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tired you're in the right place this show is for the burnt out leader who feels spiritually disconnected and trapped in outdated toxic leadership models let me help you restore your presence your peace and your purpose with grounded strategies and soul rooted wisdom so you can lead your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 hi welcome to our weekly check-in i am your host denise simpson for those of you who are new to this video episode show Let me introduce myself to you. I am someone on a search. I'm always searching for peace. I'm always looking for peace in my body, in my nervous system, in my mind. I'm looking for peace everywhere. My homeostasis or baseline is the emotion of peace. And for those of you who are on audio, I'm wearing my peace sweater. I just bought this. I just bought a whole bunch of new sweaters, like the anchor sweater that I wore on an episode ago. And now this peace sweater that I'm showing you today. Listen, my baseline is peace. for many, many, many years, I was in chaos. My mind was in chaos. It was It felt like a storm. It felt like it was emotional violence against myself, which meant I was emotionally violent to others. For those of you who hear the word violence, that may be a strong word for you, but that's okay. Stick around. If that doesn't resonate with you, then fill in the blank for yourself. For me, it was emotional torment. Because I am my worst enemy, but I'm also my greatest ally. And so I had to do something about the turbulence, chaos in my mind, which then impacted my body. See, my nervous system was so traumatized. Now, again, another word I want to be careful with. Because we all have different levels of trauma. I mean, if you've been on this planet for more than a day, chances are there are some interesting things that the nervous system and the subconscious mind or the mind have captured in your body. snapshot, the experience of your life. It's stored there. For me, I had various levels of trauma, not just in my personal life, but then I brought it into my leadership life. And so for me, peace is the baseline. I didn't know it was peace. I thought I was built for anger. I thought I was built for fighting. I thought I was built for violence. I mean, I would take these hoops off, honey, and like I'd go to war with whomever. Like you looked at me cross-eyed and I was ready to fight you. I was on the defense. I was always on guard. My goodness, I was hypervigilant. But it's because of all of the trauma and all of the interesting things that happened in my youth and then later in my early twenties and then a few moments there in my thirties. So here I am in my forties Recovering, returning, recuperating from an interesting life as a leader. You know, I started in leadership as a nineteen year old manager at a Bath and Body Works store. I mean, and I sold like my heart out. I would sell anything and everything. I had so much fun. I had so much fun managing, yes, my team and my transactions and my budget and all the incredible things. But I also had to learn so much about the trauma that was stored in me and was brought into the workplace because of what I had experienced. And so I've had an interesting career. A wonderful career, but there were, you know, just like I had many highs, I had twice as many lows. And I found the contemplative path, a way for me to return to homeostasis, which is peace. It's peace for me. Those of you who know me know that the bookend is peace or anger. And then all these incredible emotions in between. I have experienced so much, but my go-to emotions are peace or anger. And I've spent a lifetime trying to figure things out for myself. And here I am now saying, well, I can't go back. I know too much now. And now I need to share it with the world. I need to share it with as many leaders out here as possible who are suffering unnecessarily. Maybe you're asking yourself right now, what does this have anything to do with you? Why should you even care? Why does this even matter to you? Because dear leader, there is a better way to do this. There is a better way to do this where you can lead from a physiological and mental psychological state of peace so that you can be a transformational leader. so that you can have expansive vision for your collective, so that you can help them move forward with you into this next era, this next chapter, either in your organization or in your nonprofit or even in your public office role. So ask yourself right here, right now, am I at peace? Do I feel peace on a daily basis? Is what Denise is saying even reasonable? Is this something I can expect? Is this something that can actually be true for me? And I have to tell you, a peaceful leader is an efficient, effective, powerful, transformational leader. When you have found peace in who you are, in your convictions, in your values, in your belief systems, my goodness, the transformation that you can make either in your team, in this organization, or in your nonprofit, or in your church, or in your place of worship, or in your community, my goodness. Wouldn't you want to try to see what that could look like for you? A lot of my clients say, are burnt out, they're exhausted. They are trapped in these