Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Towey.
Hi Melanie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I am a passionate entrepreneur and founder of www.ByMelanieAnne.com looking to make a huge impact in the lives of others both personally and professionally. I am passionate about deeply influencing and inspiring leaders to UNSUBSCRIBE to the typical status quo and step into their own terms of success.
So many high achieving and ambitious professionals are all facing a degree of my story in their own unique way. Life keeps happening and before we know it, we look up and have gotten so far down a road, it’s too scary to look back and too scary to look forward so we stay stuck. We end up settling; existing and not living. I was quietly stuck for a very long time. It wasn’t until the fear of staying stuck got louder than the fear of what I needed to do to get unstuck occurred, that I began to make changes in my life and my journey really began. The road has been hard and not a bit predictable. I tell my own story today, to help others understand and live out theirs.
By 27, I was sitting in my corporate leadership role, making a paycheck most could only dream of. I had been a road warrior for the entirety of my career, never in one city or place for more than a day or two. I had hit every financial and career goal I had ever set in front of me and then some. I turned 30, the bank account looked amazing, the check marks next to all I had accomplished looked impressive. This was success. Or so that is what I thought. But I woke up and I had never felt more empty, tired, or defeated. I was burnt out, lonely and isolated. I had nothing to me that mattered in the depths of my soul. Outwardly I was this pillar of success but inwardly I wanted out.
At the time, my career had always been a distraction from the brokenness I was enduring in my own life. I had left Minneapolis to go to San Francisco to escape it. When that didn’t work, I planted myself in Los Angeles and changed jobs. Bigger job, bigger paycheck, bigger happiness… but the feeling of emptiness and burnout never left, it only intensified. The more I was out of air personally, I offset it professionally and ran even harder. I was running this parallel life and I was fighting my true self daily. I kept the appearances, the smile, and the outward ray of success but internally I was stuck.
I figured out very quickly that I was climbing in my career, to do just that, climb. It kept me running away from the very thing I needed to run towards. Myself. I was not fulfilled, and my career had become my own self-fulfilling prophecy. I loved the people I worked with. I loved so much of what made me great at my job, but I couldn’t shake this feeling. This was supposed to be it. I had worked so hard to reach this place, yet it felt so off.
My career held priority over my life for a long time and buried everything else that existed; friendships, health, relationships and hobbies. I loved what I did and I had worked my whole life to reach this point of success, yet it felt so off and so far away from where I wanted to be in my life.
I strove for balance for a while, but have determined it’s not possible. Arrival never happens. It’s a mirage. An illusion. The pursuit of balance keeps one bouncing between categories of life and the achievement of success in one would rob the other. Working to integrate the categories of life generated fusion. Suddenly I realized that I had begun to experience life. Strategically fulfilled. Fully integrated. No more bouncing between categories!
As my fascination with integration grew, my heart’s desire to bring others, whether individuals, or corporations, into their greatest potential, eliminating blocks, and strategically facilitating new dimensions of success continued to grow.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
My story truly came full circle after the realization that God was calling me to use all of this for something even greater. So late into the nights, I spent my time heading back to school and quietly behind the scenes became a certified Executive Life Coach, a licensed Integrative Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Practitioner from the Association of Integrative Psychology as well as a licensed and certified Practitioner in Rapid Transformational Therapy, a unique combination of NLP, CBT, psychotherapy and hypnosis.
When COVID-19 grounded everyone in March, I realized the road warrior lifestyle stopped making sense for the life I wanted to live. I was living to work, not working to live. So in October, after much consideration, I resigned my position out of Los Angeles to follow my purpose and build a business and life in Denver. It was an extremely tough decision given the landscape of 2020 and being in the midst of a pandemic and my decision was unorthodox in many people’s eyes.
I tell my own story about how I got here because talk is cheap and holding others to a higher standard before you have held yourself there is weak. We need more people willing to go into the unknown, the uncomfortable and live in their own authentic truth not society’s. We live in a world today that feels like a microscope. Judgement at every turn and the belief that if you dare not to conform to social norms it means you have failed or are not enough. The white picket fence dream… We all subscribe to that and then as move through it, they layers of who we are become numb, stuck and confused. We check all of the boxes and when we don’t feel the happiness, we were promised we are left feeling disappointed. So, what do we all do next? We set higher goals, buy nicer things, bigger houses, fight for bigger paychecks until the cycle forces you here; reading this, asking yourself how did I get here? If you are being honest everyone has a moment, they stopped living for themselves and started to live for the approval of others.
Most of the time, the problem that we think is creating the issue is not really the problem at the core. I believe that there is undeniable power in owning your own truth and in both our professional and personal worlds, our beliefs are often what limit our abilities and keep us trapped from the very things we set out to create. To break free, you must first break through.
Today, I enjoy working with other likeminded individuals, looking to make an impact and standup for what is important – taking ownership and designing the life they want. Leaders, high achievers, perfectionist alike struggle with this and my mission is just getting started to help others prove that you can have it all – the life and business you desire for YOU.
My work continues to be inspired by my own journey and struggle to integrate my professional and personal worlds. As the founder of Melanie Anne, my mission is to be a catalyst for professionals looking to achieve freedom, joy and fulfillment while living a fully integrated life.
Melanie Anne began as a way to impact the industry and its leaders holistically, through personal and professional development. I saw a need to help professionals authentically grow in themselves and in their careers, as well as to strategically help businesses at a deeper level overcome foundational challenges hindering them from results.
As a Success Coach, I focus on helping professionals gain greater clarity of themselves and define a life of success on their own terms, in a world always wanted it on theirs.
As a Business Consultant I work to support entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to get what they want out of their business by overcoming deep rooted challenges holding them back, creating a path forward and setting them up for new dimensions of success.
You only get one life. How you design it is up to you.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I am an introvert. People see me as this confident extrovert who is social and outgoing. Truth be told – I love people and I have a strong desire to connect with other. However, I get my core energy and recharge from my time alone. I am very independent, and I have an incredibly reflective personality and enjoy spending time outside, walking near the water, writing or just listening to music.
Contact Info:
- Email: Mel@ByMelanieAnne.com
- Website: www.ByMelanieAnne.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bymelanieanne/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/unsubscribebymelanieanne
Image Credits
From the Hip Photo
