There’s a “new” trend going viral that’s actually an old human skill: being present.

When we stop filling every quiet moment with a podcast, music, texts, and to-do lists, we start noticing what we’ve been missing, and that shift touches everything from mindful leadership to mental health.

In today’s podcast, Maren & Stephanie talk about the push culture that rewards nonstop doing and how it can leave high achievers with a lingering question even after they’ve “made it”: Is this really it? 

From there, they connect presence to the magic of the mundane, the kind of awareness you feel when you take a slow walk, drink tea with full attention, or sit down to eat instead of multitasking. They even explore a spicy angle on GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic, not to judge anyone, to simply ask what might change if we were more conscious about how and why we eat.

Of course, they get practical looking at how self-awareness builds self-trust, why outsourcing meaning keeps us dependent on outside answers, and they share a grounded way to approach meditation for busy minds. 

A scattered mind isn’t a personal failing, it’s a predictable result of a distracted society.

If you want a calmer nervous system, stronger relationships, and leadership that feels aligned instead of forced, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s always multitasking, and leave a review with one place you’re ready to slow down.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

0:44 Medium article: https://medium.com/illumination/the-internet-just-discovered-going-for-a-walk-c2fb7ec0e70d

5:46 Oprah Interview w/Thich Nhat Hanh:

Thich Nhat Hanh's Tea Meditation | SuperSoul Sunday | Oprah Winfrey Network

28:28 Gap Workshop: https://tslp.life/the-gap-workshop/

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
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Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

A corny joke about a vacuum cleaner lands on a surprisingly sharp truth: attachment is less about what we have and more about what has us.  Clinging to old identities -the version of your career, your relationship, or your identity that used to work and doesn't anymore- makes change feel like a threat instead of an invitation. 

In this episode, Stephanie and Maren unpack what attachment actually is (hint: it's not about good, bad, right, or wrong — it's fear in disguise) and why so many high achievers stay loyal to an old vision long after it's stopped serving them. 

Using Maren's own story of holding onto a business vision that needed to change, they explore the difference between alignment and attachment, why rebellion is still a form of control, and a simple morning practice that can help you release what's quietly keeping you stuck. If you've ever felt like you “should” keep going because stopping would mean failing, this one's for you.

Knowing that your beliefs affect your body chemistry, your focus, and the options you can see, they end with a one week practice to help you shift gears in your own life.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a review with the one thing you’re ready to release.

“The question isn't “is this still appropriate?” — it's “is this still aligned?” Appropriate and aligned are not the same thing.” ~Maren Oslac

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

• 1:27 Ram Daas
• 8:06 Daniel Goodenough

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

Do you ever find yourself asking, “why isn't this working for me when it works for everyone else?”

You do all the “right” things and still feel stuck, and the most painful part is how fast that turns into self-blame.  Today’s episode is your permission slip to stop blaming and start listening to something deeper instead.

“Wrong” and “not ready” are not the same, yet when something goes sideways, they get collapsed and everything goes straight to ‘wrong’. Very few people ever consider how timing might be involved.

In this episode, Maren & Stephanie unpack a different possibility: maybe you’re not doing it wrong, maybe you’re not ready yet, or what you’re reaching for isn’t ready to meet you. They start by naming the pressure for what it is: impatience, frustration, and the quiet fear that something must be wrong with us because it looks so easy for someone else. 

As always, they share stories and anecdotes from their own lives. Today, they use nature as a direct teacher for timing and alignment, including a great metaphor that opens a soulful leadership lens on:

• sustainable growth
• burnout prevention
• resilience 
• self-trust
• healthy systems
• and more

To make it practical, they share a practice that creates new neural pathways, gets you out of right and wrong thinking, and helps you connect to the timing that makes life feel magnetic again. 

If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who’s stuck in one gear: pushing. Then leave a review so more people can find the show.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

15:56 Otto Scharmer’s 4 Levels of Listening

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

What if the discomfort you’re trying to fix, outrun and muscle through isn’t punishment at all – it’s an invitation?

This week, Stephanie and Maren flip the script on pain, pressure and the “shoulds” that keep high achievers stuck on autopilot in their lives.

For the most part, you like your life. You’ve built something that works. So why does something still feel off? A low-grade dissatisfaction you can’t quite name. 

Pain can feel like proof that you’re doing life wrong, and what if it’s actually guidance? 

This episode challenges today’s quick-fix culture: when discomfort shows up as chronic pain, emotional overwhelm, or that nagging sense of “this can’t be all there is,” maybe the real invitation is to grow into who you’re meant to become. 

