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 This show is for the burnt out leader who feels spiritually disconnected and trapped in outdated toxic leadership models.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 back, Leader. If you are new, how fortunate am I that you chose to press play? Whether you're watching this or you're listening to this on your favorite podcast platform, thank you for taking the time. But more importantly, you are taking the time for yourself. This is about you. This is where we get to pause for a moment, contemplate, reflect on something very important. for the purpose of transforming our lives, especially our leadership practice. And I am privileged, honored, blessed to have you now as part of our family. So welcome. And for those loyal listeners, thank you for being here as always. And I have committed to providing you with a simple process to help you solve these problems that we leaders face. And because we are contemplatives, we take things a few layers deeper than the average leader. So Nothing's surface around here. Nothing's at face value either, by the way. That's not how we work around here. So welcome to you both, the loyal folks and the new folks. Happy you're here. I want to talk so badly about this idea of soul versus systems, your soul versus systems, right? Something has come up for me recently and I've been exploring and diving deeper into some of those systems that are running my unconscious mind. Something that a listener asked when I published the book, podcast episode on soul versus spirit soul versus spirit. It's this season, season three. Um, I think it's, it's, Ooh, it's a few back. You're going to want to check that out if you haven't heard it yet. But a listener reached out and said, okay, so I get it, soul versus spirit, cool, fun. But I've got some interesting dialogue and programming and some interesting behaviors that I don't know if that's spirit or if that's my soul. And so can you help me understand where that's coming from? And so this is why this episode is so important, because we're going to clear this up for everybody. So soul versus the spirit. The spirit is what we all share. But the soul is yours. It's uniquely yours. This is how you were divinely designed. I love that term, divinely designed. Now let's bring in systems into the mix. Okay. And they all start with an S. Okay. Soul, spirit, systems. Okay. Oh, fun. I just got that, y'all. I'm sorry. I'm very slow around here. But symptoms are external program. It's external factors that have impacted our internal programming. Those systems may be disrupting your life in some way or another. So there's spirit guiding all of us. It's the thread. It's the connection we all have to one another. So when I meet with my client, it's spirit to spirit. I'm like, I know what's in you because what's in you is in me. How lovely. But now I get to coach your soul because of my soul. Like, oh, it's just an incredible dyad between two humans here. So the soul and the spirit. And so when I'm in a coaching session, I'm also looking at, oh, those systems, the programming. like think of a system like a software system right like you think of you know um errors bugs um you know all of those those uh you know infiltrators you know trying to take down your computer trying to steal or corrupt your your your data or or you know steal your information right so you've got hackers out there and and i like to think of these systems as these external variables that are trying to infiltrate what the soul was assigned to do. So these are the systems that are yielding negative results in your life. These are the systems. And so how fun that this one viewer asked, listener viewer asked about the behaviors that were impacting her life and the results that she was creating from these behaviors. And she was unaware of where this came from. you know, was it a neuro association that she created somewhere in her lifetime as a child, as a teenager, but here she is now as an adult and she is exhausted of the, of the, of the same results she's creating because of the same behaviors. And so, well, now let's take that all the way back to a system, the system, an external system that, that has infiltrated you. Let's just call it, it's infiltrating your mind, right? Simple. It's simple. It has embedded. It's now a program and it's now running certain parts of your life. And so, you know, here you are aware saying, uh, we need that to end. And I don't know where that's coming from. It's more than likely a system, a system. You know, you can look To your past. I'm always very careful when we coach, right? And I just did a podcast episode on that, right? Y'all saw that. And going into the past and going down rabbit holes and then not able to come out of them because of how painful those memories are and how emotionally activating they are. And we only go into the past so that we can extract the learning so that we can integrate them into wisdom. And And so I like to caution everybody when we're going into the past because of that, because we don't want to stay stuck there, because we want to, you know, have that emotional distance so that we can take those learnings, bring them here, use them right here, right now in present day so that, you know, we become these incredible leaders, right? And we get to use those learnings in the future. So when I tell you to go back into your memory bank, just be careful because I just want for you to just as like an impartial spectator, go back into some of those moments and look at some of those circumstances. And you can maybe identify when a system took root in your unconscious mind. There are certain times in our lifetime, especially in our youth, where we are recording, we're at these interesting brain levels because our brains haven't fully developed and we're just absorbing and recording what our parents are doing, what they're saying, what our grandparents, how they're reacting, what they're saying. So there are moments in our lifetime that we are gathering information and recording it and then therefore becoming systems. even in our teenage years where we're highly influenced by belonging in a group. And so we're willing to do anything we can to be in the group, stay in the group, fulfill the group's needs. And so you turn yourself into somebody else because the group is expecting you to behave in this way. So then there is a system that's being formed. How about in college, right? Same thing. You are new on campus. You have no friends on campus. You may be living in a dorm and you're unfamiliar with this territory and you are willing to do whatever it takes to belong and to do what the crowd does. And so then you wind up joining some crazy clubs and meeting some interesting people and getting into some interesting circumstances. And then there's a system that's formed. Yeah. So you can look at all these stages of your life and you can find these systems. So when you go back into your memory bank, look for those circumstances, those situations where you could infer that a system took