Leader, if your title is heavy and your soul is tired, you're in the right place. This show is for the burnt out leader who feels spiritually disconnected and trapped in outdated toxic leadership models. Let me help you restore your presence, your peace, and your purpose with grounded strategies and soul rooted wisdom so you can lead your people with confidence, compassion, and conviction. I am your host and guide, Dr. Denise Simpson. Join me now so we can integrate spirit, science, and strategy. Welcome back, Leader. It's season three of the Dr. Denise Simpson podcast. I'm your host and your guide. Happy you are here. So happy you are here. I hope that you had a good rest. I hope the last two weeks were good to you. I know that a lot of my clients have been going through some interesting evolutions in themselves. We are elevating consciousness. We're elevating our thinking. We're shifting the perspective on how we think personally. about life and especially about the things that we cannot control. People places things that we cannot control. People places politics and things that we cannot control. And listen, I know that life is going to serve us pain. I talked about that in our season finale show, which by the way, so many of you resonated with. I heard from so many of you saying, whoa, my expectations are up here. And you're right, Denise, life has fallen short. There is a mismatch between my expectations and reality. And I'm the one that ultimately suffers. Okay. So many of you heard it, you felt it, you embodied it, and now it has shifted the way you are seeing your world. Thank God. Oh, thank God. That's what we get to do here. This is our weekly opportunity. to drop below the raging seas, okay? You know, those violent, emotional waves up on top? Contemplatives, we anchor down below. We fall down. We descend. This is an intentional descent. We go down below because we need that separation between the raging seas chaotic, crisis filled world that is causing a lot of emotional pain and suffering. But as contemplative leaders, specifically the universal leader, I'm going to talk a little bit more about that today. We descend down below and we anchor ourselves into five timeless spiritual principles. Not my principles. They're not mine. Okay. I'm just here to facilitate some of this information, right? I didn't make them up. I mean, they were kind of handed to me like, you know... Here are five spiritual principles that your leaders would really, really benefit from embodying and using, applying these principles every day. And I'm like, okay, sure, let's work on these. And so... By the way, I'm not reluctant. I'm very happy to share those five spiritual timeless principles. I know it's also redundant to say spiritual principles, principles, timelessness. Duh, right? Hello? Principles are timeless. So they surpass generations, industries, eras, trends, patterns. Principles are timeless by nature. And so- There's some redundancy there, but you get what I'm trying to say here. This is what we do every week. We drop down below. Yeah. It's work that we spiritually connected leaders want to nurture and nourish every week. And we get to do that together here. So I'm happy that you are here because again, so many of you were asking, all right, let's go. When is season three starting? Because you left us on a cliffhanger. You left us on a cliffhanger and now we want more. Okay, cool. We're here. We're back. We're back. Now, listen, I talked about life serving pain, right? I think I even mentioned on that last episode, oh, it's going to be on a silver platter. I have a silver platter that my sister gave me one Christmas and it is so stunning. I can't even use it. I'm not going to serve food on it. So I always think of that image of this gorgeous silver platter and I'm like, when can I use this? So anyway, I use it... in an analogy so that's the only way i get to use a silver platter not in real life but we get to see life serving us pain and and it'll be disguised right it'll be put perfectly on a silver platter for you And all that means is this is what's expected. Life will serve as pain, but it's in the suffering. Oh, or we get to have a choice in the matter. We get to have a choice, right? So when life serves you pain, and by the way, my family and I got some interesting platters of pain the last two weeks. And it's so interesting because I cut season two, packaged it, you know put it to bed and then god said yeah so while you're in the waiting for season three we've got some interesting news for you and your husband oh oh yikes so listen it's it it's um something i don't want to talk about obviously here in public my inner circle and my family and my sisters obviously know we are going through some interesting health concerns And so stay tuned for that. Should I want to share publicly in the future, but just know that I too am going through the motions just like the rest of us out here in this world. I too am on that surface. I'm bobbing, honey. I'm bobbing in and out of that raging ocean surface. So I'm there with you. I'm