If you’re ready to shift from punishment and self-blame to curiosity and presence, and acknowledge how trying to force your way through often keeps you stuck, this episode is for you. It’s time to stop treating your restlessness as a problem to solve and start seeing it as the gold mine of information that it is.

Know someone who is doing well by every outside measure while privately wondering when their internal alignment will catch up? Share this episode with them. 

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

4:40 Rumi Poem The Guest House (Coleman Barks translation)

20:37 Jim Collins What to Make of a Life

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

You’re the reliable one. If something needs to get done, you’re the to do it. Which not only means there’s no space for you, or your dreams -it unwittingly stifles the people around you. 

If you’ve ever watched someone struggle and thought, “Let me just do it for you,” you already know this tension that lives at the heart of leadership. It can feel unbearable because our culture equates busyness with worth

This week’s podcast starts with a deceptively simple story from Zorba the Greek that addresses this leadership issue head on: a boy watches a butterfly struggle to break free of its cocoon, can't bear the discomfort of watching it struggle, and “helps” it out early… only to watch it die because its wings never fully formed.

If you've ever rescued someone too soon — or rescued yourself out of your own growth — this episode will change how you think about rest, struggle, and what it actually means to hold space.

In a culture built on ‘go, do, and succeed’ and busyness equals worth, giving someone (including ourselves) the space feels unbearable. Sharing a strategic insight, Stephanie and Maren go deeply into something that we often feel the need to push though – the true success rhythm: struggle and rest.

Today you’ll find:

• Why rescuing people too early actually robs them of their own strength
• Why you are (literally, atomically) mostly space — and why that matters for your life
• Why scrolling, cleaning, and “staying busy” are NOT rest
• Why 20 minutes of true stillness can equal 4 hours of sleep
• A simple practice to catch yourself before you disengage from your own growth

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

01:08  The Boy and the Cocoon, and it's from Zorba the Greek.

26:50  Inner Mastery

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

Today, one of our very own superfans, Dawn Boutilier, shares how she built a business that checks all the boxes – passion, flow, joy, income, and mostly – deep meaning. Her work has not only changed her personally, it’s changed her family and her community. Dawn was one of our first listeners and has worked with us in multiple capacities over the years and it was an absolute honor to speak with her.

In our revealing conversation, the three of us talk openly about creating wealth, community and entrepreneurship WITH the intelligence of life that is woven through everything – and the huge difference that we make by choosing this little used business path.

This episode may open a doorway for you into a radically different understanding of work and its relationship to your life mission, the deep why that lives in your soul. It may also bring new insights to something that you already feel blooming within:

• You are here for a reason.
• Work does not have to be something you tolerate until you can finally retire.
• What you do is not separate from who you are.
• True wealth is not how much money you have.
• And life is not something you accomplish alone.

Dawn's story is powerful and we’re so grateful she came on to share her insights with all our listeners. 

Did her story open something in you? We’d love to hear about it! Send us a note at support@tslp.life then share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

10:15 Episodes that help break the asking for help taboo

     Ep 212 Running on Fumes Isn’t Strength

     Ep 165 Right Person Wrong Job

     Ep 151 Mindset Shifts to Transform Your Business

     E 145 Breaking the Leadership Mold

     Ep 119 Burdens to Blessings

     Ep 96 The Freedom to Choose

31:24 Co-Creation Circle (one year mastermind with Stephanie & Maren)

33:36 Show me your farmstand (farmstand finder)

36:32 Dawn Boutilier on facebook, dawnmurphy2003@hotmail.com

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

Control equals competence, right? That’s the common belief. In reality, control is tight shoulders, a busy mind, and a simmering irritation when other people don’t do it “the right way.” 

This week, Stephanie and Maren take a candid look at how the need to manage everything is actually a leadership trap. As always, they don’t leave you hanging – they tell engaging stories, bring wisdom with laughter and share a grounding, usable practice.  

In this episode they 

• pull apart everything from boundaries and emotional regulation to what it means to stay in your lane 
• tell the truth about how trying to fix others always backfires
• connect the dots between stress and the body, including tension and digestion issues, and why your nervous system cannot “digest” other’s problems
• flip the script on courage showing how it’s actually a result and dive into cultivating the skill of serenity (yep, it’s a skill) to protect your energy

Instead of struggling to control everything or waiting to feel brave, listen in and hear real stories about DIY gone wrong, procrastination, and the fear of being seen, plus a more compassionate way to meet those inner layers as they come up. 

