As leaders, we all face moments when we feel stuck.
Call it procrastination, lack of inspiration, or whatever you want; it’s that annoying position where you can’t go forward, you can’t go back, and you don’t know what to do next.
It can be tricky to find a way out of the rut and back on the path to success. Murielle Marie is a certified business and career coach who specializes in helping creative leaders and entrepreneurs break out and get moving again. She is a “mentor to the unconventional” with more than two decades of entrepreneurial experience. Her approach is part mindset and part practical steps you can start today!
Our conversation is just what you need if you’re looking for a boost in the right direction or useful information to tuck away until you need it. Murielle covers many topics, including:
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Strategies for stuck leaders
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How to shift perspectives when goals feel like mountains
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Building good habits that last
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Murielle Marie: Thinking is great, but taking action is better.
Nicole Greer: 100 percent.
Murielle: So at a certain moment you have to be willing to try.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole: Welcome to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and they call me the Vibrant Coach and I am here today with Murielle Marie. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we get started. Murielle is a certified business and career coach who helps creatives and entrepreneurs get unstuck. She calls herself a mentor to the unconventional, and it’s true. She has a master’s in philosophy. But that’s not all that has shaped her. As a multi passionate creative herself. She has more than 22 years of entrepreneurial experience. And she’s done everything from building, growing and successfully executing a web agency to founding startups, investing in cryptocurrency, and in the past seven years creating a successful online coaching business. Please welcome to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. Murielle. How are you today?
Murielle: Hi, Nicole. I’m doing really well. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure to be here.
Nicole: Yeah. And it’s a pleasure to have you here because I am listening to your beautiful accent. Tell everybody where you get your beautiful accent from. I have major wanderlust. I want to go places and the place that you get your accent from is on the list. So we tell us about your accent first.
Murielle: Yeah, so that would be Belgium. So I’m in Belgium, I’m an Antwerp. And I was raised bilingual. So I think you probably can hear a little bit of French in there and a little bit of Dutch in there. And so yeah, so it’s a little secret sauce on my on my English.
Nicole: Oh, I love your secret sauce. I think you sound lovely. I feel so international speaking. That’s fantastic. Oh, my goodness. All right. So I love it. You’re bilingual. So that that’s on my bucket list, too get that done. I took Spanish, French and German in high school. And I can do Spanish a little bit, but I wish I was fluent in all three, that would be really cool. I think you need to go places and get immersed, right, in order to get real fluent.
Murielle: I agree, I agree. I actually tried Spanish, you know, with you have these apps nowadays. And it’s so easy to teach yourself every day, a little bit of Spanish. But after six months, I found that I could I could actually say some things to myself. But I was like, who am I going to talk to I need to go to Spain.
Nicole: And I need to meet up at a cafe in Spain ASAP, but in the mean time we can do the vibrant leadership podcast. Well, the first thing I do right out of the gate is I ask everybody one question, because I’m trying to capture all the the definitions I can get my hands on. But what is your definition of leadership?
Murielle: Hmm. That’s such a great question. So I think for me, leadership is a lifestyle. And I say it’s almost a way of being. Because there’s so much in my opinion that goes into it. It leadership has to do with so many aspects of you as a person and what you embody and what you show the world and how you can inspire people that is very difficult, I think to see it’s separate from the person. And so for me, it’s a whole, literally, it’s really how you are and who you are that that can and is a great thing when it is leadership.
Nicole: Yeah, I agree. I ask people all the time this question, my listeners know this question. I’ll ask somebody I’m coaching, I’ll say, what is it like to experience you? And oftentimes people are like, tripped up by this question, because they’re like, oh, I never really thought about that. But it’s like, well, you really need to think about it. Because if you want people to follow you want your vision to manifest you got to be really clued in. So I love what you said about leadership is is a way that you are being in the world. It’s a lifestyle. Oh, I love that definition. Okay, so you can live a lifestyle of a leader. That’s so fantastic. So if I live a lifestyle of being a leader, what what are the skills I’m putting to work? How am I showing up in the world? How would you see somebody living the lifestyle of a leader?
