The Soulful Leader Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Purpose.   Meaning.   Clarity.

Do you ever feel like you’re chasing these in your life and just as you reach them, they, poof, slip through your fingers?

You’re not alone.

In this episode, Stephanie and Maren unpack what it really means to pursue this power trio — not as a destination, but as a living, breathing practice. 

Society treats them as boxes to tick, and that’s part of the problem. Today’s episode explores going beyond what you’ve been taught to a deeper kind of listening, into the path of inner mastery. 

Being in conscious relationship with yourself, your mission, and the larger world around you is the road less traveled. It’s not easy, and it may be exactly what’s calling you - as it is for so many of the high achieving leaders that work with Maren & Stephanie.

Here’s a question to ponder -
 👉 Do you know the difference between purpose and mission?
 Spoiler: One tends to come from ego. The other? It whispers from the soul.

In addition this, they also explore:

• Why clarity is not a one-time achievement but an evolving, sacred process
• How to tell if your “purpose” is actually ego-driven
• The real meaning of mission—and how it emerges through both joy and hardship
• Why leaders who seek depth must get comfortable with not knowing
• The trap of cultural quick-fixes—and how to trade those for sustainable inner practice
• How collaboration (not competition) is the soil where your mission grows
• The truth about being “all alone” vs. “all one”—and what that means for your leadership

If you’ve ever hit a wall, lost your way, or questioned everything just when you thought you had it figured out—this episode is for you. 

Clarity doesn’t come from efforting harder. It comes from slowing down, tuning in, and being willing to walk the long arc of becoming.

🔔 What’s Next?

Go deeper with the Inner Mastery Series. This is where the ideas Stephanie and Maren talk about come alive—in practice, in community, and in you.

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🔗 Links & Resources

• Join the Inner Mastery Class → www.TSLP.life/2360-2/ 
  
  
• Connect on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube
  
  
• Subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode
  
  
• Dive deeper at The Soulful Leader Project → www.TSLP.life 

Chapter Markers

0:32 Clarity- a tenant of inner mastery

5:19 Transforming your life, mission vs purpose

9:25 There’s a practice to it

13:09 Avoidance and healing

17:07 Achiever brain

19:22 You are a part of something even bigger

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

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When your emotions are all over the place, it’s easy to fall for everything and anything. You’re easy to manipulate.

On some level you know this, so you tuck those damn emotions aside, ignore them or try to control them - which only makes things worse. They come out at the most inopportune times.

Sound familiar?

The truth is, emotions are not a flaw to be overcome, they are one of the amazing gifts of being human. They are literally energy in motion, and as such, not only feed us, but are also a powerful path to healing what ails us.

Working with (instead of stuffing, ignoring or controlling) emotions gives you space to listen and to respond rather than just react. It engenders clarity and empowers healthy decisions. It calms the nervous systems and decreases stress.

This is an essential skill for all of us right now for what it can heal - individually, and collectively.

“If we don't feel, we don't heal.” ~Stephanie J. Allen

There is a negative feedback loop running - thoughts and fears and emotions that fester and create inner AND outer toxicity. The good news is that we are the antidote.

It’s a choice inside each one of us. 

In today’s podcast, Stephanie and Maren share stories, inspiration and tangible tools to help you shift your internal relationship with emotions so you become your own cure, as well as a kind of “healthy virus” in the world, infecting the people around you in the best, most beautiful way. 

When you work inside, it changes, both the internal AND the external. You impact the world around you just by being who you are. 

Are you ready to explore emotions differently and find your inner treasure so that you can live it and share it with those you love and with the world?

Listen in and let’s make some shift happen.

• 0:32 Everything conspiring
• 1:28 Clean break
• 5:09 Happening ‘for me, or to me’ choice
• 8:27 If you don’t feel you don’t heal
• 11:36 I got things to do!
• 14:06 Clearing the toxicity
• 19:22 Making it conscious so you can repeat it
• 21:54 It’s not you
• 24:07 Ancient wisdom
• 25:59 We are the antidote
• 28:21 Pain or buried treasure

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

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As humans we’ve downplayed, or completely ignored, two essential life skills: playfulness and intentionality. As leaders, we are completely missing the boat. Adding lightness to our lives is the skill we most need to cultivate.

In this week’s podcast, Maren and Stephanie along with their team members, Dave and Lori share the crux of soulful leadership - leadership that heralds play, imagination and positivity - each from their unique perspectives.

“This is what has brought me into the soulful leader realm. Is matching with people that are similar and heart like minded and that want to lead with integrity and intention” ~ Lori

Covering everything from Positive Psychology to emotional regulation and intelligence; from the impact of nature/surroundings to the benefits of community and shared experiences; the thread that runs through all of it is the open sharing of both experiences and practices.