If you want more peace, stronger self-leadership, and cleaner boundaries at work and at home, come listen, then subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find this work.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

1:02 The Serenity Prayer – two versions

Original (short) version “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

ACA version (Adult Children of Alcoholics) “God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me.”

4:40 Byron Katie's “three businesses” teaching

13:20 Roger James Hamilton's courage/clarity-confidence-commitment 

22:35 Marianne Williamson quote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

The world is changing faster than the plans you were taught to trust.

That’s why the question “What’s next?” feels both urgent and impossible. 

Careers peter out, industries disappear, and AI is reshaping the job market – the old strategy of lining up a safe, logical path has not only stopped delivering the expected security, it barely functions at all. 

It’s most likely that your next job doesn’t even exist yet.

This week, Stephanie and Maren talk honestly about the anxiety this is bringing up and share options and alternative ways of thinking. Questions like “What if what you’re really meant to do doesn’t even exist yet?” are at the heart of their conversation which changes the whole conversation – it would mean you’re ahead of the game, not behind. 

Today’s podcast covers: 

• Why outer preparation alone (money, credentials, a tidy plan) isn’t enough for real resilience
• What actually helps you navigate uncertainty 
• How “best practices” usually backfire and create bigger problems
• Symptoms versus root causes in bodies, relationships, and systems
• Why unlearning industrial-era beliefs helps to rebuild our creator mindset (and why that’s essential)
• A simple, effective and powerful  practice for clarity

If you are ready for clarity without forcing an answer, this conversation will hit home

Subscribe and share it with a friend who’s in transition Please also leave a review so more people can find the Soulful Leader Podcast. 

If you were to stop chasing best practices and start aligning with what's actually yours to do – what would you do? We’d love to hear.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

11:02 Buckminster Fuller

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
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Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life

Have you ever wondered, why does this keep happening?

Does it sometimes feel like you keep falling into the same hole?

This week, Stephanie and Maren get real about what it means to lead from a higher place when life (or the people in it) comes at you hard.

Using the powerful Buddhist parable of the “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters,” they unpack why high-functioning people so often ‘fall into the same holes’ (destructive patterns) in life – and why it’s not a character flaw, it's actually just an unexamined habit. 

You'll walk away with a fresh lens on shame, confidence, surprise, and what it actually means to build true wealth from the inside out.

If you've ever held it together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways

• SHAME = Should Have Already Mastered Everything. The moment you start with “I should have…” you've entered the shame cycle — and it keeps you stuck in the hole.
• Swap “need to” for “get to.” This one word shift moves you from hard, contracted energy into curiosity and possibility — and it changes everything.
• Falling in the hole isn't punishment — it's an invitation. Each time you fall, you're being offered the next level of growth. The hole is the reward, not the consequence.
• Your reticular activating system is always listening. What you focus on, you find more of. Deliberately training your brain toward delight, gratitude, and possibility is a practice — and it works.
• True wealth is what you have when the money's gone. Your character, your gifts, your relationships — that's the foundation that holds when everything else shakes.

If this episode stirred something in you, we'd love to hear about it. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more soulful leaders find their way to this conversation.

And if you're ready to stop white-knuckling your way through life and start working with it instead of against it, get on the waitlist for our Co-Creation Circle at tslp.life/co-creation-circle.

Content note: This episode includes a candid discussion about family conflict, shame cycles, and navigating serious life challenges (illness, loss, grief). Shared with care and compassion.

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

REFERENCES:

2:50  “Autobiography in Five Short Chapters” — a Buddhist parable link

14:26 Daniel Goodenough TheHuPersonProject.com

17:22 Roger Hamilton/Wealth Dynamics https://www.wealthdynamics.com/

19:24 Truck quote: if you lose your money, you've lost nothing. If you lose your health, you've lost something. If you lose your character, you've lost everything

24:50 Reticular Activating System Ep 103: Success: Straight Line or Meandering Road

28:24 Book of Delights by Ross Gay  amazon link (affiliate)

Love this episode? Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts—it helps other soulful leaders find us!

Have a question or topic suggestion? We'd love to hear from you. Reach out through our website or social media.

📬  Connect With Us
Website: http://www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com
Main Website: http://www.tslp.life

Find us on:

• YouTube: @soulfulleaders 
• LinkedIn: The Soulful Leaders 
• Facebook: The Soulful Leaders 

Newsletter: Get our weekly newsletter 'Shift Happens' with tips, tricks, and insights to uplevel your life and leadership, plus notifications of new podcast releases and blog posts. Sign up at http://www.tslp.life