William Norvell: Everyone. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. My name is William. It’s so good to be with everyone today. I feel slightly alone. Today I’m minus Henry and Rusty today, which is a bit sad. But the Lord delivers sometimes and sometimes the Lord delivers a friend to make you feel comfortable. And so I said, I feel kind of alone, but not totally alone, because we’ve got Mindy here, who’s become a friend recently. And, you know, I think we had a great connection a couple of times. We’ll find out later if that’s a shared feeling or if it’s a one way feeling. But I feel comfortable. We’ll see if Mindy finds this comfortable or uncomfortable, but we’re excited to have you on the show. So thank you so much for coming, Mindy.
Mindy Caliguire: Well, thanks. I’m really glad to be here. And yeah, I would consider us friends. So that’s it’s delightful to be here together. Would have been fun to meet the other guys too. But I love that we’ll have a conversation.
William Norvell: I know this this could have gone sideways fast. So I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that. Well, I guess that I’m so grateful to be here. You know, we connected over some shared work and you’ve been kind of tracking along obedience in the same direction for a long time. And I just can’t wait for our listeners to hear about your work and what you’ve done and how you help shape people’s souls, which is just an amazing you know idea. And so with that, one of the first things we love to do is just to get a bit of an autobiographical sketch of who you are. Where do you come from, where are you sitting today? Because it’s pretty awesome. Yeah. How did you find yourself here? Just tell us a bit about yourself.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, totally. I’m happy to do that. You know, where I’m at right now is I’m looking out of the flat Iron Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. You can see that view. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but the journey to Boulder was quite unexpected. For most of my life. Ministry and marketplace career, I’ve been in both business and organizational ministries of everything from, you know, micro churches to megachurches to, you know, the Willow Creek Association, really big global entities served on the executive team there. And then more recently have been in really a very faith driven entrepreneurial environment, serving on the senior leadership executive team at Gloo here in Boulder. And so that was, you know, a phenomenal, phenomenal experience. But for the past 25 years, as you know, the care of my own soul, you know, emerged out of my own journey and story in church planting many, many years ago. But this became my own way of life, my own priority, my own resolve, frankly. And then out of that, continued having opportunities to create resources and gatherings and teams and services to help people know how to care for their souls, to extend the message beyond that. And what’s really interesting about this moment for me, and this is actually true, I think, since you and I talked a couple of months ago, is I’ve just recently left Gloo, we’re great friends of a team and everybody, great hearts and spirits all the way around. But with the world being where it’s at right now and some of the seasonality of my own life, it just became clear that this for the first time in all these 25 years is the first time soulcare as the business, as the ministry, whatever you want to put around it, it’s kind of like a 25 year old start up. I don’t know if that’s a thing.
William Norvell: I think it’s a thing.
Mindy Caliguire: It is. It is the first time. This is then my full locational focus, first time ever. And that is such a rich joy. It has all the scary parts of entrepreneurship that you and I have talked about and that, you know, relate. So that’s part of, you know, who I am and how I’m here. I grew up in New York. I spent ten years in Boston, spent time in Connecticut. New Jersey, Ithaca is where I went to college. And then we spent 13 years in the northwest suburbs of Chicago in and around Willow. And yeah, I’ve been out here for about I think it’ll be eight years this summer. And then personally, my husband, I’ve been married for 35 years this summer. That’s like mind blow emoji. And we have three adult sons and two of the three are married and live local here. And the youngest, the oldest and youngest are the ones who are married and the youngest and his wife will be returning from about five years on the field with YWAM and then beginning a year of rest, a year of sabbatical, which is really kind of cool at such a young age to be recognizing the need for that. So that’s me. You know, the question was sort of posed ahead of time about how has faith informed my journey? And I thought, that’s an interesting turn of phrase or an interesting way of asking that question. And for me, it seems that the journey has been extremely unexpected. I don’t know if you and I got into this when we met earlier, but I’ve had a lot of very surprising turns in the journey and. The role that faith has played in it. I mean, obviously, all that had the context of faith, but it has taken a lot of faith to follow this journey. So that’s that’s what I would say. That’s that’s what it looks like.
William Norvell: Well, I love that. I mean, you said 25 years old startup. You bought soulcare.com in the nineties, right? Eighties?
Mindy Caliguire: 1998.
