Your Soul's Success Story Isn't What You Think

In this deeply honest and faith-filled episode of Entrusted to Lead, Danita Cummins invites you to pause and ask: Whose version of success am I chasing? If you've ever felt exhausted trying to keep all the plates spinning — leading a team, running a business or ministry, making a difference — this message is for you.

Danita unpacks what it means to commit your plans to the Lord (Proverbs 16:3) and reminds us that God’s version of success is not rooted in performance, productivity, or public approval. It’s about peace, obedience, and faithfulness. From the kitchen table to boardroom decisions, this episode brings clarity to a truth we all need: Your soul’s success story is unfolding on God’s timeline, not the world’s.

Scripture Anchor:
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and He will establish your plans.” – Proverbs 16:3

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why doing “all the right things” can still leave you empty
• How to release the pressure to perform and embrace peace
• The difference between striving and surrender
• Three clarifying questions to redefine what success looks like for your soul right now
• Why margin is a sacred gift in leadership and life

Reflection Questions:

1. What version of success have I been chasing that may not be from God?
2. Where do I need to surrender the outcome and trust His process?
3. Am I being faithful to what’s in my hand — not just what’s on my vision board?

Resources to Go Deeper:

• Take the Free Leadership Clarity Quiz
• Schedule a No-Pressure Strategy Call
• Download the Strategic Planning Checklist

Share the Journey:
If this message encouraged your heart, would you share it with someone in your circle who needs to hear it too? Tag @DanitaCummins and let’s talk about how God is rewriting your success story from the inside out.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 2:05 Challenging Worldly Success Definitions
• 4:35 Committing Our Work to God
• 6:30 Three Questions to Redefine Success
• 11:15 What True Success Looks Like
• 13:36 Final Reflections and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hey friends, welcome back to Entrusted to Lead. I'm Danita Cummins and I'm really glad you're here. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the community. But if you've been around for a while, you already know that this is a space where we talk about leadership, purpose, faith and how we show up for the people we have been entrusted to lead, even if it's hard. Today, I want to have a heart to heart with you about something that's been on my spirit lately, which is success. Because, let's be real, it is super easy to get caught up chasing a version of success that looks good on the outside but doesn't actually fulfill you. You can be doing all the things building the business, climbing the ladder, serving the people and still feel like something's missing. Have you ever been there? Today, we're going to talk about why that happens and how God is inviting us to redefine success on His terms, not the world's. So grab your cup of coffee and let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Leadership can feel really heavy sometimes, especially when you're carrying vision and people and purpose on your shoulders all at the same time. You have got a big mission, but the strategy feels fuzzy and your team is looking at you for clarity that you're not sure you actually have. I get it. It's hard. I'm Danita Cummins. I help faith-driven leaders like you find clarity, align with your values and lead with confidence, without burning out, because that's never okay. If you're ready to get unstuck, lead your team with courage and to turn that God-given vision into strategy that really works. I want us to talk. Take the free leadership clarity quiz that I've created today and I want you to schedule your no-pressure coaching call, because together we can uncover what's holding you back and how to move forward in faith and confidence. So here's a question I've had to ask myself more than once what version of success have I been chasing? If I'm honest, there are many times in my life where success was all about achievement Hit the next milestone, grow the audience, add another credential and while none of that is inherently bad, this is what I've noticed the more I achieve, the more pressure I felt and the peace. Well, that part started to slip away. You see, the world defines success by what you do, your productivity, your influence and your outcomes. But what if success isn't about any of that? And then how do we look at that from the lens of faith and talk about our fruit and the production of fruit and not get all that turned upside down.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Proverbs 16.3 says commit to the Lord whatever you do and he will establish your plans. That verse doesn't say work hard and God will bless your hustle. It says commit to him, commit it all to him, and the word used there means to roll it onto him, like literally like take the heavy burden of performance off your back and roll it onto God's capable shoulders. What does that look like? Can you imagine? How does that make you feel? So let me ask you this what is something that you're carrying today that's heavy, not because it's from God, but because it's rooted in pressure or fear. We've talked a lot about fear this summer. We've dug into some limiting beliefs and ungodly beliefs and lies and pressure. So maybe it's a number you feel that you have to hit, maybe it's someone else's expectations, or maybe it's an internal voice that says, if I don't accomplish this, I am not enough.