there with you. And I want you to know that I too am doing the work. I too am doing the work. And guess what? I get to share with you every week what I'm doing behind the scenes because we're in this together. We're leaders. We're not AI. We have emotions. We have feelings. We have trauma. We have to resolve, right? And so just know that I'm here with you and you're not alone. So I'm speaking from experience. I'm sharing you what I'm going through and I'm sharing with you what is working for me and what doesn't work for me. In hopes that it'll serve you in one way or another. So here I am now, season three. Here you are now, season three. And we're going to talk about soul and spirit today. Ooh, this conversation needed to be had. Your soul and spirit. Let's talk about these two incredible things. layers of who you are. Your soul. Let's start there, leader. Your soul. Your soul is who you are. It's who I am. It's who he is. It's who they are. This is how we identify ourselves in this world. Here's where we get to use our ego. Mm-hmm. Yes, there's a beautiful side of the ego. Trust me, there's shadows to everything. And the ego is, you know, that gives us a big shadow when we're out of alignment. But let me tell you something, there is a healthy part to our ego. This is where we have boundaries. Yeah, this is where we have some pride in our body. It's like, yeah, no, we're not doing that ever again, because that's not going to serve me or anybody else. So the ego shows up in its full effect when it is in alignment. But trust me, there is the dark side and the shadows to the ego. But back to your soul. What is that? It's your personality. It's all those beautiful things that you believe about yourself. And yes, yes, of course, the shadows in our personality as well. It's everything. It's everything. The soul carries it all. It's your temperament. It's your moods. It's, again, your identity. How do you identify yourself? How do you walk around in this body? That's the soul. It's all-encompassing, and it is glorious, and it is beautiful. And yes, there are dark parts of that soul. And guess what's part of that soul? Your trauma. your wounds, the things that we want to heal for ourselves because we want to be better humans. We want to be kinder to ourselves so that we can be kinder to strangers, right? It is those dark parts. memories in particular that have been embedded in our nervous system that hide in the shadows until you're triggered or activated and then they come bubbling up, right? I mean, I was talking to a client the other day. I'm like, I had no idea I had to work on this, but because life served me this, I had no idea that was still unresolved. I'm like, yeah, well, of course, of course you lift a long time on this earth, Denise. Okay. You lived a long time. Okay. And, and the self development and the spiritual growth and development and the mastery that I am, I'm earning here and the wisdom that I've gained who like that, it was hard earned. Okay. But I'm here now speaking from that perspective. So the soul is all of you. It's so incredible. It's your psychological mind. It's all of those beliefs and values and all those things that you carry with you, all of those internal forces that control your life for good, bad, or indifferent. That's part of the soul. That's part of the soul. Now, listen, some people say, is the soul the mind? I don't know. You know, I think it's so much more than the mind. The mind is the brain in motion, so that's focusing on an organ. But I believe the soul is all-encompassing. It is the memory in your cells, maybe even the memory in your bloodline. There is blood memory, my friends. The ancestry, the lineage that you have traveled through. I think it's all of that and more and more that we can explain. So here you are a soul. Oh my gosh. What an incredible soul you are. Yeah. The good, the bad, the ugly. You are absolutely incredible. I see the greatness in each and every one of you. This is how I'm trained. This is how I'm trained. This is what I purposely look for when I have you right in front of me. When I'm coaching a client, that's all I'm concerned with. I don't care about anything else in the world. I care so much about about you and your brilliance and your genius and putting a mirror up against your face and going, you see how great you are? Have you forgotten? Because you've been picking up the wrong mirror, girl. Now I'm going to show you what you really look like. And that's what I get to do. I get to reflect back to you what's in that soul of yours. And I get to look and help you look at the greatness that's within you. That's the soul. You take your soul everywhere. You know, I talk about taking your mind, your brain, your heart, your body. everywhere you go, right? Because a lot of us want to compartmentalize our lives. Some of us say, no, I'm going to leave my spirituality at home and I'm not going to take it anywhere else outside of this house. But excuse me, ma'am, you take your brain, body, heart, soul everywhere you go. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything because you take yourself everywhere. That's what that saying truly means. You cannot hide from yourself, my friend. You cannot hide the soul. You take your soul everywhere you go to the grocery store, to the drop-off line, to the PTA meeting, to the doctor's office. There you are taking your soul everywhere you go. Oh my goodness, that soul. Your soul can shite a light in a dim room or that soul can cause so much pain and suffering in this world. Ooh, those are the dark spots. Those are the dark sides. That's the shadow, the shadow side of that soul. I believe that the soul has lightness and darkness because if the soul is everything that encompasses who we are, yeah, then that means some shadows too. And so how are you showing up? Are you shining your light as bright as possible? Or are you showing up to hurt and to traumatize some people in the workplace, right? Here you are, leader. You are a walking, talking, speaking soul. Here you are in this body that God gave you, right? This is the vessel. Ooh, the vessel. Well, I mean, this is why we talk a lot about embodying these principles because we use our bodies every day. Like this whole thing, you know, I hear a lot of new age stuff like, well, you're ninety nine percent energy. Yeah. OK, sure. Cool. However. God gave me a body and now I've got to use this body and I got to heal the body because these organs are shot because I've been abusing the body. Okay. So yes. You have a body, but the soul is in the body. The soul is here. It lives in this incredible vessel. And so you walk into a room, right? Some people may be looking at that body of yours, honey, because it is wow. But guess what? The soul speaks. So when you open your mouth and you shine your light, and your energy comes through. It's your soul that is magnetizing. It's the soul that's influencing. It's the soul that's inspiring your team, not that body, honey. I know a lot of us growing up said, use your body. It's a weapon. Leverage it. Oh, my gosh. I can write a whole book about that bullshit. Let me tell you something. I mistreated my body. I was unkind to my body for so many years. It really wasn't until recently, recently, when I had my health scare in my early forties, I'm like, oh, whoa, I've been... I've been abusing this body on purpose. Like what was this on purpose? Was this unconscious? Denise, good morning. Wake up because it's time to do something about it. Oh, let me tell you the body. the body we'll talk more about the body later right now we're talking about the soul the soul that encompasses all of you now you take your soul everywhere you go how lovely is that be conscious of that so when you're walking into the boardroom today What are you showing? How are you presenting that soul? Are you showing up in your trauma? Are you showing up in your fracturedness, your fragmentedness? Are you showing up in your wholeness, in your most integrated self? How are you showing up? How is this soul showing up? That's question number one for you. Question number one for you is, okay, now I get to... See how I show up in these circumstances. So when you're going to meet your ex spouse to drop off the kid, how are you showing up? a little upset a little hurt a little traumatized a little bitter okay work on that soul my friend the soul is what we came to work on huh are you showing up in that doctor's office pissed off as hell because you thought this was unfair this diagnosis was unfair huh and you're blaming the doctor you're trying to blame someone that's that's outside of you instead of taking responsibility for the body you were given and what you would how you treated the body So how is the soul showing up in that circumstance? Listen, when I show up at the local HEB, my soul is like, it's, it's nasty. My soul does not like to go into a grocery store. Love HEB Texans. I love HEB. However, whoa, the people in there are in a hurry. Some are unkind. The employees are great by the way, but you know, customers in there and get a little, you know, testing. And so my soul shows up like ready to fight somebody. And it's like, girl, whoa, Put the trauma aside. You're just coming in to get butter. It's okay. So start thinking for yourself how the soul is showing up and in what context. What context does the soul show up in its brightest, most glorious form? And in which context or circumstances does it show up in its darkest, most painful, hurtful form? unhealed form so beyond to your soul beyond to yourself so as i mentioned the the soul huh we came here to heal the soul We came here to, I don't want to say fix. I don't want to say save. There's nothing in a fix or save. It's where we bring our souls back to life, back to its original state. Because now we talk about the spirit, because the spirit put that soul in your body, in this very specific body. So we come to this earth in these beautiful bodies and these souls, I believe, you know, assigned to this body, this family, these circumstances. Oh, okay. Here are the cards. Here are the cards you were dealt with, Denise. Okay. How's that soul going