William Norvell: I mean, that is amazing. Just to see from an entrepreneurial perspective, just see how God continued to pour something in over time, over time, and now has brought you full time on a concept you felt so strongly about. You know, you bought the Web address, you felt pretty strong around it.
Mindy Caliguire: Well, yeah. And I started creating resources back then. I sold them into bookstores, but even those things were unexpected. But the product development side of it just became a fun thing that I didn’t even know I loved. And so that was fun to step into that creative space and then put on my old salesperson hat and figure out how to sell into the Christian Booksellers, you know exhibit at CBA and, you know, all those things that you do. But it was always very much in the part time of my life. But I knew then and I know I mentioned this to you, I knew then that this was huge, that this was a really big idea, that this really warranted focused attention and a broad perspective. And I think if I look back on those 25 years, certainly the need has become more obvious than it was then because a little resistant for a while. But I think it was a lot of God shaping and changing me into the kind of person who can, I hope, lead a team into where we’re moving. So it was about that kind of stuff.
William Norvell: Hi Min, and I want to especially in, you know, a lot of church culture, I want to stop and pause there because obviously the name of your organization and you know, I want to give you a chance to define these words. Right. What does soul mean? What does that definition mean to you? You know, I feel like we hear that word a lot. And then furthermore, of course, what a soul care mean. Could you tell us how you and your business define those terms?
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, easily. Yeah. It is a thing that I find evangelicals usually want to know definitions. And if I were presenting to a whole group of people, I would probably not start at the definition because I find that people get really kind of hung up in their push toward defining things. And the perception I have is that a lot of times we think if we can define a thing, then we sort of have some mastery or control over it. That’s not really the case in most anything is a bit of a delusion, western mindset, I think. But nonetheless it’s still a very valid question. And to me the best answers for that have to emanate from the scriptures, right? And I was just working with a team yesterday down at Compassion and we were talking about this very thing and it’s like how, how in the name of God have we gotten to a point where so many devoted Christian leaders, followers of Jesus, whatever their vocation, are living with such a soul deficit? Like, how did we get here? And those are really interesting historical and theological questions. And I think a lot of it has to do with what you’re asking about, which is the definition. And if we look to one of Jesus’s most famous statements, rhetorical questions in Matthew 16, he says, you know, we all know it. How could you possibly benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeited your soul? Or what could you give in exchange for your soul? And in most contexts that I grew up in and spiritually was matured in or grew up in. That’s the question you ask somebody who’s far from God. That’s the question you ask someone who you’re saying, don’t throw your life away for things that don’t have eternal value. How could you benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeited your soul? And we sort of equate that eternal life with God once we die is what the soul thing means. And in some ways I think, I hope entirely unintended. We’ve reduced both the gospel and the conception of soul to an important facet, I believe, of salvation, which is justification. But we’ve kind of inflated all of what God does with the human soul and made it about justification, forgiveness of our sins, and then said, Bonus points, you can be a disciple, here’s how you get saved and here’s how you be a disciple. And that dichotomy just doesn’t exist in Scripture. So back to that verse, Matthew 16 two really interesting things from that verse. The first is the people that Jesus is talking to are well-known. It’s at the top of the paragraph. It is not people who are considering following him. It is not people who are out there is the mighty throng who’s sort of paying attention to this carpenter from Nazareth. It’s his disciples. This is the question Jesus asked His disciples then and us now. How could you benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeit your soul? What does that mean? If I’m already in Christ, if I’m saved, then that’s the you know, I’ll get back to the second thing in this passage. But the. Famous and beloved for good reason. Him of it is well with my soul totally reinforces this idea that what makes your soul well is the fact that you’re saved. And the song goes We know it well. My sin. Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but in whole, has been nailed to the cross. And I bear it no more. It is well, it is well with my soul. There is absolute truth to that, that there is a fundamental wellness that comes to the human soul when we begin our relationship with God. That is true. But what we’ve largely lost is any way of imagining the health of the soul that is saved. And as a result, we don’t have any imagination or rhetoric or strategy around why making our soul stay in a healthy place. We don’t have a way of talking about it, even because if you’re saved, then your soul is fine. So just get on the business of doing whatever work you’re called to do. So the second thing in that passage that is really significant is I wish I had my little whiteboard here. I would draw it out. But the word for soul is “psuche” a Greek word, p-s-u-c-h-e, from which we get our psyche psychology, sort of the inner part of who you are. And interesting verse 25 above verse 26, same exact word is translated life. Jesus in that verse says, If you gain your life, you must lose it. But if you lose your life, your “psuche “your soul for my sake you’ll find it. And how could you benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeited your “psuche”, your soul, your life? And what could you give in exchange for it? And William, really, the bottom line is that biblically understood, the human soul is inextricably woven together with the idea of your entire life, your whole personhood. And this is where it hits into all the different dimensions that make us who we are the mind, the emotions, the body, our relationships. Everything that matters to us is wrapped up in this idea of our personhood, which is integrated and held together by the concept of the soul. Now, Dallas Willard is the person whose writing I mean Johannesburg others have deeply influenced my thinking on this. And so, you know, Willard has all kinds of beautiful metaphors and things like that, but he has this really great quote in Renovation of the Heart. And he says, When we’re speaking of the human soul, you’re speaking of the deepest level of life and power in the human being. The deepest level of life and power in the human being. This is not some inert toggle switch that gets flipped on or off if it’s saved or unsaved. And sadly, that’s kind of how we thought about salvation. It’s like a switch that gets flipped. It’s a deal that gets done. It’s we have a very transactional way of thinking about that salvation and what happens to that human soul. But the truth is, your soul is your life. Your soul’s well-being is your whole life’s well-being. And when you reframe it around the life which can be saved and doing well or not so well. Now we have a new conversation about why the care of the soul matters so very much.
William Norvell: Hmm. That’s so good.
Mindy Caliguire: Sorry. I went on a tear about that. That’s like one of my ……….
William Norvell: Well, it is your profession for 25 plus years, so I’d expect that. And I thought it was great. I mean, I think you really grounded that. And, you know, hey, we have images of our soul floating up to heaven, right? And that’s what people think, right? That’s what. Even from cartoons as a child. Right. And I love that, you know, it’s the mind will, an emotion. It’s the personality. It’s who you are. Right. And part of that is the immaterial connection to the divine. And the other part of that is daily decisions and relationships and and health and wellness body as well.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we’ve been doing a listening tour and may have shared this with you at one point with different organizations who are trying to breathe life into the well-being of their teams and that kind of stuff. And during that listening tour, we’ve been learning a lot and inviting people into that process with us. And one of the things that came out in the very first set of interviews we did with people who are working in all different kinds of organizations, some faith based, some not, most faith based. But you know what, William? It’s not going to shock you knowing your passion as well. It’s like the future of this conversation and helping people in this regard has got to be centered in integration. And again, this is what I think falls to the wayside in our passion for defining things. It’s like, well, what’s the heart, what’s the soul, what’s the mind, what’s the strength? And we want to look at them separately when that was never what Jesus was trying to say in listing them out as separate things. It’s not like one was a bookshelf and the other was a, you know, whether app and the other, like they weren’t things that had nothing to do with one another and are to be understood separately. The point was they are like different ways of talking about the same thing. Love God with all of your personhood, all of it. It wasn’t about the separateness, it was about the integration. And that’s the key right now that I think is really the most compelling frontier, is how does and this relates to the whole topic of this podcast, how does the wellness of your soul relate to your business like? We better have a very good answer to that, and I think there is one, but that’s not, you know, my father in law’s business and I mean devoted believers, but there was never a connection between their business and their faith. And that, thank God, is changing.
