Daring to Live Begins Here

In this episode of the Daring to Live podcast, PamElle Hansen shares her personal journey of evolution, healing, and self-discovery. She reflects on her past experiences, including the challenges of achieving success without fulfillment, the importance of self-trust, and the transformative power of solitude. PamElle emphasizes that growth is not always visible and encourages listeners to embrace their own journeys of becoming, reminding them that they are not alone in their struggles.

takeaways

• This podcast is about truth and empowerment.
• PamElle's journey involved uprooting her life for fulfillment.
• Success without alignment leads to burnout.
• Healing requires permission to dive deep.
• Growth can be quiet and non-linear.
• Self-trust is essential for authentic living.
• Embracing solitude can lead to self-discovery.
• You are not defined by your roles.
• Living authentically means trusting your own truth.
• This season focuses on deeper connections and self-exploration.

titles

Daring to Live: A Journey of Self-Discovery

Sound Bites

• "Growth isn't always loud."
• "You are becoming."
• "This space is for you."

Chapters

00:00
Welcome Back and Personal Evolution

02:49
The Journey of Healing and Self-Discovery

05:14
Uprooting Life for Fulfillment

09:55
Navigating Change and Embracing Solitude

13:30
Embodiment and Living Authentically

Transcript

PamElle Hansen (00:01.728)
Welcome to the Daring to Live podcast. Here, we talk truth. From walking in your power, living in confidence, learning to connect on a deeper level, to putting it all into practice while creating the absolute life of your dreams, empowering you to create balance, fulfillment, impact, and purpose. If you're ready to evolve into your next level self, this podcast is for you.

PamElle Hansen (00:28.338)
It feels really good to be back here. If you're new here, welcome. And if you've been around for a while, whether through social media or my previous podcast, thank you for still being here. Thank you for your support and your presence and your trust. This isn't just a podcast comeback for me. This is a return from a very real chapter of evolution in my life, a chapter that has shaped me in ways I could never have predicted.

Two years ago, I started this podcast and at the time it was called the Successful Podcast. That was success-full, F-U-L-L. And I really was leaning into building a life that was both built on success and also full of joy and balance and meaning. But truthfully, at the time, I hadn't mastered that yet. And while we're all a work in progress, I really felt like I had a bigger message that I wanted to share.

And I knew that would require more of me and that there was more inner work to do before I was in a place to share the things I was learning from and growing with at the time. I hadn't fully given myself not just the time, but the permission to fully dive into healing. And I was keenly aware that the point in my life where I couldn't ignore that any longer had arrived. What I realized trying to build that podcast and launch a new business back then,

was that I was still doing the same thing I had been doing before. I was still trying to prove my value, maybe even just to myself, by building something that became successful. And I came to recognize three things. Success doesn't mean anything if it's built on burnout, overworking, and moving for reasons that aren't in alignment with who you are. If it's built on a place of disconnection with yourself and those close to you. And if it's built in the midst of a life that's on autopilot where real growth isn't happening.

So I pulled back, I took a break and I dove deep into all the things I wanted to become, all the pieces of me that I knew were there, but hadn't yet had the space to fully emerge. So I healed and I grew. And ultimately I changed and became different in all the ways I wanted to be different. And that woman underneath it all had been there all along. She just needed permission from me to step up and be all of who she was meant to be. In 2022,

PamElle Hansen (02:49.014)
I intentionally uprooted my entire life because I realized I wasn't living in a way that was fulfilling me at all. And while my life looked sort of picture perfect from the outside, it wasn't a real depiction of the woman that I knew I was. I had the life, the American dream, the house on the hill full of beautiful things, a high income, nice cars, investment properties, the whole keeping up with the Joneses thing, right? But as we've learned, the way things look can often be deceiving. And the truth was, that's miserable.

And a very simple phrase began to repeat itself in my mind. If you want to change your life, you have to change your life. I left a very painful marriage, moved away from the city I'd lived in for two decades, and I walked away from a very successful real estate career at the top of my game. I'd done over 20 million in sales the year before, and I had achieved every goal I put in place for myself. Interestingly, while I did achieve some pretty lofty goals,

I never seemed to exceed those goals. It was almost like putting a goal in writing became so rigid for me and such a directed thing that it also became a limiting belief in a sense. I would work toward it and subconsciously ease up once I knew I would reach it because I was exhausted from all of it. Because the goals were empty back then. They were numbers, strategic totals that I could move with and track. So those milestones came easy. But the truth is that achieving things becomes really empty.

if there isn't an impact being made that aligns with who we are and what we feel our calling and purpose really is. I had fallen into the trap of being who I thought I had to be based on what people expected of me. It had become a place where reaching milestones that were dollars and sales goals was driving me instead of making an impact for people, which is what I really wanted to do. And that was completely out of line with who I knew I was and what I really wanted to bring to this world.

