In this informal Facebook‑Live‑style video, Mary Schiller—author and coach at MarySchiller.com— shares her personal journey from living with chronic stress and a PTSD diagnosis to discovering a radically simple way to stop feeling stressed. She explains how the "3 principles" perspective revealed that stress is not an obligation but a product of stressful thinking that we can choose not to endorse. By adopting a "do nothing" approach—simply sitting with thoughts without trying to manage or fix them—she found that her innate calm returns, eliminating chronic stress and freeing up many hours each day. This shift allowed her to focus on other pursuits, ultimately leading to a coaching career and a sense of expanded possibilities. She concludes by encouraging viewers to try this approach, inviting comments, and providing her website and email for further contact.
Chapters
Hello, hello, it's Mary Schiller, author and coach of MarySchiller.com, coming back to you finally after a bit of an absence on these Facebook Lives and hoping I don't have lipstick on my teeth. Do I? Anyway, I still have a little bit of a froggy voice, but I'm over this cold and my voice is just taking a little while to come back, so forgive the slight hoarseness you might hear. I wanted to talk with you about something that has been on my mind recently because of some emails that I've received from people. And it's a really big topic for me because, you know, I used to feel like my life was one giant ball of stress pretty much, and I didn't know what to do about that. I thought that that was simply how it was based on my past experiences in life. Based on the fact that I had been told I had post-traumatic stress disorder, based on the fact that the Western world seems to wear stress as some sort of badge of honor and all those sorts of things. And what I realized when I first started to catch a glimpse at what these 3 principles, as they're called, are pointing to was that I was really under no obligation to feel stressed ever, that the only reason I ever felt stressed was because I was listening to stressful thinking and agreeing with it. And I remember when I first had that thought, I laughed out loud. I was like, that is really funny. I'm having, excuse me, all this stressful thinking, and I'm saying, yeah, you're right. I do need to be stressed. I do need to feel stressed about money. I do feel the need to feel stressed about work. I do need to feel stressed about my relationships. I do need to feel stressed about where I'm living and what I'm doing with my life and on and on and on. And when I kind of broke through that facade, it was really hilarious because I just saw so clearly that I was doing it to myself. And what was so exciting about that was that with this understanding of the 3 principles, I saw that I didn't have to do anything about that. All these years I had been trying to manage my stress and do something about my stress and it hadn't worked, surprise, surprise. Instead, I had discovered that I could just wait. I could simply sit with whatever the feeling was that was coming through via my thoughts and nothing would happen to me. I could sit and wait, and eventually the innate set point of calm and composure and peace would return. And I found that absolutely stunning. The more that I experimented with that and the more that I saw that that was a fact, it was kind of like all of my daily habits trying to manage my stress all just went out the window. Which, as I've said before, frees up a lot of time. When you're not having to manage your state of mind or your feeling state at any given moment, it frees up a lot of time to go do things. And eventually, that's what happened. Hi, Ingrid. Is that I was able to take all of the time that I had been spending on myself trying to manage my stress and all these other feelings I didn't like. Once I stopped doing all of those things, it was like I gained, you know, another 8 hours in my day. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you're no longer focused on managing stress, for one thing, because it doesn't need to be managed. Just doesn't need to be managed. And when you realize that it doesn't need to be managed, it's not a problem anymore. I can say with 100% certainty looking directly at you that I no longer suffer from chronic stress. I have what I would call brief moments of stress, but they don't bother me. I don't suffer at all when I'm experiencing that because I know exactly what the source is. It's, it's momentary thinking, has nothing to do with anything but that. And I know that that will change. So I can have a day where I'm feeling a little out of sorts and I can simply do what I want to do anyway because I'm not busy trying to manage that stress or do anything about it. So as a result, I don't really feel stressed anymore, which is incredible to me. You know, as I've said, and I'm gonna repeat this, I was told that I was going to have this mental illness of post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of my life, that there was nothing that could be done for me. The only thing that would have solved it was if I could have gone back in time and, you know, somehow undo the things that supposedly caused that stress. And since that wasn't possible, you know, no one offered a solution. Well, little did I know that the solution to stress or any feeling we don't particularly like is simple. It's called do nothing. Do nothing. Don't worry about having it. All that's normal. All those thoughts are normal. You don't have to try to fix anything in the outside world because nothing in the outside world is going to affect anything. It's all coming from in here. So you're under no obligation to be stressed ever. You don't have to listen to that thinking. You don't have to believe it, you don't have to follow it. You have the option to just sit with it and let it go on by and continue going about your life. And the more also that I, as a consequence of that, took the focus off of myself, well, interestingly enough, my life really expanded because I started to see all these opportunities to interact with people and eventually, you know, start earning a living as a Coach because I saw that I had the opportunity to help people in perhaps a unique way, just as you do. So anytime we take the focus off of ourselves, off of trying to manage ourselves, off of trying to manage stress, which can't be managed, folks, it's amazing the space that opens up for all kinds of other things in life. So you're under no obligation to listen to, believe in, follow, whatever, any sort of stressful thinking. You can sit back and watch it play out in front of you and don't do anything about it. Don't worry about it. It will go on its merry way momentarily. And running underneath that, of course, all the time 24/7 is the calm river, the calm lake, however you want to picture it, that is who you really are. So I hope this video has been helpful. I would love for you to comment if you'd like, and of course find me online at maryshiller.com. If you want to start an email conversation, just email me at mary@maryshiller.com. Talk to you again soon. Bye.
