropping self‑management practices made her feel better, and she now views mental‑health labels as unnecessary. Mary invites viewers to reflect on this perspective, share their thoughts, and connect via comments, email (mary@maryschiller.com), or her website, where she offers books, free audios, and other resources. The overall message is that the quickest, simplest way to improve one's experience is to recognize that one is already part of Life, not a separate entity needing constant fixing.
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Hello, hello! It's Mary Shiller, author and coach of MaryShiller.com, coming to you today not from my usual Paris, France, but from Kauai in Hawaii where I am on a vacation with my husband for the next— oh gosh, I guess we've got about 10 days or so left. And it's been a really, really nice time that we've had so far. We've explored some parts of the island and we've gone snorkeling, and we're going to do that again in just a few minutes. Let me just take a quick spin with the iPad here to show you where I'm staying. There's a nice pool over here, lots of palm trees. Of course, they're ubiquitous here in Hawaii and very beautiful. Hi Erna, good to see you. Thanks for joining. And I've got vacation hair, have not done a thing to it, and so whatever. So, um, on In the title of this video, I said if you want something like the fastest, simplest way to change your life, then you need to watch this video. And it's really been interesting because about— when was that? Maybe 2, 2 and a half years ago, something like that— I had an insight into something that absolutely profoundly changed my life and how I saw my problems and everything. It made everything so seem very, very different. And it was so simple. It was like one of those, duh, why didn't I think of this before kind of things. And I realized this simple fact: that most of our conversation in this Western culture is all about how to fix my life, how to feel better, how to have less anxiety, how to get over phobias, how to make more money, how to have better relationships, how to, you know, just have a better experience of life, how to be more creative, how to be more productive, how to be motivated, how to, you know, not be so judgmental of myself and other people, how to, you know, fill in the blank. There's a million ways you can fill in that blank, and it's all very focused on the self, little s, you know. It's all about me. Basically, how can I have better relationships? How can I have a better day-to-day life experience? How can I feel— fill in the blank— a certain way? How can I be happier? And this one day, I was sitting in my apartment there in the Bronx that we used to live in, and I realized, you know what, this isn't even my life. There is no my life. My life doesn't exist. Instead, there is this thing, this big thing called life, and I am in it. I'll say that again a different way. I realized that life, capital L-I-F-E, is this giant infinite no end to it, uh, creation, I guess I would say, that is infinite space, it's infinite creative potential, it's infinite possibility, it's all of those infinites. And I was born into it, and I don't see myself as separate from it. Just like, you know, I'm looking around at these trees right now, and they don't look separate to me from this overall life, this overall creation, however you want to describe it. Are there individual trees? Yes, there are individual trees, but each individual tree isn't focused on how it can be a better tree. Simply living according to life, capital L-I-F-E. And so I realized that all of those concerns that I have about how to have a better life was really focused on my kind of weird vision of what a little self life, my life, small m, merry life could be. And it seemed suddenly like a big waste of time because, you know, we were walking on some beaches yesterday and I realized that the way that I had been looking at life before I had this realization was like looking, getting down on the beach, the sand, and looking at each individual grain and going, okay, this grain of sand I don't like at all. I want to change that one. How do I change that grain of sand? This one over here is okay, so I'll leave that one alone. This one over here, I don't like it all, so I want to go away. You know, that is a really tough way to live when you're constantly picking up each grain of sand and trying to determine whether it suits you or not, whether you like it or not, whether you value it enough to keep it. Why not lift your head up and look at the expanse that's all around you, and not paying attention to what little blips you might have from time to time, and realizing that every single grain of sand in your life is okay. You know, this is coming from someone who used to feel anxious and stressed most of the time. And this is what changed that for me, was recognizing that just like those grains of sand, just like the waves on the ocean that are continually changing, I didn't have to concern myself with that at all. The more that I have lifted my head up to see where I actually am, the better experience I've had. And that entails doing no work on myself at all. No work at all. And so I really feel like in this Western culture conversation about self-help and, uh, self-development and trying to change the way we feel and get rid of certain feelings and all that, it's just a big waste of time. You are living in life, capital L-I-F-E, What do you care if from one moment to the next you're feeling different from the moment before that? Who cares? So what? Look up and look where you are. Look where you are. You know, that to