Transcript: Your Leadership Can Look Healthy and Still Be Running on Empty // Mindy Caliguire, Soul Care

Mindy: On the one hand, we get super grindy, hustle, drive, you know, all gas, no brakes, and we wear it like a badge. But the downstream impact of that into our organizations is we just layer toxicity, impossible demands, a functional atheism at times, and those are all destructive to our own soul, to our teams, to the mission. Contrast that with what I would say the goal for a soul care life of a leader is that you’re living and leading out of overflow.

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Narrator: This is the Called to Flourish podcast, where leaders and cultures grow.

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Robert: Welcome to the Called to Flourish podcast, where leaders and cultures grow. My name is Robert Wachter. I’m the Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Best Christian Workplaces. Today we are joined by Mindy Caliguire. Mindy is the co-founder and CEO or Soul Care and the author of Ignite Your Soul: When Exhaustion, Isolation, and Burnout Light a Path to Flourishing – one of our favorite words here – flourishing. Mindy, welcome to the Called to Flourish podcast. But before we jump in, could you tell us a little bit about yourself, the work you’re doing through Soul Care.

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Mindy: Yeah, yeah, I’d be delighted to. Thanks for the invitation to join you. Obviously, been tracking with the work of Best Christian Workplaces for a long time, and so we share your desire for flourishing in the workplace and the Christian workplace especially. My journey into ministry began when my husband and I were church planting. I’ve been involved at large churches, at Willow Creek, working in spiritual formation there, I’ve been at the Willow Creek Association helping them help churches on the topic of transformation, which culture is a key factor of the framework we were building around, and then I worked for a tech company here in Boulder, Colorado called gloo that you probably are aware of - a lot of others are - and I worked with them for nine years or so, but all really since the church planting days was when I had some collapse of my own interior as a leader that made no sense to me - it was very disorienting - and God so graciously led me on a path of learning how to prioritize the care of my soul, which prior to that wasn’t even a category I was paying attention to. And so all through these other vocational episodes, journeys, ways I’ve been able to contribute to really beautiful world-class organizations, soul care has been a constant personal way of life, but it’s also been a message I continue to be able to help other people with, so I wrote some books with Intervarsity Press and Zondervan, and the most recent one you mentioned, and really coming out of the Pandemic led myself, for the first time ever, to fully vocationally step into soul care as an organization to say: What are the products? What are the resources? What are the services? What are the assessments? What are the things we can do, I can do, a team can do, to give as much lift to this topic globally as we possibly can? Because I feel like, while it has been a persistent theme in my own life and I think it’s the most important thing, coming out of the Pandemic, many, many more people were starting to realize we’re in a lot of trouble, and that’s happening in individual conversations, that’s happening organizationally, and so it’s really been a delight in the last, really only four years, that I’ve been stepping into - What does soul care need to become? – even though technically I purchase the url for soulcare.com in 1998. So, I’ve told people it’s a 27-year-old startup, and maybe I have to say 28 now. But, but truly, the work that I and our team - we feel so committed to and reaching into the actual lived experience of missionaries, pastors, leaders, executives, church planters, business leaders, all kind of leaders, to say – how can we, how can we help? So, that’s what I do.

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Robert: It’s amazing work, and I always like to say, if you haven’t experienced a time where you needed the tools to really understand how to take care of your soul because you’re going and going and going, just keep going and going and going, and eventually you will find yourself in a position where you may need to rethink how you’re approaching your life and your work. So, I’m excited to have you on the podcast today. I want to wrestle with this idea of what happens when your leadership looks healthy on the outside, and I can attest to this, what happened to me. My leadership looked great on the outside, but there was something going on internally in my soul. My soul wasn’t okay. And so we’re going to wrestle with that tension and speak into this situation that I think everyone needs to be thinking about.

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: Preferably before it becomes, sort of--

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Mindy: Right. Right.

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Robert: --a situation.

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Mindy: Right, a situation. Yeah. Like I’ve often said, He will make you lie down in green pastures, out of love.

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Robert: He will make you. Yes.

