[WHITNEY OWENS]
Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host Whitney Owens recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow and scale your practice from a faith-based perspective. I will show you how to have an awesome faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me today. Over the next few weeks, I’m hoping to do a series of solo shows a little bit more focused on the spiritual side of our lives and growing our businesses, a little bit more soul care. So you’ll be hearing about that today and over the coming weeks ending this year of 2021.

I do love when we’re coming to the end of a year, because it is a time to slow down and reflect a little more and spend time with our families. But it’s also a time when I start thinking about next year and I get excited about the goals that I have for the next year. I always spend some time at the end of one year in the beginning of the next year, really mapping out quarter by quarter what are my goals personally, financially, family wise, work wise, all those good things. So I hope that you’re doing the same.

So as we hit 2022, I do want to tell you about the Faith in Practice mastermind groups. If you have some goals in growing your business, creating better systems, but also integrating faith appropriately with your clients and as a business owner, I want you to consider joining a mastermind group. A mastermind group is likeminded people that get together with a common goal. So a lot of times that is how do I make more money in my practice so I can give more? How do I grow as a business owner and not have so much anxiety? How do I delegate out more? Or it could simply be, how do I create an effective website? How do I market myself and how do I get more of my ideal client into my practice?

So if any of these are questions that you are having head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/apply, and you can apply to work with me. I will be starting several mastermind groups in January. I do go through those applications and I select like people based on need and based on interest and put you in a group with a like-minded people. Within the mastermind group, we will meet every single month, twice a month to be able to talk about your business. We’ll also get accountability partners, a private community group for us to work alongside each other and an individual consulting call. So are some of the things that are included in the mastermind group.

I’ve been doing these for several years and I just love it. I love looking at how people’s practices started in group. I’m thinking about one person in particular I did a mastermind with her. It was really only about six months ago and she was a solo practice owner, wasn’t really sure how to manage her caseload, didn’t know how to delegate out and so she hired an assistant. She grew her client. She started a podcast and now she’s in Group Practice Launch hiring her first employee, her first clinician in her practice. All that’s happened in less than a year for her. So if you really want to put your practice on kind of hyperdrive, then consider joining a Faith in Practice mastermind group. So like I said, if you’re interested go online and you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/apply, or you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/faithinpractice mastermind to get more information, or just send me an email [email protected]. We’d love to connect with you.

So like I said, we’re going to go through some things here at the end of the year, that a little bit more tending to ourselves as business owners, thinking about our spirituality and how that impacts our business and how that impacts our work with our clients. So the first one I wanted to do here was the importance of healing a weary soul. Now you might have seen that title and thought to yourself, oh, okay, that’s about helping my clients when they feel weary. Sure, you’re probably going to learn something about helping your clients when they feel weary, but this is really for you.

So you might be hearing this. I want you to be thinking about where you land in this spectrum. Are you feeling tired or are you feeling weary? Now, these two words are very different. When we talk about being tired, we’re really talking about a physical tiredness. When I go on a run, my body might feel tired at the end, or if I am picking up my child too many times, or I’m doing yard work, my body feels tired. So I need to go sit down and let it heal itself. So that’s what we’re talking about tired. Tiredness can be healed with a nap. I think of so many times where my anxiety is worse or I say that I’m exhausted and really, I just need an app. Then once I nap, it’s like the world’s a better place. You probably all know what I’m talking about. So a good night’s sleep can really heal a lot for us. So that’s tiredness, but let’s talk about weariness.

Weariness is way beyond that. Weariness is a soul condition within us, and the only way weariness can be responded to is with a soul solution. If you look in The Word, the Bible, you will find that tired is mentioned a few times. Weariness is mentioned many times. You’re probably already thinking of multiple Bible verses where we talk about weariness and I totally could pull out a bunch of those, but let’s focus on a few concepts today when we’re considering a weariness of the soul. So a weary feeling is when you feel completely and totally tapped out. I would think that as therapists, often we hear self-care, burn out, these terms used for weariness.

