268 | Stronger Leadership Starts Here: A Self-First Approach

Join Jenni Catron and Mindy Caliguire for an enlightening conversation that dives deep into the critical importance of soul care in leadership. In this heartfelt dialogue, Mindy opens up about her personal journey through burnout and health challenges, highlighting the often-overlooked need for emotional and spiritual well-being amid the relentless pursuit of productivity and success.

Together, they explore how leaders can become so focused on achieving goals that they neglect the very core of their being. Mindy shares powerful insights from her book, *Ignite Your Soul*, encouraging leaders to reflect on their connection with God and how this relationship serves as a wellspring of strength and guidance. 

This conversation emphasizes that leading from a healthy soul is not just beneficial—it’s essential. As Mindy and Jenni discuss the signs of burnout and the journey of self-discovery, they invite you to consider how nurturing your soul can profoundly impact your leadership and the well-being of your teams. Don’t miss this opportunity to ignite your passion for soul care and discover the transformative power of leading with intention and heart.

Instagram: @mindycaliguire and @soul_care
YouTube: @soulcarenow
Mindy's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Ignite-Your-Soul-Exhaustion-Flourishing/dp/1641588551 

We need your help to get the LeadCulture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:

1. Review us on Apple podcasts
2. Subscribe - we’re available wherever you listen to podcasts.
3. Share - let your friends know about the podcast by sharing your favorite episode on social media!

Transcript

Jenni Catron (00:02.392)
Well, Mindy, thank you for joining me today. I am then looking forward to this conversation because every time you and I get a few minutes together, I get to read a little bit of your work. I'm always a little bit convicted and also super encouraged because you are so intentional about the health of a leader. So I would love for you just to kind of start out for our listeners, maybe sharing where that passion came from for you of just

Mindy Caliguire (00:24.42)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (00:30.614)
You're such an advocate for the importance of soul care and leadership. And I think it'd be great for everybody to kind of hear your story and how that became such a passion point for you.

Mindy Caliguire (00:42.363)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm happy to. And while I don't want you to feel convicted necessarily, maybe gently reminded and encouraged. Yeah, we'll put it in that category. It's delightful to be with you. I'm so grateful. So fun. And I agree that a few times I get to hang out with you, I reminded that I want to keep leveling up my own personal leadership. So I'm grateful for your work as well. okay. But to answer your question, yeah, you're welcome.

Jenni Catron (00:47.118)
The right kind of conviction, yes.

Jenni Catron (01:07.288)
Thank you.

Mindy Caliguire (01:10.274)
It matters. You're doing great work out there and it's leveling up the ecosystem of the organizations that you and I both support. It's really cool to see. Okay. But my passion for this really came out of my own story of a lot of brokenness. I, like many of us, know, kind of came to faith in college timeframe and really felt like I wanted to pursue God with my whole heart, my whole career. I had gone to school in very

secular university environment. so the call to ministry wasn't my initial response to the gospel. It was just like calling, following God with your whole life. But that ended up pulling me and my husband into a variety of vocational ministry contexts and leadership contexts. And one of those, when we were in our twenties was a church plant. So

For those who know what a church planting is, it's kind of an entrepreneurial venture where you're kind of launching out in your own, to start a new organization. No background, no history. We did this in a really tricky, you know, hard place and we did it in the hardest possible way. There are some organizations that support would-be church planters and provide coaching or accountability or encouragement, whatever, but we were completely on our own.

Jenni Catron (02:10.797)
Right?

Mindy Caliguire (02:35.942)
started her own 501C3, did the whole thing, raised the money, whatever. And great things did come of that, but the net results of the pressure and the stressors of that high intensity startup environment, I did not, I didn't know how to care for my soul as a leader. would have been like, what is that? We need to be strategic, we need to get after it.

keep driving, there's urgency and there's strategy to be applied and we need to harness our gifts and recruit other people in and all the things that are normal parts of leadership. But this would have never been on my radar. A care of my own soul. And as a result, you know, the story really unfolded that I basically ran headfirst into a wall that I didn't know was there. And I

Jenni Catron (03:06.946)
Right?