Murielle: I think you’re definitely having a very active role in the life that you’re creating and in everything you’re creating, right because it extends further than living alone. I also believe that it requires a lot of self awareness. So that would definitely be a skill I think you need to possess. Because you need to be able to reflect on who you are, as you already the question you ask clients is like, spot on in such a fantastic question because it’s about, am I aware of who I am in this world. So there is this self sort of reflective and awareness piece. And then there’s really the embodiment because I think leadership is something you show, it’s not something you can sell.
It’s by being a leader that other people will sort of flock to you and understand what the purpose is, and that you’ll be able to inspire them to do whatever it is, you know, that you stand for and want them to do. And I think then the third piece in there is a sort of an openness to the world. You cannot be a leader alone on an island. In order to be a leader, you need people around you. And so there is a back and forth and a give and take and there’s an ear, you need to have for people, you need to listen, you need to be open. So I think those are the main ingredients, I’d say, for what I would call active leadership.
Nicole: Right? Right. So she said, don’t miss this everybody that is like an openness, a self awareness, right. And one of the things that you need to know about Murielle is she has a fantastic TED talk out there. So you need to go out and watch her TED talk, for sure. I watched it. I think I watched it twice, actually. And she talks in her TED talk about the fact that you know, don’t believe everything you think. So will you tell us what you mean by that? Don’t believe everything you think?
Murielle: Hmm, yeah. And you know, it’s so interesting, because I, until the last moment, when I knew I had to go on stage and deliver that talk, I was questioning what the title should be. Because I felt like, that was such a big statement, you know, to say to people don’t believe your thoughts. But one of the things I think that keeps us small, and that keeps us from taking leadership positions, or that keeps us from really living the life we want to live is the stuff that goes on in our heads. And everything starts with beliefs. That’s why it’s so important to be willing to question what it is we’re thinking. And for me, that happened. Before I started my coaching business, so it’s gonna be about 10 years ago now.
I feel like I’m such a self aware. And, you know, I would even dare to call me spiritual, maybe a little bit, not always, but I try, you know. But I wasn’t like that 10 years ago. And so one of the first things that I did was a mindfulness training. And I’ve never meditated before Nicole. I’d never heard anybody speak about things of, you know, the spiritual world, self aware. I didn’t know anything, I was just, I was building my web agency, and I was really, you know, doing a good job at that. And everything else was a little bit on the side. And the first thing are teachers, in the first session, like literally in the first 10 minutes of that first class is, you are not your thoughts. It hit me like a bus. I’d never thought of that.
For me, and I was very anxious. And, you know, I was keeping so many plates in the air at the same time, and I was building this business. So you have like a million things in your head all the time. And here’s this person who’s super relaxed, and smiling and very happy. And I was like, late, and I was sweating. And I was just, you know, barely on time for the first class. And she says, do you realize you’re not what you’re thinking. And so that’s really opened up this entire world that I now live in. But it was it was that woman that did that for me. And that thought.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. And you know, reflective mindfulness, they say that this is one of the top leadership skills we should be practicing. As my mentor likes to say we should slow down to the speed of our souls once a day to just kind of check in with ourselves and see what’s going on. So I think that is a huge skill for a 21st century leader. And don’t miss what Murielle said. She said, you got to you are not your thoughts, right. That’s the download she got. And I think she’s talking you’re talking about this idea of thinking about what you’re thinking, right? And then questioning what you’re thinking is an absolutely huge tool or skill for leadership leaders to do, because you could have a false thought in there. You could be telling yourself a story. So give us an example of how a leader might you know, survey what they’re thinking and then how do you do that? What do you do with it once you’ve done your survey, this is what I’m thinking.