I truly loved my clients and everything about the real estate world. I still really love real estate. And I built beautiful relationships with many of those people who truly became my friends. And I still talk to a lot of them. But the numbers called and the busier I got, the less energy I had to pour into people because ultimately I was doing it all wrong. I was working 100 hour weeks and striving and not setting boundaries where I needed to, to give myself rest. And I gave and I gave until ultimately I burned out.

PamElle Hansen (05:14.348)
I hit a point where I said, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And nothing in me wants to keep going like this. I moved cross country to a beautiful area in South Alabama that I had fallen in love with on a road trip. I built an Airbnb business and tried to regroup the best that I knew how at the time. I started working quietly on gathering new tools and skills to do business and success, success coaching and focused on ways to give myself geographical freedom.

I knew I didn't want to be tied to any specific place and I knew there would be some time required for building that freedom. And I started a podcast about that reality, that success and joy and balance, fulfillment and impact could actually all coexist. When I decided to step away from the podcast, I really dove into healing work and self growth and learning self trust. That part was hard for me. I was at a point in life where I began to understand the concept and the importance of learning to love myself.

I had confidence, but it was built on success and achievement. And I knew that I needed a deeper sense of who I was. I made finding joy and beauty in everything I could the basis of my days. And I really started to see the growth showing up in my life in some really beautiful ways. I dove into spending really special time with my daughters and my granddaughters who lived close to me in Alabama, and also into spending intentional alone time. Time that wasn't fenced in with chores and errands.

And I learned to give myself grace and my imperfections. And then I fell in love again. Together, we traveled, we camped, we kayaked, we started sailing and did a million things I'd never done before. Things that truly lit me up. And I enjoyed all of it so much. And I learned things about myself that I would never have known otherwise. We had so many beautiful life experiences together in a pretty short amount of time, just over a year, and experienced a really beautiful connection in many ways.

We did some really cool things, honestly, as many of you have seen on social media. And we dreamed some pretty amazing dreams together. It wasn't perfect, but I was excited about it and hopeful. And then about nine months ago, my baby, the youngest of my four kids, turned 18, and I entered the empty nesting phase of life, which seems crazy even now. My oldest is 29. My next is 27.

PamElle Hansen (07:35.008)
And my next is 25 and now 18. I have two boys and two girls and they are the absolute lights of my life and two little grand babies and a wonderful son-in-law. And I am extraordinarily blessed. My sweet baby girl at 18 years old wanted to move back to Washington to be with her friends, which made perfect sense. She's a beautiful group of people there that she's very close to. And I love that for her.

And then my older daughter and her family, including my two grandbabies, also moved back to Washington. And they also have a very tightly knit group of friends there who are all raising families together. And I couldn't blame them for wanting to be close to those friends. And then my boys, one lives in San Antonio and one lives in Nashville. So we're pretty spread out. So while most of us moved to Alabama together, I was staying here by myself without them. Washington just

isn't my place anymore, at least not for now, although I will be going frequently to visit my family. At the same time, the beautiful relationship that many of you saw unfold on Instagram also came to an end. All of this happened within just a few weeks. My girls and my grandbabies moved back to Washington. I found myself single again, empty nesting and feeling a little bit like the rug had been pulled out from under me. What had become a deep and connected and beautiful life for me suddenly changed.

And while all of these things...

PamElle Hansen (09:09.704)
did make sense on their own, it was still a lot to take in all at once.

Especially when you consider that only two years prior to that, I had already uprooted my entire life and started over.