Speaker 1: 3:50

When my husband decided that he really wanted to go after this new business at the end of last year, when he was really felt like the Lord was calling him to this and this was the thing that he wanted to put his hand to, we had a very serious, candid conversation sitting in my office one night and I said where are we going? What is the point? How do you define success? Because as soon as you walk out that door, life is going to hit you really hard. It's going to be hard to start a business from scratch in our basement. It's going to be hard to compete on a market scale that is competitive, highly advanced and, let's just be honest, very expensive. We're not building $12 shoes. We're building $5,000, $6,000, $10,000 communication systems, so we are walking into a market that's already established and they're running really fast, and so there are a lot of challenges that we're going to have to overcome the minute we decide we want to go after this thing, and I think that's important, because we can get really frustrated or really discouraged if the success measurement is about money or metrics or numbers and those are all good things.

Speaker 1: 5:10

I love metrics, I'm not opposed to making money. I think these are all really important things. Money is a resource Food, clothing, shelter. The more money we make, the more people we can help, the more our organizations can grow and we can have a greater impact in the world. But that's not how God defines success. So what does it truly mean to commit our work to the Lord. What does that truly mean? That's where this real shift happens, when we move from striving to surrender and I know surrender isn't sexy. I've served in the military for 30 years. I know it's a word we don't like to use. It doesn't look good on a resume and it clearly does not sound powerful in a mission team. I know I've been there. But can I tell you something Surrender is one of the strongest decisions that you can make as a leader.

Speaker 1: 6:00

I've had seasons where I was holding on so tightly to my plan, trying to make every little thing line up every, every box, every dot and it just kept falling apart. Or it was really really, really hard and super exhausting. I would tweak the strategy, I'd put in more hours over here, I'd overthink the next move over here and I would still feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I often tell markets like 10 little piles are all burning at the same time and I'm running back and forth, back and forth, back and forth making sure that they're all staying lit, all at the same time. It could be exhausting, but it wasn't until I prayed the simple but hard prayer that God gave me clarity when I said God, I give this back to you, whatever you want to do with it. I'm listening. And then I felt something shift. Peace entered the room, because God's version of success starts with obedience, not outcomes.

Speaker 1: 6:58

I love this part in the scripture in the Old Testament and in the New Testament where we learn where God says I desire mercy, not sacrifice. That is rooted in faith, not formulas. That doesn't mean we don't have a plan, because we do have a plan, because I'm a planner and I like a plan. I like a good plan and a good checklist and a good Excel spreadsheet. But it means that our plans are held loosely and we offer them freely to the Lord. So let me say this for someone who needs to hear it today you do not have to force what God is not blessing. You don't have to do that. There is a difference between persistence and striving. One is rooted in trust and the other is rooted in fear. So what did those look like for you? So let's get practical for a minute, because if we're going to redefine success, then we need new metrics, right, new ways to measure whether or not we're on track and a new perspective, realistic expectations.

Speaker 1: 7:51

I like to say so here are three questions that I am learning to ask myself that I will share with you today because I love you. Number one do I feel peace in this decision, even if it's scary? Not for comfort, but for peace. Peace be still. Ever since I came back from my sabbatical last year, I say that a lot. I just close my eyes and I lift my hands up and I say peace be still, lord. Just peace be still, the kind of peace that lets you sleep at night, even when the outcome is unknown. That's the kind of peace we're looking for. Number two the question is am I walking in obedience, not just productivity?

Speaker 1: 8:31

Because there have been a lot of things in this season that I have learned that I'm not supposed to continue to carry anymore. There are a lot of them, and that's hard. It's hard to lay things down, especially when you think am I failing? Am I going backwards? I built all these things. I have teams, we have processes, we have a podcast, we have books, we have these things we're doing now. Is this all a waste of time?