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Mindy: He will make you, if you don’t choose to figure this out yourself, and it’s out of love. It’s not condemnation. It’s not punishment. But it is an invitation to a way of life that we are finding. I think the dilemma you’re addressing or surfacing is really hard for us to wrap our heads around because we live in a world that is so focused on the exterior - this is true in general culture, but it can also be true in Christian culture – that if everything looks fine on the outside, we assume everything is fine on the inside, and so when all the metrics of an organization are up into the right, we don’t have a way of looking at or thinking about what could be actually going on if there’s a quiet, silent erosion of the interior life. Sadly, I think it’s an utterly predictable thing to happen if it’s not intentional pushed against. If it’s not intentionally pursued, the life of better, stronger, faster, harder, more and more results on the outside, if it does not have an intentional, attendant replenishment strategy that sits alongside all of those great results – which we love the results, we love the mission, we love all that stuff – but if we do not have an intentional embedded process of restoring the life of those leaders precisely in the midst of the doing, it’s just utterly predictable. There will be, there will be a silent erosion because the applause from the outside is the driver. It becomes the driver. It’s what, it’s, it’s – that’s what boards want to hear, that’s what your staff wants to hear, that’s what your donors want to hear, that’s what makes your press releases and your news headlines – except we don’t like what happens and hits the press releases and the news headlines when that erosion becomes the beginning of a flameout. We always say we’re trying to get on the preventative side of the burnout, the flameout, and the dropout that is--

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Robert: Yeah.

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Mindy: --all too common right now.

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Robert: Yeah. I can resonate with that. I think for many years I was so specifically driven by mission.

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: It was this calling. I’m called to this. This is actually life giving for me to double down, and I wore it as a badge of honor—

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: --to go harder, try harder, and then – until you can no longer do that. So, what is happening? And I think you kind of touched on this, but why is it so difficult for leaders--?

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: -- to not—

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Mindy: I mean, it just is—

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Robert: --to not recognize these – what’s happening?

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Mindy: And, first let’s just stop and say, there is a truth to the energizing nature of a compelling mission. There is energy that comes from giving ourselves fully. There is a call to give sacrificially to the things that God has called us to. So those are not categorically problematic. Those are, those are what the whole point is. We are on mission. We are called to rescue and be part of God’s redeeming and restoring of all things, so there is a missional call that is very important and does not pit itself against the life of overflow of a soul being well. So those two things too often get pitted against each other. We either have a missional drive, and we keep pushing, or we are, you know, taking day-and-a-half solitude retreats every other week. It just – these get put in opposing corners.

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Robert: Yes.

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Mindy: --and they should not be. What we need is a vison of integration.

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Robert: Right.

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Mindy: And it’s this dis-integrated idea of our soul and our work that is what leads to the kind of life that we’re talking about where everything where everything that happens out on – to use Jimmy Dodd’s language – on the frontstage becomes utterly disconnected to the life I’m living backstage. And when that disconnection, dis-integration, continues long enough, there will be an implosion. It’s just—

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Robert: There will be an implosion.

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Mindy: Yeah. It’s just a – it’s just a fact of life. So, the question, though, that I’ve been asking, and I think is what you’re asking as well, is how is this true everywhere I go? Like I’ve been dealing with these themes for a very long time. We, the people of Jesus, have a message of life that we are literally killing ourselves at times to bring this message of life to others. Something about that is not very strategic, but it’s been persistent. It’s the water we’re swimming in, so to speak, and has been for decades. It’s a generational issue. There is a great quote from the Billy Graham Centers – what was it? It was their contribution, their North American Status Report to the Lausanne Conference, the most recent one in 2024, and they addressed this issue of ministry burnout and why is it so pervasive, and they, rightly, I believe, note that it is generational. The Pandemic exacerbated it, but it is not - did not cause it. So these causal roots, like how is it true that whether I’m talking to church planting organizations, or mega churches, or movements, or parachurch organizations, global mission organizations, Christian business leaders, how is it true that all of us are experiencing this to some degree, when yet, we would all say we’re the ones that God has entrusted with this message? First of all, you could always say there’s the plans of the enemy, right, so there is an enemy of the souls of the leaders of the organizations that God has put in motion and asked to shoulder these very big commitments. But I think some of it has to do, at least some of it, has to do with the way we talk about the idea of soul, and I did write about this in that most recent book that you mentioned. The soul in many - like evangelical contexts is mostly my background and upbringing – the only time we talk about the human soul is with reference to its eternal destiny. Souls are lost or found. They’re saved or unsaved. But once your soul is saved, you’ve sort of done that deal. We don’t need to talk about your soul anymore. Your job is now to get about the business of helping other people make that same decision, which again, I very much agree with that that is what we’re then invited into as being sent on mission, and yet, we don’t have a way of thinking about the wellbeing of the soul of someone who is in Christ.

