You have permission ... to say YES to life! (talk 1 of 4)

Hello there, it's Mary Schiller, author and coach of MarySchiller.com. I would love to know if you can see and hear me okay, so just give me a hi sign in the chat if everything— hi Mike— is going okay. I will just wait for a couple of comments there to make sure that everything is working. Can— hi, Mary. Can you all hear and see me? Okay, give me a yes. Yes, you can. Loud and clear. I just fall. Thank you. Okay, super. Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate that. Once again, I'm Mary Schiller, and I'm happy to welcome you to this call. Great. Thanks, Doug. Called You Have Permission. This is the first of 4 talks I am giving on this topic. And just really quick, I am using a new platform to deliver this talk, and so far I really like it. And it has an interesting feature which we can take advantage of, and you'll see next to the chat area— hi, Victoria— there's something called Ask a Question. So if you put a question in there, I can then answer it and click a little button. So on the replay, if you want to just jump to that question and my answer, you can do that. So that's kind of cool. So of course, I'll be responding to your comments that I see in the chat. But if you have a question that you'd really like to draw my attention to, because sometimes the chat goes by kind of fast, please go ahead and put it in that Ask a Question. Box and I will be alerted. Hopefully, hopefully I will. I'll, I'll keep an eye on things. So again, I want to welcome you to this talk all about You Have Permission. It sounds like— isn't that cool, Mimi? It's very cool. So first off, really quick, just let me know where you're logging in from. It looks like Victoria is in Ottawa. Where else are some of you logging in from? Hi Erna. London is— Lee is in London. Christine is in Ontario, very nice. Sarah is in Colorado. Mary is in Arizona. I know, Mike, what's going on with Hurricane Florence there? I hope you have your electricity stays working and everything. Erna's in the Netherlands. Catherine is in Norway. Yorkshire, Karen. Mimi is in the UK. Germany for Verena, yes. Portugal for Jesus. Ali, hi Ali, is in New Orleans. Gavin's in Ireland. Wow, we have quite the international group. Sue is from my native California. That's fun. Clifford's in Northern Ireland. Terry, hi Terry, is in Kansas City. Giselle's in Stockholm where some of my family is from and probably still live. I haven't been there in quite a while, so I'm not sure if they've moved. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you everybody, really appreciate that. I thought it might be fun to start with the reason why I decided to host these calls. As you may know, I have a book on this topic and I can show you the COVID of it. I don't know if you can— let's see, that'll show on my Kindle. Maybe it won't. Let's see. Nah, that's not really working. Well, I don't have a paperback version of it here, but anyway, it's called You Have Permission. And I realized that I hadn't really, hi, Graham, I hadn't really done any talks specifically on this topic of you have permission. The other night, a couple nights ago, I was out on a gorgeous walk here in Paris where I now live, and the sunset and everything was just beautiful, and people were in such a wonderful mood. And I realized, you know, I have never really taken the time to do a series of talks on the topic of You Have Permission, even though it's been a central part of what I've been doing the last several years, really, and professionally for the last 2 and a half years. And I wrote the book and published that last year, and I thought, you know, it's really time for us to have a discussion on this topic. And so I was really inspired to do it, and I decided I didn't want to wait. I was just going to set up the calls and we were going to meet and have a chat. So this is a very informal conversation. I don't have any PowerPoint slides. It's just you and me having a chat and you contributing to the conversation. So it's not just me yakking here for the next little while. And so I'm very curious to know before I start with what's been on my mind the last few days related to this topic. If you could summarize in a sentence what drew you to this conversation we're having today, is there something, for example, that you feel like you almost need permission in your life to do that you haven't done yet? Is there something that, um, you feel like you need someone else to give you permission to do? Uh, I know for me And that's how it always looked to me. It looked like there was somebody out there somewhere who was going to give me permission to do something before I could actually do it. So I'm very curious to know what drew you to this conversation today. This particular topic is you have permission to say yes. So I will get into that in just a moment, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. So please feel free to share. Christine, to stand up to my brother. Ah, very good. Sometimes there is someone in our life that we feel we need to maybe have a certain kind of conversation with, and, and we haven't felt like we had permission to say what was on our mind. And, and I can certainly understand that. Sarah says curiosity, same with Lee. Mimi, I have something I've been wanting to do for years. Oh, I'd love to know, Mimi, if you want to share, if it's not too personal. Hi Sue, believing that I don't, oops, really have permission, that it's just your idea. Ah, okay. That it's just something that's in your head but you can't actually make it come to fruition. I got it. Karen, presently I'm feeling limited, restricted. Having permission sounds liberating. That is the understatement of the century, Karen. I mean, really, that's a big reason why I'm hosting these talks. So thank you for mentioning that. Hi, Mike. It's evergreen advice I always forget about and need to be reminded of again. Well, it's funny you should say that, Mike, because I've been going through some of that myself where I was kind of looking at things in my life and going, is it really okay for me to do that? I don't know. And I thought, you know, I think I need a reminder even though I wrote a