HOW TO LIVE A LIFE YOU LOVE,
FROM EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE.
Welcome to The Playful Life.
I’m Brie McLean — artist, guide, and founder of The Playful Life.
May what you find here inspire you to begin your own joyful transformation, starting right where you are.
What is The Playful Life?
Feeling Alive vs. Simply Being Alive
Most of us know what it means to be alive — to get up, go through the motions, and make it through the day.
But feeling alive is something different.
It’s when your senses wake up, when joy and curiosity re-enter the room, and even the hard emotions — fear, grief, anger — are met with awareness instead of avoidance. It’s when your whole self is invited to the experience of living.
A Philosophy, a Practice, a Path
The Playful Life is more than a concept — it’s a philosophy, a system, and a way of seeing the world.
It’s a 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 grow 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 small or stuck
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 come alive
Unblock the creative energy that’s been waiting to move
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 a Playful Life
Each of us has a unique blend of Soul Soil — the fertile ground where play, creativity, and confidence take root.
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 heartbeat.
Love opens you; grief deepens you. Together they expand your capacity for compassion and connection.
Curiosity
CURIOSITY: Curiosity is about being present.Being curious is about seeing the world around you through a different lens.
Curiosity
The willingness to wonder — to ask, explore, and be surprised.
Curiosity invites you into presence, turning everyday moments into discovery.
Confidence
CONFIDENCE: This is not the type of confidence in your abilities to do something or your skill set, your talents, the way you look, it’s about confidence in who you are.
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 remembered.
I feel like all of these constituents… Everything I'm talking about, is essentially about agency; recognizing and embracing that you have agency over your own life, even when it feels like you don’t. And even when, in a lot of ways, you don't. I feel like most people talk about doing the big changes… And what I'm saying is, don't do any big changes at all… not until you do the little changes… not until you do the things that build the trust in yourself to make decisions that are best for you. And knowing the difference about which decisions are based out of fear or anger or grief or sadness or envy or any of that…and which are based on what it is that you want. What your Soul Seed is saying. There’s a popular saying that says “hurt people hurt people”. That's what you're trying to figure out; is what are your hurt, your wounds, so you don't put them on people. And, as important, so you don’t define yourself by them. And the way to know if you are getting to know yourself and knowing what it is that you want and who you are at the soul level. Going back to confidence, I feel like when we talk about getting self-confidence. We are playing by the same rules that tell us we're not good enough. What I'm saying is bypass those rules, acknowledge them understand their importance take what you want and bypass them.