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Robert: Yeah. You’ve got to put, you’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first, right, isn’t that what they tell us?

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Mindy: It is.

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Robert: Before you start helping other people put their oxygen masks on.

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Mindy: It is. It is.

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Robert: I’d love to kind get . . . can we just kind of cut through the—

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: Because I’m here like thinking, what does this look like, you know?

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Mindy: Yeah. Yeah.

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Robert: I just feel a little tired. I just feel a little burned out here. What actually are the implications? What can happen? What have you seen happen when this issue is ignored long enough? I can tell you my story, but I’d love to hear from you. What kind of things . . . ?

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Mindy: Well, I can tell you from my story, I ignored the symptoms, and I do think they are utterly predictable symptoms that our souls are not well. You can be very much saved and have a very not-well soul. So even just introducing that category is new for most people, but for me, I ignored every symptom that maybe it was not well with my soul, although I could sing the song, and I was saved, but there were some things that were not well. But I ignored all of those and ended up with physical symptoms that effectively sidelined me for a season, and it was severe vertigo, I had some optical nerve involvement, you know all this stuff, that there really in the end was no explanation other than the fact that I was living a completely crazy life as a leader.

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Robert: Yeah.

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Mindy: So—

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Robert: So, it can manifest into physical—

Mindy: For me there were physical symptoms.

Robert: Physical symptoms?

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Mindy: Yeah, absolutely.

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Robert: Absolutely.

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Mindy: How about for you? You said you had an experience? How did you . . . ?

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Robert: I had an Elijah moment.

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Mindy: --know something is not well? Okay.

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Robert: Yeah. I – and I’d love to talk about the warning signs in just a moment.

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Mindy: Yeah. Yeah.

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Robert: --that you said are so predictable. They’re so easy to – if you know what to look for. But my situation was very much like the Elijah – you know the story of Elijah when he had his – basically a breakdown and he went out and God restored him. But mine was like that. It wasn’t physical symptoms. It was a complete and utter – I don’t know how to describe it other than it took months to recover, but I was pastoring fulltime as a lead pastor, carrying almost all the weight of the church while working a fulltime job during the day. Okay.

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Mindy: And so many pastors are doing that.

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Robert: So many pastors are doing that, especially as church startups, you’re planting a church, you know you don’t have the funding. You can’t, you can’t live off of the salary from a church, so yeah, for me it was – think of with Elijah. It was, it was a shutdown, a complete shutdown. I’m done with this. I can’t do this. I’m sick of this. I don’t want anything to do with ministry every again! And it was a . . . God, you know, just . . . it was nothing . . . there was no, you know, beyond that, for me personally. It was stopped there, which was numb. I’ve been doing this for so long. I have no interest anymore, and that, that is, that’s unfortunate, you know, and of course, I reclaimed that and was healed out of that, but it took me a very long time.

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Mindy: I bet a lot of people listening can either relate to seasons like that in their own life, or maybe right now, or they know someone who is there, because that’s what happens when you – like you talk about burnout, like we burn money in an account, right. You know what your burn rate is. You know how to exhaust the funds in an account. Well, when you’ve exhausted your personal reserves, and you’ve hit that bottom, the account is still there. It can be replenished, which is – thanks be to God - your story right now.

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Robert: Yeah.