Mindy Caliguire (03:35.192)
ended up with like smart people kind of have language around and we have more language these days around burnout or some of these kinds of things, but there was no language around that. And I just pushed harder and harder and ended up completely incapacitated. Like I was a neurological symptoms at optic nerve and cerebellum and all these other things were freaking out.

Jenni Catron (03:45.304)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (03:59.634)
And my like highly productive, highly generative, high energy, high fun factor, all those things like could not walk across the room without kicking my guts out. I was hospitalized several times. mean, it was bad. It was crazy. And the worst about it, like I think a lot of us can endure a hard season if we know like what the healing arc of it is, like what's the pathology of this thing that just went wrong. So it starts here, then it looks like this and the road to repair looks like this.

Jenni Catron (04:12.335)
That's crazy. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (04:29.734)
but there was no road to repair. Nobody knew what was wrong with me. And so they had no idea if it would go better. And that is a scary place to be. And so, yeah, it really is. And so anyway, was the reason I paint all that picture and I don't need to get into all the glory details. But it really brought me to asking a lot of questions about what it takes to, like I was like, God, I'm like, I'm a team. This is not strategic. It's like, my work isn't happening.

Jenni Catron (04:37.269)
Mm-hmm, for sure.

Mindy Caliguire (04:59.942)
and ended up with some different conversations with God. And it threw me, you know, punchline into being very deeply convicted that I had to reorder my life around the well-being of my soul as a first-order priority. Not once everything else is done, once I had nothing better to do with my time, but as a first-order priority. And then let everything else that I'm responsible for care about.

Jenni Catron (05:16.014)
Hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (05:29.862)
come out of that place of overflow. And that, I didn't know how to do that, was like, I just became convinced that the way I had been doing things was like not a really good solution to a sustainable life. further wasn't the invitation Jesus had for us. Like, what if, like this was not a picture of streams of water, this is a picture of a mess.

Jenni Catron (05:44.694)
Right, right.

Mindy Caliguire (06:00.432)
I knew it wasn't God's fault. I became convinced that through mentors, friends, guides who helped me along the way, authors, that I just could open myself up to a different way of being in my own skin, a different way of being with others, and a different way of opening myself to God. And that, out, there's a whole body of historical thought around that that's called spiritual formation. But I didn't know that at the time. I was just trying to live.

Jenni Catron (06:27.458)
Right?

Mindy Caliguire (06:29.348)
I was just trying to live. that was how I became convinced that the gunning and gunning and gunning that I was actually pretty good at and was sort of what you get rewarded for. I became convinced that that was not the path that God was actually inviting any of us into. And that the care of the soul or reorienting around our life with God was actually

Jenni Catron (06:30.092)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jenni Catron (06:40.034)
right?

Jenni Catron (06:51.758)
Hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (06:57.868)
the path to the greatest flourishing and the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest living out of the belovedness that is who we are that we can still hear through the side of the midst of our leadership. So that's my origin story. That's kind how it all came about. And the good news is like every other opportunity I've had to lead now many, many years since because that was a very long time ago.

Jenni Catron (07:27.118)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (07:27.494)
Those have all sort of just happened. It wasn't a striving, it wasn't like, I think here's my strategic plan to do this or achieve that. I've got a lot of opportunities to do wonderful and beautiful things, but they all sort of came organically as I continued to live from this result that I will... Yeah, people say, well, what is soul care? It's like, well, it's kind of a couple levels of answers to that, but at one level...

Jenni Catron (07:49.538)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (07:58.694)
The care of the soul is just my own personal way of life. That's what soul care is. Soul care is the way of life for me. But then it's over the years has become a message that I feel compelled to bring. And then now it's an organization of people and resources and ways that we're trying to get lift to this topic globally. But the first two never go away. This is still my own way of life. We'll stop.

Jenni Catron (08:02.414)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (08:08.45)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (08:25.952)
Right, Mindy, how do you coach? Thank you for sharing just kind of that backstory. I remember reading some of that in your book and thinking, I think if I were in your shoes, I would be, because I think I have a lot of similar that drive and push for making things happen and pushing yourself too hard, too fast sometimes, because you see all the opportunity. think a lot of leaders listening resonate with that.

