[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.

Hello friends, and thank you for coming back and hanging out with me on the Faith in Practice podcast. Looking forward to this episode. Today, I’m doing a series of solo shows, a little bit more focused on our spirituality and who we are more so than our business, but we know that these things go hand in hand. So I’m really looking forward to chatting with you today. But before we jump in, I wanted to remind you that I’m currently taking applicants for the Faith in Practice mastermind groups that I’m starting up in January. So if you want to join that or learn more about it, you can head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/faithmastermind, where you can get more information, read some testimonies and all that good stuff.

But to tell you a little bit about it, we meet over Zoom twice a month for six, for you to work on your business. And along with working on your business, we bring God into the mix. So it’s a special mastermind in the fact that it’s also a faith-based group of clinicians, and those are some of the relationships that last. It’s so valuable when we can bring faith into the conversation about our business. So we’ll be meeting about 12 times, that’s twice a month for six months for an hour. Along with that, you’ll have a consult call with me, access to me through texting email and those things so I can help you get your business moving forward.

A lot of the types of people that have joined the group have been people who have smaller practices that are so low, really wanting to grow and take it to the next level. In fact, somebody in our current mastermind, it’s only been running a couple of months and she started out with Hmm, six, eight clients. She was very hesitant about joining because it is scary when you put your money, down to join a group and you don’t know what’s going to happen. And just this past week, or it might have been two weeks ago, she said to me, well, how do I manage a wait list? It was amazing. Her goal was 18 clients. She’s already there within two to three months of doing the mastermind group and that’s a very common story.

Well, I really help you take it into high gear, market your practice, and then as well I also have Faith in Practice groups for group practice owners that are wanting to learn more on onboarding scaling, how do I manage my team, when do I hire some of those types of questions? We conquer those as well. So if you’re interested in the group, please go to learn more on the practiceofthepractice.com/faith mastermind. If you want to apply, you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/apply and just click that you want to join the mastermind group. Then we will schedule a call and I’ll chat with you about the group. I want to make sure that it’s a good fit and that you’re going to benefit from it. I never want anyone in the group that isn’t going to benefit.

I’ll be honest with you. There are definitely times that I say to people, “I don’t think this is going to be good for you at this time in your practice. Here’s why, and I recommend another resource that’s better for where they’re at.” So we’d love to connect with you. Check out practiceofthepractice.com/apply to join that group. Or you can just email me if you have questions about it, [email protected].

All right. So on today’s episode, I want challenge you with an idea and then I want to talk further about it in my own life in hopes that the Lord will use that to speak to you in your life. So this episode is called, who are you becoming? It is so easy as life is so fast and passing by that we become maybe even something we don’t want to be. I can think of times where I’ve said to myself, this isn’t the person that I want to be. Why am I acting this way? Maybe it’s about my business, maybe it’s myself as a mother, maybe it’s who I am as a friend, but sometimes life passes and if we’re not intentional in doing the work, we’ve become something we never wanted to be.

Now I want to specifically speak to this in our businesses and the quote that comes to me, or this idea I should say that comes to me is God is more concerned about who you are becoming than what you are achieving. I’m going to say it again. God is more concerned about who you are becoming over what you are achieving. You all are entrepreneurs. We have a mindset of achievement. That’s just what we do. I honestly can tell you, I sometimes can get the whole achieving and God thing a little mixed up where I feel like I have to achieve things so that God will be proud of me or think well of me or that I would please him honor him. So then I like rationalize this idea that I have to hustle. I have to do things, I have to look back and go look at this I did.

I can even say I do this with the podcast. Like, hey, look, I created this Faith in Practice podcast. Wow, go Whitney. Well, I did it all for God. This is true in a large extent but sometimes we really have to quiet ourselves in our hearts and say, okay, why are we really doing the things we’re doing? I can tell you, sometimes I am doing it for money and sometimes I am doing it for glory and for myself. So this idea that we’re becoming something so fast, that we haven’t realized what we became until we became it, I want us to stop and think about that. Because I don’t want to become someone who’s totally money driven or fame driven or focused on things of the world and not the things of God. I want to be someone who is more concerned about who I am on the inside than what I achieve on the outside.