book on the topic and talk about this all the time. It helps me to remember this fact as well. So thanks for that, Mike. Jeanette, I feel I'm withholding me somewhere. I'm sure a lot of people on this talk or who are listening on the replay can relate to that. And Jeanette, if anybody can raise your hand if you feel like you're, like something in you is being held back or you're kind of unwittingly doing that to yourself and not kind of living to your fullest self. Anybody relate to that? Say yes or wave your hand. Victoria, to go beyond where my mother went and to do before she dies. Oh, wow. Well, Victoria, you hit on a nerve for me, and I'll come back to that. Actually, maybe I will make a note to come back to that because that was a biggie for me too. So yeah, a lot of people here. Yes, Mimi, Clifford, Verena, Karen, Nima can relate. Hi, Nima. Can relate to feeling like you're not living to your fullest potential. I don't really like to use that word because we have infinite potential, but that we're not really doing all the things that we want to do and we know that we could do, and we're kind of playing it safe. Maybe that's how we should say we're kind of playing it safe. Uh, hi Nima. Christine, to go forward, then go forward and then one back. Yeah, just follow to remind myself I want to leave the IT industry. Very good. Um, hi Jesus. I only knew about the 3 principles about 3 months ago. I'm still learning. That's cool. And I should, uh, put a brief pause in here because this has come up a couple of times already. So many of you are familiar with me, and you know that all of the things that I write about and coach people in and teach people about are based on something called the 3 principles. And if you're not sure what those are, if you've never heard of that before, totally okay. You don't need to know that to participate in this call and to get something from this talk. If you're curious about it, I would suggest checking out some of my videos on YouTube and also my books, because all of those are based in these principles and do have a way of explaining things rather simply in kind of plain language. So that's what I would recommend there. So, you know, it's, it's really interesting because I think many of us grow up with this idea that there are certain things that are simply off limits, that we're almost conditioned from a young age to see ourselves in a certain way, and that breaking out of that seems very bold and kind of scary. You know, we're asked from an early age, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I always kind of laughed at that because I had no idea. And to be honest, I still don't know. I'm not going to tell you how old I am, but I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm just kind of playing now. And I think that for many of us, we're kind of pigeonholed into some roles or some ways we start to see ourselves in certain ways. And the whole idea of actually following something that's calling to us that seems really maybe out of character, you might say, or kind of crazy, or, you know, no one would believe me if I told them I wanted to fill in the blank. You know, we kind of stop ourselves from going there. And what has been so liberating, as somebody mentioned a moment ago, for me is seeing that all of that stuff that I was engrossed in this whole idea of who I was and what type of person I was and what was possible for me and what wasn't possible for me, it, it very slowly started to kind of fall apart. I saw that I was listening to and watching a story about Mary that was completely fabricated. That there was actually no limit on what I could try to do in this life. You know, there was nobody telling me what I had to do or what I should do or what I couldn't do or what I— there was nobody saying that to me. The only person that was saying that to me was me. So that was a pretty big wake-up call. And I see your comment there. I'll get there one second. I remember having a conversation with a client a couple of years ago now, now that was really impactful for me. And she said to me, you know, I realized that I was following all these rules that I had to live by. And it was for her in a specific area of life. And she's like, I had all of these rules and I had to do this by this time of day and I had to do this next and then this and then this. And I had to be done by this time, you know. And all of a sudden she kind of put the pause button on and said, Wait a second, whose rules are those? Did somebody hand those down from on high and somehow I have to abide by them? And she's like, no, I just made them up. I just made them up. So I can unmake them up. I can just not listen to those anymore. And that's essentially what has begun to happen for me over the last few years is that I started to see through those made-up rules, those made-up ideas about what kind of person I was and what kind of person I wasn't. And I started to live with much more sense of freedom and liberation and realizing, you know, actually there's no limitations on me. All these ideas that I had about what I could do or couldn't do, this kind of prison, I had constructed it myself. And I could unconstruct it just like that. So let me go to Verena's comment here. It feels like having permission is like a door opener to new ideas. When I have the feeling of having an outrageous dream, it looks like I'm hitting a wall of not knowing the next step towards it. Yeah, it totally is like that, Verena. It's more like a simple way of allowing the door to open instead of having to bash it down with brute force. Let's see. I see a comment here from Michael. Anyone else having problems downloading? Oh, I am not having any problems. Let me just, let me just say Michael was saying that he's having some trouble with things interrupting the flow. So if anybody is, put a note in the chat box and let him know what the solution is. I'm not having any issues with that. So thanks for posting that question, Michael. So, okay, good, good. I'm glad things— I hope you figured that out, Michael. So, so I think what started to happen was that I started to kind of question all of these notions that I had about myself. And the more I started