Mindy Caliguire (08:45.306)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (08:54.978)
We're drivers, we make things happen. And I think if I were in your shoes, I would have been thinking, okay, what's wrong with my body? Why is my body not keeping up? I'm curious. I think, I don't know if I would have gotten to, this is a soul care issue. I would have just started beating myself up for my body not doing some, my body doing something crazy and wasn't keeping up with me. Like, do you find that with leaders that they have trouble acknowledging that when they're, you know,

Mindy Caliguire (09:19.343)
Yeah, yeah.

Jenni Catron (09:24.794)
There's that book that the body tells the score and how much our body actually like is telling us. Yeah, it's telling us stuff, but we don't listen well. Right. So I'm curious when you're coaching leaders, how do you get them? Maybe how do you coach me to actually begin to really acknowledge that you like your pace is unsustainable? Like, how do you how do you get us to pay attention to that before we

Mindy Caliguire (09:31.022)
It It talks. Yep. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (09:39.824)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (09:43.419)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (09:50.758)
be.

Jenni Catron (09:54.028)
have the debilitating scenario.

Mindy Caliguire (09:56.516)
Yeah, no, it's great. Great question. I can tell you some of the answers from historically in my story, how I came to that if you want, but then I'll answer that. How do I try to help leaders? I won't, it wasn't some like great, like the clouds parted and all of a sudden I had this divine awareness. Okay. It was a gradual, cause I, I was sidelined for months and very despairing at times. And,

Jenni Catron (10:08.216)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (10:20.92)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (10:25.706)
One of the first things that happened to me was in the middle of the night, I couldn't sleep. mean, honestly, Jenny, this started with me telling God how not strategic this was. So I did not start in this like deep, soulful place. Can you imagine telling God what is and is not strategic?

Jenni Catron (10:37.23)
Right.

That's helpful to hear because yes, because I probably have done it.

Mindy Caliguire (10:50.542)
I joke about it all the time, but now even in this moment, I'm like, did I really do that? I did. I was like, this is not, there's things that aren't happening. There's people at meetings that aren't happening. This team is this, this project is like, this is not strategic. The stuff isn't getting done. Good Lord. Okay. So that was, that, that was my like flesh. I just want to identify with you. Yeah. Like that was, it wasn't my first conclusion of,

Jenni Catron (11:06.286)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (11:17.274)
The inner fire of my soul is in trouble. That was not my thing. But I did get there. So some of the things that happened is in the middle of the night, I couldn't sleep. Oftentimes when people have chronic illness or sometimes sleep becomes very difficult. And I sensed it. I was like reading three different small groups at least. And running the back under the church and all the most imposing things that I was folding at that time.

There's actually who else is going to do it. You got to keep going. And I, I remembered Jen, he's got a simple gentle and has the best sense of humor in the world. But he was like, you know, talking to me and I'm Hey, remember that verse in John Fisherman that you're having all three of your small groups memorize, which we all know about everyone on this call, anyone on this listening, whatever one knows. John 15 five.

You know, while the metaphor is repeated many times in that last supper. But in 15, five, John, Jesus, John records that Jesus says, if you remain in me, you will bear much fruit. We love that part, right? There's the fruit bearing. You love that. But the second half of verse is, apart from me, you can do nothing. And I sensed God saying to me, Mindy, what part of nothing didn't you understand?

Jenni Catron (12:28.779)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (12:35.97)
Nothing.

Jenni Catron (12:44.504)
Wow.

Mindy Caliguire (12:46.926)
And yeah, it is a wow. And I kind of had a bit of a, almost a feisty response over the years, my like engagement with that passage and that question has emerged because I think in a lot of our evangelical circles, which is more where you and I find ourselves most of the time, there's a lot about nothing we don't understand, right?

Jenni Catron (13:11.182)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (13:16.55)
What did Jesus mean by that? Psalm 139 says, there's nowhere I can go from the Spirit everywhere I go. God is always with me. And that's like, prior to the Gospels, the psalmist David understands this. There's nowhere I can go that's away from God's Spirit. then Romans tells us there's nothing at all that can separate us from the love of God, neither height nor depth, nor angels or demons or anything else. We know these things, theological truths.