Murielle: Well, I think in leadership positions, especially, you know, you have to think about so many things. And it’s not only the fallacy of the thought, it’s also who’s actually in my head. And it can be many different people. And it can be a lot of different influences. And when you have to weigh things off one another, I think it’s really important to be able to realize that not everything that happens in your head belongs to you. So it could be a false thought. But it could also just be something that, you know, a belief or an idea that comes from someone else. And I think as leaders, we have to be willing to go there, and especially to that place that’s very uncomfortable, of not really knowing, and, you know, being willing to act upon. I want to call it a hunch, but it’s not the best word for what I mean.
But because it’s, it’s, it brings together the expertise of the leader, that the information that’s available in the group, and you know, what, what everybody can build together, sort of intuitively. And sometimes you have to make decisions based on that, but you’re gonna have a voice in your head, that’s gonna go that’s dangerous. Don’t do it. Don’t try it, you know, or it always failed before, why would he work now? So you have to work through that jungle of all of those, those conversations and get to a place where, you know, without maybe knowing 100%, you’re still acting?
Nicole: Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. So I love what you said is that there’s a couple of things, you got to slow down and think about what you’re thinking metacognition, because you might have a false thought. But there also might be somebody else who’s in your head. So you know, that’s when other people are trying to influence us, right? And so like, somebody says something, and it just keeps going around and around, and you’re ruminating on it, ruminating on it. If you slow down to have that mindfulness every day, you can go, what is bothering me, what do I keep thinking about? Oh, it’s this comment that somebody made? Then you, once you can zero in there, you can go? Is that comment relevant?
Does it have any truth to it? Do I need to even worry about it, but sometimes we just get caught in that like little swirl, as I like to call it. And you can’t get through to what you want to do. So I think that is great advice. So you know, when you think about a leader, you know, getting clear about their belief system? How would you coach somebody to get clear about what they believe? How would you do that?
Murielle: That is such an important piece, right? Because at the end of the day, belief is the beginning of a cycle that ends in action. I think people often forget how everything starts with what we believe that then turns into emotions, emotions turn into, you know, actions. And that’s really the world. I’m simplifying, right Nicole. I’m sure you noticed that, just for simplifications sake. So you have a belief, and that’s gonna turn into your world, basically, that’s how it happens. So so what I think is important there is for people to really look at, how are you behaving? Because if the belief is the starting point, and the action is the end point, looking at the actions can give us a lot of information about what we actually believe.
Very often, you know, of course, there is the classic sort of journaling prompts of, you know, think about the subject, and then what are your thoughts on that subject? What do you believe about that subject? All of that is valid, and it’s helpful. But I often find that when you really look at what you do, that says so much about what you believe. For instance, a lot of really inspiring, interesting, creative people will have the belief that they lacked something, they’re not good enough in a particular area, and that maybe even the talent they have, you know, aren’t as great as they are. That will show in their actions by them not going fully for what they want. By keeping themselves small, by, you know, maybe even apologizing for what they’re producing, instead of being proud of it. For all of those those things.
But in effect, when all of that is happening, they’re actually speaking their beliefs. So I find it very helpful, especially for people because I coach a lot of people who are stuck, right? So and then the stuckness is this really annoying place where you can’t go forward, can’t go back, don’t know what to do next, where you’ve exhausted all of these journaling prompts and all of that stuff and you can’t seem to move forward. So we need a different strategy. And then it’s really interesting to not ask ourselves so much, but really to look at, like, what what am I actually doing in my life?
Nicole: Yeah. And so I love what you said about these thoughts can do a lot of things to us. And if we can notice the actions. So here’s the things that I wrote down that you said that you’re keeping yourself small, you might be apologizing for things. And then I wrote down the word procrastinating. That’s another part of being stuck. People just don’t take any action. So there’s got to be like a triggering thought, that produces some emotion like fear or anxiety or worry. And then you get into this terrible cycle of procrastinating, keeping small, apologizing for what’s going on. So you know, you said you coach, a lot of people who are stuck, and in there, you might have exhausted the exercise of journaling. Maybe you are sitting still for a portion of the day. What strategies can you put in our pockets today for our leaders who might feel like they’re stuck? What strategies can we do?
