Need a Break? Practical Soul Care for ALL Enneagram Types

When you have a minute to yourself how do you spend it? 

Do you automatically hit the button on your phone and get lost in the scroll? 

Do you find yourself with your head in the pantry or fridge snacking on a few things hoping they might satisfy or give the boost you are looking for? 

Or do you stay up after the kids and hubby go to bed to get in a couple of hours of the new binge-worthy show? 

If you nodded yes, 

Now, I want to know, how do you feel after you give yourself these self-care habits? Do feel you satisfied? Are you Refreshed and ready to pour out to your people? 

I ask because These are the exact things I am prone to do when I feel depleted and empty. My automatic response is to turn to my phone, or food, and get lost in another world. 

And you know what? The social scroll reinforces that these ideas are totally normal and acceptable, it's what my mom friends joke about and it’s the memes that get thousands of likes. 

BUT, somehow I feel more empty afterward than when I began. The rest I was looking for doesn’t get realized. 

My ongoing depletion and emptiness led me to evaluate the normal self-care mantra. Perhaps self-care isn’t the answer? And if it’s not- how do you get refreshed, renewed, and refueled? 

Here’s the truth: What actually satisfies you and what you give your free minutes to, are often at drastic odds.

So today, I want to invite you to exchange your ideas of self-care for life-giving soul care. 

I’ll share the BEST examples of healthy soul-care, I’ll guide you through the basic teachings of contemplative practice and provide practical examples so you can put soul care into practice, today. 