PamElle Hansen (09:26.56)
I was finding myself in that place again at a time when I didn't expect everything to change again. It rattled me hard. It broke me open in ways I could never have expected. And as difficult as it was in many ways, it's also been a really beautiful thing for me. The last nine months have been some of the most transformative in my life. Even though I had been deeply submerged in growth and the self-dement development world for nearly a decade,

The last nine months have shown me more about myself, about others, my view of the world, and my connection to all of it in ways that we can sometimes only see when things go dark and quiet for a time. And while there have been difficult and painful moments, I'm incredibly grateful for that time, for the solitude and for the woman who's come out on the other side. I started traveling solo again, which a lot of you have been watching, sailing on various incredible trips, crossing an ocean, wandering, listening.

and turning inward. And I didn't know it at first, but I wasn't just seeking adventure. I was seeking the me who wasn't defined by my roles, not as mother, not as wife or girlfriend, not as businesswoman or real estate investor or coach, just me, the woman underneath it all. I think so often we find ourselves at certain times in our lives accepting that we're defined by the roles we play for others, almost like it's not

quite okay for us to have our own dreams and to be in a place where we actually live for ourselves. Because we become so engrossed in being present and available for everyone else. And there's really so much beauty in being that present safe place for people. But what we miss is that we also need to be that for ourselves. And that honestly requires so much more grace and self-trust toward ourselves than I ever realized when I was younger. Here's what I want to say today.

Especially if you've been doing the work. If you've been healing, evolving, shifting, growing, but wondering why it still feels messy sometimes or quiet or like it's not working as fast as you want it to. This is the reminder. Growth isn't always loud. It's not always visible even to yourself. And it's never linear. Sometimes growth looks like sitting in stillness with parts of yourself you used to rush past.

PamElle Hansen (11:50.636)
Sometimes it looks like choosing not to respond to the things that used to trigger you. Sometimes it looks like doing nothing at all because you finally learned that your nervous system is more important than your to-do list. Sometimes it looks like finally speaking up and talking about how you feel with the people you love, even when it's hard, especially when it's hard. Sometimes it's about digging deep and opening up and being real and raw in ways that you would have been exceedingly uncomfortable with in years past.

And sometimes it's about sharing that journey, even in all of its messiness, in the hopes that maybe you can reach in and help someone else who's still in the thick of it.

For a long time, I thought growth meant breakthroughs, achievements, and awareness. It meant journaling, burning it all down, reinventing myself over and over again, and proving to everyone around me how strong I am. But at some point, growth shifts. It softens. It settles. It becomes something else entirely. It becomes embodiment. Embodiment happens when the work you've done stops being something you just talk about and starts becoming the way you move through the world.

It's when self-trust isn't just a concept, it's a feeling in your body. And boundaries don't require a process to be honored. It's when you choose peace over proving, not because someone told you to, but because it finally feels like your truth. This past year has been a space for me that has been both wildly fulfilling and also painful. And I've learned that those truths can absolutely exist at the same time.

I took long trips alone. I sailed the ocean. I cried quietly here and there over the memories. And I built my sense of self outside of the labels I had worn, the roles I had played, and the expectations of my strength and character that I felt other people had for me. Let me be clear. This podcast is not about arriving somewhere or being healed or perfect or endlessly productive.

PamElle Hansen (13:59.724)
It's about daring to live in a way that feels aligned, rooted, and whole. It's about trusting yourself enough to start being. Whether you're at the beginning of your healing and growth journey in the messy middle, or just starting to feel like yourself, this space is for you. If you've ever felt like you were doing all the work and still not arriving anywhere fast, if you felt like you've outgrown your old life, but you aren't quite sure how to step into the new one,

If you've been quietly choosing softness, but worried that it makes you look weak. Let me just say this. You are not behind. You are not broken. You're not too much. You're becoming. And maybe the only thing left to do now is to give yourself permission to live as the person you've already become.

This season of the Daring to Live podcast is going to look a little different. It's not about telling you how to live. It's about inviting you deeper into your own truth and connecting with yourself on a deeper level, which will in turn also help you connect with those around you on a deeper level. It will build your relationships and it will continue to build you. You'll hear solo episodes, reflections, gentle teachings, and some really great guests.

and always reminders that you are not alone in this. We'll talk about self-trust, about nervous system healing, about soft power, sacred boundaries, and building a life that feels like freedom from the inside out. And I'll share what I've learned and what I'm still learning along the way, because I'm here walking the path too, and I'm so honored to walk it with you. If this episode spoke to you, I'd love it if you'd share. Tag me on Instagram at pamel.hansen. That's P-A-M-E-L-L-E.

dot Hansen, H-A-N-S-E-N, and let me know what landed for you. I'll see you next week. Until then, live daringly but gently, look for joy in the little things, create opportunities for bold experience, and live as the person you've already become.