Murielle: One, one thing that I really love to invite people to do is to see life as an experiment. Actually, there’s a famous person who even said that. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson that even said that all of life is an experiment. I could I could mistake. So I apologize if I’m just quoting that totally wrong. Anyway. So why? Because if we so procrastination, I think that’s such a great example. Because when we procrastinate, we’re actually also doing something right. It’s also an action, we’re not doing anything. So that’s doing too. But procrastination really is a blanket. And under that blanket, there’s fear. There is trepidation, there is excitement, there is stress, there is anxiety, it could be a lot of different things, but it’s always an emotion.
And it’s an emotion that stops us from doing anything. The problem with that is when you’re in that cycle for too long, or for long enough, you really don’t know anymore, how to get out of it. And so again, you’ve exhausted all of the tools, which usually usually the major tool that people use is willpower, which I personally don’t believe in. I don’t think there is such a thing as well, it exists, that is a very finite resource, right? It’s not like it’s this well, that you can just go back to and keep on drinking of. That’s, that’s not how it works. But then when you’ve exhausted your very tiny amount of willpower, you’re still not moving forward, and you start to take yourself really seriously. You start to look for what’s wrong with me? You know, why am I not capable of doing this? You know, it goes into disaster scenarios very fast.
So what I like to invite people to do is to start to play, experiment, don’t make commitments that feel like you can fail. Instead, give yourself a break, and try to find whatever other ways you can find to move a little bit forward. Because the thing is, though, you need to make a step, you need to take that step. There is no way around it, you need to take action. The only thing is, we want you to be able to do it, even if you feel a little uncomfortable, even if you’ve been procrastinating for a long time. And so the way that you can achieve that is by not making it such a big deal anymore for a while.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the strategy that you’ve shared to get unstuck is to see life as an experiment. I love that. Right? So you know, you get in your laboratory, you get your lab coat on, you mix things together, and you see if any of it will work. And you’re saying that’s like taking that next right step. And you know, I think that sometimes to Murielle people, they measure too far in advance. Like maybe the reason they’re stuck is because the thing, they’re after his big, like, say they want to write a book, or they want to get a college degree or they want to get this new job.
And all of those things are actually a series of little teeny tiny steps. It’s like, well, if you could just experiment with one of those steps. So for example, I know that you work with people on helping them with their careers, I do the same thing. And it’s like, okay, so you want this big career, but like, what’s, what’s the little thing we could do between now and tomorrow that would move your career forward? Well, let’s get our resume together. And let’s make it fantastic, right, let’s research all the ways we could do our resume. And then once we have that in place, it’s almost like that kind of reinvigorates our willpower, right. Gives us a little energy. So I think it’s about you know, I love your idea of an experiment.
Like, let’s just try to get the resume together. How does it make you feel? Let’s do the next thing. How does that make you feel right? And so then people start to kind of get that willpower going, as you’re talking about, maybe you get a bigger, bigger dose of it. Well, when you think about leaders that are super successful, and leaders that struggle, what do you think the difference between those two leaders are? Why do some just get it done? And some stay stuck? Other than the fact that they’re not using life as an experiment? What, what else might be going on there?
Murielle: Can I just quickly comment on what you just said. I think there’s something that could be useful for your listeners and viewers. You’re talking about, we make these big goals, right, which is true. And very often they look like mountains, right. And so the thing is, is I find that it’s, you can really shift somebody’s perspective on this. If you make them understand that it’s actually not a mountain, they have to climb in one go. But if you flip it around, it becomes the distance they have to walk. And so the distance is a step by step process, right? When you look at the mountain, you’re like, how can I be on top of there like tomorrow? But when you lay down flat, you realize it’s actually a journey? It’s it’s not I mean, I don’t have to figure out how to get there in one go. It’s not straight up. It’s like a much longer route. I mean, and much longer doesn’t sound very good always when we want to achieve goals. But, you know, you know what I mean?