But then what did Jesus mean? What was he saying? Apart from you can do nothing. And that has forced me into trying to understand the apart. So let's go back to that verse and that metaphor of a vine and a branch. And there's a way that a grafted in branch gets connected to its source, to the vine. And when and as that connection holds,

The life force of that vine flows through that point of connection and out and does in that branch, whatever that kind of thing is designed to do. Like grafting is a whole thing, right? And people that are grafters that have pointed their pick on that and also people that call themselves that. People who are experts, master gardeners, I don't think they call themselves grafters. In any case, very non-technical term. The people who know stuff about this.

Jenni Catron (14:26.316)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (14:33.166)
Right? It works for me.

Mindy Caliguire (14:45.156)
have told me, and this is beautiful, that two things about when you're creating a graft in a vine, like there's a vine that knows how to live, knows how to stay alive. That's why you graft a specialty fruit or flower into a thing that really knows, it's usually very disease resistant, drought intolerant, like these, that's what you look for in the base, a thing that really knows how to stay alive. And that's God. And in order for a graft

Jenni Catron (15:06.222)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (15:09.72)
Yeah, right.

Mindy Caliguire (15:15.012)
to take place, you have to create a wound in the source and you, yeah, and a fatal wound in the branch. If that branch does not get connected, if there is not a death of sorts and a reconnection to a source of life, that branch will never root. And the second thing is when there's a wound in the source and a wound in the branch,

Jenni Catron (15:18.422)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (15:22.264)
Wow.

Jenni Catron (15:29.964)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (15:34.702)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (15:38.284)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (15:43.47)
you have to bind them together so tightly that the graph literally plays full. And I know, right? I've been so curious about that point. Like my parents have super sciencey, my whole family is, and it's like, my dad was a scientist. And I was like, if you could look through an electron magnet microscope or whatever they are and look at the literal juncture between a source

Jenni Catron (15:49.848)
Wow.

Jenni Catron (15:56.27)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (16:13.348)
and a brand, what does that look like when that bond starts to solidify and becomes permanent? What does that look like? Because I think it's pretty cool that a completely separate entity can receive its life from this one. So that's what Jesus is talking about here. And a lot of our fruit bearing conversations, we kind of like

Jenni Catron (16:13.366)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (16:20.14)
Right?

Jenni Catron (16:26.414)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (16:40.942)
we kind of get our assignments from God, we get our orders. It's like, okay, I got it. I know what I need to do. And then the busyness of our work pulls us away from the point of connection.

And then we're wondering why it's so hard, why we're so burnt out, why we're so tired, why even going through the motions of reading our Bible or having our quiet time, but like we can even go through all that stuff and never actually be in a corrective way with that. So learning how your soul actually receives its life from God, that's what the carat soul is all about. Like how do I receive my life from God? And so much of Jesus is

Jenni Catron (16:59.533)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (17:12.494)
sure.

Jenni Catron (17:20.096)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (17:23.2)
language throughout the Gospels and the New Testament entirely is the language of relationship. It's a language of connection. It's not the language of performance. There are things we go and do, but the language of our relationship with Him and the reason I believe He repeats that metaphor so many times during this pivotal final conversation with His followers is like, they'd have no idea, but the way He relates to them is about to fundamentally change forever.

Jenni Catron (17:29.698)
Mm-hmm, right.

Jenni Catron (17:40.738)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (17:49.912)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (17:51.758)
And he's trying to lay in a way of thinking that is going to sustain them through persecution, through great achievements, through great losses. And that's supposed to sustain us too. So anyway, that was one of the first things that started to indicate to me that there was a way that I was working that was actually apart from God.

Jenni Catron (17:57.612)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (18:07.267)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (18:14.338)
Mm-hmm.

Wow, even though you were working for God in quotes, right? Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (18:21.318)
for God. It's all God's stuff. It was all God's stuff. And that's the big, I think, hope for many who are in vocational ministry today, who are or Christian leadership in any regard, whose pace of life is pulling them away from God as their source, which doesn't mean to take eight hours in a cave or anything. It's almost like a mentality.

Jenni Catron (18:37.814)
Mm-hmm, sure, yeah.

Jenni Catron (18:46.902)
Right. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (18:48.142)
It's an orientation of how am I receiving my life from God's, which really hasn't been the focal point for us. So that's kind of one of the answers to your question of how did it come to the events? This was a soul issue. And then since you mentioned the body thing, and I do tell this story in the book, there was a therapy, I started to spiral emotionally and I, it's always the happy, know, joy show, whatever, high energy.