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Mindy: But when you are just spending down, spending down, spending down, spending down, in your own account, we think we’re just limitless and you know, in Christ we can do all things, and so we just keep barreling through and quote Bible verses all the time to ourselves and each other and not engage the soul in replenishment which is vital. So yeah, the symptoms, I’ll just rifle through some. Our whole soul health assessment at SoulCare.com has been built out of many of these findings over many years, but like fatigue that does not go away with a good night’s sleep, alright. It’s just you’re just dirt tired. That feeling that you described of being done, I’m just done, that is a huge thing to pay attention to. There’s kind of resentment that grows up against the ministry for all its demands and you know that resentment can get really big. Just a lost passion, like I just – I don’t – I’m done caring, I don’t care anymore about this thing that I used to give my whole life to all the time. Other things are varying versions of anger, fear, panic, symptoms that are often associated with depression can start as a depressive cycle even, and if that doesn’t get corrected, your brain starts compensating for this depressed state, and even if it didn’t start as a constitutional depression – if it was more circumstantial – your brain starts reinforcing it as the new normal and so now you’ve got a brain chemistry issue in addition to the difficult circumstances that brought it about. So you – these are all very real things that manifest and the physical symptoms, like I mentioned that I – and dozens more. But I think it’s really important for us to pause long enough to reflect and go, what are my symptoms right now? How is, how is my soul? What is, what is my soul – you know Dallas Willard talked about this in Renovation of the Heart, that we learn to hear the cries of the soul. Your soul might be trying to say something, but if you’re just barreling forward into the next initiative, into the next project, the next email, the next drama-filled whatever, and don’t pause to let your soul speak, say what . . . you know, that’s how did the psalmist – it’s deep, right, like the cry of the soul in the Psalms is – why are you so downcast, oh my soul? It’s like you have to ask your soul in the third person, like what is going on?

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Robert: Yes.

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Mindy: But if you don’t stop to ask that question, you’re not listening.

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Robert: Yes.

Mindy: And if you don’t listen, you can’t take action, and so, whatever those warning signs are, they’re very unique to each person, depending on your calling, your gifting, your wounds, all different, unique things, but getting quiet, getting still, pulling out a journal, which I know can be scary for a leader, and just say, what is really going on inside, without judgment or without a need to fix it right away. Like can you just let out what’s going on inside? It won’t be the end of you. You’ve just got to start like expressing, exposing what it really feels like to be you right now without judgment, without fear, like let – just be a – what do they call it? – a gentle or kind observer of your own soul.

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Robert: You mentioned the idea of you’re taking inventory and then you know what to do about it. How do you take action? I want to touch on that, you know. I think there might be an inclination just for somebody to say, yeah, you may be right here. I might be going a little hard. I’m just going to go to Hawaii for a week, and I’ll come back.

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Mindy: (Laughing).

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Robert: I’ll be ready to go, right. I hear you laughing because that’s just silly, right. Of course, there’s a time for vacation, but I think what we’re talking about here is a little bit more extensive than I need a week in Hawaii. Sometimes those are more exhausting than work, by the way, especially if you’ve got kids like me, vacations are not really a vacation. They’re more of a heavy lift, but talk to us about that. This is more than I need a little time off.

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Mindy: I agree, and I think even when people do get time, even extended time on sabbatical, if they’re not intentional with getting at this deeper layer, they can have an extended time away and that will bring a measure of relief of the pressure, but it won’t get below the surface to the restoring that is needed at the soul level.

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Robert: Right.

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Mindy: I hate to say this, but my experience is a lot of us in vocational ministry, and myself would have been included in this, we know how to learn more things about God, we know how to work hard for God, we know how to maybe even connect those two things and call it maturity, and it’s not unconnected to maturity, but it is not the same as and it is definitely not the same as a soul that is receiving its life from God, so we have, in many ways, not learned how to let our souls be quiet, rested, still, receiving from God in real time, not just learning new truths about God, not – as important as those are, so please hear me, those are important – but how do you learn to let your soul rest in God’s presence in real time, not resting with I know how to quote, you know, Psalm 46, to be still and know . . . you know, we know, everybody listening knows all these verses, but to take – I don’t know – two hours, half a day, once a month and rest in God’s presence, let go of all that productivity, let go of your words, in silence, receive from God in those moments. It will feel very unproductive. All our muscle memory knows how to do and do and do more. We need to practice in many ways learning to rest in God’s presence, which is what I would say is the distinguishing factor. I can, I can burn through a 45-minute quiet time and never really connect with God. I can have a seven-day vacation in Hawaii and never really connect with the person of God. Learning how to do that, learning how to let our soul become still and quiet in God’s presence to receive from God what God has to give to us, that’s the category that brings restoration to the soul.