Speaker 1: 8:55

Some of the most meaningful things that God has asked me to do didn't make sense on paper, but they were the next right step, like when we started the nonprofit, there was nothing on paper. I literally had a poster board that I got at Walmart. I cut up a bunch of pieces of construction paper, I wrote down a bunch of words and I moved them around at my kitchen table about 1200 times and I cried a lot. It didn't make any sense to me. And now here we are, all these years later, and we are making a powerful difference in the community every single day. That didn't make sense at the time. I didn't have any five-step plan, but we just move forward in faith.

Speaker 1: 9:31

And number three the question is am I being faithful to what is in my hand, not what's on my vision board? It's good to have a vision board. I like vision dreams. All those things are great goals, but your faithfulness today is the soil that God will use to grow fruit tomorrow. It really truly is friend.

Speaker 1: 9:51

So maybe success isn't about how big the platform gets, but how steady your soul stays. And what is the soul Like? Can we just be honest for a second? If you know, you could drop, like a note, a comment in the DMs, you could send me a social media message or, I don't know, you could call me, because probably half of you have my phone number Like what is the soul? Where does it come from? Where does it go? How does it move and shape and grow as the seasons of our life change? I have all these questions. And how do we steady our soul right? It's so big. I think it's a lot less complicated, though, than we really give ourselves credit for, but that's a different day.

Speaker 1: 10:31

So maybe success is not about getting more done I don't think that it ever is actually but about being more available to God and to the people around you, and in this season of my life that is so super important to me. We talked a little bit last month about margin. We didn't really dig into it very much last month about margin, we didn't really dig into it very much, but there is a huge lesson to be learned about. How do you make emotional, spiritual, physical, financial, intellectual margin right? How do I hold space for those people that are super important in my life to make sure that I have the time when they need me, that I have the money if something comes up, that I have the emotional capacity to take on hard things, or when my mom gets sick or when my friend has cancer Like we have to make margin in our life for the things that really truly matter, and so maybe the win isn't this public recognition Most of the time it's not, but it's more so a private obedience, and that can be hard too, friend, I know I get it.

Speaker 1: 11:30

So what does this actually look like in real life? Here's what it looks like to me. It looks like choosing to say no to something that would elevate your status because it doesn't align with your calling. Okay, and you can measure that. Does this align with the values that I have? Yes or no? Number two, it looks like launching something imperfect, like a podcast or a book or a course, not because it's polished, but because God told you to move forward. And it looks like trusting that God can do more with your surrendered little than you could ever do in your own strength with a lot, and that has been very true.

Speaker 1: 12:06

For me, surrender isn't quitting. It's trusting and it's getting to the end of your ability and saying, okay, god, I'm going to keep walking, but you, you're going to have to lead. It's releasing the need to be impressive and choosing instead to be intentional, and those look like two completely different things. And, lastly, it's letting God define what the win is, even if it looks different than what you expected. So, friend, if you're in a season of questioning or reevaluating, if your version of success feels heavy or if your spirit is craving something deeper, then I want you to lean into this. Number one commit your work to the Lord. Number two trust him to to the Lord. Number two trust him to establish the plan, because he already has. And number three redefine success as obedience, peace and faithfulness. Let God take the pressure off, because he never asked you to perform. He only asked you to walk with him. So here's the reflection question for you today what success have I been chasing that might not be from God? Where do I need to surrender the outcome and trust his process, and how might God be inviting me to redefine the win in this season? Thanks for spending the time with me today.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I hope this episode encouraged you to breathe a little deeper and remember you don't have to have it all figured out, okay. You just have to keep showing up with open hands and a willing heart. And if this resonated with you, would you do me a favor? Can you share it with a friend? Tag me on social and let me know what part spoke to you, because I'd love to hear your stories. And if you haven't already, can you subscribe to the Interested to Lead newsletter, where I send tools and prompts and encouragement straight to your inbox, because I really do wanna help you grow in your faith and in your leadership journey. All right, friend, until next time, keep leading with courage and remember your worth isn't in what you accomplish, but it is in who you belong to. So keep showing up every day, even when it hurts, because you matter. All right, friend, I'll see you later. Have an amazing day. Bye.