to question them, the more they seemed to have no substance to them whatsoever. The more I started to go, wait a minute, is that really true? Am I really the kind of person who blah, blah, blah, or who does this all the time? And I realized that all of those ideas were things that I had simply been listening to for a very long time. And I didn't have to listen to them anymore. I didn't have to listen to them anymore. And so I have to also give credit to a coach that I had who was very helpful to me in an area that really was troublesome for me for a long time, and that was money. I seemed to have a real sticking point when it came to earning money. I couldn't get over a certain money threshold, and I really wanted to work for myself and had no I felt really stuck in that way. I couldn't seem to get anything going. And I was talking with this coach and I said, you know, I just don't seem to be the kind of person who can do this. I don't seem to be the kind of person who can work for myself. Kathy says yes. So I'm talking to this coach and I'm telling her, you know, I just don't seem to be this kind of person who can work for myself and make a really good living and, you do the things that I'd like to do with that. And she said, well, Mary, what if you're wrong about that? What if you're actually wrong? What if you do have those capabilities? What if you actually do have those creative resources within you to do those things? And I paused and I realized that All of the resources that we need to do what we would like to do, we already possess. They're already built into us. And it seemed to me that what was actually missing in this picture was me simply saying it was okay, that it was okay, that in terms of this conversation, I had permission to do different things, to create a business, to make money in a way that was more fun and interesting than what I had been doing, that I was allowed to do those things. And, uh, the, um, the money gene is available, Doug says. Yeah, in fact, uh, Doug, it's within all of us. And so it started to look more and more to me like the phrase, Mary, you have permission to whatever, that was really helpful to me. And that was why I wrote the book and why it's become such a feature of what I coach people in, because I really feel like most of us are waiting for somebody somewhere to say, Yeah, you have permission to do that, whatever that thing is, you know, that's been calling to you for a long time and, and really, you know, brings you joy and excitement when it comes to mind. Yes, you have permission to do that. So I'd love to pause here, and I'm going to come back to the, the comment about the mom because that was a biggie. But right now I want to ask you a question. Is there something that has been calling to you for a while now? Something that you want to do, something you want to experience, something you would really love to change? Um, it could be just about anything, but something that you haven't done or you haven't moved towards because you have this sense that maybe it's not really okay, like maybe you don't have permission to do it because it looks far afield from what you've been doing in life. I mean, it could be like, I'll give you an example for me, and this seems like a small one, but for me it felt really big. I had always wanted to learn how to draw and never saw myself as having any abilities in that area. I couldn't even remember the last time I drew anything, so I decided to sign up for this cartooning class. If you follow my Facebook page, you'll see we have to post our scribbles somewhere public, so I've been putting them up there. And I didn't know— I know this sounds really nutty, but I had to hear myself say, yes, Mary, you have permission to pick up a piece of paper and a pencil and try to draw a bear. You have permission to do that, and you have permission to post it publicly for everybody to see. And once I kind of heard that, it was like, oh, okay, this is kind of cool, you know. And so now I'm having fun sketching these animals and We're just doing really simple stuff with circles, but I'm really finding it very freeing. It's like, wow, I actually never heard myself say that I had permission to try to draw, and now I'm trying to draw and it's really fun. It's kind of bringing out some new parts of my creative self. So let's see what else other people saying. Ever since I'm a little girl, Mimi says, you have something you've wanted to do since then. That's Not unusual at all, Mimi. I have some still. Uh, hi Sarah. Oh, thank you. So let me just ask you to say yes if this is true. Is there something, and it could be anything, from something that you like, Mimi, you've thought about since you were a young child, something that you wanted to do or someplace you wanted to go or something you've always wanted to try? Is there something that's calling to you that's kind of, you know, either tapping you on the shoulder or pulling on your heart and saying, you know, it's time for you to try this, it's time for you to let this in? You know, let me know in the chat. Uh, yes, yes, I see a few yeses so far. I had one occur recently. Absolutely, Victoria says. Uh, Ali and Robin. Hi, Robin. Uh, yep, Nima says. Uh, and this talk today, I called it this, um, on purpose, is you have permission not just to say yes to the fact that yes, there's something calling to you, but you have permission to say yes to whatever that is. You have permission to allow that idea to be there and to explore it and to really say a resounding yes to it. I think we all have a calling too, Mimi. In fact, I think we have many callings. I have done a lot of different things in my life, and even just in the past 2 or 3 years, I've done a wide variety of things, and I've enjoyed them all. And it's good also to realize that the things that are calling to us can change over time, and it's okay to say yes even when things look really, really different to us. Like I was saying before, things can start calling to us that look very different from things we've done previously. Um, hi, Jesus. Hi, Clifford. Uh, there's always something. Um, let me check the question here. Uh, here's a question from Diana. Uh, I would love to