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What if there was a more fun and empowering way to do life?
Shelley Paxton
Shelley Paxton is a Chicago-based author, international speaker, and transformational coach. She spent 26 years as a highly regarded marketing and advertising executive, stewarding some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Harley-Davidson, Visa, McDonald’s, and AOL.
In 2016, Shelley left the corporate world to launch her own company, with the mission to liberate the souls of leaders and organizations by inspiring them to realize their greatest purpose and potential.
As a certified professional coach, she works with executives at Fortune 100 companies and with fellow rebel soul individuals and entrepreneurs. She holds a marketing degree from Boston College and graduated from iPEC, one of the country’s premier coaching certification programs.
Shelley Paxton is a member of 4PC, Rich Litvin’s exclusive community for extraordinary leaders and coaches, and has trained with some of the top teachers in the world including Brene’ Brown, five-time New York Times bestselling author. She is the author of the book, Soulbbatical: A Corporate Rebel’s Guide To Finding Your Best Life.
What We Discuss With Shelley Paxton in This Episode
- When she first realized she was a rebel
- The difference between rebelling for and rebellion against
- How to discover your own authentic self
- Breaking away from the impostor syndrome
- The Rebel Leaders Manifesto
- What is a Soulbbatical
- You know you’re a rebel if…
Transcript Highlights
When did you first realize you were a rebel?
Probably when I shot out of the womb but I didn’t know it at the time. It was around 8-11 years old. I always wanted to do things differently. I asked, “Why are my parents saying it needs to look this way?”
I felt like the black sheep of my family. They all wanted to do things a certain way and it didn’t feel natural to me or normal and I wanted to push these boundaries and horizons that nobody else seemed interested in.
How Do You View Being a Rebel Differently Than What Most People Think?
My revelation around rebellion, especially writing the book last year, is that we have this bad boy, bad girl image of rebels; the Steve McQueen, James Dean, and worse. The rebels are constantly doing the bad thing. They’re the character you don’t want to get mixed up with. The reality is that I frame my life and everything I do around this idea of rebelling for, not against. That completely changed my perspective. Being the bad guy or bad girl is disempowering and it’s on someone else’s terms.
I’m calling the rebel in all people. It’s in all of us. “Rebelling for” is on your terms. It’s an empowering way to think about what you want to create in your life, how you can be true to yourself, and what impact do you want to have in the world.
Authenticity is an overused word these days. It’s one what I use and also try to put a little more definition and nuance to. For example we hear a lot about authentic leadership but what does that really mean? It means it has my fingerprints on it. I’m bringing my whole humanity to my life and to my leadership.
How Did You Discover Your Authentic Self?
So many of us find ourselves on a path of should; whether it’s the conditioning from our parents or what society tells us we should do. Authenticity is breaking down the “shoulds” verses the “want tos”.
I woke up at the peak of a marketing career, after 26 years in the corporate world, and in the role of Chief Marketing Officer of Harley Davidson. Let’s be honest, that is the sexiest dream job for a marketer, with an iconic brand that people tattoo on their bodies. Who leaves that job? Who is the person crazy enough to walk away from that gift? The answer is me.
I got to a point in my career where I had ticked all the boxes of external success – what society told me success looked like. But I had a reckoning through a nightmare that started ripping me out of my sleep, where the thought was, “Maybe this wasn’t success for you. Maybe you’re living someone else’s dreams.”
While I had all that success on the outside and I don’t take any of it for granted or regret any of it, I felt really empty on the inside. I also felt really alone in feeling this way. I finally woke up to the fact that I was living my dad’s dream and following his path. I didn’t know I would be leaving my corporate career, but I had to take some time to really sink into my soul deeply and get clear on who I am and what I want. That became the journey that became Soulbbatical.
Talk about the Imposter Syndrome
A lot of this has to do with our self-worth and worthiness. When I started to unpack all this on my journey, I realized how tightly wound my identity was to all my corporate titles, accolades, awards, paychecks etc. My identity didn’t have anything to do with who I am at my core and what I now know in my soul. Those two things were completely disconnected.
Part of the Soulbbatical message is that self-worth trumps net worth and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. One leads to the other.
One of the most crucial questions that I asked myself on this Soulbbatical journey was, “What if representing the Shelley Paxton brand is the most iconic brand I could ever represent?” and “What does that brand actually stand for?”
It forced me to get really clear on what is my essence, which led to me understanding my own self-worth. It also helped me reconnect with what some of my passions are. I had three passions when I started this Soulbbatical journey – I loved to write, travel and photography.
Let’s take writing as an example. I had trained myself to write in a box, quite literally, a power point slide. So I had trained the creativity and prose out of me. I was beholden to corporate buzz words. When I gave myself permission to reconnect and gave myself a wide open blank white page to do whatever I wanted to do with it, it unlocked something really powerful in me.
We subscribe to so many unwritten rules in our lives. This is something else we can all rebel for. Let’s catch ourselves and ask ourselves, “Wait, is that really a rule or is that something I’ve been conditioned to believe? Or maybe it’s a rule that I created for myself decades ago that I now just take as gospel.”
What is the Rebel Leaders Manifesto?
(Shelley reads the Rebel Leaders Manifesto in the interview, including eight powerful new agreements.)
I’m on a mission to liberate a billion souls. I do not believe I can do that on my own. We do it as more of us step up to this way of leadership and this way of being in this world. That is creating the ripples of impact (ROI). That is creating the change in corporate culture and the culture of courage. We are at the tip of the spear of change.
The one of the biggest insights or lessons for me is that community is key to the work that I’m doing in the world and what I want to create. It’s no coincidence that we are talking here today. Our missions are so aligned. It’s like my community is self-identifying. And when we look at it through a community lens, it gives us permission to ask for help, and I can look around at what others are doing and see how we’re supporting each other.
Asking for help and saying “I don’t know” are super powers. Seeing asking for help as a sign of weakness got me in a lot of trouble.
What is a Soulbbatical?
A Soulbbatical is the creative handle for everything you and I have been talking about. When I left Harley Davidson, I mashed soul and sabbatical together because I didn’t have a word to describe this journey that I was about to go on. Soulbbatical is a choice to live and lead more authentically, more courageously and more purposefully.
At first I thought you had to leave your job. What I now understand much further along in the journey is that it’s a way of being and it’s making the kind of choices that you and I have been talking about. That’s the short and sweet, and you’ll get the long and dirty if you read the book (Soulbbatical).
On Giving Yourself Permission to Rebel For What You Want
I write myself one or more post-it notes every morning and I ask myself, “What do I need permission to do, not do, or feel in order to show up as my most powerful and authentic self today?”
That has served me so well. I have fun with it and it’s a beautiful reminder throughout the day.
You Know You’re a Rebel If…
- You’re thinking and feeling different than other people
- You can’t put your thoughts and ideas in a box
- You want to get messy because doing big things in the world is messy
- You’re kind of coloring inside the lines but not really
- Someone gives you a rule, and you go ahead and create your own rule on top of it
- You drink from coffee mugs that have crazy sayings
- You want to have fun and you want play to be a big part of your life
Episode Resources 
Connect With Shelley Paxton
- Website: www.soulbbatical.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulbbatical
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulbbatical
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/soulbbatical
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