Your "frame of mind" is irrelevant! So stop waiting for the "right" one
Mary Schiller argues that your mood doesn't control whether you can work, create, or help people. She shares three stories: producing headlines as a journalist while exhausted, launching her coaching business while feeling terrible and getting many sign-ups, and doing this live broadcast in an awful mood. Stop waiting for the right feelings and act anyway.
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Hello, hello, this is Mary Shiller, author and coach of MaryShiller.com, coming to you today on this Friday in Paris where it is gloomy, gloomy, gloomy. It's still not looking like spring, but c'est la vie, as they say. I wanted to jump on here and do a short Facebook Live for you today on the topic of your frame of mind is irrelevant, so stop waiting for the right one. So many times I am asked this question, well, Mary, if I am not in a certain frame of mind, then I can't do XYZ. If I'm not feeling creative, then I can't create. Or if I am feeling uneasy about something, then I can't move forward. Or if I'm feeling afraid, then it's the wrong time for me to do XYZ, and all these things. Well, I would love if I can, maybe not with just this particular Facebook Live, but hopefully over time I can clear this up because it is completely and utterly false that you have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to do anything. You can— hi, Anna Greta, thanks for joining. You can do anything you want anytime no matter what feeling state or what kinds of thoughts are running through your head. I will give you a very simple and concrete example of this from my former career. So, uh, back in the '90s, I was a journalist. I was first— I started out as a copy editor, so I would read through stories that were going to be printed in the paper, and I would write headlines for them as well. And of course, I was on a deadline for that. And then later I wrote feature stories and I also had a column. So I would write stories about interesting people in our community and events, and I covered music and the arts and all kinds of fun things. It was a great job. Again, all on deadline. So Do you think that there were days when I wasn't in a great frame of mind, when I wasn't in my best place, whatever you, however you want to describe that, in order to do that type of work? When maybe I really didn't feel like going out and interviewing someone and taking notes and then coming back and writing it up. Do you think there were times when I didn't want to do that? Of course there were. Like, you know, fairly frequently. I enjoyed the work very much. But of course there were days when I didn't feel like it, when I had other things on my mind. For a lot of that time, I was a single mom and I was working this job as a journalist and I was going to graduate school, so I had a lot of responsibilities and things. And at that time, I didn't have tons of money either, so that was on my mind. And so of course there were days where I didn't feel totally focused on what I was doing, but could I still do it? Absolutely. If I couldn't have, I would've gotten fired. I would've been let go, like, this isn't working out 'cause you're not hitting these deadlines. And we had a lot of deadlines at the newspaper. So, and that's just a really, pardon me, small and tangible example of the fact that you can have anything going on in your mind And it does not have to have any influence whatsoever on what you're able to do. I remember another time, not that long ago, I'd say maybe 2 years ago, where I was in a terrible state. I was fretting and just in a horrible state. I remember this very clearly. And I made a decision that I was still gonna go forward and set something up related to this coaching business. I, at that time, didn't have a page set up with any sort of offers for anyone. And I was like, I don't care how I feel. I'm going to put this page up. And then I'm going to send something out to my then very small list and see what happens. And the whole time I was writing the webpage, deciding on how much I was going to charge and all that, I felt horrible. I felt absolutely horrible. Guess what? I did the work, got it done, sent the email out, and I got a whole bunch of people signing up. It was incredible, and that was another big light bulb moment. It was like, right, I don't have to be in a certain frame of mind in order to create something that might actually work. There's no guarantees that it's gonna work, and not every story I wrote for the newspaper was stellar either. But I think we have this weird belief that these thoughts and feelings somehow have control over the quality of what we do or whether we do anything at all. And they simply don't because we are so much bigger than these thoughts and feelings going on. You can do anything you want in spite of whatever state of mind, frame of mind, state of being that you happen to be in. And I'm gonna give you one final example of this. So if you were to ask my husband what kind of mood I've been in today, he would tell you awful. Mary has been in an awful mood today. And it's true. I have had several moments today where I've been very short with him, where I have felt irritated, where, you know, things just look totally awful to me. And yet I've been able to help some clients already today. I'm here on this Facebook Live talking to you and thoroughly enjoying this conversation with you even though it's just me talking right now. It's really been interesting. I thought, you know, I wonder if I should just skip the Facebook Live. I was like, I really don't want to skip it because I really know the power of these talks. I hear from people who listen to me and I really don't want to skip it today. I want to keep going. Hi, Erna! That's so funny. So Erna's been in a great mood today. You know, we can't predict these things, we can't control them, so why do we actually care what they are? Why can't we simply just go ahead and do whatever it is that we want to do? Well, the answer is we can, and I'm sitting here in front of you right now as living proof of that. And what I would love for you to do after you listen to me is look at your own life. Look at times when you remember that you were not in a good frame of mind and yet you still were able to create something, do something, take steps, take care of another person, whatever it's been. Um, hi Crystal. And who cares anyway, exactly Crystal says. Like, who cares what state of mind I'm in? If I can still reach into my bigger self and bring something forth that can help another person, then who cares what I'm feeling. It doesn't even matter. You know, I've already apologized to my husband, by the way, for kind of snapping at him, and he decided to go over to the coworking space for a little while just to give me a little room here. So with that, I'm going to leave you with this idea that your frame of mind is irrelevant. So stop waiting for the right one to come along to do what you want to do. Oh, Ernest says, I just made a long video today talking, talking, talking in and out of thought, just kept going, and you really enjoyed enjoy doing it. Yeah, so we can do anything, we can do anything. The state of mind that we're in is irrelevant, so stop waiting for the quote-unquote right one, the right feelings. You don't have to wait to be motivated, you don't have to wait for anything. You can simply go and do, and most of all, look at ways that you can add value to someone else's life. How can you help someone else? That's really the core of what matters. Erna said her mood got better along the way, and I have a feeling that as soon as I hang up from this Facebook Live, I'm gonna feel better too because I can feel it already. The energy is shifting thanks to you guys being here, whether you're listening live or listening on the replay. So thank you so much for being here. If you want to get in touch with me, my website is maryschiller.com, and you can always send me a personal email at mary@maryschiller.com, and I will respond to you directly. All right, enjoy the rest of your day and have a lovely weekend. You're very welcome, Crystal. And I'll probably jump on once this weekend. I try to take one full day off of the computer. Highly recommended. It's a really nice way to give yourself a little space and remember what it's like to be kind of out in the real world. Alright, I'll talk to you all soon. Thank you so much. Bye.