This is an engaging, insightful episode filled with practical ideas as well as questions that will push you to an even better 2025 and beyond. Questions like: “How are you going to lighten up?” And “Where does the play fit in your life for this year?”

Please let us know your relationship to these questions - and share our podcast with a leader that would benefit from ‘lightening-up’

• 00:31 Changing of the guard: lightness in business
• 04:55 Are you the person you wanted to become?
• 09:55 Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Health
• 15:59 Issues in our Tissues
• 19:26 Going to the past to fix it
• 24:52 What is your anchor?
  • 25:41 Dave - shifting mindsets with play and imagination
  • 32:40 Lori - anchoring through nature and awareness
  • 36:50 Stephanie - leadership as a path
• 39:37 What’s calling in 2025

LINKS

32:12 Positive Intelligence

40:11 Podcast 176 Interview with Mark Silver

TRANSCRIPT

YouTube Video

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Leadership is evolving.  Will you be ushering in the change?  Or will you watch from the sidelines hoping to catch up?  If you want to continue to be relevant, now is the time to shift. It is more important than ever to go inward, to take the inner journey. 

Self awareness is what is going to change, not only our businesses, but our relationships, our teams and our world. It is our responsibility to show up and commit to shifting from the inside out as leaders in this culture, at this time, on this planet. It is also our birthright. It’s what we came to do.

Join us for this powerful episode that invites each of us to take our place and become the remedy our world is calling us to be.

• 00:42 Best of 2022 and the Inhale and Exhale
• 06:49 leadership, giving to give and a congruent life (What's the value for a leader to even start to look at the inner game?)
• 09:13 Drama Triangle - victim, violator, rescuer & work life balance
• 14:37 How do we get off the merry go round? (Harnessing the teenager’s life force and energy)
• 19:21 Beyond the analytical mind
• 24:18 going into the unknown, presence
• 28:39 getting past blame and shame
• 32:00 Becoming the Remedy

Maren mentions The Inner Game of Business, the book she was referencing was Busting Loose from the Business Game

Please share your insights and questions in one of our Soulful Leaders groups:

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Do you know the symptoms of burnout? Do you ever ignore ongoing physical ailments so you can 'just keep going'? If so, you might be like today’s guest who was 'pushing through' her life thinking her exhaustion, dizzy spells and other chronic issues were ‘normal’. 

This week's very special guest, Michelle Leotta, experienced burnout herself and decided to dedicate her life to not only studying it, but to helping women heal this very pressing issue. Stephanie and Maren often talk about the ‘inward journey’ and sometimes there are ‘outer’ steps that must be addressed before we can look within. 

Sometimes we’re so overwhelmed with life that we don’t even know where to start. Michelle knows what that's like and is helping women make space in their lives to get healthy. You can access her free stress assessment here.

If you are in ‘overwhelm’, going from thing to thing, and need some support, this podcast is for you. Michelle gives us some really wonderful guidance around burnout, how to recognize it and how to overcome it.

• 05:04 Michelle’s Burnout Story, the normalcy of being uncomfortable
• 12:00 Anxiety meds and discovery, the go getter’s journey
• 13:54 Rock bottom & following the thread
• 19:59 There’s no ‘one right answer’/one size doesn’t fit all
• 22:56 I can make big changes
• 33:36 burnout = being out of alignment, the choices we make

Free Stress Assessment: shesgotpower.com/free

She’s Got Power.com

Maren on She’s Got Power Podcast: Ep 83 The High Achiever's Next Step

Podcast 77 (things we Tolerate) Delights in Everyday Moments

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A tapestry is created from the back side. The artist works from behind and sees the mess, the hanging threads, the transitions, etc. The world sees the polished, finished looking front, even while it’s in process. A perfect metaphor for our lives and our work. We are the creators of our lives, we not only see the mess, we live in it. The world, looking in, has a very different perspective.

Stephanie and Maren use this wonderful analogy to help us all shift our perspectives going into this new year. They even include 5 questions you can ask that will give you a glimpse of the front of your beautiful life tapestry… and tools to help you uplevel your skills!

• 00:41 Threads of Life
• 04:16 Surrender & Surfing as a Spiritual Practice
• 13:38 Having the front of the tapestry reflected back/5 questions
• 18:15 Unlearning, time to replace the push strive go conditioning
• 19:47 Paul Weinfield’s FB post
• 26:29 Are you playing in the kid’s pool?

5 Questions

1. What is the first thing you think of when you think of me?
2.  What do you perceive is my greatest strength?
3. What do you feel is my greatest achievement?
4. What is my most interesting and unique feature/aspect?
5. What would someone come to me for advice or help about? 