Nicole: Yeah, And I do think like laying out linearly, right. And then, you know, one of the things that you’ve shared again, in your TED talk is, don’t believe everything you’re thinking, right? Well, like, if you believe it’s a mountain, then it’s going to be hard. Right? Like, I find that there is an epidemic of hard in the world. There’s, there’s an actual epidemic in the world right now. Called COVID. But, but I think there’s another epidemic that like, we tell ourselves that things are hard. And if you call your goal, this big mountain, you know, this big mountain, you’re just making it harder on yourself. So like, if you again, like you’re saying, I love that idea of flatten the mountain out, get a nice level pathway, something that’s manageable. I take one step it’s not going to wind me, I don’t need special equipment, I just need to sit down, do the resume. Then I need to apply on indeed.
Then I need to work my network, all the different things that I might need to do if I’m working on my career. If I’m working on my leadership, then maybe I need to sit down and get my leadership philosophy together. I need to figure out what I believe about leadership. What I believe about the future of this company, and then pick one next right step. I think that’s fantastic. Okay, so when you, you were in your TED talk, you started out by talking about the power of questions. I love the fact that you said when you were a little girl, you would ask your daddy about things and, and he would, he would he would he would be the one source that would explain everything to you. And it seems like the older we get, the less questions we ask, tell me what you think about the power of asking questions. I’m a big fan of that.
Murielle: I think we, you know, you used to answer until he got really fed up with me, which did happen. And then I had to be quiet for a while. But anyway, I think that’s normal. But the power of questions is, I think as long as you can ask questions, and I think this needs to be a habit, it needs to be a way of living. It needs to be part of how you stand in the world. Like being curious about people and being curious about life itself. And yourself in the middle of all that, I think is one of the most beautiful and unique gifts we have as human beings. I cannot imagine any visionary, any leader, any innovator, anyone, any scientist come up with something that because everything we have around us like was once imagined.
So I can’t imagine any of those people come up with these things without first asking a bunch of questions. And what I realized also is that you’re talking about, you know, this step by step process that actually gets you on top of the mountain after a while. That’s the process of asking questions, the right one. And, and a couple of, you know, wrong ones along the way, which you know, you need to ask too to know, the right one. So a lot of my clients, when they start working with me, they get homework, obviously, you know, they have things to do. And then some of them come back to me and they said well, and they say well, I had this and this and this to do but I didn’t really do anything.
And then when I ask a little bit further, what I realize is they’ve actually done a lot of things. What they’ve done is they’ve question a lot of what they need to question in order to be able to move forward to meet, the goals they set and the activities they have. So and we often forget that this piece of asking questions and finding answers can look like procrastination, it can look like we’re just sitting in the sofa, you know, doing nothing. But I think it’s a vital element in anything we want to undertake.
Nicole: Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I had a master coach, his name was Dave. And he said to me, you know, even though you might have a client who’s stuck, you might be coaching the client, and you get stuck, the coach gets stuck, you don’t know what question to ask. And he had this little phrase, and he would say, Murielle. He would say, here’s what you do, you turn to wonder, and you should write that down. Everybody just write a sticky note that says, turn wonder, you know, and put it on your, your, your mousepad, put it up on your computer, something. And I thought that was such good advice. Because, you know, I don’t know what to do here. But I’ll just wonder what’s going on. Right. So you know, you know, you would say, I wonder why this person is so stuck. I wonder why this person can’t move forward. You know, it’s just turning to that place of curiosity.
But I love the word wonder. So I think that’s fantastic. So as you work with people, and they do their homework, and they they are doing all of this thinking, you bring it to their like awareness, you know, you actually were thinking a lot. I think that critical thinking, measuring things, and, you know, kind of turning things upside down, looking at things all different directions. That’s exactly what a coach can help people do. So when when you’ve got people in there, and they’re stuck, you ask them to see life as an experience, you bring to their awareness that they’re actually thinking and thinking is getting things done. How do you move people? What advice would you give them for actually taking that next right step? What could catapult people into the next step?