share the principles. I do get them intellectually, but it didn't click yet. I have a chance to do so within the company where I work, but may I do so even though I don't fully get them myself? All my colleagues know me. If I mess up and nobody understands what I want to convey or nobody's interested, I would feel so ashamed. Well, I thank you so much for that honest question, Diana. And here's what I would say. And it doesn't just apply to sharing something like the principles that I mentioned earlier and things like that. It kind of applies across the board, which is if you have something that you feel very passionately about, or something is pulling at your heartstrings, you don't have to worry about embarrassment. That doesn't need to, to be any part of this at all, because the same coach said to me that when we have something that we are called to do, it's like we already have it as a kit. I loved that phrase. She said it's like a kit, means that As you go towards the thing that you want to do, you simply unpack the kit and you take out the next thing and you take out the next thing and eventually it all starts to come together. And so even if you have just an inkling of something that you would like to go forward with, that's enough. That's enough. You don't have to see a Diana and everybody else. You don't have to see, you know, way down the road. All you have to see is the tiniest little step in front of you, just the tiniest one. And Diana, you've already seen that tiny step because you've, you've been called to do something and you have permission to try and see what happens. And I really don't think that it's going to go awry. I really don't. As, as I have seen, you know, even things where I've kind of messed up or whatever, people don't mind. They appreciate the fact that we are living from inspiration and that we're telling them something that's important to us. So there's nothing to fear there. Uh, so let me know if that was helpful, Diana. Uh, hi, Ali. I also wonder if when we call them a calling, we make them too daunting, and they're sometimes just desires. And that's so valid. Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of discussion kind of in the popular culture about a calling and a purpose and all that. And that's not really what I'm referring to. I'm really just referring to things that we want to do. You know, I don't necessarily feel like we each have one big life purpose. I think that, like I was saying a moment ago, we have lots of different things that we can do. We, we kind of change and our interests shift and we, we see something different and we're like, oh, I want to try that. And oh, you're welcome, Diana. And so I think that once we recognize the fact that we actually do have permission to listen to what is occurring to us to do, that it starts to become easier to follow those inclinations, and we don't have to make such a big deal about it, if you, if you get my drift. I think that's what you mean, Ali, that, you know, I don't want to, to set it up like, oh, you know, if you don't find your life purpose, if you don't answer your life purpose, then everything's terrible. No, that's not what I mean. I'm really just talking about, uh, the fact that yes, Mimi says we're free. We're free to do what we want. We're free to listen to what is occurring to us to do, and then we're free to act on it. And that's the piece that I really want to get to, because it's wonderful for us to allow this freedom to express itself to us and listen to all these ideas and things that we might want to do. The next part is, yes, you have permission to actually go do the thing. Like I was just saying to Diana, you have permission to take a step in a certain direction. Nothing needs to hold you back from that. Nothing. Because there's never anything at risk here. I know it can really look that way because of how life looks to us sometimes. But the actual truth is that we are much more likely— and this seems crazy to me now because this is so not how I used to see things— but we are much more likely to achieve the thing that we would love to achieve when we go towards what we want, when we say yes to those things that are calling to us. And you know what? If it doesn't turn out the way we want it to, at least we'll have had a good time along the way, because I would rather go towards what I am interested in. And my other phrase is follow the fun. I would rather do that and not achieve something than toil away at something that I really don't like and still maybe not get where I wanna be. So for me, it just doesn't even look like a choice anymore. It's like, of course I'm gonna listen to what I wanna do instead of seeing myself in these little boxes of shoulds and shouldn'ts. Hi, Elizabeth, how did you know which is your purpose? Well, that's kind of what I'm alluding to is I still don't know. All I've really done in the past few years since I kind of started to see things differently, since 2014 was when I kind of had this shift in perspective, I've really just done what looked interesting to me. I stopped looking at things in terms of, oh, I can't do that because I'm not that type of person. Or that doesn't look very safe to me, so I'm not going to go there. I stopped looking at that kind of thinking. And instead, I went towards what my intuition was saying, what was inspiring to me, what looked fun, and what looked interesting. And I said, you know, I am not going to go towards anything anymore that doesn't speak to me in some way that isn't interesting. Because why do I need to do that? As Mimi just said, I'm free to do what I want to do. I don't have to do things that I don't want to do anymore. Is holding a gun to my head saying that I have to, for instance, stay in a job I don't like. Nobody's telling me to do that. I can look towards what is bright and beautiful and fun instead and see what's over there. So I hope that answered your question. Hi, Robin. Point yourself in that direction and see what shows up. Yeah, that's pretty much what's happened is that I have kind of, I guess I would say I, I started to— this is a funny way of saying this, but I started to show more respect for the ideas that came to me that