William Norvell: Hmm. Amen, and then we’re going to go into this, you know, connection. Yes. Like so health and how it changes over time and how that impacts the people on your team, product development, what you’re looking at, all those things. And I’d love to dive there. I mean, you’re working with leaders every day. Obviously, we’re coming out of a and we’re still in it. I mean, the world has fallen so crazy. Season may not be the right phrase, you know, but COVID, of course. And now we’ve got a war and we’re not, of course, on the grounds up, but we’re thinking about and seeing and could come to us one day. What are you seeing in the soul health of leaders right now? Where are people? I could imagine many think they’ve never recognized it and are recognizing it for the first time or they’ve always recognized it and now they’re paying attention. Or or are you educating people from the ground up of, hey, actually what you just said, people don’t even understand that it’s an integration issue.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, I would say there’s a range, as you would expect some people let’s throw fake percentages on it. There might be 30% of the Christian people I deal with who have never given thought to the care of their soul whatsoever and very much fell into the I’m saved and now I got to work as hard as possible for God and just get the things done. And that’s all that matters. They have no imagination around their soul, being alive and governing who they are and how they show up. So there is a pretty big percent of people who are really in that category, and that might be some of the people who are listening today. I think there is a maybe 20% who are leaders I’m talking to who really have navigated life and life’s challenges from a deep groundedness, a deep rootedness in Christ. And they wouldn’t maybe use the language of soul care or whatever. But as soon as we start talking, they’re like, Yeah, but here’s what I have noticed about them, and one that I’ve been working with him and his executive team in their organization increasingly. And his words were, I realized I needed to stop making assumptions about my people and I needed for them not to be making assumptions about me, about my well-being. And it was a very humble, I thought, and self-aware view of saying we can’t make assumptions anymore. People are struggling and just because. Somebody’s struggling. There’s no shame in that. It’s how do we come around that with support and with help? And then the big 50%, the sort of in the middle of those two extremes, I would say, you know, underlying all three of those responses, they sort of have an awareness of it. But the challenges of daily life make it just hard. Right. We’re busy. We’re running, we’re gunning, we’re strapped by doomscrolling. We’ve got really hard things going on with family and impossible situations. You know, you and I talked after we’ve had these wildfires rip through and people are so significantly displaced on top of everything else and with hopeless financial scenarios in front of them, it’s quite dire. And that’s just my little pocket of the world. Never mind what’s going on in Ukraine and all these other places in the world. I think for that 50% that might have been open to it, as you suggested, like never before, people are raising their hands and saying, I think we need to talk about this. We need to create an event around this. We need to hold a staff meeting about this. We need to have a day retreat on this. Leaders are so much more willing to organize time for themselves and their team to attend to the well-being of their souls and even strike up the conversation for the first time than I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been at this as you seen a long time and I’ve never seen and I’m thrilled about it. And I think the opportunity is massive because when people’s souls are most alive to God, most alive to what’s going on in the world, in their own world, I believe not only is that certainly a better way to live it, certainly from a therapeutical most standpoint, it feels better, but far more strategically. And I hope the soul care conversation starts to transcend from the therapeutic to the strategic far more strategically, people who are really grounded, alive to God, they are able to take risks. They are able to see into scenarios in the future that the Spirit is starting to speak to them about. They are less ego involved. They’re willing to show up strongly or recede to the background. And as a result, I believe they have a greater chance of making great impact in our culture and our world because of their posture.