Murielle: Thinking is great, but taking action is better, right? So at a certain moment, you have to be willing to try. And that is also again, the place where you have to be willing to be very uncomfortable. Because you have no certainty. You don’t know if it’s gonna work out or not, you just have a hunch. You’ve thought about it, you’ve asked yourself the questions, you know, you have an idea, you have a plan. But then you have to go out and, you know, test it against reality. And I think the best way for people to do that is to give themselves, I want to say a deadline, at least, you know, a time for thinking and a time for doing. And that’s again, where a coach is very valuable, right, Nicole? Because we then to help people to go from the thinking imagining phase into the doing phase.
So when when they work with us, they have regular intervals, accountability, and somebody questioning and you know, asking what actions they’ve they’ve taken. So accountability, if it’s not within a coaching series, or whatever, it can always be interesting. Not doing it all alone, but having other people helping you. But I think at the end of the day, it’s really a decision you make, it’s a decision, right? We all see these dreams and these goals. And for a very long time, I really thought you just have to work hard at it, and it will work out, it will be fine. And to a certain extent, that’s true, right? You learn the skills, you see it’s not a mountain, and you have to take the steps, it will take time, but you’ll get there.
But the more I do this work, the more I believe that you also have to become the person that is capable of achieving those goals. And that’s much more an internal process. Where you, I mean, when I look at it in my own life, for instance, I’ve been writing books, and yesterday was the first year anniversary of the first book that I started writing, and it’s almost that it’s a it’s almost finished. So it’s a big, big job. But I did it in 45 minutes print a day. So I only write 45 minutes every day. That’s what I do. Not more, not less, but I’ve done it every single day for 365 days. And you know, you have these quotes that tell you, you know, your future self will thank you or you know, whatever.
So that’s true. Now that’s true, now I’ve done it 365 times I have a book. So it’s an incredible accomplishment. But when you look at it day by day, it’s not that hard. It’s not a full time job. But it required me to become this person that was going to do it systematically every day. And I think that’s an important piece of this puzzle. So there is accountability, there’s making sure that at a certain moment you start doing instead of you don’t stay in the thinking world. But then there’s also this question of how can I be, you know, the person I want to become?
Nicole: Absolutely. So first of all, congratulations, what’s the working title of your book?
Murielle: Oh, I don’t have one yet!
Nicole: Okay. All right.
Murielle: I’ve been through 10 so far. So I don’t want to say anything.
Nicole: Okay. All right. Well, we want to know, and when you get the book published, and everything, we want to have you back on the Vibrant Leadership podcast, so you can tell us all about it, we’ll work through chapter by chapter and get the highlights from us. We’re, we’d love to do that. So I love that you’re kind of like our poster gal, for, you know, turning, thinking into doing you know, and sitting down doing that next right step. And the next right step for 365 days, don’t miss this, everybody was 45 minutes in the chair typing, right and thinking thoughts letting it come through her hands into her fingers onto the keyboard showing up on the screen.
So that is an excellent, excellent example. She’s our own little poster gal for that. And I think too like, again, if we think about it, if you say I’m going to write a book, it seems enormous. But if you sit down and you say, I’m gonna write for 45 minutes, that’s totally doable. And we get ourselves out of that belief system of it’s hard, because sitting down for 45 minutes and writing, that’s not bad. That’s not a big deal. That is totally doable today, right? So it’s kind of like, do what you can today. And then eventually, at the end of those series of 45 minutes, and she used this language that’s so coachy, y’all, she said, my future self will thank me. And that’s such a coachy way to talk. I love it. Because of us coaches, we think about the fact that you know, you decide who your future self will be. And in the moment, you start creating that human right now.
So she has become an author. 365 days ago, she was Murielle Marie, the coach, the web developer, whatever. But now she’s added a whole new segment to her future self. So gosh, don’t miss that. And you know, when we’re talking about this, Murielle, one thing I’m thinking about is my coach, he says, you know, don’t fall in the gap, don’t fall in the gap. So if you say, oh, I’m going to become an author, maybe about six months ago, if you’d have measured forward and saw how much was not done on your book, you’d have fallen into the gap. But if you sat down and looked at everything you wrote, and you said, look how much I’ve written, you don’t fall in the gap. So there’s this idea of perspective, that is absolutely huge. So tell me a little bit about how you managed your thought process as you have become an author? Because I think this is a great testimony.
