How to live a life you Love,
from exactly where you are.
Welcome to The Playful Life.
I’m Brie McLean — artist, coach, and founder of The Playful Life.
My hope is that you get inspired to get to know yourself, the real you, the amazing and incredible you, the you that’s always been there, on the inside.
Because once you get to know that Inner You, and you introduce her to the Outer you, and the two of you begin to collaborate, you will feel more Alive than you might think possible. And what’s more, you will grow to absolutely LOVE YOUR LIFE.
What is The Playful Life?
Feeling Alive vs. Simply Being Alive
Most of us know what it means to be alive — we get up, go through the motions, laugh if we are lucky and make it through the day.
But feeling alive is something different.
It’s when your senses wake up, as well as an awareness to the present moment. It’s when those wonderful feelings of joy and happy and calm walk in, and right behind them the hard emotions — anger, fear, grief — and you’re able to appreciate and even embrace them. It’s when your whole self is invited to the experience of FEELING ALIVE.
A Philosophy, a Practice, a Path
The Playful Life is more than a concept — it’s a perspective; a way of seeing yourself and the world around you. It’s also a virtual box of habits; both mindset and action-oriented that act as guide-rails along your particular path.
It’s this path that helps you move from surviving to thriving; from numbing to feeling; from self-doubt to self-trust.
It’s about becoming resilient, adaptable, and joy-filled — even when joy isn’t the emotion you’re feeling in the moment.
What It Cultivates
When you live The Playful Life,
You begin to cultivate qualities that make life not just bearable, but beautiful:
Deep connection to yourself and others
Curiosity, appreciation, and gratitude
Compassion and self-acceptance
Comfort in your own skin
A renewed sense of possibility
What I Hope to Help You With
My work — through coaching, writing, and creative guidance — is to help you:
Shift the mindsets that keep you from seeing both your life and the world and inherently beautiful, interesting and exciting.
Reconnect with your creative and playful self
Believe, deeply, that you are enough
Learn to love yourself and your life as they are
Understand what play really is (and isn’t)
Find the forms of play that make you feel alive
Unblock the creative energy that’s been inside you all along
Why It Matters
At its heart, The Playful Life is about remembering who you already are — before the world told you who you should be.
When you reconnect to that truth, you don’t just survive this life…
you feel it, breathe it, and live it fully — playfully.
The Roots
of
The Playful Life
At the heart of The Playful Life are the five elements of your Soul Soil — Play, Creativity, Love (and Grief), Curiosity, and Soul Confidence.
These are the living components that shape how you experience the world, grow through challenge, and connect to your most authentic self.
Like any garden, your inner life needs tending — and that’s where the 21 daily habits come in. These simple, grounding practices are how you nourish, cultivate, and maintain your Soul Soil, helping you stay resilient, joyful, and deeply alive from the inside out
Your Soul Soil: The Five Elements of The Playful Life
Each of us has a unique blend of Soul Soil — no two Soul Soils will be exactly the same.
Here are the five elements that keep your inner world thriving:
Play
The spark that reconnects you to joy, spontaneity, and presence.
Play reminds you that not everything has to have a purpose — sometimes the point is the pleasure.
Creativity
The flow of your authentic self made visible.
It’s not about talent — it’s about expression, curiosity, and giving form to what lives inside you.
Love
Love is the LIGHT, it is the glow. It is the shiny, enervating energy of our lives that gives us the motivation to move through life.
Love + Grief
Two sides of the same sparkling gem.
Love makes you shine; grief deepens your light. Together they expand your capacity for compassion and connection.
Curiosity
The willingness to wonder — to ask, explore, and be surprised.
Curiosity invites you back to the present, turning everyday moments into a world of discovery.
Soul Confidence
The deep trust that who you are is already enough.
It’s the quiet knowing that your worth isn’t earned — it’s based on who you already are.
The 21 Daily Habits:
Nourishing Your Soul Soil
Small actions, big transformation
Real change doesn’t happen all at once — it grows through small, intentional acts of care.
The 21 daily habits of The Playful Life are gentle invitations to reconnect with yourself and your world — the simple, grounding things that cultivate presence, creativity, and inner steadiness.
These habits are how you tend your Soul Soil: how you water your joy, loosen the roots of old fears, and make space for new growth.
They are practices of noticing, gratitude, movement, rest, play, and reflection — chosen to help you move from simply being alive to feeling alive.
Each habit is both a seed and a reminder that you already hold everything you need to flourish.
A final note…..
At its heart, The Playful Life is about agency — the quiet, steady kind that begins inside you.
It’s the recognition that you have power over your own life, even when it feels like you don’t.
True transformation doesn’t start with sweeping changes; it begins with small, honest ones. The ones that build trust in yourself — the kind that teach you how to tell the difference between a choice made from fear, grief, or envy… and one made from love, curiosity, or desire.
The work isn’t about fixing what’s broken; it’s about listening for what your Soul Seed is whispering — what it wants to grow into.
There’s a saying: “Hurt people hurt people.”
What we’re really doing here is tending to those hurts — so we don’t hand them to others, and so they no longer define who we are.
When you begin to know yourself at that level — not the surface self, but the soul one — you stop chasing confidence by the world’s rules.
You see that you were never lacking. You simply needed to remember your own agency, and choose, again and again, to live as if you are already whole.
With affection,
Brie
.
Feeling Alive starts here-with laughter, curiosity, and the freedom to play again.