seemed out of the blue or out in left field or kind of crazy or whatever they were. Like, even just putting some books on Amazon like I have, when that idea came to me actually through another person said, yeah, you should put your book online. I was like, really? That seemed really out there. Like, why would I want to do that? Nobody's going to want to read this. And, you know, my books are mostly quite short, and I thought, oh, nobody's going to be interested in these little tiny books. I mean, that's not what a book is, you know, that's— that doesn't look right. And instead, I ignored all of that, and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna have some respect for this idea that came to me that was literally handed to me. You know, all these ideas are delivered to us on a silver platter just waiting for us to act on. And I thought, I'm gonna respect that and I'm gonna act on it and see where it leads. And that's exactly what I've done with everything. I've listened to what has come to me to do, and instead of immediately saying, no, I'm not going to do that, it's more like Hmm, I have permission to do that, so let's see what happens if I go in that direction. What if I say yes? What if I say yes? Then what happens? Let's see, it's been great advice for me, really. Oh, you're very welcome, Robin. If you have an example to share, that would be great. So yeah, let me ask you that. Can you think of an example, any time in your life, where you gave yourself permission to say yes to something and you followed through on it and what happened. You know, I gave myself permission recently to say yes to something that sounds a little far afield for me. I have no idea what's going to happen, but my daughter has to take a trip to a faraway place and we were trying to plan a mother-daughter trip and we decided we were going to go to Tokyo together. Now, we have no real reason to go to Tokyo, except it just sounded interesting. So we said, you know what, yeah, let's do it. And I do have a lovely former client there. So I'm hoping to meet her. But that was one of those ideas that just came out of left field. And I said, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. And so it was really fun to give myself permission to say yes to something like that, not knowing anything about what's going to occur after that, because we don't have that ability as humans to predict the future. And so we'll just see what occurs. So what is something that you have said yes to at some point in your life that maybe surprised you, that seemed like, oh, I couldn't do that, but then you went ahead and did it anyway and you got some sort of really, you know, interesting result or something occurred afterwards that, you know, you could never have predicted. When moving from New Zealand to New Orleans, yeah, Ali, that's a pretty big move. That's a pretty big move. And it's so interesting when we hear an idea like that and we go, gosh, could I really do it? You know, could I really do that? And suddenly when you say yes to it, you're like, yeah, I want to do that. The how starts to become clearer. The, the steps start to appear. I think a lot of us might stop ourselves because, like I said a moment ago, we can't see the whole path in front of us. But we don't need to. We don't need to. It will become clear. And if we get detoured at some point, then we just do. Uh, doing a clown's training, Jeanette said. Oh, how fun, Jeanette! I was a clown a little bit in college, and I don't mean in the classroom. Uh, at the university where I went, at UCLA, we had, um, a big, uh, fair every year, and so I was a clown at the fair. Hi Robin, recently I decided to do a course that has opened up so many opportunities. Before, I'd have said it's too expensive, what if it doesn't lead to where I want it to, yet it's opened so many doors. So glad I just went for it. Robin, I can totally relate to that as well, where I have you know, spent money on something and thought, gosh, you know, I feel really called to do this. Is this the right thing? And I can see where in the long term, yeah, it definitely did help me. You know, some things haven't and that's okay, but some things certainly have. So I can relate to that too. Oh, I see I have another question. Let's see, from Mimi. Is having someone in your life not supporting you when you'd like to take action on an idea, maybe me, myself not being ready, should I listen to that person? Uh, that's a really good question. Um, and it's hard for me to give a blanket response, but, uh, I have to say that in my experience, uh, we know best. We are within ourselves, uh, very, very wise, and that person may be listening to some of their own thinking that's saying, "That doesn't look safe to me, Mimi," or, "That doesn't look like a good idea to me." But that's them responding to what's in their mind, and you have a very different view from within yourself. So I always, these days at least, err on the side of how do things look to me. And it also helps to know that there's really nothing at risk here. That we are absolutely free and we'll always have what we need. So I hope that was helpful, Mimi. Uh, let's go back up here. Uh, Lisa, 10 years ago, after I failed— oh, a failed IVF and loads of job stress, I left my managerial role in NHS and retrained as a hypnotherapist, starting a business. I went on to have successful IVF. How about that? All this happened within a few months, and along with anxiety and fear, I'm Seeing how this happened, I'm curious that this will happen again now. Yeah, all the doubt in my mind screamed at me not to, but there was a quiet voice that just said do it, and it was so the right thing. Oh, I love how you said that. I absolutely love how you said that, Lisa, because that screaming voice can get very loud and very insistent. And what I have noticed is that when that starts to happen, that's when I know I really don't have to pay attention to what that screaming voice is saying. That I can kind of say, hey, you know, hi, how you doing? Nice to see you. Nice to hear you again. And then I can listen to that quiet voice that actually is telling me the truth about what I'm capable of and what might be possible for