William Norvell: Amen and take us into the work you do. Right. So maybe a Soul Care 101. I mean, I know it’s, you know, distinguish it from self-help. I know it’s not, you know, pray 7 minutes a day, read the scripture in the morning and you know all as well. Right. You know, I know that’s not the answer, but but that’s where I’m going to say specifically for entrepreneurs, that’s where a lot of minds go is give me the checklist. I heard it. I’m convinced, you know, I need to, like, get this in order. Where’s the checklist? Right. And so I’m curious, as you could explain, you know, the work you do and how you think about what this process can look like. How is it different? How is it the same? Walk us through a little bit.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, yeah. I think grounding in the idea of life is a much bigger idea than what are a couple of key practices that might help on any given day, but on another day might not work at all with my schedule. And so I think we, each of us, has to decide what kind of life we actually want. And that’s why I love starting with that great exercise of helping people think about what symptoms exist of what I call soul neglect and what symptoms exist of soul health, because people resort to checklists when you’ve lost a vision for what could be and you might end up doing things on any given day or not. But it’s not about the things. It’s about how do you want your life to be? What do you, as an entrepreneur want your experience of God to be like? What do you want your own personal relationship with stress and fear and anxiety? What do you want that to be like? And then like anything, how would you arrange your life to best support that future goal? And so when I do a soul care one on one, I walk people through the scriptures that we just talked about. And I anchor in John 15 and we talk a little bit about what does it mean to be deeply connected in real time to God as our source divine? And what symptoms of health or unhealthy are? Frankly, I believe, utterly predictable. I’ve done this all over the world and with groups of thousands of people and as small as like eight people around a conference table yesterday. It is fascinating how easily we can reflect on how we are, how we start to behave and act and think and feel and work and live when we’ve lost a sense of God being with us and for us. Versus when we feel anchored in the sense of God being with us and for us. Neither of those things have anything to do directly with our exterior circumstances, and that’s the grand illusion that exists out there, is if you can get your circumstances arranged just so then you’re happy and things are good, and if your circumstances are bad, then you’re categorically sad, miserable, driven, overwhelmed, etc. and nothing could be further from the truth. There are times where people’s exterior life is very up in to the right. They’ve got the money, they’ve got the cars, they’ve got the house, they’ve got the good health, they’ve got their whatever we attribute some sort of success to. And inside they’re dying. Inside, they’re full of fear. They’re driven by ego involved. I mean, it’s just all the stuff that’s left to our own devices. We just become I become. You can have soul neglect in the midst of great external circumstances. And conversely, you can have a soul that is incredibly alive to God. Very anchored, very attentive, very centered in God, real time in the moment in connection with a terrible health diagnosis. I mean, the New Testament was written in prison with a death sentence. Right? Right. That was wasn’t happy, you be skippy. Everything’s, you know, like. But was Paul joking when he said we could count it, Joy? Was he being spiteful and mean and or was he actually describing his real lived experience? What if that were the case? Well, I believe he was. And I believe there is a way not that we slap an artificial joy onto hard circumstances, that that is a bad idea, but from a place of authentic groundedness into the reality of the unseen, into the reality of the kingdom of the heavens, which Jesus has made a way for us to encounter. Despite our circumstances, we can have soul health in the midst of failure, searing pain, utter confusion, hopelessness in terms of circumstances. And yet we can be held, as it were, by God in those places. So I think when you look at those two options and then think, well, what helps me stay connected, what helps me not know more about God, that could be important. I’m not saying that bad, but that doesn’t meet you in your terror when you wake up in the middle of the night. And a lot of evangelicals tried to do a lot of mental math when they wake up in the middle of the night with a lot of fear and they remind themselves the things they know about God. And I’m pounding my fists because it feels that like rigid and grinding, even because it’s still a forced mental exercise, rather than learning to connect and rest in God’s good care, which is a completely different gear.
William Norvell: Hmm. That’s good. My next question. I’m thinking about our audience. I’m thinking of people. They’re saying, well, that can’t be me, right? I’m doing fine. I’m curious, do you have some of those symptoms you mentioned of soul neglect? And, you know, could you walk us through.
Mindy Caliguire: Some of those?
William Norvell: Yeah, a little bit of like a self-diagnosis for people listening, you know? Hey, you know, this could be something you might want to look into because the one thing I loved about what you did, the hyper ballistic moments are good to anchor. And when it’s all falling apart, it’s all going well. And that’s because people can visualize that most people are in the middle of that continuum somewhere.
Mindy Caliguire: Yes.
William Norvell: And it’s so easy to say, but I’m not over there. So, like, I mean, how bad could it be? Right. How neglected can my soul be? Because I’m not depressed or, you know, picking up drugs recreationally. Right. Right. Or all the horrible things we might think about. What are some of those symptoms that someone might think about as they’re listening to this.