outdated, antiquated, toxic leadership models. And I know these models because I trained so many of you out here on those exact models. I was a leadership trainer, public academic, researcher, executive coach to some of the most incredible leaders on this planet. And I found that what I was actually doing was perpetuating more chaos, more emotional violence. I wasn't helping my leader come to terms with their trauma. I was just masking it by numbers and statistics and performance and data points. I mean, it was a perpetual cycle of emotional violence. And so I had to heal myself. And I'm still doing that. I mean, it's a daily practice. And this is how I found the contemplative path that works for me. My ultimate goal is to find peace every single day so that I can think clearly, so that I can see farther and wider, so that I can move this collective forward with integrity, with a moral compass that we can all see together. So it's not my personal agenda. It is the collective agenda. See, that's what that moral compass is for. I'm not driven by narcissistic tendencies or my tiny screaming ego. No, this is for the collective. Look, we all get to see it. It's transparent. Nobody's hiding anything from anybody here. Here's the goal. Here's what we want to attain and reach for. follow me. I think I have some ideas on how to get there. And oh, by the way, because I also want to create other leaders like me, a contemplative leader, I'm going to ask you to engage in this process because as I'm leading, I'm also training you. I'm also showing you how to do this because you will be leading your teams too. See, the contemplative path is very different than what traditional leadership training and development programs look like. Those programs are focused on performance. They're not focused on you. They're focused on the output, the measurements, the things we can measure, the things we can find evidence for. That's great. Yeah, we're leaders. We will always be measured, of course. I mean, that we can't get away from. Unless you have your own company and then you get to do it differently, which is what I've done. Eliminated all measurements. Because I am so focused on my follower, my employee, my teammate, because it is in them. It's them that I want to help transform, help to expand and grow. It's that that interests me more than numbers and sales quota and data points. I'm not going to measure your worth based on your output. That's not what I do as a contemplative. And that is my goal is to help as many of us out here who are burnt out, who are overwhelmed, who are frustrated. to offer those folks a different way to lead. One where homeostasis is peace. And I know for a lot of leaders out here, that is uncommon and actually uncomfortable to find peace because their minds are habituated, their nervous systems have habituated, have been programmed in the chaos of And so I'm going against leadership culture. I'm going against the public norm. So I know that what I'm saying right here, right now, many of you will disagree. Great, great. Something to think about, something to contemplate over, something different to try. You know, I've had a lot of feedback over on LinkedIn about, from folks saying that it's dangerous for me to talk about spirituality and leadership in the same breath. And I've had some folks tell me that all this is spiritual bypassing and actually ignoring what's really important, which are those performance measurements. And that is not what we do here. We take care of ourselves first, the core, the nucleus, you leader. I'm hyper-focused on you. Because if we heal you and you find awareness around what it feels like to lead with peace, Those performance measurements will take very good care of themselves. You will see the results. You will see the measurable results. They will surpass what you have expected, what you could ever imagine. This is a new approach to leadership. And I know we're a I'm out there. I'm out there and that's okay with me. I've always been the outlier and I'm okay to continue to be the outlier. But what I will not do is continue to perpetuate these toxic leadership models that have harmed our workforce. The reason why so many left during COVID is that mass resigning of groups of individuals. I mean, there was a mass exodus. People were saying, no, I'm done. I'm burnt out, overwhelmed, exhausted. And this is just not, my nervous system can't handle one more thing. It's like the sponge. You were the sponge and there was, there's so much water in that sponge. Not a single drop could be added to that sponge. You needed to wring out that sponge, wring out that water. So that you can then hold capacity for more water. Right? So we have to keep doing that. And a lot of us leaders never came back to leadership. We left. We completely left. We said that's it. We resign and we're never coming back to this space. And there's some of you right now that are hanging on by a thread. And those are the folks that I want to take very good care of in showing you that this is a different way to lead. One that you may have never heard of, one that you are unfamiliar with. And there's an opportunity for you to feel peace in your body again. So if you have that mental rumination, if you have the chaos in your mind, And what's happening