to develop through all these circumstances? Ooh, I don't know, God, because yikes, you gave me a bad hand. Okay. You gave me a bad hand. Now what do I do with this? Oh, there's the test. There's the test. And so here I am now going, whoa. Whoa. I may have failed a few of those tests, but that's okay because I have hopefully a lifetime to remind myself through the healing of my soul to remind myself the spirit that runs through me and through every other being on this planet. Ooh, the spirit. So you have a soul and then there's spirit, right? And the spirit is what connects us all to one another. This is why you can't go hurt yourself. You can't go hurt people and think it's not going to impact you or that community because we all have that invisible thread. We all have that invisible connection. Some see it. Some see it clearly. Some are like, yeah, cool. You don't need to give me evidence of it. I know I'm connected to every single being on this planet because of my beliefs. because of my spiritual beliefs, because of these principles that I follow. Never mind religion, you guys. Never mind that. I have no business talking to you about theology. I have no business talking to you about theology. I never have, and I probably never will, because that's how much respect I have for you, because you get to decide what your religion is. You get to decide who you pray to, what you believe in. Your faith is your faith, my friend. I'm talking about spirituality. I'm talking about that spirit that connects every single one of us on this planet. So your soul is formed over time, right? Your soul is formed over time. It is healed. It is unhealed, right? Depending on circumstances, depending on experiences, the soul is the soul and it's doing the best it can, right? Because of these experiences that are happening. But you know how I talked about how contemplatives descend down below? We descend down below. Because up here on top, ooh, right? That's where the soul is being banged around. It's like, there you are bopping on... Bopping your head out of that water trying to stay alive, but you're taking in a lot of water because you are at the effect. You're sold at the effect of all of these interesting things. So contemplatives, we descend down below where spirit is, where the spirit is. This is why those five spiritual principles is what we anchor into. right? That's intentional. The spirit is the God force that lives within you. God, higher power, universal spirit, divine intelligence, whatever you want to name it, call it, whatever. Claim it though. Claim it. Claim it, right? So for me, I claim God, God force. That's the spirit, right? I have No need to heal that. No need to touch that. That's just perfect. It is absolute perfection. That is none of my business. I don't, I don't, that's, that's the life force. that lives in me, works through me and through you. So that's the connection that we're having right now on this podcast episode. I have a soul, you have a soul, but spirit is what is connecting each and every one of us. Feel that for yourself right now. I have my soul. You have yours. And there are opportunities for healing because life is going to serve as pain. That is my responsibility. Not God. Not my mama. Not my partner. Not my children. The soul is my responsibility. It is a sacred responsibility. Because you're not AI. You're not a robot, my friend. Okay? Spirit. picked you in that body with that soul, right? And so we now get to have the sacred responsibility of doing something about that soul. Do we want to enrich it with liveliness? Do we want to be kinder to ourselves and to others? Do we want to better understand our trauma and our wounds? Do we want to better connect with our employees, maybe connect with our constituents a little bit better, right? That's the soul we get to Heal that part of ourselves. Not the spirit, however. That's the indwelling presence of this higher energy, God, divine intelligence. It's the indwelling within our minds, bodies, and our souls. Again, this is what connects each and every one of us on this planet. So the spirit is what I like to call the divine intelligence. It's like my human intelligence is like right here. I mean... If y'all knew me in high school, I was below average. Okay. I was not a scholastic person, not until way after. Let me tell you, I was happy working. I was happy with a part-time job. I was happy running, you know, the books, not the bookstore, the student store on campus. Ah, work ethic. Give me, I'll, I'll, I'll shine all of you with my work ethic. Like that was me. I was never a jock athlete, a cheerleader, a whatever scholastic person. No, I was Below average. flew under the radar. But I loved what I loved, my friend. Okay, so anyway, here I am. Human intelligence, even today, below average probably, that's the human intelligence. But the divine intelligence is beyond, beyond, beyond, beyond, beyond. And that is what connects us. So I think of the human intelligence as part of that soul of yours, cool, cute, right? But the spirit has that divine intelligence. That