Mindy Caliguire: That I can offer you? And I’ll tell you some of my own that because I think it’s important for us to learn what are the symptoms for each of us, because they’re different by our gifting, our calling, our wounds, our brokenness. We just all show up differently into life. And I can give you some of the ones that I hear the most and then a way that I think would help people, because you’re exactly right. Like when I do this and what we did yesterday and people can on the soulcare.com website, they can go, there’s a new assessment that we just put out there that allows people to go through a little set of questions around the top symptoms that I’ve heard over these many years of what and I just call it what marks your life. But the cool thing is it leads not to a like a result, like you’re a squirrel. It’s more like, here’s a download to go have a devotional time with God and start to process like, how am I today? Like, what’s really true for me? But the ones I hear and just in case anybody listening, you know, you find yourself in any of these, it wouldn’t be likely that you’re categorically all of this in the most extreme form. It’s just where you can start to notice these things. One of them for me is I get super judgy when I have lost a sense of God being with me and God being for me and the judgy. I get judgy about other people. I get judgy about situations and circumstances. I find when that voice is most sharp in me, it also is usually pointing back at me. I get super judgy about myself, about the things I’m doing, not doing. It’s just relentless being in my head. So judgy is one thing, as opposed to being quite accepting and grace giving and generous of spirit, right? So those are sort of extreme opposites. Another one that I’m just starting out with, the ones that are me, you’re getting the more vulnerable version here. I can start to feel an inner turn, like I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I got to make words that you probably don’t see on your podcast happen. I got to go make stuff happen. It’s a driven this for me. For some people driven, this might be a perfectly fine word, but for me it means a certain rev. Like I can just I can feel it in my body when I start driving in a way that is about a neglected soul, not the overflow of God’s spirit. Moving in me, because I do have a ton of energy, I do have a high capacity, but that can come from some really dark places. Other ones that I often hear are anger, not the capacity to feel anger, which is just a normal human emotion. And even God we know experiences anger. But when we’re becoming an angry person and this is starts to get at the relationship between soul care and spiritual formation, when we’re becoming an angry person, we’re making our decisions based on anger. We are controlling people out of our anger. We are constantly defending ourselves out of anger. That’s a whole different kind of a symptom that I’ve lost, a sense of God being with me and God being for me. Fear also creeps up. Panic, dread. You know, when you wake up in the morning and it just hit you, you can feel your chest tighten like it becomes a constant, steady state. That is a symptom that a lot of people describe when they’ve lost a sense of God being with them and for them other, more mundane and kind of funny ones that I’ve heard over the years just to round it out that it isn’t all so heavy, heavy. I think he was a pastor. I don’t remember what his vocation was, but he said, I know I’m not caring for my soul. I’m in soul neglect when I have gone too long between haircuts. I was like, Wait, what? And it was just it sounds so dumb, but it’s like, he just is so in the doing that he’s lost even a sense of what his body needs, who he is. Many people isolate. Many people end up kind of glomming on relationally because they need somebody or something. All kinds of ways of medicating pain all of a sudden make sense because it’s really painful to live in that state of disconnection. Some people experience a lot of blame game. Yeah, they get apathetic, like, just stop caring. Some people feel super fatigued. Like, they just they’re tired and it doesn’t go away with sleep or rest and numb. People feel numb. They’re just not feeling anything anymore. They’ve lost their passion for their work or their creative edge. But those are some of them.
William Norvell: No, I think that’s a great list. If you can’t find yourself in there somewhere, you’re doing great. Reach out to us. Let us know your secrets. Now, I mean, that’s real. And I hear some of myself in those in different phases of my life. Right. I can hear like, oh, that was me ten years ago. Now this is the way I would recognize that. But. And they move, right? Yeah.
Mindy Caliguire: For me, I ignored every indication that my soul was not well. All right? Every indication is I just did what I only knew how to do and just keep working harder and ignoring what it felt like to be me. Because there’s such an important mission to be.
William Norvell: If you do it long enough, you just assume that’s normal.
Mindy Caliguire: At the world. That was all I ever known
William Norvell: That’s right. That’s … that I see a lot.
Mindy Caliguire: That’s how I got through school. That’s how I got in through the marketplace. That’s what I knew even as a Christian, because I had the deal done. And my job is to work as hard as I can. And William, I can’t remember, we’ve talked about this, but I woke up one day and I had forced the level of stress through my body, like I ended up with neurological symptoms, which is a whole other category that often gets mentioned. People have insomnia, they have stress related headaches or digestive issues, muscle tension, like your body is going to start talking. And mine freaked out. Mine absolutely freaked out. And I was sidelined from my life for a period of time. And that’s when the really hard conversations between me and God were like, which started with me saying, What gives? This is not strategic, right?
William Norvell: Well, Min, it is that you mentioned is the integration point between the body and the spirit. Right. And so, of course, it’s going to have but people don’t think about it that way. And yet as we moved towards the end of our time, I’m curious. So if someone is listening and now they’re tuned a little bit, what are steps in the right direction? I know we’re not going to solve it in 5 minutes on a podcast, but what are steps in the right direction?