Jenni Catron (18:58.51)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (19:17.348)
like not so comfortable with the negative emotions. But once it was clear the neurologist didn't know if I was ever going to get better and I was pregnant, the baby's coming, I was spiraling. And the doctor said, you know, if she starts to really fall apart emotionally, that's going to compromise her ability to physically heal. So you better, to my husband, see if you can find a therapist or someone to try to support her. And

Jenni Catron (19:43.416)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (19:45.124)
By God's grace, a beautiful man, Dr. Lombardi in Boston, in one of the suburbs of Boston, would meet with me. And the first time I met with him, I was still like manifesting all these bizarre symptoms. Like my eyeballs were moving. I couldn't, I mean, it was bad. And so I get to his office and he's asking me good like onboarding questions about my family origin and the last five years of our tenure in Boston and this kind of stuff. And he says to me,

You know, well maybe I can't speak from a biological or physiological perspective, because he's not an endo, but from a psychological perspective, you have forced out of your body what could never come out of your mouth, which was the word of mouth. No, I can't keep doing this. I can't, I can't, I'm I'm I'm too, I'm too, too, I'm too, I'm too,

Jenni Catron (20:36.078)
Wow.

Mindy Caliguire (20:44.78)
and

Yeah, was a, those were the kinds of things that God gently started bringing my way that caused me to learn, okay, this is kind of an interior job. This isn't my body failing me. This is my body leading me to a different place. And yeah, so that was.

Jenni Catron (20:56.174)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (21:02.338)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (21:09.314)
Right, right, yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (21:16.378)
That was a little bit of how that all happened and how that happened. But how I help leaders now, that was the other half of your question. Did you have anything else you were going to say about that?

Jenni Catron (21:25.708)
Yeah, yeah. No, I was going to say, I mean, I would love for you to speak to, I mean, first of all, just you sharing your story. And I think so many leaders can connect with, you know, just that drive, that push, that go, go, go. And you want to ignore the symptoms your body is kind of, you know, trying to acknowledge. And you said something in the book at one point.

Mindy Caliguire (21:41.861)
Thank you.

Mindy Caliguire (21:46.683)
yeah!

Jenni Catron (21:52.128)
A person with a parched soul goes from burnout to burnout, gradually collapsing emotionally, spiritually, and physically. And I love the words parched soul really stood out to me. And you talk about that a lot through the book. You go on to say, when we feel that severe lack, the kind of burnout we can't find our way out of, we often remain unaware that it's our souls that are cracked and undernourished, arid and hot and prickly.

We're uncomfortable and everything is unsatisfying.

Mindy Caliguire (22:25.22)
Yeah, I know.

Jenni Catron (22:47.192)
It stopped recording for a second, but I think it's back now. So we'll clean that up. Fortunately, it gave me like a little pop-up. So who knows? So I'll pick up there. But that last phrase that everything is unsatisfying, like that, like, whoo, because I can think about different times in my life and my story where it's like,

Mindy Caliguire (22:53.392)
your comments.

Mindy Caliguire (23:09.742)
for us.

Jenni Catron (23:13.418)
nothing is technically wrong, but you've just been moving at such a pace that you're not enjoying anything anymore. And I mean, I'm assuming that's a symptom, right? Of like, our body is like screaming at us.

Mindy Caliguire (23:17.74)
Thank you.

Mindy Caliguire (23:25.572)
Yes, yes, yes it is. So yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So we'll stick to that word symptom for a minute, but I do want to go back and play with some of the funner, fun ways that I love helping leaders kind of think about this. But the symptoms, I have done a lot of work about thinking with folks about how like, let's go back to that point of connection, Jesus words. Part of our challenge is that the actual root of the word

not the root, the Greek word for soul.

We in the evangelical context, so many ministry contexts, we only talk about the soul with reference to its eternal destiny. We only talk about if souls are saved or unsaved, lost or found, but we have lost, and I do think this has been the case in church history, but in modern times, in my faith tradition, we have largely lost our capacity to talk about a soul that was saved, but might not be well.

Jenni Catron (24:11.226)
Right?