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When you have a minute to yourself, how do you spend it? Do you automatically hit the button on your phone and get lost in the social scroll? Do you find yourself with your head in the pantry or fridge, snacking on a few things hoping they might satisfy you or give you the boost that you're looking for? Or have you ever stayed up late after the kids and the hubby go to bed to get in just a couple hours of the new binge worthy show? If you nodded yes, now I want to know, how do you feel after you give yourself to these self-care habits? Do you feel satisfied? Are you refreshed and ready to pour out to your people? I ask because these are the exact things that I am prone to do when I feel depleted and empty. My automatic response is to turn to my phone or food and get lost in a whole other world. And you know what? The social scroll reinforces that these ideas are totally normal and acceptable. It's what my mom friends joke about, and it's the memes that get thousands of likes. But somehow I feel more empty afterwards than when I began. The rest I was looking for doesn't get realized. My ongoing depletion and emptiness has led me to evaluate the normal self-care mantra. Perhaps self-care isn't the answer. And if it's not, how do you get refreshed, renewed, and refueled? Here's the truth, my friend. What actually satisfies you and what you give your free minutes to are often at drastic odds. So today I want to invite you to exchange your ideas of self-care for life-giving soul care. I'm going to share the best examples of healthy soul care. I'll guide you through the basic teachings of contemplative practice, and I'm going to provide practical examples so you can put soul care into practice today. Hi, my name is Amy Wicks, and I help you navigate the overwhelm and frustration of motherhood through faith, Enneagram, and simple plans. As a faith-based Enneagram coach, I champion you to love your mothering style because you are the mom your kids need, even when you don't feel like it. I'm a mountain mama who somehow ended up on a cul-de-sac in the Midwest, overwhelmed and frustrated by motherhood. But the Lord didn't let me stay there. He helped me turn the challenges of motherhood into a wholehearted decision to get intentional with my faith, my self-awareness, and my family. Each episode of this podcast provides perspective through story, wholehearted purpose, and simple plan so you can discover how to love your mothering style and be confident that you are the mom your kids need. Think of this podcast as your on-the-go mom pal and friend who can't help but talk about Jesus and the Enneagram. So get to that pile of laundry, or hit the treadmill, or load up the kids in the car for that grocery run. Get ready to be encouraged and empowered while you listen. This is the Simply Wholehearted Podcast. Do you have a bad habit of thinking your world will fall apart without you and that you can't take much needed time for yourself? Perhaps you've suddenly begun to think of yourself as the only one who can take care of the needs and the people around you. Or perhaps you fear that you will no longer be needed if you take a break, or you will discover that indeed you are expendable or replaceable. If this is the case, then maybe your need for significance, security, and fairness are drowning out reason and wisdom. And as a result, perhaps shame, fear, and frustration are keeping you stuck in unhealthy self-care practices. So as you look at self-care versus soul care today with me, I want to show you the best example that you can find on healthy soul care. What do you think it is? Well, I bet you have an idea. So, together, let's look at the life of Jesus. First, I'm going to share a few examples about the teachings of Jesus on rest, and then give some insight about contemplative practice, and then practical examples to plan your best way to put soul care into practice. When exhaustion, depletion, and stress are the normal way of living, soul time might feel radical. And let me be clear, radical soul care is not a one size fits all, nor is it a self-indulgent or limited to treating yourself. The world is beating the drum of self-care. But what is at the core of the world's self-care rhythms? How do you determine what is self-care and what is soul care? So let's go to the Word of God to see what Jesus did. A few weeks ago, I shared a little bit about the temptation of Jesus as told to us in Luke 4, but today I want to start with an important aspect of the story which Matthew writes to us in chapter 4, verse 11. It says, The devil went away or left him, and the angels came and took care of Jesus. In some translations, it uses the phrase, they attended to him, or they ministered to his needs. So the question is, are you allowing yourself to be taken care of by Jesus? Are you letting your needs to be tended to? Are you even aware of what your needs are? I would love for you to listen to the words of Matthew 11, 28 and evaluate how well your soul is being tended to. Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with mine. Learn my ways, and you'll discover that I'm gentle, humble, and easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me, for all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear. My guess is you may have met these words with a deep sigh. You feel weary and in great need of refreshment. Jesus understands, and he understood the demands. So this is what he did. Mark writes in chapter 1, verse 35. The next morning Jesus got up long before daylight, left the house while it was dark, and he made his way to a secluded place to give himself to prayer. In Mark 3.7, we learn that Jesus once again withdrew with his disciples to the lakeside. And in Luke 4.42, he left for a sacred place. In John 7.10, he took the back road. And Mark 6.31 tells us there was such a swirl of activity around Jesus, with so many people coming and going, that they were unable to even eat a meal. So Jesus said to his disciples, Come, let's take a break and find a secluded place where you can rest a while. They slipped away and left by sailboat for a deserted spot. I love that even though it seems like he only got away for a short while, it was enough because Mark says he was filled with compassion for those in need and he took time to minister to them. Jesus didn't scroll on social media to compare his status or accomplishments to his peers to feel better. He didn't hide away eating unhealthy food, he didn't go blow his money on a target shopping spree or hide in his room to binge on Netflix. Jesus strategically got away and he did the thing he needed to refuel. So when I look at the life of Jesus and the Word of God and compare it to the world's mantras of self-care, this is what I find. Self-care is all about you. Soul care is about others. Self-care doesn't satisfy. Soul care fuels you care is isolation. Soul care is retreating. Self-care subtracts. Soul care adds. Self-care is a tool of distraction from your real purpose, but soul care, soul care is the Lord tending to your needs so you can be full of purpose. Here is the deal, my friend. You must take time to refuel so you can have the compassion you need to minister to your kids and to your spouse and the world around you. I do believe there is a great reward for the mama who decides to tend to the unseen world of the soul. So, what exactly are the soul care rhythms that Jesus practiced? In short, contemplative practice was the key. It would see the rhythm Jesus followed was to consistently practice stillness, silence, and solitude. These are also the rhythms of our fathers of faith and the invitation for you to implement. So today, I'm