LINKS

FB Post by Paul Weinfield

Ep 78 - Playgrounds of Possibility w/Margaux Khoury

Ep 74 - Poor Sad Tomato

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How you do one thing is how you do everything and bringing this awareness into your new year affords opportunities you might never have seen before. This theme winds its way through all parts of today’s podcast taking you to a new place for the year to come.

Maren and Stephanie share stories about lights, beginnings and endings and up-leveling standards to become the person you want to be. They also share what they look for in a mentor/coach AND the practices they use to step-up in their own lives.

Are you ready to step-up your life in 2023?

• 00:41 Taking advantage of the opportunities of the new year
• 05:36 Allowing the goodness in our lives, how do we stop pushing it away

My ability to receive love directly correlates to the ability of myself to be able to give myself love, and to also let it in and trust it. - Stephanie Allen

• 08:31 Enlightenment through a string of lights
• 19:02 Setting up a supportive day
• 19:50 Three Times Rule -standing for yourself
• 27:18 You hit your head when you try to dive deeply in the shallow end
• 28:20 finding a mentor and creating a practice

We invite you all to say yes to this year, and its unfoldment in the deepest way possible for you.

Links

Ep 74: Poor Sad Tomato Podcast

Great Uplift: 12 Days of Christmas

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The magic of the butterfly ...it's a future potential lying within the imaginal cells of the caterpillar, it only becomes a butterfly when transformation is triggered and the process completed. 

The perfect metaphor for us, where we are individually, and as a collective on the planet right now.  You feel it. Your own actualization process has been triggered and you are being called by your future potential. The one that already lies within you.

Today’s magical podcast not only looks at this metaphor for us as leaders and future humans, but Stephanie shares a powerful practice/journey at the end that supports our metamorphosis!

This is the perfect kick-off to a new year.

• 03:43 Your shadow shows you your light
• 08:30 In every fairy tale, there is a villain … 
• 11:15 Weeds will keep on popping as long as you're conscious
• 15:20 Our ego walks us across the street in NYC
• 18:00 Addicted to pain because it gives us an out
• 22:10 Dark night of the soul, And I just jumped in there with you.
• 24:45 Okay, I'm in my crap. What do what the heck do I do with it?
• 26:30 The metaphor for metamorphosis
• 33:40 Harnessing the the power of the child and teenager
• 38:00 Embodying the butterfly
• 44:20 Metamorphosis journey

LINKS

Daniel and Jill: Ep 67 Three Questions that Will Change Your Life

‘For Me’/ ‘To Me’: Ep 37  ‘To You’ or ‘For You’: How to Make Shift Happen

Wing of the Bird Podcast(s): 

Ep 71 - The Shortcut to Uplevel Your Life and Business

Ep 69: Your Ego Wants to Figure it Out, There’s a Better Way

Metamorphosis Journey

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Is your holiday season a mad sprint to do all the things, see all the people and tick off all the jobs?

There is still time to do it DIFFERENTLY this year.

What If you took a half step back, tuned in, then re-engaged on your terms?

As a leader, you’d empower all those around you to do the same, you’d be leading from meaning; from a centered, internal compass.

Stephanie and Maren help all of us shift our holidays and traditions to something supportive and empowering. They also share an option for creating a very different 2023! 

• 00:41  unfolding the past year with presence and love, creating an amazing 2023
• 02:10 The why of traditions, and how they mess with us
• 06:43 there's nothing that will break open the heart of world faster than a question
• 11:38 What would you be doing if you weren’t ...
• 15:52 Who are you when no one’s looking?
• 20:53 Life wants more for us than we can ever imagine.
• 25:11 What will lift you into 2023?

Happiest of Holidays from all of us at the Soulful Leader Podcast

The Great Uplift: 12 Days of Christmas

“This is not goal setting. It’s creating the space to receive the presents, to receive the gifts that your soul wants to leave you this year… and to be present to what's coming.” ~Stephanie J. Allen

Please share your insights and questions in one of our Soulful Leaders groups:

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What would your Holidays be like if you could be REALLY present?  

To the sacredness, to the people, to yourself?

It’s the season of the longest nights, the most inward time of year, and yet we push ourselves to go, and do, and buy. Stephanie and Maren talk about bringing a bit of presence to ourselves, our needs and nature’s rhythms to transform the holidays… and beyond. 

They also share their own practice of presence and invite everyone to join them for 12 Days that can shift ALL of next year.

• 00:41   What if you could unfold your life completely different and totally in choice
• 04:16   Presence as a present
• 09:44   We're conditioned, trained, OUT of listening to our rhythms.
• 14:40  Giving yourself permission, what is nature calling you to?
• 18:39  We can’t do anything until we are present.
• 22:55  The 12 Days of Christmas Practice
• 26:24  The internal result of being present

Ep 75 - Slow Learners Podcast

The Great Uplift: 12 Days of Christmas

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