So we can easily look at our practice and think things like, look what a great counselor I am. Look at all these clients that are getting better or look at the wait list I have. Or maybe you’ve written a book or done a presentation. It is so hard not to let our spiritual lives in our identity be found in what we’ve done. It’s in who we are that matters. Like when it comes to the end, that’s what matters. You can’t take anything with you. You’re not going to take your accomplishments with you. And your memory will only last so long on this planet that we hope that the things that we’re spending our time and energy on and the things that have eternal value and the real thing that has eternal value is our relationship with God and who we are as people.

So what does it mean to become something in the Lord and how do we do that in our business? I think about who I was when I started my practice and who I am now, world’s, world’s different. I even can sometimes go back and listen to the podcast, episodes I made 18 months ago or something and I’m like, man, I have totally changed. Thank to the Lord because I’m glad I’m a different person sometimes. And you probably can feel the same way about seasons and times in your life as well.

But it’s our business that transforms us. If you didn’t listen to the podcast episode I did with Jane Carter, I think that aired a month or so ago, please go back and listen to that. She did some great quotes and just information on how our business impacts our spiritual lives. And this is so true. So when I think back in 2014, that was when I had moved to Savannah. Even though I had done private practice prior to coming to this area, I hadn’t done it here. I didn’t know anyone and the connections that I had just met that I was trying to use to find a job in private practice, or even to find a job at a psychiatric hospital, nothing was working out.

God has a way of closing doors and opening them, doesn’t He? So, because nothing was working out, I was like, all right, I guess I’m going to start a practice. Through prayer, I felt that tug on my heart to start a practice. I actually was talking about another counselor the other day. He said, he called it his journey complex, I think is what he said, but the idea that, we know God’s leading us into something, but we don’t want to do the thing God’s telling us to do. So then we start doing a bunch of other things, hoping that we don’t have to do the very thing He asked us to do, even though we ultimately know that’s the thing we’re going to do.

So anyway, that’s how I have felt about many things in my life. So when he shared that with me, I was laughing because I was like that’s me many times. So when I go back and think about starting the practice, I was so freaked out. Like who’s going to come see me? Did I get my paper of work right? Am I holding space for the Lord to work? Am I focusing enough on the spiritual part, but also the clinical part and how do I bring these things together? It was really through the practice that I matured so much in my faith because I had to have faith. I had to trust God. I had to lean in. When I felt emotional, when I felt overwhelmed, I had to trust that the Lord was going to care for me.

I mean, we could go into so many scriptures about that and keep putting your cares on Christ, because He cares for you and the broken and weary. Like he’s there for them. We do such deep soul work with our clients. It transforms us. So when I talk about God cares more about who we are and who we’re becoming, look at your practice. How have you become a different person because of the work you do? And as I look back on different times in my life where I felt challenged to do something, I stepped out in faith, even though I was super scared and it transformed who I am.
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[WHITNEY OWENS]
So now I’m going to take it a step further to a real place of vulnerability as we consider who we are and what the Lord’s doing. I love sharing with you all books I’m reading and things I’m thinking about and recently, I’ve been reading some Henry Nouwen and I’ve read a couple of his books. So if you haven’t gotten to know Henry Nouwen, you should definitely check him out. The most recent book I’m reading is Discernment, but I’ve read a couple of his other books. If you don’t know the story of Henry Nouwen, he was extremely successful professor at Harvard in Yale, traveled all over the world speaking, I mean talk about a guy that could easily be achievement oriented.