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Robert: So, it sounds to me like the goal here isn’t just to recover enough to get back to work, and I think that’s probably what happens so often is we don’t change our pace, we may have isolation, we may be struggling with some internal dialogue, some neurological pathways, some patterns in our thinking that are putting stress on, so we’re carrying more than we need to carry spirituality. We’re putting the whole weight of everything on our shoulders. We’re trusting in our strength more than, you know, really trusting in God’s strength. We take a little break. We try to get back, but I want to dig into what actually changes in a leader when they begin to lead from a healthy soul.

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: Rather than constantly running. What happens there?

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Mindy: I mean, it is, it is such a stark contrast, Robert. It is such a strong contrast. On the one hand we get super grindy, hustle, drive, you know, all gas, no brakes, and we wear it like a badge, right, but the downstream impact of that into our organizations is we just layer toxicity, impossible demands, a functional atheism at times, and those are all destructive to our own soul, to our teams, to the mission. Contrast that with what I would say the goal for a soul care life of a leader is that you’re living and leading out of overflow.

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Robert: Yes.

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Mindy: Sometimes our strategies for rest and replenishment look like if this is our baseline, this is me being okay, not doing great, but this is me being okay. I’m not in deficit. Okay. We serve, we lead, we go into deficit. We rest enough to get to baseline. We serve and lead, we get to deficit, we rest enough to get to baseline. In none of those cases are we living out of those streams of living water, where out of the overflow of what God is doing in our lives are coming ideas. Ability to manage conflict, ability to problem solve, ability to ideate, innovate, everything that we want to bring as leaders out of the best version of our leadership is on the far side of a healthy soul. It is not approaching towards a healthy soul, and so the faith step for a leader is to say, I have to suspend activity, at least for a minute, or however many minutes that means, but for a minute as a figure of speech—

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Robert: Sure.

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Mindy: I need to suspend that in order to let my soul rest in God to the point where that tank has been replenished and I am serving and leading out of overflow. When that is the case, we show up with a whole different energy, a whole different energy. We don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. We can let go of power, we can welcome, avert opposition, we handle adversity differently, we can endure suffering, we can remain relational in the midst of hard things, like we just become a completely different - or actually the way we’re meant to be - kind of person. And I think that’s what – I mean, isn’t the enemy just so shrewd to just go strip the very life of God out of leaders who are still highly functional and functioning and then we all sit back and wonder why it’s so toxic, why it’s so hard, why leaders keep imploding at high levels. Like, can we stop being so surprised at that and instead orient ourselves around wholistic flourishing, which is I know your word, for leaders in the midst of – but we have to reintegrate the health of the soul with the work being done or we can’t logically give ourselves permission. I don’t know if that’s getting practical to you.

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Robert: It is. It is. A Scripture comes to mind as you were talking about – you mentioned a minute, and then you talk about what is a minute. Isaiah 40:31 came to mind which is, “But those wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.” What does that mean to wait on the Lord? Because I think there is something deeper going on here because it’s talking about strength, not just waiting for an open door, waiting for an answer, waiting for God to perform a miracle. There seems to be a deeper issue related to the soul here – “who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.”

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Mindy: Amen.

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Robert: It says, “They shall mount up with wings like eagles.”

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Mindy: Yeah.

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Robert: So you can go from the depleted Elijah, experiencing health - physical healthy symptoms, experiencing mental health symptoms and issues, you can go from that desolate, completely depleted, completely checked out place, and get back to a place of renewed strength where you mount up with wings like an eagle and actually soar above—

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Mindy: Yeah.

Robert: --all of the stress and things and become effective in that way again. But the key here is exactly what you’re touching on, waiting on the Lord.