just surpasses everything that you think is possible. That's how I think of spirit. That's how I think of spirit. It's the divine life already given to you. There's nothing to be earned with the spirit. Now, the soul, however, has got a lot of unraveling, unwinding, deconditioning, reprogramming. But still, the soul is something to revere. It's not something to shame yourself over. the spirit untouchable it's perfection you don't have to work on that it's already given to you you don't have to earn that you have to prove your worthiness it's the presence of god in you and your body in your soul and throughout this universe that we share so soul and spirit so here you are leader showing up with that soul But I want you to never forget the spirit that's connecting each and every one of us. So you could stay on the surface as long as you want. Frustrated, painful, suffering. That's most of the world. The contemplative, however, descends down below where spirit is. Because the contemplative knows if I stay up here too long, I'm Ooh, without recalibrating, without realigning, without anchoring, re-anchoring myself, it's going to be, I'm going to be in trouble. I'm going to be in trouble. And this is what I offer you every single week is an opportunity to descend down below where spirit is, where spirit is loud and clear. And you don't have to outperform people, please. You don't have to Show your worthiness down below. It's given. It's there. It's now for you. Now what do you get to decide? Do you get to decide to stay on that surface, raging with the rest of the world? Or do you decide on plummeting down below with man? And that's the spirit. That's what we want to remember. We want to remember that there is a spirit that is moving, orchestrating all of these incredible people, places, things in our lives. It's the spirit, my friend, that you don't have to earn trust. You don't have to earn, you know, by showing your worthiness. No, it is yours. It is there. And you just need to remember it. Because we have forgotten because we've been on that surface far too long. And it's time to remember the spirit that runs through us, flows through us, and connects every single one of us out here. So the next time you show up in your business, your nonprofit, in your organization, or in your community, because you hold office, don't you ever forget that the soul is what we are responsible for healing. But spirit, let the spirit run through you, my friend, because you don't have to earn the presence of God that's running through you. It's there. So don't forget those incredible followers, stakeholders that you influence every day. Use your soul to heal yourself, to be able to be a better, greater, masterful leader. But then also don't forget that the spirit is what's connecting each and every one of us. So spirit and soul of a contemplative leader is what I want for you to keep at the forefront of your mind as you're moving through the rest of this week. And then when we meet again next week, we'll talk more about the universal leader because that's what we're forming, universal leaders around here. The universal leader. holds those spiritual principles, remembers that they are a spirit in motion, and they have a soul that they must heal. All right, leader. I had not realized how long this episode is. My goodness. There's no editing here. Wow. Yikes. See what happens when the spirit runs through me? It speaks for me sometimes. Listen, leader, let me invite you over to... Let me get my little banner out here, especially if you are watching this on my YouTube channel or on my website. Join me inside the sanctuary for contemplative leaders. That's the banner that's running right now on this video in case you're listening to this. The sanctuary for contemplative leaders is where we plummet. It's where we descend. Because when we descend, we spend some time in these principles, but then we ascend back to the top of that surface of the ocean. So we plummet down below, we anchor ourselves, but we have to go back up, my friend. And so I show you how to do that in my private community. You're going to want to join me there so we can go deeper in this work together. Again, the Sanctuary for Contemplative Leaders, there is a link in the show notes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're watching this. You're and support you on your journey in leadership, my friend. Okay. Thank you for your time. Wonderful to be back with you. And I'm looking forward to serving you on the next podcast episode. Take very good care, leader. I'll see you inside the sanctuary. Bye for now. Hey, before you go, if today's episode served you, please consider subscribing or even leaving a review. Or you can share this with a leader who is desperate to find peace right now. Now, if you're craving a deeper refuge, somewhere where you can return to the stillness, I created a sacred space. It's called the sanctuary. Here is where you can reconnect to your divine assignment. thanks again for listening today reader until next time take very good care bye for now
