We've all been there – working long hours, spending evenings checking things off our list, and hitting the pillow stressed, exhausted, and overwhelmed. When things don't work out, we hustle harder. But is this really the best way to live?

What if we didn’t have to sacrifice our ambition or goals to live a fulfilling life? What if instead, we were more thoughtful about how we pursue them? Well, Mel, today’s guest, has a thing or two to say about that.

Mel Miles is a coach, speaker, and the founder of Soulcation, a company that helps people develop vacation-like routines that revive the soul.

Formerly a program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she managed millions of dollars and helped launch the global campaign to eradicate malaria. After working in twenty-five African countries, she found herself hyperventilating through a panic attack, utterly confused about why she felt so stressed, exhausted, and unhappy when she was living the life she always thought she wanted. In the midst of her confusion and pain, she decided to quit her dream job, sell all her belongings, and travel alone around the world to answer the question keeping her up at night: In all her work fighting for the freedom and healing of others, was she living freely herself? 

Mel currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal, where she is proud to have designed a life she doesn’t need a vacation from.

Ready to bring vacation vibes to the everyday? Be sure to tune in.

Check out Mel’s book, Soulcation

Check out Mel's Website

If you’d like quick tangible tips and practical corporate career advice to level up your authentic leadership, download the 10 simple “plays” to stop selling out and start standing out at https://bauthenticinc.mykajabi.com/freebie  

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DISCLAIMER: This episode is not explicit, though contains mild swearing that may be unsustainable for younger audiences.

Tweetable Comments

• “It feels so good to walk through the world, knowing that the ideas that pop into your head or the things that live in your guts can actually be birth to life.”

• “We can fill our schedules with things that we think are rest without actually tuning into our body and asking, “What do I need right now?”

• “Oftentimes, we suppress the childlike playful self, and we don't learn to play. You have to almost relearn and reconnect how to play, how to be bored and be in nothing.”

• “If you're not doing something to connect with pleasure, you lose the sense of a liveliness.”

• “The actual feelings people were connecting to on vacation-that brought them the most joy and created the happiest memories, were feelings that they could access in their everyday life.”

• “The work of being a human is knowing it's time to leap-letting go without yet knowing the answers, without yet knowing where we're going to end up.”