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Mindy: Yeah. There is so much that can be said there. Waiting in that passage, and elsewhere, is also translated “hoping in” or “trusting in.” So it is like, what is my confidence in? What am I relying on? What is the source of my strength? Is it better, faster, stronger, harder, or is it I am pausing to connect with the maker of all things, the one who holds the world altogether, and let that be the driver of my work in the world, and those are very subtle distinctions for most of us to learn. Like everyone listening knows that verse. We love it. The danger for us is we’re in that depleted state and we’re like, we want to do a spiritual bypass. We want to just go right past whatever needs to be grieved or acknowledged or confessed or healed, again, not with shame, but with embracing this process. That’s one of the chapters in the book is that when Igniting Your Soul: When Isolation – all that – I’m butchering my own subtitle – Lights a Path to Flourishing, one of the, one of the chapters, before you get to the how, is about the garden of desolation, and we don’t like desolation. We don’t like grief. We don’t like the sadder, harder things, but by God’s design, for us to move from wherever we are, into that future state of flourishing, mounting up, as you said, on wings like eagles, with a whole different perspective, with a whole different strength, we don’t get to just jump. We have to go through the process of allowing God to do what God needs to do in our souls.

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Robert: Yes.

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Mindy: And that’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. I can’t tell every single person what that would be for them. But I do believe we tend to want to avoid it because pain is painful.

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Robert: Yes.

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Mindy: And so, how do we embrace those seasons and allow God to meet is there? That’s the work to be done.

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Robert: Exactly. I love the way you stated that. I love the way the Scripture ends because it talks about soaring like an eagle before you’re running and before you’re even walking, so it seems to be speaking to something. I always ask, what is the Bible trying to say to us? There seems to be something soul related, positional related, with the way we’re thinking, the way we’re approaching God, the way we’re relating to God, the way we see ourselves, the way we are moving and healing, and all of these things that you mentioned in that garden you were talking about. That must happen so we’re soaring before we’re actually running on the ground and walking it out daily.

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Mindy: I love that.

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Robert: That’s encouraging to me. Go ahead.

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Mindy: I was just going to say another Scripture that comes to mind that I’ve spent a lot of time living and hoping to compel others into is in Isaiah 15:30, I think, or 30:15. I always get that messed up. I should know my Bible better. But in any case, Isaiah is taught – challenging – God is challenging the people through Isaiah. The whole chapter is amazing because he’s kind of railing against their decision to try to secure their own wellbeing through alliances, army, acquiring this, all that, you know.

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Robert: Yeah.

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Mindy: He’s basically calling him out, that they keep pursuing their own wellbeing by any other means than actually—

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Robert: Yeah.

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Mindy: --waiting on Him.

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Robert: Exactly.

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Mindy: And so in that verse at the end He says in repentance and rest is your salvation.

[0:34:18.4]

Robert: Wow.

[0:34:19.5]

Mindy: In quietness and trust, and there is that trust word again. In quietness and trust is your strength. There is the strength idea again. But the last phrase of that verse, Robert, is “but you would have none of it.” But you would have none of it. In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it. Instead, you’ve run around and tried to secure your wellbeing in all these things and then He goes on to just say, but He longs to be that for us. Like, that is what I want every leader to hear is like, yes, maybe, maybe you’re running around trying to make sure the budget is perfect and the donor plan is great and those are all good things, and God may lead you in overflow to address all those things. But what is the source of your strength? Is it – are you confident that you’ve got this and now is the whole yoke on your shoulders? That’s going to be too heavy for you. There is a God of the universe who is saying, I’m here. I am ready to be your strength. Would you just let Me?

[0:35:26.3]

Robert: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Jesus said it. Come to Me if you’re weary.

[0:35:31.3]

Mindy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[0:35:33.0]

Robert: And I think this is such a rabbit hole we could go down.

[0:35:34.8]

Mindy: I know!

[0:35:35.8]

Robert: Because it’s, it’s so powerful. It’s because it applies to the work we’re doing, but it also applies to our own walk. How many of us are trying to strive just to feel that we’re good enough for God or righteous before God, when all of it’s really a gift and it’s our position in Him? Boy, does that wear us down and just cause us to just be totally spirituality burned out. I am encouraged by this conversation, and I want to kick this question over to you because I really want you to speak directly to anybody who may be listening right now and that person listening, you know something needs to change, you know that you are experiencing some of these symptoms, you know that this is an unsustainable rhythm and choice and path that you’re currently going down, and I’d love for you to speak to this particular person, whoever is listening, what would you say to them in this moment that they’re listening and they know the Holy Spirit is speaking to them right now.