Mindy Caliguire: There is one really simple way. I’ve begun talking with leaders because at the end of the day, everybody’s heads are full with so much. It’s like, what’s a simple rubric? A simple thing that I could keep in mind, and this seems to be helping people. So I’ll offer it to your group here as well. And it’s just to keep these three things in mind a page, a person and a plan. A page, a person, a plan. I’ll walk quickly through what those are, but none of them are as important as deciding that you want to live from a healthy soul. The details will work themselves out. You and only you can choose. If what you’re doing right now is bordering on insanity, then by all means, do whatever it takes to move towards health. And there’s all kinds of resources and people who are eager to help you on that journey and able. But the page person plan. What I mean by that page is just a very simple way of referring to self-reflection. Self assessment could be in the pages of a journal. That’s for me often where that takes place. But you know, it’s well documented the value of journaling to the brain, slowing you down to the pace of your writing, getting both halves of your brain, working at the same time to write something out. But even if you’re like, I don’t have time for that, I need to journal electronically because it’s faster. There is value in pausing to say, Well, how is it with my soul? It’s a question of examine How am I actually doing today? And if you’ve never really given any thought to that, starting with a blank page, whatever, if a digital or otherwise is a really good way to start and then to continue in that practice of reflecting and self-reflection is key to successful leadership. I don’t know how anyone could get by really without it, but a page. Second thing is a person I believe. I know you believe this firmly as well. We need someone who is in the journey with us. We need somebody who knows the good, the bad and the ugly who can hear our hearts. Hold space, hold non anxious space with us as a spiritual director, a friend, a coach, a therapist, could be any number of kinds of people. Even if you have to pay somebody. You have got to have leader. You have got to have somebody in your life with whom you can be honest about what’s really going on and not feel afraid of retaliation or, you know, consequences. I think it’s vital to find those people changed my life. I thought, okay, I’ll take care of my soul. I should learn to. Maybe I need to learn new ways of prayer. But I kind of got that prayer would connect me to God. Maybe I need to learn new ways of connecting to God in Scripture. But I kind of thought, Well, that’s a whole category that I should expect. What blew me away was the way God met up in the eyeballs and tears and the silence and the words of ordinary relationships. Once I became willing to enter into a bit more of an unagended open way of being with people, and I couldn’t deny that. As I was doing that, I felt like I was forced into it, but I couldn’t deny I started healing. These ordinary relationships were breathing life into me at a level below words. It wasn’t like they were saying the thing that I needed to hear that day, which might have been the case. But it was deeper than that. It’s deeper than that. So a page, a person in the last one is just a plan. You know, intentionality matters and how we think about the structured things we put in our life. You know, there’s more and more coming out about change. You can’t really create habits and stick to them unless you change the environment. And when you create a system that holds your intentionality, it becomes a structure that can support growth. And in ancient times, they would call this a rule of life. And it’s been sort of resurrected in more modern times as a monastic rule or some sort of rules. You it’s kind of a dusty old word, but the source was a Latin word, regula. And the rule the regular was the same word that they used to describe a trellis. And if you think about a trellis, the trellis doesn’t cause growth ever. When a plant starts growing around a trellis, the plant is just wired to curve and to grab on and to climb. We our souls are wired to kind of climb on to routines and climb on to various practices when they get anchored into our lives in some way. So I find intentionality around a plan is good. Lately, with our team, we’ve been doing a lot with helping groups and individuals create a a plan, a soul care plan that includes the five different dimensions of flourishing. There’s a lot of research at Harvard and the Barna Group coming out about the dimensions of flourishing, which is really a beautiful picture of shalom, is what we were created for is life flourishing is shalom. So thinking about things outside of only just, you know, what we think of as spiritual, you know, it’s all spiritual. But like how does a plan incorporate what you do with your body and how your career is going and how you are thinking about finances and your sense of enough and all those dimensions, the fiber, you know, relational, spiritual, physical or mental, kind of interconnected, vocational and financial. And so we’re finding that is a helpful way to help people bring their intentionality, not with rigidity and legalism and mechanical weirdness, but just to start to create a little bit of structure to support the growth that they’re created for, that they’re designed for.
William Norvell: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Now I see that that’s an amazing framework to think through how someone to start and some where to start. And unfortunately, we have to come to an end here in the way we always come to an end is by turning it back to God’s Word. And we love seeing how God’s word can bridge between our guests and our listeners. And and we always like to invite you to share with us something that could be something you read this morning, could be something you’ve meditated on your whole life, but just some part of God’s word that may be coming alive to you in a new way today.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, there is one thing that I actually read through the whole book of Daniel like two or three days ago, which I.