going to define contemplative practice as engaging, resting, and consenting to stillness, silence, and solitude. The fruit of stillness, silence, and solitude are the gifts of your identity, and your personality begins to emerge in its healthier form. These practices lead to correcting your reactions that come out of your intelligence centers, uh, the whole head, heart, or gut center thing. It specifically helps you with shame, anger, and anxiety. And I don't know about you, but I know I need help with each of those, and I want to be free from each of those. As you engage rest and consent, it also helps to unmask the lies of your identity. You're going to begin to recognize your temptations to believe that your identity lies in security, significance, or justice. No longer will you believe the lies that you are what you have, you are what you do, or you are what other people say or think about you. And you will begin to loosen the grasp of your addictions to programs for happiness, your addictions for power and control, affection and esteem, and security and survival. There's a lot more that we could dive into, and it's the kind of content that I help the women, the mamas, and my coaching program, whether it's one-on-one coaching or my really special 12-week whole-hearted community. But I'd love to give you an overview today. Solitude is an intentional withdrawal. It's a practice that teaches us to be present to yourself, God, and others. You, my friend, are surrounded all the time, especially by your little people, but also constantly bombarded by technology. So you have to take time to connect to God just for you and not for anyone else. Silence, on the other hand, it teaches you to listen. It helps you learn how to listen to the voice of God. So you can also hear when the people in your life speak loving, truthful words of correction and affirmation, you can receive it. In silence, you learn that God is not as hard on you as you are on yourself. There is so much noise, and you are always being interrupted. So silence helps you make sure that no other voice is louder than his. And stillness teaches you restraint. And it's in this restraint that you're able to discern what the Lord is compelling you to do, no longer allowing productivity to feed the lies that you believe about yourself. You desire to help others. You even embrace the term activist, and you accept pressure to do more, work hard, and fill the white space. But what is the Holy Spirit compelling you to do? Stillness helps you to discern his leading. And now when we talk about contemplative practice, you pair one of those specific instructions, the stillness, silence, and solitude, with a verb. And one of those will be consent, engage, or rest. So here's what I mean. Consent is an act of agreement, the agreement of how you will give or posture yourself. And instead of giving yourself to everyone else, you posture yourself towards God. When Enneagram twos, fives, and eights consent to what they continually reject, they can receive the gift of healing for the fragmented self. Now, engagement means showing up intentionally and being aware of your needs by resisting the tendency towards resignation. This is the antidote to the addictive patterns of retreat that threes, sixes, and nines use to detach from their intelligence centers. That's some deep stuff, right, my friends? Well, last but not least, rest meets the deepest needs of the idealist triad who are continually agitated, never satisfied, and are often upset with themselves for failing. Rest gives the middle finger to Satan and declares your trust in God. Yes, I did just say that. And it's true. This specific action, rest, heals the type 1s, type 4s, and type 7s need for idealism. This, my friend, is deep. So meditate on it a little bit, read a little bit more, and you can even send me an email to ask more questions about these contemplative practices. But now I want you to take some time to figure out what fills your picture. What can you do today that will help you refresh and refuel and feel renewed? I realize that you and I are not Jesus and we live in first world America. So you and I desire practical everyday rhythms outside of prayer and meditation. That's real. So the step that you're gonna take today is gonna take your awareness of your need to practice healthy soul care and put it into action. First, I recommend do a self-check-in to pause and evaluate are you overwhelmed or are you underwhelmed? Use some of the basic ideas that I'm gonna share today to determine which soul care practice you need to get back to a state of peace and energy. If you are underwhelmed, you might need to use gross motor movements. You might need to increase sensory input, which boosts energy. Think about journaling, an activity which requires your hands. Perhaps turn on worship music, or take a run, or punch a boxing bag. You can even diffuse oils designed to wake up and heighten your senses, or even cook a meal with rich flavors. Now, if you are overwhelmed, you might need to do some deep breathing, maybe a grounding exercise, get yourself in an environment with decreased sensory input or quiet, maybe an activity to release energy by calming the body and mind. Think specifically of holy yoga, bar, Pilates, simple rhythmic movements, maybe even stretching. Try deep breathing in a dark room with soothing wave noises or nature sounds playing on an app. Now these are just a few ideas to get your soul care going. I'm excited to have you put this week's content into practice. I know moms like you and me, we underestimate our needs. Would you take Jesus' invitation to lay your heavy burdens down and tend to the needs of your soul? I am confident that you will see radical change in your life when you take this knowledge and put it into practice, when you exchange self-care for soul care. It's practical topics like this that my 12-week coaching circle gets one-on-one help with. And though another group probably won't open until September of this year, I do have five more one-on-one coaching spots left for the rest of the spring of 2021. Hopefully, one of them has your name on it. I have led dozens of women like you who feel stuck in the messy middle and are ready for freedom from anxiety, shame, fear, and their anger. So many of you feel frustrated with what your life looks like. You know the freedom that Christ offers, yet you feel stuck. So I'm here to tell you that nothing is wrong with you. Salvation is yours, but healing is often a journey. It is not instantaneous, and you can't do it alone. Maybe the Lord put you in this wholehearted podcast community so you can be invited to explore your unique story. Friend, if emotional, spiritual, and physical healing is for me, I believe that it can be for you. And in time, you will begin to walk in the abundance and peace that God has for you. You can email me anytime at Amy at Simply Wholehearted.com or follow the links in the show notes to learn more. Get the Enneagram Mom's guidebook and schedule your 15-minute discovery session. I am here for you. And by the way, make sure you're subscribed because the fourth anniversary episode of the Simply Wholehearted Podcast is coming up on March 17th. Don't miss a special conversation with Kamani, a young woman who was born into abject poverty in the Philippines. She experienced heartbreaking childhood, but that is just part of her story. Trust me, you're gonna want to hear how Christ and the loving work of Compassion International made all the difference in her life. So, friend, until our next conversation, remember, you are the mom your kids need. Continue to pursue perspective, purpose, and plans for the wholehearted life you desire.