me. So thank you for putting it that way. Hi, Elizabetha. I gave myself permission to move to another country for a new job, improve the language. Great for a short time, then several things didn't go right. Now I'm fine living abroad with a lot of struggle. You know, I'm glad you shared that with us, Elisabetta, because we have no idea what's going to happen. You know, if only— I don't know actually if that would be a good thing, I say that, but all we know is what we would like to do right now and what looks like the right thing to do, and we simply do the best we can from what is speaking to us in the moment. And fortunately, we are equipped to handle anything that comes our way, absolutely anything. We have all the resources and resilience we could ever wish for. And so that again allows me to explore in this very freeing way what is on offer to us and say yes to more things, because I know that whatever happens, I'll, I'll be able to handle it. And we can all look back at our life and see plenty of times when something didn't go the way we planned, and yet we were able to figure out what to do. And that's very reassuring to me. Thank you for that. Oh, good, Mimi, thank you. Verena, I love the notion of nothing is at stake or at risk. I so often forget about that. It feels like an out-there idea. I think what helped me with that, Verena, was recognizing that we have been given everything. As human beings. You know, when I think about how little we actually have to do, it's kind of incredible. We don't have to work hard to have new ideas. Uh, we don't have to work hard to simply do normal tasks. Those things— we're so creative and so adept, and so we have just so much going on that is, uh, that is unconscious to us. We don't even think about it anymore. If we really stop to examine how much we are given each day to do something with, I think we would just fall to the ground weeping with joy. I mean, I really do. So, uh, I find it helpful to kind of take a few steps back and actually see what each of us has. And I don't mean materially, that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about just intrinsically as human beings We have an endless stream of new ideas. We have an endless well of creative ideas and creative ways of solving problems. We have endless resources in that way to figure out things and to solve problems. I mean, that is 99% of the work done for us already. So that's what helps me see that nothing's at risk. Robin recently noticed that the louder the voice, the less useful the info it's bringing to me. Exactly. That's exactly what I was saying. Diana, some big things like moving to another country were so easy for me. With small things, I don't have any trust in myself at all. That's interesting, Diana. Excuse me. One thing that people ask me a lot is, you know, what if I don't trust myself? You know, do I have to have a lot of self-belief in order to say yes to more things and to give myself permission? And some of you have heard me say this already, so it won't be new to you, I always say that trust is a waste of time. It's a waste of time because we don't need to trust what already is. You know, I don't need to trust that if I drop this pen, it's going to fall to the ground because gravity is at work. So I don't need to trust that I have everything I need available to me, and I simply have to listen for it. I don't need to trust myself because that would be like saying I need to trust that the earth is rotating right now. So I put trust off the table. If I have any thinking like, like that, I don't even go there because I just know that it's not necessary. So I know that's a really out of, out of the whatever kind of comment to make. That's very far afield from what most people are talking about. But Things like self-belief and trust and self-confidence, we already have all of that. There's nothing we need to do to increase it. We couldn't even increase it if we tried. So I don't bother with that. I simply listen to what's calling to me and start acting on it. So let me know what you think about that. Verena, so much has been given to us. We don't have to work hard for getting new ideas. Yeah, exactly. Hi, Isis. You can always see what you will lose by taking a leap, but you can never measure what you might gain. Oh, that's an interesting thing to quote there. I don't feel like there's anything to lose, frankly. We can't lose something that we are. And the qualities that I'm talking about, like confidence and creativity and all these beautiful resources, that's what we're made of. So there's never anything to lose. There's absolutely nothing. So that's another thing that has become very, very clear to me as, as I've looked in this direction the last few years is that there's never anything at risk. I wanted to just go back to one thing earlier. Somebody said that, you know, they wanted to do something for their mom. And, you know, I was thinking of my mother recently who never really followed what was calling to her. And when she was nearing the end of her life, she made it very clear to me that she didn't want me to go that way, that she really wanted more for me than that and wanted me to listen to what was calling to me. And so I think of her often in that way because I, I do want to do more with the time that I've been given. And I think that's why you're all here too, is that even though we don't necessarily have a bigger life purpose, like we were saying, that we can, we can simply go with what is calling to us. And simply by— this is the key thing— simply by going more in that direction, we can contribute to making the world a better place because we'll be living more consciously. We'll be living more from joy instead of desperation. We'll be living more from this innate abundance that we don't have to attract. It's simply part of us. It's what we are. And when we're living more consciously from there, we kind of, you know, all boats rise with the tide. That's the end result. So that's why it's so important for me to get this message out there that you can do what you want to do. You do have permission to say yes to the things that are calling to you and that you would love to do with your