Podcast transcript:

Hi! I’m so happy to welcome you for this very first episode of this brand new podcast! Today, I want to share with you why I decided to launch this podcast, and share a little bit more about myself and my journey. Who’s the voice with the uhum slightly french accent you’re listening to right now? Where does this person come from, and why does she care so much about getting you unstuck? Great questions! Thanks for asking! 

I’ll do my best to answer them, and hopefully to get you a little bit excited about what’s to come in this podcast! 

Ok, so first for the official introductions. My name is Murielle Marie, I live in Antwerp, Belgium. I write, I coach, I’m an entrepreneur and a creative generalist, I invest in other people’s businesses, I advocate for equality and inclusion, I love genealogy, transcendental meditation, yoga, reading, learning new things, and stepping out of my comfort zone. I was raised speaking French and went to a Dutch school, that’s where the weird french-kinda accent comes from. 

I was a quiet, timid child who spent a lot of her time by herself. I’ve always been interested in what it means to be human, and what on earth we’re supposed to be doing with our lives. That’s how I started my adult life with a philosophy degree in my pocket and realized early on that an academic career wasn’t going to work with my creative brain. So right before graduation, much to the sorrow of some of my teachers, I applied for a tax registration number so I could start working as a freelancer. I landed my first consulting job at a magazine ads agency who was looking to transition into digital marketing. We’re talking about the year 2000 here, so don’t think of high speed internet and canva but rather dial-up turtle net and dreamweaver 4. 

After that first consulting job, more than 20 years ago, my love for IT and website development only grew. I led a few more projects that had to do with the internet. Eventually, a few years later, I launched my own agency. I had that business for almost ten years before selling it to another company. After that I consulted as a senior project manager for the European Commission for a while, and co-founded a small software security startup that led me all the way to NYC. It sounds cool, and it was, but to me, the most important thing is that around the time I left the agency, now eight years ago, is also when I started the career and business coaching business I’m still running today.

It’s the most important thing to me for a few different reasons. The first is that it’s absolutely aligned with my interests, passions, values, and even the way my brain works best. As a creative generalist I need diversity in my work to fight off boredom, and a good excuse to keep learning, and running an international coaching business gives me that, and more. 

The second reason why it’s the most important to me is that it’s the only career choice I ever truly made in my life. Everything else, from that first consulting job to what I did right up to starting my coaching business, was either me saying yes to an opportunity I wasn’t looking for and that just showed up, or me doing the things I thought I needed to do in order to be a good person and to be successful.

But then in 2010, my parents passed away, 5 weeks apart from each other. First my mom, unexpectedly from a heart attack, then five weeks later my father from cancer. After going through an intense period of grief I realized that I’d always done things for other people. I was living two lives. The one in my head when everything I wanted was finally there and I was happy, and the one I was actually living where I was working like crazy and absolutely not connected with my emotions, my dreams, or even my body.  

It took me a few more years to figure things out, but eventually I realized I’d been stuck for so long, for decades really, looking successful on the outside but feeling miserable on the inside. I always felt out of place, like I didn’t belong. Now I know there’s a few good reasons for it. The way my creative brain works for one, or the childhood trauma I carried with me well into adulthood. Some of the reasons I haven’t talked about publicly yet, but I bet I might later on in this podcast. And then there’s mindset, and how we look at life. That, too, greatly influences how stuck we are.   

A decade ago, I woke up to my life. Instead of only talking and thinking about all the things I wanted to do, I started to actually do them. Little by little, step by step, I got myself unstuck. As that was happening I started helping other people get unstuck too.   

Now, eight years later, I’m nothing like the person I used to be. I’ve learned so much about what gets and keeps people stuck along the way that I wanted to share what I’ve learned with you. That’s why I’m starting this podcast. Because I know how painful feeling stuck can be, how agonizing. 

Helping people say “fuck it” and get unstuck is my superpower. I do this work using a unique blend of philosophy, neuroscience, mindfulness, attachment and trauma theory, metaphysics, essentialism, minimalism, mindset work, and the knowledge and expertise I’ve built through thousands of hours coaching clients. So we’re going to talk about anxiety, fear, overthinking, perfectionism, procrastination, people-pleasing, our creative brains, work and life, happiness, why we do the stuff we do, and why it’s so hard to change our behavior. Among other things. Being an avid reader, I’ll throw in a book tip, or an idea from a book or an essay once in a while. And of course, with more than 20 years of entrepreneurship under my belt, sound career and business advice will be part of the mix too.

Because I believe that you can’t think yourself into anything, at some point you have to go out and do it. I love to come up with experiments and games for myself and my clients to try out, so they can step outside of their comfort zone and experience new things. I believe it’s the best way to help our nervous system figure out that what we fear isn’t going to kill us, so I’ll add a dash of that in this podcast as well. 

After doing this work for so many years, here’s what I know: being stuck is a feeling, not a fact. The way you feel today doesn’t need to be how you feel tomorrow, believe me, I witness incredible changes and transformation in my practice every day. And I’ve experienced it firsthand many times in my life.  

So if you’re ready to get unstuck, to free yourself, to come alive, to say fuck it and go for your dreams because you know that this is your time, your life and that you only have one… 

There’s only one thing for me left to say: Welcome! Thank you so much for listening in on this first episode. It’s a pleasure to have you. And I can’t wait to share everything I know about getting unstuck and live a wild and free life with you. Talk to you next week!