[0:36:41.2]

Mindy: Yeah. Great question. Friend, what I would say to you is take courage. Be willing to take an honest look inside. See what’s going on and take radical action if necessary because all the hard work you do for everybody else, you might for a season need to turn that very good hard work ethic towards your own soul’s recovery. It is not selfish. It is not wrong. It is vital, not only to your own life and to the life of your family, your friends, but to the calling that you have been entrusted with. This is one your – I believe it is your primary stewardship, and caring for your own soul, it might be new language, it’s going to feel hard and awkward and maybe wrong, but you have got to go down that path if you’re going to truly steward the thing that God has given you to do in this world and to be, and I promise you, there is joy on the other side of it. There is fun to be had. There is – you can’t even imagine probably right now – a version of your life that will feel like it has that overflowing vibe to it, but that is available to you. We often say at Soul Care, like you just, if you want to know like what’s the one thing I can take away from this and go do, we talk about a page, a person, and a plan, which is a way of sneaking three things into one thing, but it’s easy to remember. You need a page, a person, and a plan. The page is sit yourself down with a journal or just a blank sheet of paper and answer that question: How is my soul? John Wesley encouraged those groups to ask the same thing. How is it with my soul? It is not selfish. It is not wrong to ask yourself that question. And do not be afraid of whatever you write next. Have the courage to face what’s real. The second thing you’re going to need, besides the page, is a person, and that may have to be a professional for a season, a coach, or a spiritual director, or a therapist, or a ministry peer in another organization. But you have got to have someone, and the higher we are in leadership, the harder it is to have those people who – with whom – who are really for you and with whom you can be perfectly honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly. That is a vital restorative measure for your soul, so the self-examination, the invitation to reflection, the invitation to connection, and then the plan is you’ve got to have some sort of like – none of us floats downstream into a desired future, right. You’re going to, at some point, not today, but at some point, the plan is going to come together. You’re going to say, how can I be intentional with building a life that honors the wellbeing of my soul. Instead of – we all know in agriculture the practice of monoculture where you keep farming the same thing again and again and again and again because it seems like a really efficient way to use the land. That is the surest way to deplete the soil. Where we know the parable of the sower of the seed, you as a leader are good soil. You are bearing much fruit, but if you do not have a strategy for replenishment, anyone in farming would be able to tell you, if you keep extracting from the same field again and again and again every season, you will actually kill the soil. It will become dead. The once most fertile soil ever will not withstand repeated chronic extraction, and so, the same is true of our souls. So, you’ve got to have a plan. You have to have a replenishment strategy. It’s not like you quit ministry forever, although that will probably happen if you don’t take action, so do that today.

[0:40:51.8]

Robert: How can people find you, reach you to you, connect if they want resources, more information?

[0:40:55.6]

Mindy: Oh, yeah. I hope they will. Yeah. We have so many free resources at SoulCare.com. So, that’s the easiest thing. Go to SoulCare.com. We’re in LinkedIn, social media, other places, but that’s the best place. You can take our free Soul Health Assessment. We offer it for teams, for individuals. It will ask a lot of these questions about burnout, flameout, dropout, some of the symptoms of soul health and soul neglect and get you on a path to maybe some really practical next steps around page – we have all kinds of free resources around that person, all kinds of free and fee-based resources around that, and plan, how you can create a leader care plan, a soul care plan. Yeah. We are here to help. We would love to. We would be honored to support you.

[0:41:39.4]

Robert: Alright. If you want to do that, reach out to SoulCare.com. Mindy, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It’s been a pleasure having you and exploring this topic with you.

[0:41:49.2]

Mindy: Thank you.

[0:41:49.0]

Robert: Yeah. Absolutely.

[0:41:50.8]

Mindy: I’ve enjoyed it.

[0:41:51.6]

Robert: We’ll have to have you back. Likewise.

[0:41:52.7]

Mindy: Ah, that would be fun. Yeah. And you! Take good care.

[0:41:57.2]

Robert: Yes. Okay. God bless you. To everyone listening, if this conversation was helpful, I want to encourage you, share it with a friend, a colleague, to anybody you think would be – would benefit from the content today. Be sure to subscribe to Called to Flourish so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Thanks for listening. God bless you.