Jenni Catron (24:34.522)
That's an important distinction.

Mindy Caliguire (24:37.83)
So even it's vital. And if we can't recover the imagination that says, my soul is very much saved and also not well right now. But if we conflate those two things and we say that by virtue of being saved, a soul is fundamentally well, and there's nothing else to talk about for the rest of your journey, just try to behave like Jesus and do a good job, we've lost, this is why the spiritual formation conversation is so

Jenni Catron (24:45.839)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (25:07.302)
critical in this path, not as an optional, if you got, you know, a couple extra candles around that you want to light, do the spiritual formation thing. It's like, no, this is inherent in our understanding of regeneration under soul. And the soul, biblically, in Matthew 16, I think benefit if you gain the whole world, but forfeit your soul, that verse, the word for soul is suke, the Greek word suke, P-S-U-C-O-T-U, and it is the exact same word that is translated life.

in the verse, you save your life, you lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you'll find it. Well, it's not like Jesus was doing this high discipleship challenge in verse one and five, and then turning around and talking to you, a crowd and trying to get them to come follow him. It was not a discipleship shift. Now we're talking evangelism between those two verses. We have to recover an integrated understanding of how God has created the human soul, that it actually is your whole life.

Jenni Catron (26:04.612)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (26:07.364)
and your whole life can be doing well or not so well, even if safe. recovering that is a key part of it. But then if it has a quality of life, it can be doing well or not so well, then we can start having different conversations about symptoms, which is the word you were using. What are symptoms of when my soul is doing well or not so well? And Jenny, I've done this exercise with leaders all around the world in all kinds of cultures, socioeconomic ranges, ethnicities.

Jenni Catron (26:09.37)
Right, right.

Jenni Catron (26:22.63)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (26:37.57)
when you work with a group of people or even just an individual and start having them think about their life when it's feature connected to God, not to truths about God, but like real time in the moment, I feel like I have a lived sense that God is with me and for me. Right. When that connection has been lost, when that's we might still believe in God, we're still saved. We know all kinds of things that are quite resolved in our even devoted service to God.

Jenni Catron (26:54.404)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (27:07.92)
But when we disconnect, when life gets running and done and we get busy, we forget about God and forget that we forgot, but we can still teach at a conference. We can still engage with our donor base. We can still do all the things, but we've disconnected.

Jenni Catron (27:15.333)
Right?

Mindy Caliguire (27:27.558)
You ask people, what are the symptoms? How do I start to act and think and feel and relate when I've lost that sense of connection? And that's when I'll write up on a whiteboard or whatever, a whole list of things. And it would usually include something like what you just said. I've lost, I've lost my ability to, to feel anything anymore. Like I've lost, right? So that would be one of the lists, but I see all kinds of things, very predictable things that show up across.

Jenni Catron (27:47.296)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (27:56.642)
all different kinds of people, business leaders, ministry leaders, moms, like any group, they all report the same kinds of things.

Jenni Catron (28:00.176)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (28:05.701)
Hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (28:09.786)
Conversely, you ask, what was a season of your life? Whatever was going on around you and whatever your particular rhythms or things were at that time, when was a time that you knew that you knew that God was listening for you? Can you think back to that time in your life? Maybe you've had many, hopefully. Could be right now, could have been three years ago, could have been...

Jenni Catron (28:24.571)
Hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (28:35.586)
not last week but the week before or something like that but I love I have everybody think about and show are you doing that good to think about a time for you when that was true.

Jenni Catron (28:47.45)
The first thing that came to mind was when I made the giant leap of moving from my hometown in Northern Wisconsin to Tennessee for school, well, actually when I left for my internship and I just knew that it was what God had for me. I just had this deep sense that it was all going to be all right and that God was with me in the craziness of it. My parents thought I was nuts, right?

Mindy Caliguire (28:47.994)
You got one?

Jenni Catron (29:14.459)
and but there was just this deep sense of I'm good God's got this.

Mindy Caliguire (29:16.688)
Yep. Yep.

Mindy Caliguire (29:22.086)
So what I love doing, what I love that, what I love doing is having people anchor that season of their life in their head. And you do this with whole people, it's so fun, even online. And then, and then what I want you to think about, you just started to say a few of those things. Then you ask the question, what naturally flowed out of you in that season? And that season marked by deep real-time connection, what flowed out of you? Confidence?

