Mindy Caliguire, co-founder and president of Soul Care, discusses the physical, mental, and spiritual symptoms a lack of caring for your soul can cause. She also lays out how boundaries can help you resist burnout…if you do it correctly.

Have you seen July’s featured book of the month on the Podcast Reading List?
Click here to find out what it is!

You can listen to this conversation with Mindy on our podcast, Work, Love, Pray! Listen below or click here to find your preferred listening platform.

If we don’t care for our souls, what happens?

I believe there are utterly predictable things that happen in our souls and our lives, because the soul integrates all the dimensions of your personhood. When the soul is diminished, we feel like that sense of connection that God is with us and for us is gone. God hasn’t gone anywhere, but we’ve lost that sense of connection. The results of this lost connection can manifest as bitterness, contempt, disdain, and anger.

Physical symptoms can also develop, like digestive issues, muscle tension, and even insomnia. Relationships can also be affected because when we’ve lost that sense of God being with us, we may start to isolate. Symptoms emerge from all the dimensions of what makes us human: our minds, our emotions, our contributions in the world., like all these things are impacted, our relationships.

Can caring for your soul help you set boundaries that will help prevent burnout?

Taking the time and space to care for your soul is going to require boundaries. Something needs to be set up to create a safe place for you to be open with God. Carve out a way of life that allows your soul to be able to hear from God and just to be with God. Let go of your agenda. Over time, what this boundary opens up for you is the ability to understand and prayerfully evaluate what parts of your life you’re overextending.

Psalm 139:23-24 are perfect verses to live by when trying to create boundaries. ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.’ This is an important three-part prayer that many of us know by heart. I believe these verses help us see how caring for our soul then leads to actionable changes we might need to make in our life in setting and holding boundaries, and then understanding the strength necessary to hold onto those boundaries.

‘Search me, God, and know my heart.’ Ask the Holy Spirit to search you and know your heart, because most of us don’t even know our own hearts. ‘Test me and know my anxious thoughts.’ What are my anxious thoughts? The living God who loves you will look through you with love, not scorn or judgment. Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there’s something that needs to change.

There are all kinds of ways to create soul care in your life that allows you to hold space ultimately for this Psalm’s prayer. You need to be led in this because if you knew how to do it differently, surely by now you would have made changes. We need help getting to a different mindset, a different schedule, a different whatever it is that needs to change. God is more than able and scripture says He’s more than willing to help us on that path.

Mindy Caliguire is the co-founder and president of Soul Care. As an organization, Soul Care cultivates soul health among leaders by providing guides, practices, and pathways that help them, and those they serve, personally flourish and achieve missional impact. Mindy serves as an Ambassador for the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA), and in the past has served in executive leadership both in the marketplace and in ministry at Gloo (www.gloo.us) and the Willow Creek Association (now GLN). Soul Care serves ministries and organizations across the US and beyond including LeaderCare, C-12, Compassion International, The Navigators, Christ Church of the Valley, Dallas Theological Seminary, Plum Creek Church, and many more. Mindy’s most recent book is coming out in September Ignite Your Soul: When Exhaustion, Isolation, and Burnout Light a Path to Flourishing.