Murielle: Hmm, thank you. Yeah, you know, I wanted to mention, and I think that’s a little bit an answer to your question, that it’s also doing things slowly. I mean, slowly, doing things in an easy way, right, like 45 minutes a day, no pressure on myself, is the way that I build most habits. Because I’ve found that if I pressure myself too much, I’ll do it really well for a few days. But it’s too hard, and I won’t stay doing it. But just by finding, you know, where the bar is low enough for me to actually do it, even if there’s a little bit of discomfort in the beginning, because there certainly was, I can continue to do it. And as I progressed, I changed. So now in the morning, I look forward to those 45 minutes, because they’ve become part of my morning routine. They really focus me and doing it for a year has obviously as a multi passionate creative, I’ve read all of the books on writing, I’ve applied everything that I’ve read into my work.
So whatever I did in the beginning is is absolutely not what I’m doing now. So there is also this process of really becoming someone and becoming something as you move forward through your journey. And so all of that is made that it’s been so fun to do. But what started at 45 minutes, just for me, because I wasn’t, I mean, for the first six months, I wasn’t even planning on making it like a published book. Like now I’m talking to you know, publishing houses and everything. So this is becoming a real, real thing. But it wasn’t like that in the beginning. I was just doing it for fun for me. But now a year later, it informed because it changed my brain. And it informs everything I do. So it’s made me a better article writer, it’s made me a better, you know, social media writer, producer. Like it’s really transformed my life.
Nicole: I am celebrating you over here. Okay. So I love what she’s saying is, you do have to get past the discomfort stage. You know, neither one of the coaches on this call are going to tell you that, oh, it’s just easy peasy. But you do pick something that is, you know, manageable, put it in your schedule daily, learn to have that discipline on it, and it will change you as a person and, and then some day you’ll wake up and you’ll find yourself being an author. I absolutely adore. adore that. Well, we are at the top of our hour. And I have absolutely loved talking to you about setting like next steps, little small goals, hearing about meeting your future self. Thinking about how we’re thinking a lot of great stuff we’ve covered, but I’m wondering if somebody out there a leader out there needed just one piece of advice about how to live their life more vibrantly, how would, what would you give to them? What would be that piece of advice for that one special listener out there?
Murielle: I would say that leadership starts with yourself. I’ve heard a saying once that said, you know, leadership is never given. It’s always taken. But I want to change that a little bit. I don’t think it’s taken, and I think it’s earned. And the way you earn it is by becoming a leader, right. Maybe exactly the same way, as you’re becoming a writer, you have to practice and you have to work at it. So the advice I would give is, like, start taking on this active role in your own life based on, like start doing changing the world around you based on your values based on your morals based on what you believe in, and practice on yourself until you’ll see that actually it has a ripple effect. And you can do that on a grander scale as well. But it starts with yourself.
Nicole: That’s right, that’s exactly right. Yeah, you got to lead yourself well, first before you can lead anybody else. I couldn’t agree more. Well, Murielle is absolutely been a delight to be with you. Will you tell everybody how can we find you if we want you to coach us, help us with our website? You know, talk to us about writing books. How can we find you and get up with you? Are you on LinkedIn?
Murielle: I am on LinkedIn. You can find me at Murielle Marie and also on Instagram at Murielle Marie and of course my website, which is muriellemarie.com. So I invite everybody to come talk to me send me DMs. I love receiving them. I’m always available and I love a good conversation.
Nicole: Oh, that’s fantastic. So, if you’re a stuck leader, you definitely need to go out there and get up with Murielle Marie. Let me spell it for you. m u r i e l l e. Murielle. Marie. m a r i e .com. Alright, so fo check her out. I’m so grateful that you are on the Vibrant Leadership podcast. Let us know in the book is done. We’ll have you back and we’ll talk all about the book. All right.
Murielle: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Nicole. It was a pleasure.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk.