I was just thinking the other day about how the mental health world has so many answers for spiritual concepts or really spiritual concept up are the real answers. So how God is present at all times. That’s the same thing as being mindful. We’re being mindful of God’s presence. So we can use these terms interchangeably as we look at mental health and as we look at our spiritual world. And I think the same for this, if you’re feeling burnout, it’s very likely that you’re feeling weary. So I want you to think through that. Are you feeling weary right now? We have had a rough, rough one to two years with COVID as practice owners. I feel very weary about that and it’s been hard to make time to care for yourself, especially as you run a business and there is such a need right now for mental health services. Maybe you have children and you’re having to care for them.

I know for me, my kids have already been out of school so many days because of different contexts and things going on and then you’re still trying to run your business and you’re still trying to care for people. It can make your soul hurt on the inside. It can make you tired. So we can look at the Bible, like I said, for examples on weariness. If we look at Hebrews chapter four talks, about the Israelites and how they were weary from being in the desert and walking around. It’s so interesting to think how, if you look into the history of it, when they were going to the Promised Land, it actually wasn’t all that far. It could have really occurred in a matter of weeks from my understanding. Instead, they ended up walking around for 40 years in a time that could have been so much shorter because they were disobedient and then they became weary.

When I think of weariness, I think of it as loss of hope, loss of focus. We don’t really know what we’re doing. We’re kind of aimlessly running, trying to take care of fires, trying to take care of other people and we totally neglect ourselves. Or maybe we do pay attention to ourselves, but we don’t pay attention to the right aspects of ourselves. So we think, oh, well, if I do this thing as self-care, that’ll fix it, but we’re neglecting to tend to our souls.

So think how does one tend to their soul. In the chapter of Hebrews, the author goes on and says, in verse 11, that we must be diligent in caring for rest, diligent in entering that rest. And when I think of that rest, I think of diligence and caring for our souls because when our soul is cared for, that is when we feel rest. Rest is peace. And even in the midst of a storm, when we don’t know what’s going on around us, even when our business is chaotic, maybe even when you have a lot of clients calling, when you have crisis happening, if you’re caring for your soul, even though those things around you happen, even though you might actually feel physically tired, your soul feels full. It feels good.
[BRIGHTER VISION]
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[WHITNEY OWENS]
So we find that at least in the Israelite passage that the Israelite hardened their hearts and the hardening of their heart led to weariness. So the first thing I want you to consider here, as I walk you through these steps of caring for your soul is how have you heartened your heart? Where have you been hurt maybe by God or by the church? Maybe you’re disappointed that your business is not running the way you thought it was going to run. You’re disappointed that you had goals, things you wanted to achieve or even beyond that maybe even in your personal life, there are things that you trusted God for that never came to pass, relationships that were destroyed or painful for you.

So in those ways, our hearts hardened so easily. So the same way the Israelites kept thinking, oh, we’re about to be there, we’re going to be there, they weren’t and things were not working out and they weren’t being obedient and their hearts began to harden. So considering where is your heart hardened because when you harden your heart, that is when you have weariness. So as you consider that, it’s the up of ourselves to something beyond ourselves that brings healing to our soul. So when we go through pain and difficult circumstances, all we want to do is revolt and get mad.

I can’t tell you how many times during this pandemic I’ve wanted to do exactly that, but it’s the opposite that we really need to embrace to be able to bring healing to our souls, being open to pain and experiencing it instead of hardening our hearts to it. But when we want to, when we come to experience this pain, experiencing it within the context of the Lord and not by ourselves, that He is our healer and He is with us even when we’re in pain, even when we feel exhausted. So open yourself up to what God might want to do even when it’s a painful experience that you’re going through. In the same, that the Israelites were disobedient and not listening.

We find healing for our soul when we submit to God when we listen. And when we feel directed in different ways, a lot of times we want to run the other way. I can think of many instances, even the idea of going and becoming consultant was a time that I ran the other way. That’s not something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to face my fears, but it’s through submission that we find freedom in our lives. So my question for you, is there something that you feel like God is calling you to, something greater that you’re running away from? Because if you are, you’re going to get weary just like Jonah ran away.

It didn’t go well for him. In the same way it’s not going to go well for us when we run. So it’s better if we embrace and submit than if we run away. And knowing that, my next point here is knowing that Jesus brings grace for the times that seem exhausting. When I was thinking about consulting, I thought, gosh, there’s absolutely no way I can take on this extra burden in my life, already feels entirely full. Or I think of even smaller examples of a client comes in and they have a really traumatic experience to share with me and I think, oh, there’s no way I can hold all this for them. But God gives us grace for that moment. God gives us grace for it.