William Norvell: That’s a good one.
Mindy Caliguire: I don’t know when the last time I did that was and a mentor of mine who’s based in Germany and he had told me recently, he goes, Mindy what is the Book of Daniel about? And I was like, Well, I’m guessing it’s not Daniel.
William Norvell: The first half or the second half. The first half is great. If someone knows what the second half of Daniel’s about, I want to talk to him.
Mindy Caliguire: Yeah, right. Yeah. But his point, even for the first half, was that the book of Daniel isn’t so much about Daniel. It’s about the four kings that God was reaching. Through Daniel and about the Dominion that God cared about bringing into our world. And there was a verse I see which I can find it. I think it was in chapter four. So yeah, first half, verse 26, it was the whole thing where Nebuchadnezzar and this is what struck me the other day, you know, he has that dream that he’s going to be a tree and he’s going to get chopped down and all that stuff. Verse 26 says, Daniel tells the king your kingdom will be restored when you acknowledge that heaven rules. I was like, Wow, that is a pretty pithy thing. And the idea for me lately, and I guess why that stuck out to me so much the other day, is just that as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a parent, as a homeowner, you know, all those things. God is the smartest person in the universe and we are all wise to the extent to which we start asking and inviting God’s guidance into our daily lives. And in the Kingdom, it’s important for us to acknowledge that heaven rules, heaven has the ultimate say. And I just liked how concise that was. And I want to be the kind of person who’s always thinking about God, always has the last say, always.
William Norvell: That seems to be accurate from Scripture, not the way I live my life, but I would agree with your accuracy of the statement.
Mindy Caliguire: Well, I’m sure it is how you live your life, man, or you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing.
William Norvell: I’m trying.
And I that is so exciting about you.
William Norvell: That’s awesome. What an amazing way to end. Well, thank you for all you’re doing, you know, and thank you for all you’ve been doing for so long. And, you know, it’s so funny, you mentioned some of those books as the things on my shelf I’m trying to learn about. Right.
Mindy Caliguire: I’m still learning. We’re all still learning.
William Norvell: Oh, I thought we won eventually.
Mindy Caliguire: I know I’m here, but I haven’t learned it all. My brain is being blown up lately by Jim Wilder and other I mean, it’s just. It’s so fun. We just keep learning.
William Norvell: Yeah. When I was younger and I’m still. I’m pretty old now, you know, it’s like I just thought there’d be that day where you just kind of get it, you know, especially from your soul perspective, like, hey, it’s been thirty, and I am going to be forty right, it has been for 40 years. I’ve read a lot of books, lived a lot of life, like, okay, I get it. Here’s how this works. And, you know, I feel like I’m further away every day than than where I started.
Mindy Caliguire: The French, you know, you remember this from high school? French, if you took it. Have two different words for the word. No.
William Norvell: I don’t know.
Mindy Caliguire: Oh yeah. No, there’s two “connaitre” I think is one and “saitre” I can’t even pronounce but one starts with the a C and is longer and other starts with an S, one is about head knowledge. It’s about acquiring knowledge. And they have a whole different way of describing knowing when it’s about knowing a person.
William Norvell: Mm hmm.
Mindy Caliguire: And we I think this is packed with this evangelical emphasis on knowledge, which is not just goodness. It’s not denigrating that. But we have substituted knowledge about a thing for the knowledge of that thing. And even our language fails us in trying to describe or differentiate because we say we know something, and in English it’s all the same. So that’s good. We can read all the books, but it’s not the same as when, you know.
William Norvell: That’s good. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out. We’re really grateful for you and grateful for you spending the time with us. And just thank you so much for all you’re doing.
Mindy Caliguire: It’s an honor to be invited. I hope it will serve you guys well. And we’ll be in touch soon, I’m sure.
A statistically improbable success story reveals how a difficult childhood and corporate rejections became stepping stones to purpose. Former Meta global faith partnerships leader Nona Jones shares how entrepreneurs can transform rejection from pain into powerful opportunity. Through candid stories about comparison, identity, and divine redirection, she shows how faith-driven entrepreneurs can build from calling rather than ambition.