root, took place. Sometimes it's hard to find them and that's okay. And this is why it's important that we have this conversation because if a behavior is is yielding a negative result. That's more than likely a system that is not valuable for you to keep. Maybe at one point it was. Maybe at one point your brain and your nervous system said, ooh, we need this system to protect us. Because I believe all these systems were formed for protecting ourselves. It was a form of self-survival, self-protection, self-preservation. And so I believe that these systems were intended initially to be a positive thing. But here you are now going, hmm, that's on repeat and that's automated. And here's what I keep creating and what I don't want to create anymore. And so this is when we take a moment to look at these systems. So nothing has gone wrong. If you are questioning a behavior and more specifically the result that that behavior is creating, nothing has gone wrong. You don't have a problem. There's nothing wrong with you, my friend. You're just coming into full awareness of who you are and who you want to become. And so the solution here is to take a moment and to take inventory. And again, when we go into the past, it's just to Collect some data and then keep moving so that we can integrate that wisdom that we're learning from those past memories. And so maybe you go back into that memory bank and you pull those moments, those moments in time where you think a system took root. And we do that just for the wisdom, right? We do that to improve and increase our self-awareness capacity. That's all we're doing, right? It's not we're going to go back and blame somebody and we're going to go and confront our parents for what they did or what they didn't do to protect us and why this system took root. No, no, no, no. I'm assuming that we are mature adults that can do this work without falling into the rage or anger trap. And so take a moment. And if it's too emotionally activating, then don't do this work. But it's important that we just go back and pull where that could have been formed, just so that we know for ourselves, for those that we're raising, for those that we're leading, so that we are more aware and we have more capacity for this awareness. And so again, nothing's gone wrong. And that's the simple solution is to go back and extract and then integrate it into wisdom. And so that's a simple process. Every time I come on here, I say it's simple, but it's not easy. The processes that I share with you every week are simple, but they are not easy to do. I am aware of that. And so you can always join me inside the sanctuary to support you on your journey. And we do coaching in there. And so I want to invite you, if you are someone who's ready to do that work, we do group coaching inside. And so here's what's possible. I love that. I love that. I'm going to start ending our podcast episodes with that statement. What's possible if you do this work, right? What are the results that you can expect if you do this work? And I've mentioned a few already. When you start looking at your soul versus your systems, right? The soul is how you were divinely designed. And that includes your personality. It includes your character. It includes your values. It includes your love for yourself and for a higher power. It includes all of these interesting human factors. Yes, because you're matter. You matter. You are matter and you matter, right? But you're living these lives in these human bodies. So your soul consists of all of these things. And the spirit, which is not your soul, spirit connects you to me and me to him and he to them. And we're all on this planet sharing this incredible world together. And we are all tied. Ooh, like a string, like a gold string being pulled from each of our chests. And we're all, you know, just walking along. next to each other, all tied together. That's spirit. That's not soul. That's spirit. But these systems, the systems that were embedded in our human brain, our human nervous systems, right? Those are the systems. And the key here is, is that system yielding a negative result in your life? If it is, it's a system. Mm-hmm. It's a system. It's a system. It's not your personality. It's not your character. It's a system that you picked up along the way. It's a system that was embedded in you in your childhood. It's a system that you learned after going through some very harsh circumstances. It's a system to protect you, self-survival, self-protection. So it's a system, a system that is a system that, again, yields negative results in your life. So those are the differences between the three and the possibility, right? Now that you know these three individual entities, individual things, you are now able to identify for yourself what's a system and what's my soul. What's that system that I don't want to be part of my life anymore? Because my soul is designed to do this. My soul is designed to be in love, to be of love. My soul is designed by a higher power, not my own tiny little ego that screams so loudly. No, this is something greater and bigger than myself. That soul is what I want to explore. I want to get curious about. It's the soul. that you take with you into leadership. Be careful with those systems. Those systems will show up in your leadership practice because they're unresolved and you have not extracted the gold from those systems so that you can embed them, integrate them into wisdom. I talked about this on the last podcast episode. Go check that one out too. Lots for you to review, lots for you to go back to and listen to. So the possibilities of this information, having this information, knowing this information, and then putting it into practice, again, creates a highly aware, spiritually connected leader. This is what contemplation is about. This is what we do in the sanctuary. This is what we do as contemplative leaders. Because we are looking for groundedness. We're looking for peace in our bodies. We're looking for a different way to lead our people. Because we are exhausted of those outdated, antiquated, toxic leadership models for I know I am. I don't know about you, but I believe and I know and deeply know that there's a better way to lead and this is how. This is how. All right, contemplative. I believe. pray and hope that you have had a wonderful time with me today in taking this information and finding value in this work and then putting it into practice for yourself because words don't teach life experience teaches so put what i am sharing with you the words Make what I'm sharing with you and put it into practice for yourself so that you can experience this for yourself, so that you can see the transformation that this will provide your life and your leadership practice and those that you serve. Put this into practice now. And then meet me inside the sanctuary. I'll be there waiting for you. Excited to serve you in the sanctuary. I'll see you there, my friend. And I also look forward to serving you on our next episode. Take care. Bye. 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