life. So that's, that's a big part of why I do what I do. And you know, I have no idea what I'll be doing if I'm lucky to be here a few years from now. I may be going in a completely different direction, but all I know right now is is that this is what I enjoy doing. I enjoy helping people like you follow your intuition and your inspiration and give yourselves permission to say yes to the things that you really want to be doing. So what other comments or questions do you have? Uh, I would love to hear, and then I'm going to just mention something about a program that I'm offering. I just wanted to check my notes. And make sure I didn't skip anything that I wanted to cover. I think I'm good. So what have you taken away from this conversation so far? I would love to hear. Verena has posted a few things. We've heard from a few people. What has been impactful to you so far? Hi, Diana. I have the feeling that in order to do something, there needs to be some kind of confidence, trust within us. But then again, the only thing we need before acting is not listening to thoughts that want to stop us. Exactly. That's it. So you can just kind of thank them for coming. Thank them for coming, because they're going to show up and we can't do anything about that. It's okay. But yeah, you have all of that other stuff already. You don't need to wait for a feeling of belief or wait for a feeling of trust. Not necessary. If I did that, I wouldn't be on this call right now. So yeah, so I advocate, you know, leaping and not really paying much attention or, you know, paying any mind to those kinds of thoughts like you need to have all this self-belief and all that. It just doesn't seem necessary to me. What else have you guys heard in this talk? I would love to know what has made an impact or what you're maybe seeing a little bit differently from when we started chatting 45 minutes ago. Oh, you're very welcome, Diane. I appreciate that. I know one thing that has stood out for me during the conversation and listening to all of your thoughts here is that what would the world look like if every single person recognized this truth that they had permission to do what they wanted to do? What would the world look like then? You know, if you could imagine every single human being being allowed to follow their heart, to follow what they were drawn to, to spend their time doing what they wanted to do, that would be an amazing world, wouldn't it? Verena, we have permission to change what we're doing anytime. Yes, we do. Mimi, I really like the fact I can just follow the small things instead of going for a life purpose. Same here, because that whole life purpose thing was like way past me. I didn't understand it. I still don't understand it. What it means. I have often said that we've fulfilled our life purpose simply by being born, so anything after that, we're allowed to do what we want. Kathy says Burning Man. You want to go to Burning Man? That's cool. Victoria, we can have more than one calling. Absolutely. I've had several during my life, and I have several more calling to me right now that I'm going to be answering. So we'll see what happens. Excellent. Oh, thanks, Sue. I'm glad you appreciate that. Really appreciate it. Hi, Nima. We can just go for it on this thing I've been debating. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. We can. I think that's a really good point too, that we can get in this debate thing in our head. You know, should I, should I, shouldn't I? And it's kind of like, what am I even debating? You know, of course, unless it's, you know, about hurting someone, which obviously we're not talking about. But if it's something that I want to do, why shouldn't I do it? Why couldn't I do it? I think that we, we listen to all the second-guessing, and we don't have to listen to that either. Exactly. So I wanted to mention— I know, first I should say, do I have your permission to mention a program that I am offering this month? If I do have your permission, please tell me by saying yes in the chat box. I'll wait for your response. Go for it, Victoria says. Okay, cool. Thanks, Victoria. Yeah. Okay, great. So I have been— thank you so much. Permission granted. Thanks, Nima. So for the past few months, I've been offering a really unique program to people who have been impacted by what are called the 3 principles and who have a real desire to share these principles with people. As we said, it could be anywhere. Oh, thank you. It could be anywhere from the workplace to, you know, your family, to creating a business around this in some way. And the reason why this particular program is unique is because it's not a coach training. It's not like a 3 Principles coach training. It's a lot more about simplifying what these principles are really saying and what they're really pointing towards. And then giving you permission to express those in any way that you want to. So for example, one of the people who went through the program is an artist, and she's expressing these principles via her art and via some other conversations she's having about creativity. You know, other people are looking at it more from, you know, how can I— other people have gone through the program— or how can I maybe transition from a job that I'm in into something where I can How can I be more comfortable sharing these principles with people? Or how can I bring them into my workplace? So other people who've gone through the program and one person who's doing it with me shortly, you know, they want to bring it to more people in their local area, you know, not necessarily the world and online and all of that, but just people who are in their, their communities. And so I really felt like there was a gap here most of the programs like this were trying to help people become Coaches, and they were also quite lengthy and frankly quite expensive. And I wanted to offer something different. So I came up with this program that's got kind of a goofy name called The Three Principles at Warp Speed: Get Out There and Start Helping People Already. And the way that it works is we have a 2-day workshop via Zoom. So we meet for a few hours, 2 days in a row. With a small group of no more than 7 people. So