So how are we going to sustain? We’re going to sustain by being in tune with Jesus, being yorked to Him, instead of all the other things around us. It’s so easy for us to get sidetracked, distracted, to roll down the hill, I guess you would say, of all these different things that are trying to grab our attention. Because if we lose sight of our faith, then the weariness comes very slowly. I do believe that a year or two ago, I did feel a lot of weariness. It was hard to focus, hard to not be resentful of people around me that seemed happy. It’s exhausting. And I find that over the past few weeks months, I’ve had to force myself to really embrace God in a higher level. I mean, when we really need God, we really have to work hard to get focused on Him.

So what I hope you walk away from this podcast episode is that if you’re feeling weary, it’s okay. We all get weary. But coming back to the disciplines, coming back to your relationship with God is where your soul will heal itself. We can do this in so many different ways. Then I can share with you a few of the ways that I find healing. And it’s going to be different for you. So I want to challenge you at some point to consider, how does your soul find healing in the Lord. I find that often through prayer. And let me tell you, I’m not one to sit down and have a focused time of prayer, but I find it through running. I pray when I run. In fact, recently I’ve started running without music. I used to always have music because I felt like I had to have that distraction. So now I’ve gotten rid of that distraction and I’m focused more on God as I run and listen to the world around me, pay attention around me and spend that time in prayer.

Our soul finds healing through the word and reading. Our soul finds healing through relationship, which has been harder to get lately with COVID. So as hard as it is, I encourage you to get out of your comfort zone at times and spend time with other people that are going to encourage you in the Lord. Talk about the things that you’re learning, the things you’re thinking about, going to church. I know a lot of people have had a hard time going to church during COVID. So if you can make it happen, make it happen because that is where you will find healing in your soul.

Surround yourself with like-minded people. That also could be like-minded practice owners who are also trying to wrestle with difficult questions about faith and about their spiritual walk, figuring out how do I manage it all. Spend time with those people so that you can grow together. And read stories, books written by faith-based people. Lately, I’ve been reading Henry Nouwen and that book, I’ve been reading Discernment and it has been phenomenal. Now he has other really great books. So anything honestly by Henry Nouwen will get you to a good place.

There’s Thomas Merton, I mean, there’s so many that I could sit and talk through with you. A lot of these, I actually learned in school as I took theology classes alongside my counseling classes, so try to spend some time reading books written by other theologians, other people that struggled. Brother Lawrence, Practicing of the Presence is another one of my absolute favorites and it’s simple and easy to read. The Thomas Merton book that I love is Seeds of Contemplation. These are a couple of books that will help you as you battle questions and as your soul might be feeling weary.

When I sit with one of these theologians, my soul comes alive. So it’s coming to a place where we enact the very things we know to enact that we struggle to actually do it. I encourage you to come up with some kind of process of having time with God. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a certain way. It’s whatever way works best for you. If you’re feeling weary, these are ways that your soul can find rest. And as the Bible says, we need to be diligent about entering that rest. Then in Matthew 11, where Jesus says, come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest, but you have to come to Him.

So you might be listening, thinking, well, I’m a Christian. I’ve been doing my things. I’ve been doing all the disciplines, but if you haven’t been aware while you’re doing them, then it’s difficult. So I hope that listening to this you will come to a greater awareness of the presence of God in your life and that it would heal the weary soul that you have and that you will feel renewed and refreshed.

I thank you so much for taking the time to listen to these words and I pray that you would be changed by them. We will continue to do a few more episodes on these concepts as our soul and our spiritual life is the very foundation for how we run our business. It was through my faith in God that I felt compelled to start a practice, I felt compelled to do consulting, that I felt led to do all these things and all these things will fall apart if I’m not car for my soul and not focused on my relationship with God. So may you find benefit in peace and rest.

Thank you again to Brighter vision For sponsoring this podcast episode. If you want to get that special deal on your website, head on over to brightervision.com/joe.

Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also there, you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and in group consulting, or just shoot me an email, [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.