Jenni Catron (29:26.064)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (29:41.958)
confidence.

Jenni Catron (29:46.106)
Yeah, yeah, just confidence, conviction of just that sense of knowing that I was doing what I needed to do in that season. I wasn't fearful. And there are times where I will recollect that moment and go, why was I so confident, not fearful, trusting, and how do I get back to her? But really it's how do I get back to God, right?

Mindy Caliguire (30:11.514)
Thanks everyone.

Jenni Catron (30:15.686)
So yeah, those are the things that come to mind.

Mindy Caliguire (30:17.21)
Yeah, yeah, yes. And I would say, yeah, and there might have been certain things that supported that level of connection that you have, but often we look to the things that we were doing rather than the point of connection is the main point. So in different seasons of life, there's gonna be different things that support that level of real-time connection.

Jenni Catron (30:24.912)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (30:29.88)
Yeah, completely.

Jenni Catron (30:37.936)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (30:40.33)
And what we read, we can end up in trouble where we're like, I know what works for me. Because back then I was in a small group and I was leading a small group and I was journaling for 45 minutes a day and I could run by the river every Saturday for two hours or whatever it was. And then we're like, I have to get back to that. it's like, current life circumstances will never allow you to return to a way it used to be usually. We can learn from the past or whatever and we should, but sometimes we put undue pressure on

a version of our life in the past, rather than having an exploration to say, are the values that help me reconnect with real times inside? So anyway, those are some of the things I do with leaders, but that dry feeling you were talking about, the part that nothing, sometimes I think that, and I wrote an article, you could do everything with culture. I was just starting to speak to the topic of culture from a soul care perspective in organizations.

Jenni Catron (31:18.534)
Yeah, that's cool.

Jenni Catron (31:24.666)
Yeah. Yep.

Mindy Caliguire (31:39.122)
I was making the comparison to when souls are unhealthy in a culture, it's kind of like the zombies in the Pirates of the Caribbean. Because, right, they're the dry bones. They're dry bones. They've lost their ability to taste. They can't taste pleasure. They can't die. They are the undead. But do you remember in those movies, the way

Jenni Catron (31:48.002)
that's good.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (32:05.188)
There was only one way you could tell if you were fighting against a zombie or actual human. And it was when they were in the moonlight. It was like, you would catch them in a certain light. Then you would know that they were the undead. They were a part of that zombie army. Which I know sounds a little, I don't know, tried or lighthearted as it relates to readership.

Jenni Catron (32:13.52)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (32:17.67)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (32:24.09)
But it's a great visual. Yeah. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (32:28.64)
It is because we that we become the undead will never stop. But we've lost our capacity for pleasure. We've lost our capacity for pain. And you can't even tell. But when you catch us in the right light, it becomes clear. There's no book.

Jenni Catron (32:31.032)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah. Yep.

Jenni Catron (32:45.732)
You see it. Yeah. That's powerful. So, Mindy, as we're starting to wrap up, mean, gosh, I could keep talking to you about this for so long and people need to just go get the book and like dig into your resources. But for the leaders listening who, know, leaders hold disproportionate influence over the cultures we lead, the teams we're influencing. You know, one of the things I notoriously say is lead yourself well to lead if there's better.

Mindy Caliguire (32:58.522)
Ha ha ha!

Mindy Caliguire (33:03.3)
Very fun.

Mindy Caliguire (33:10.395)
Yeah.

Jenni Catron (33:15.142)
And how would you coach them? They're hearing you, they're saying, ooh, I wonder if I need to be paying attention to this for me, for my team. How would you encourage a leader to take a next step towards leading themselves to a healthier place and as well as leading their teams?

Mindy Caliguire (33:24.75)
and song.