that's how we start. We spend the first day really taking a deep dive into these principles, and I show you some ways to really simplify this whole discussion so that it doesn't seem unattainable or, you know, out of your reach. And the second day, we recap that, and then we also look at how we can bring these principles out into the world in the way that we want to. If that involves business, we talk about some of those things. But the whole 2-day workshop is structured in such a way that it's very much about simplifying things, not overcomplicating them, because I don't like complication. I really prefer things to be very clear and as easy to grasp as possible. And the first 2 groups that have gone through this have had some wonderful experiences. It's been just great. And so I'm offering this program one more time. It also includes 6 months of support from me. So during 6 months, you can email me anytime with questions. I'll also give you a one-to-one call with me. And I really want to support you as you go out into whatever sphere you want to, to share these principles. You really do have access to me 24/7. So I'm offering this program just one more time and the dates for it for the first 2-day workshop are the 25th and 26th of September, so coming up in just a couple of weeks. That's a Tuesday and a Wednesday. And we, we, I have 1 person signed up, so I have 6 spots left. And I would love, if this is something that you would want to do, I would love for you to be part of it. And if you want to get in touch with me about it, please feel free to email me, mary@maryschiller.com. I'm happy to answer, and I'm happy to answer questions here too. Let's see, Robin, just wanna say, Mary, of all the takes on the principles I've been exposed to, I found yours to be the most fresh and inspiring. Oh, thank you, Robin, what a nice thing to say. I really appreciate that. Oh, thank you, Diana, that's very, very kind. And you know, really, it's really a big part, I think, of why I wanted to offer this program because I felt like things were maybe getting a little complicated and I wanted to see if I could simplify them. And so that's really what I've tried to, to do. So I'm going to put the link to the program here in the— let's see if that works. Is there a button there somewhere? I don't know. Anyway, I'll put it in here. There's the link also. And, um, I would really love for you to consider, um, applying and, and getting in touch with me if it's something that you want to do, because gosh, it is so important to me that, um, that this get out there to as many people as possible. Uh, Diana, yes, this is the last time I'm going to be offering this particular program because I give so much support on a personalized level that I realized that I've really committed myself now for quite a while to supporting the people individually who've already gone through the program. And I have enough time in my schedule to offer this one more time. And then for the foreseeable future, I'm not going to offer any one-to-one coaching at all. And I'm not going to be offering this program again. At least not in this sort of live format. So this is really, if you are looking for a way to interact with me personally and to be part of an intimate group experience related to these principles that I'm leading, this is it. I'm not gonna be offering it like this anymore. So, you know, not to be overly dramatic or one of those, you know, sleazy marketers who's, you know, the scarcity thing, I really mean it. This is the last time. Let's see. Robin, now I'm dying to hear what you have planned for after, if this is the last time you're running this. Yeah, so I'm kind of just shifting the way that I'm doing things. And yeah, I haven't quite sorted it all out yet, but it will be coming soon. I'm probably gonna be launching some new things in early October. But right now my focus really is on forming this final group and bringing in some amazing people who are, you know, really just have a calling, I guess, somewhere inside themselves to share these principles more widely. Thank you, Sue. Good, I'm glad I answered the question. So again, the link is in the chat here to the program details, and I'm happy to answer any questions. If you are interested and you want to have a chat with me before signing up, just send me an email, mary@maryschiller.com. Let me type that in the chat. If you have questions that you don't want to ask here or you'd rather just have a chat about it, I can answer any questions that you have. And again, I have 6 slots remaining because I want a maximum of 7 people. And yeah, it's going to be awesome. I mean, the first 2 groups were really great. I listened to— and everything's recorded. I should mention that too. Everything is recorded. So I went back and listened to the recordings. I felt quite moved by a lot of the things that happened there. Let's see. Oh, hi, Victoria. In case you're wondering, this new platform is the best I've seen. Oh, awesome. That's great to know, Victoria. All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been a wonderful chance for me to chat with you about this topic. I'm going to continue this series of talks tomorrow. Tomorrow's topic is you have permission to say no. Today's was all about you have permission to say yes. Tomorrow is Permission to Say No, and I think that's going to take us in some interesting directions. So I hope that you will join, and the replay will be available pretty much directly after this closes, and you'll be able to access all of the replays right here on this page. So that's all very simple. So thank you all so, so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And again, feel free to get in touch with me about the new— or excuse me, not the new program, the final program that I'm offering called the Principles at Warp Speed training. And I would love to have you as part of it if it's something that is calling to you to do. So thanks so much, everybody. And I hope you can join me tomorrow. We will continue on. And until then, have a wonderful day or evening wherever you are in the world. Thank you, Just Paul. Hey, Sus, Diana, Lisa, Terry, everybody. It's been a joy. Thanks so much.