me is the quickest, simplest, most magnificent way to have a better experience of life because it is showing you where you actually are. That these things that we have somehow decided are so important simply aren't. I realized for me— this is my own thing— that it wasn't important whether I felt stressed or not. It wasn't important whether I had post-traumatic stress disorder thinking or not. Didn't matter, because look where I was. I was in this magnificent creation that we've all just been born into without having to do anything. And the more I have simply looked around, which takes no effort to just look around and, and see where I am, the better experience I've had. The more I've been able to create things that have been helpful to other people, the more I feel like I've made a contribution in some way to this life, big L. And so I would love to know what you think about this. Like, if you could simply, you know, move your focus from down in the grains of sand up into life, what would happen? Vivian says it's a scary thought when scared not to pay attention to it. I totally get that, Vivian, and let me address that. Thanks for asking. I really believed that if I took my eye off the ball, you know, if I stopped doing all of these things to try to manage my experience and try to manage my post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought I would fall off a cliff. That's really how it looked to me. And just the opposite happened. Every single time I sort of dropped one of these self-management techniques, I felt better, felt more relaxed. I felt, um, just good. I don't even know how to explain it other than that. And so it's an illusion that we can control any of that anyway. And it's much nicer to live outside that illusion in, you know, in an experience of real life. And I realize that for a lot of people it can seem scary to stop doing those things because we've been told that we have to. I mean, I was told that. I was told that I would have to manage my post-traumatic stress disorder stuff for the rest of my life and that I would never be healthy. I would always have some level of this mental illness. It was all BS. It was all BS. Well-meaning people who were really trying to help me with what they knew, but they weren't seeing the fact that I was okay, you know, that we're all actually fine. We all have thoughts— yours, Vivian, and Erna, whoever else is watching here— Your thoughts are one flavor, mine are another, but they're all the same in essence. They're giving us an experience of being here. But that experience is like I said, examining these grains of sand. There's a much bigger experience that we can be having that could be, you know, 99% of our time if we simply looked up from all of that illusion that we can actually change those grains of sand. The sand into something else and saw where we actually were sitting and walking and breathing and just being. And so, you know, I ditched every self-help technique. I threw away all the books. I got rid of everything. And, you know, that's not to say that it can't be fun to do certain things like meditate or whatever you like to do, but those are not an answer. You're already the answer. There's no technique that you need to try. There's no management you need to do because you're the answer, and you always have been the answer. You take care of yourself because just like this tree I'm staring at, it knows what to do. It knows how to grow. It knows how to take nutrients from the soil. It knows how to support the birds and everything. Hi, Terry! And you're the same. You're no different from anything else. All you have to do is look around and ask yourself that question: am I any different from, from anything I'm seeing out here in nature, for example? No. How could I be separate from this? Because I'm in it. So that, in a nutshell, over these few minutes, is the quickest way to have a better experience of life— is realizing it's not your life. It's realizing that you've been born into life, big life. You're in it, and you're already serving your purpose simply by being born into it. And any fluctuations you may have in your kind of day-to-day experience are inconsequential. They make no difference whatsoever, especially when you can just look past them and see where you are. Look at where you are. I wish really wish— and I can get kind of teary about this— that somebody had told me this earlier. Somebody had told me this in my 30s when I, you know, was trying to get help and trying to figure out what was wrong with me, quote-unquote. I would have had a much, much different experience of my adult life than I had. But the thing that's so cool about this is that I can even look back on those 30 years or so that I was having these symptoms of what is called PTSD, even though I don't even believe in that anymore. I can look back at that and see plenty of times when I was enjoying life with a capital L, and I was experiencing the beauty of that and the wholeness of that and the health of that. It's very obvious to me now, so I have no regrets, although it would have been nice to have this insight sooner. So I would love to hear what you think, and please feel free to post a comment here wherever you're watching this video, or send me a note, mary@maryschiller.com. And also you can find me on my website at maryschiller.com. I have lots of books there and free audios and some audio programming and other things that might be of interest to you. So I'm going to go for a short walk, then I'm going to go snorkeling, and I will see you again soon. Oh, you're very welcome, Vivian. Thanks so much for being here. Bye now.