Then he just started filling up call to do something. He wasn’t really sure what that was. He actually went to Peru for a year and lived among the poor. He kind of didn’t really like that realizing that it really wasn’t the lifestyle for him and how difficult that was, not having hot showers and space and all these kinds of things. So then he came back to the states and was just waiting on what he was to do and then he had an encounter with some people at Daybreak, which is a community that serves the disabled. I think it’s in Toronto, Canada. Forgive me if I messed that up, but I’m pretty sure it’s a community in Canada that said you can come be with us and you can find God here.

So Henry ends up moving there and spending the rest of his days caring for the disabled. And there was one member with the community in particular that he got close to, but he went there and was a chaplain for the disabled community. This just blows my mind and here’s why; the idea of him being able to have a big impact by speaking and teaching, yet he laid it all down and cared for the most broken of us all. Talk about who you become, being more important and then what you achieve. Dang.

So a lot of times I’ll say to myself, oh, well I need to go do therapy or I need to do a podcast or I need to speak at something because I want to have this great impact. That is not bad. That’s actually great that God uses that, but we don’t want to do it to a point we’re missing on what God’s creating within us or we’re missing what God wants us to serve. So Henry Nouwen’s story really speaks to my heart because I have a special needs child. My five year old, Abby she’s the cutest little thing ever is autistic. We got her diagnosis about when she was 18 months, two years old. She also has a hearing loss and has to wear hearing aids so she got a double whammy, unfortunately, but she is just the brightest, sweetest, most loving little girl.

Even this morning, coming up and giving mommy kisses and she just does such a good job doing what we ask her to do. Her biggest flaw is not being able to speak. So that’s always really sad for us, but I never, in a million years expected to have a child with disabilities. Not what I thought or I guess I should say neurotypical to me. It is very challenging. I used all those words wrong, but anyway, it’s very challenging situation in my life. And when I think about Henry Nouwen and I think about my daughter, like what are the most important things that I’m doing in my life?

Like right now I’m planning a Faith in Practice conference. That seems like a big deal, but what’s really important is caring for my daughter. There was a moment, a few weeks ago where I reflected on my day. So this is a good exercise for you guys. If you have a few minutes, each day to just reflect and say, okay, where was God active in my day? So as I asked myself this question, I thought about all the things I did during the day and all the clients I served and conversations I had. And I think actually that day I had led a meeting for school counselors that were really struggling with everything going on within their school system with mental health and boy, we had cool conversations in there and they really supported each other.

So in first thought I thought, oh yes, that was good. That did that. But then the Lord just kind of put on my heart, the most important thing you did was lay with your daughter in the middle of the night. If you don’t know much about autism, one of the most difficult parts that we have had the face and it’s very common sign or symptom is difficulty sleeping. So my daughter wakes up in the middle of the night, she’s up for hours and doesn’t go back to sleep for a while. It’s not that she doesn’t want to. It’s just, she can’t. So the Lord brought that to my memory of when you laid with her, that was when I was present. That was when you were doing the most important work in your day, not when you’re seeing clients, not when you’re leading meetings, not when you’re talking with friends, maybe not even when you’re reading your Bible. But it’s when you care for the needy, the poor, the disabled, and you become who I want you to be.

So as you take this with you, my hope is that the idea of who you’re becoming will become more important than what you’re achieving and that your identity will start to be found more on who you are in God than what you’re doing. We do, we talk to our clients about this all the time. Even someone the other day said to me, I don’t think that anyone would ever date me. This is an older single woman. No one would date me because I don’t work. What do I contribute to society? I was just so heartbroken, like the idea that, what she does is more important than who she is. But this is something that we as entrepreneurs also think to ourselves. If we’re in a group, we feel like we’ve got to contribute, we have to be something. And you don’t. You can just be who you are than who the Lord’s created you to be.

So today know that who you are is more important than what you do. Take a moment to reflect on your day and be changed. Thank you for being with me today.

Again, we want to thank our sponsor Brighter Vision for being with us today. If you’re interested in getting a hundred dollars off of a new website, or you just need a revamp on your current 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.