Mindy Caliguire (33:31.75)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (33:37.22)
Yeah, I mean and I do I do hope the book would be helpful. It's got a pretty clear path that would be supportive to people wanting to take the next step and helping you sort of identify is this really where i'm at and our website and resources we have for leaders, you know, there's lots of good stuff there But what I would start with honestly is just in the context of our conversation today is Maybe reframing this from the I don't want people to feel convicted by this. I want them to feel that there's hope

Jenni Catron (34:04.186)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (34:07.47)
that it doesn't have to be this way. And you're not wrong or bad and you're not like, it's usually, mean, leaders are the most disciplined people on the planet. It's not like they lack discipline. What I think we lacked is the vision for how our lives and our team's lives would be different if we were functioning out of deep connection. We just talked about vision all the time. And I almost got in an argument with a leader one time.

Jenni Catron (34:28.454)
Mmm.

Mindy Caliguire (34:36.609)
of a kind-hearted argument, but you know Dallas Willard had this three-part framework for change. Vision, intention, and reasons. You have to have a vision of what will be different. Then you make your intention individually and as an artist. And then you find the means. What are the ways that I make progress on this vision? And oftentimes we just try to focus on the means for how to live a life of deeper connection.

I would say that is the wrong place to start. This is not a time to get like a new gimmick for your journal, a new gimmick for prayer. I mean, there's a thousand ways to pray, a thousand ways to journal, a thousand ways to have silence and solitude or spiritual friendship or any of the other things that are pathways, practices and guides. know, they're all, all of them are good.

Jenni Catron (35:14.736)
sure.

Mindy Caliguire (35:27.682)
what is lacking and this is what this leader and I said, I laid out this vision intention means and he was very familiar with it, knew Dallas as well and he said, he goes, yeah, what we lack is the intention. We're just not disciplined enough. We're just, I know the meanings, but we're just not disciplined. And I said, Dan, I don't think that's the issues. I was thinking, don't have a clue of what would be different in your life if you were really living out of a healthy soul.

Jenni Catron (35:55.547)
Yeah.

Mindy Caliguire (35:57.976)
if your leadership was flowing from a healthy soul, that decision almost makes itself and you will find pathways. And so I think for many leaders, there is a start, if anything you're hearing today is resonating, like do go for a walk by a river or pull out the pages of the journal and start to reflect on, do I like the way it feels to be in my life right now?

Jenni Catron (35:58.586)
Mm-hmm.

Jenni Catron (36:02.255)
Right?

Jenni Catron (36:21.943)
Mm-hmm.

Mindy Caliguire (36:25.594)
Do I feel connected to God? Of course you know truths about God. Of course you're really smart and hardworking. Those are table stakes. But what is your real life connection to the living God? Like right now, like today, like as I'm talking, how are you, does that feel like, a conversation with a familiar friend or like, I'm trying to blow the dust off of this point of graft and reconnect. And again, no shame. Let's all understand that craziness happens. Storms come.

Jenni Catron (36:44.038)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (36:48.507)
Right.

Mindy Caliguire (36:55.258)
branches fall off, the question is, what are we doing to reconnect? And so I don't think anyone makes really good headway until, like Jesus saying, what do want me to do for you? What do you want?

Jenni Catron (36:57.562)
That's really good.

Jenni Catron (37:09.102)
Mindy, that's so good. So good. If you all haven't grabbed, if you all haven't grabbed the book, it's called Ignite Your Soul When Exhaustion, Isolation and Burnout Light a Path to Flourishing. And Mindy, I'm so grateful for your work. Thanks for going first and going through, you know, I mean, we wish we wouldn't have to go through the hard places in order to help lead others to healthy.

Mindy Caliguire (37:16.516)
I love talking with you.

Mindy Caliguire (37:31.577)
Hmm.

Jenni Catron (37:36.856)
healthy ones, but you did it and you're helping lead us to healthier places. So thank you so much for your investment in us. Where can people learn about you connect with your work?

Mindy Caliguire (37:52.41)
Yeah, yeah. Our website is just civilcare.com. So that's an easy way to find it. The book is available on Amazon and all the places. And our team is pulling together a lot around our social media account, especially on LinkedIn and, well, LinkedIn and Instagram. So those are other good places people can find us.

Jenni Catron (38:01.392)
Perfect.

Jenni Catron (38:07.876)
Awesome.

Jenni Catron (38:12.655)
Mindy, thank you so much. We're so grateful for your investment in us as leaders and appreciate you being with us today.

Mindy Caliguire (38:19.822)
Yeah.

Thanks, Jen and I'm delighted to. Thanks for your time.