Living an Integrated Life
Running so hard, measuring your life by measurable return runs the risk of focusing all your energy, thoughts, and affections on a few goals, objectives, and achievements that may not truly matter. To borrow a familiar line from the teachings of Jesus, "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?" (Mark 8:36), emphasizes that worldly achievements are meaningless if they come at the cost of well-being, love, and your life.
Setting aside our beliefs, values, and priorities for secondary pursuits can lead to a disintegrated life. Being separated, falling away, or fractured from the whole. Integration is about integrity. To be sound, holistic, healthy, and right standing integrates the complexities of our lives as a whole. Integration of what we're doing, in the context of why it's significant, with a perspective of who we're becoming expressed through how we live our lives day-to-day. It's a dance of knowing, being, and doing that often finds missteps affecting the rhythms of a life at peace.
There are moments in life or in the lives of others that stand out: living fully, facing challenges, experiencing daily joys and then upsets, stretching from assignments yet somehow maintaining a profound peace and wisdom of inner stillness. This is the strength, the calm in the storm, and the grace that comes from intentional living.
I'm pursuing what I call the integrated life—a framework that serves as more than just a philosophy. It's a practical guide for my decisions, a compass that directs me toward greater harmony between my faith, values, relationships, and commitments. This approach provides decision-making criteria that inform my priorities and values, serving as a reliable guide through life's complexities. We will have choices regarding where to invest our time and resources, which may or may not yield the return or results that truly matter.
The integrated life is about making decisions that move me closer to the core of who I am. It creates opportunities to weave more faith into my daily existence—faith is one of my primary values. It enables me to make choices that incorporate more of my family, friendships, and meaningful relationships into the fabric of my life. This approach isn't about saying yes to everything. Rather, it's about examining opportunities through the grid of my deepest values versus pursuing things that may be good but not necessarily the best for me. These considerations run soul-deep under what I call the chapter of "soul work." I'm trying to craft a message reflecting how we care for and nurture our souls, reaching a place where we can truthfully say, "It is well with my soul," regardless of whatever season or circumstance we're facing.
The Reality of Soul Challenges
Recently, I shared a conversation with a friend experiencing significant loss. Some have invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into businesses that will likely fail—fail according to profitability and sustainability measures. They grapple with questions about how long to persist, when to pivot, and when to give up on something that simply isn't working.
Yet there's a profound grief and heartache that comes after investing five years into something only to feel suddenly labeled with shame and failure. This leads to complex emotions around shame, regret, and heartache. It's a genuine grief that requires acknowledgment.
Another construction leader I spoke with this week, in his sixties, is dealing with aging issues around parents, brothers, and sisters-in-law. He's providing end-of-life care or support for those with dementia. He's also facing the practical challenge of family members who haven't planned well financially, creating increased responsibility for those serving as caregivers.
These situations create burdens that leave you feeling empty and poured out. These are realities where your soul becomes dried up, wearied, and weathered. But we must also identify the elements that nurture the soul.
Soul Work Fundamentals
This is the soul work we must recognize—establishing daily practices as essential as breathing, resting, and eating well. These practices could include meditation, journaling, or engaging in hobbies that bring joy. Being around loved ones provides those base practices that allow us to be human beings before we're human beings. These fundamentals will enable us to connect with people during their most challenging times and be compassionate and empathetic.
How we care for our own souls creates a grid, criteria, and capacity to care for others in their time of need. We might call this "having a heart." What do we do to care for our hearts? How do we tend to the most profound and core aspects of who we are, ensuring we're not neglecting what matters most?
This brings us to the language of self-care—those practices that allow us to nurture what's most important in our lives. Yet these self-care practices are often basic things neglected because of daily demands, the tyranny of the urgent in our work life, or external circumstances beyond our control. It's crucial to remember that caring for ourselves is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Consider a young mother caring for a little one. She often feels stretched because she's caring so much for others that she lacks time to care for herself. There's always tension in the discussion about what self-care looks like. What does tending to your soul—this soul work—look like to be sufficient?
Beyond What We Do
We must acknowledge that the core aspects of who we are need tending. This premise challenges popularized thinking that focuses merely on what we're doing, how we're doing it, or even why we're doing it. Understanding purpose and significance—why something matters—is certainly an important variable for prioritizing our energy.
But often, all that consideration allows us the expense of who we are and, perhaps more importantly, who we're becoming. When we talk about soul work, we think about the types of people we're becoming.
Later we'll discuss self-leadership from a developmental standpoint. Self-leadership is the ability to guide and motivate oneself to achieve personal goals. It's about who we're becoming that allows us to grow in competency. But this chapter addresses the character of who we are. When we nurture our souls, we're nurturing our character, recognizing that these characteristics represent the most significant qualities about us.
In a sobering sense, we're often compromised in ways we do not realize. We've said yes to things we perhaps later recognize we never should have in the first place. We feel stretched thin to where we lack time to care for what matters most. We may have gone against our conscience, sense of standard, or personal ethics.
Level-Setting for Your Soul
This is level-setting—not just for organizational leadership, strategy, or teamwork, but for your own soul. We must reflect on those non-negotiables that once allowed us to be at our best. From a coaching standpoint, we often ask: What's the highest and best use of your time? What will enable you to reach your full potential, becoming the best version of yourself?