in your body is that you are carrying the fear. You're carrying the anxiety. You're feeling the stress in your body. The nervous system is hypervigilant. I mean, just look up what those signs are when you are in overdrive. And when all your mind and your nervous system know what to do is to keep it on a hundred miles an hour, you will see the symptoms. And what I'm trying to do is, again, help you find awareness around where you are now and how different it can be for you. So we contemplatives, we take a pause every week on this podcast episode so that we can reflect on And ask ourselves these curious questions. A contemplative is curious. And we're also skeptics. We contemplate. We ponder. We like to confront the issues. We like to confront the problem here. And we like to get curious about what solutions do we have? What ideas do we have to help solve this specific problem of ours? And that's all I'm offering every single week is for you to take that moment with me to contemplate. So now, leader, I have so much to talk about regarding the descent as anchors, how we remove ourselves from this mental chaos, turbulence. I like to picture that. You with your team on a boat, right? There you are in the storm. You got caught in a storm and the waves are violent. And that reflects all of those thoughts, mental rumination, those mental loops. How many of you, how many of you have those mental loops that you just cannot stop? Well, here's one way to do that. We use the anchor symbol. We descend down below. Because all of that mental rumination is causing all of that friction in your life. It's causing the burnout. It's causing the overwhelm, the chronic stress. And so my invitation to you is to drop down below and anchor ourselves into five very specific spiritual principles that then help us reemerge back to the top. So on our next podcast episode, I want to talk about the ascending of this leader. Because it's the descending, that's number one. It's recognizing that you have a choice to descend. Because your nervous system, your mind, your heart, your soul, your spirit can no longer stay on those raging seas. So you find awareness around a choice. Like I can choose to descend. You mean this is a choice I can make to distance myself from all of that chaos? Wow, didn't know I could do that. Thought I was stuck right here in this boat, getting knocked around by these waves and this crazy storm. You mean I have a choice? You have a choice. Descend down with me. Descend down to the bottom of the ocean floor with me. You are the anchor now. You went from being the captain to choosing to anchor yourself at the bottom of the ocean floor where you can think for yourself, where your spirit comes back to life. When your heart starts showing, oh, it's pumping again. We're pumping some blood here. Okay, I'm alive again. I'm alive again. I am myself again. Here's where I find peace. And with peace comes clarity. With peace comes expansive vision. I can think for myself. I can feel again. I can feel again. Because I had forgotten what it was like to feel peace in my body. But what's important is the ascending of that leader. What happens after we anchor? And we'll talk about that on our next podcast episode. So dear leader, for now, check in with yourself, check in with your mind, check in with your body. Where are those gaps that you're finding? What are you finding right now that you are uncomfortable with? What is it that you want to take a closer look at? What is it that you want to ponder or reflect on? Because if you're not leading in peace right now, today, You're missing out. You're missing out on a way to reconnect to that divine assignment that you were called to do in this world. You have missed an opportunity to lead these people. You are responsible. It's a sacred responsibility that you have to steward these very specific people. There's so much that we're missing out on. And I just want to bring that to your attention that there's a different way to lead. And I can help you find peace in your mind, in your spirit, in your heart, in your soul, and in your nervous system. I have found it for myself and so many others that I have helped discover for themselves. And we do that inside the sanctuary. It's a private community. It is algorithm free. Nobody's checking in on your posting and liking and all that crap. This is an opportunity for us to descend, to choose to descend, then to anchor, and then to ascend back to the top. So much incredible, lovely, peaceful, transformational work that we get to do together as a community. And I want to invite you in. So wherever you're listening or watching this episode, you'll find a link, click on that, and then join us inside as soon as you can. Leader, I cannot wait to serve you again next week. We'll talk about the ascending of this leader and what it means to be anchored in these five spiritual principles, because you want to see what the output is. You want to see what we're measuring here on top. And I'm going to show you more about that later. on the next podcast episode. For now, dear leader, have a wonderful rest of your day and week and I will see you in the sanctuary or right here on our next podcast episode. Take very good care. 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