Reflective speculation gives us time to pause and consider identifying what we were doing at our best and what characteristics and qualities were revealed about us. This is an invitation, more than a mandate, to take time for pause and reflection.
What are the self-care practices that create space for your soul? This allows you to return to being a human being rather than just a human doing. We spend most of our time at work and in other activities, but how much time over a day, week, month, or year do we devote to tending our souls?
When we do this well, it gives us greater capacity to connect with others. When we examine our reflective model of five spheres of leadership influence, we find that the most significant issues within leadership and organizations are, most of the time, people problems.
The Value Proposition of Soul Care
The premise here is that as we invest not just in hard skills but in actual soft skills, we create a value proposition: as we improve our ability to work with people, we see a difference in resolving problems more quickly, motivating people to higher levels of engagement and productivity, improving retention, and lowering turnover.
In some ways, the softest skills—tending to your soul through self—care practices—may be the most significant investment of your time in seeing the impact of your leadership.
This is an opportunity to return to those core things that make you who you are. Some of your self-care proves identifying a long-forgotten hobby that needs raking. What are those things you love to do—not have to do, but pause and reflect to find joy in the activity itself?
Practical Self-Care
What are the self-care practices, even the baseline of identifying how much sleep you're getting, the foods you're eating, and the friendships you're nurturing? Who are the people that, after spending time with them, make you feel better? Or enjoying a good meal that nourishes not just your body but your sense of well-being, rather than consuming foods that harm your physical health.
Consider the benefits of getting out for a walk, incorporating a little exercise, and stealing away 10, 15, or 30 minutes a day to move around. Enjoy not just the activity itself or physically "getting your steps in," but notice the world around you—the clouds in the sky, the sun on your face, the benefits of vitamin D. Take time to smell the roses or observe the seasonal changes as leaves grow on trees or fall off, or feel a snowflake land on your face.
These things we take time to notice—these little details—somehow stir nostalgia or memory that mark creativity and ultimately bring a smile to your face. Simply ask: How often do you smile throughout your day? What produces beyond just surface happiness—a sense of joy, delight, and wonder that nurtures your soul and shows in your countenance?
This doesn't necessarily require an overhaul, though some dedicated time away—whether in solitude, with family, or on a genuine vacation where you're not responsible for someone else's happiness—creates opportunity. You might identify some daily practices for reflection, prayer, quiet meditation, reading a good book, journaling daily events, or keeping a gratitude journal to give thanks.
The Power of Pause
Taking a pause in this reflective space is vitally important. A therapist friend who works with trauma survivors calls a version of this activity "emotional fitness"—identifying the highs and lows of your day. Reflect for 30 seconds or three minutes on the highs and lows, identifying the emotions you felt, from anger and frustration to joy and absolute delight.
This is an opportunity to consider what you can do to tend to your own soul so that when life happens, you absorb it more holistically rather than compartmentalizing and stuffing feelings away for another day.
Start small, building practices that give you time to reflect and pause. Perhaps set a reminder text on your phone or an alarm that prompts you to pause two or three times daily—to pray, give thanks, offer someone appreciation or encouragement, or simply smile. Something in a purely physiological sense somehow translates into caring for your soul and finding delight during your day.
Beyond Surface Understanding
This isn't meant to be an extensive deep dive into the human soul. Plenty of resources and books exist to pursue from theological, psychological, or sociological standpoints. But the integrated approach asks: What are those things that, when you take care of yourself, allow you to be more fully human, with a greater capacity for knowing and doing, to impact the world around you?
This begins with reflection, perhaps probing moments when you were happiest, filled with joy, delight, and wonder. What activities were you doing? Who were the people around you? What could you do to nurture some of those experiences or reconnect with those relationships?
Take time to plan. If there are places you want your emotions to spend time with, be proactive rather than reactive, looking forward to those activities. Or perhaps block time to create space that you protect throughout your day—30 minutes for quiet reflection in the morning, getting up 30 minutes or an hour earlier for quiet space, or blocking 15 or 30 minutes on your calendar with a "do not disturb" on your phone and your office door closed.
The Integration Point
The integrated life isn't about perfect balance—it's about intentional alignment. When we tend to our souls, we're not just improving ourselves; we're creating ripple effects through every relationship and responsibility we hold. The more we integrate our core values, the more authentic and impactful our lives become.
Integration doesn't mean everything receives equal time. Rather, it means everything receives appropriate attention according to your deepest values. Sometimes your work will demand more energy, sometimes your family, sometimes your renewal. The integrated life is fluid, responsive, and ultimately sustainable.
By prioritizing being before doing, we create a foundation from which all our actions can flow with greater purpose and meaning. We become less reactive and more intentional. We experience less internal conflict because our actions align more consistently with our values. Perhaps most importantly, we develop the capacity to help others find their integration points.
The journey toward an integrated life isn't a destination but a continual process of alignment and realignment. It requires regular reflection and adjustment. But the results—greater peace, more meaningful connections, and a deeper sense of purpose—make it one of the most worthwhile pursuits of a life well-lived.