The Age of Distraction Is Breaking Leaders – Your Soul Didn’t Sign Up For This
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Dr. J.R. Andrews, Marketplace Chaplain & Soul-Centered Success Strategist, leads InnerShift360 and shows high-achievers how to trade toxic grind for grace, purpose, and peace in work and relationships.
On paper, today’s high-achieving leader looks unstoppable. The title shines, the calendar stays booked, and everyone has them on speed dial as the unofficial “In Case of Emergency” for work, family, church, and the group chat. But around midnight, when the phone light is the only thing glowing, that same leader is scrolling, overthinking, and quietly wondering, “Why does my life look so successful and feel so off?” Most people call that burnout. I call it soul fatigue.
What is soul fatigue and how is it different from burnout?
Burnout is the obvious one, too many meetings, too many demands, too little margin. The world prescribes a vacation, a long weekend, or a new job. Soul fatigue is sneakier. It doesn’t just live in the calendar, it lives in the identity.
Soul fatigue shows up when a person no longer knows how to feel valuable unless someone needs them. Their worth is hooked to being useful. If they’re not fixing a crisis, carrying a project, or holding someone else together, they feel strangely invisible.
Rest starts to feel suspicious. Sit still too long, and a little voice whispers, “You’re falling behind.” Stillness doesn’t feel holy, it feels like a trap.
At the office, soul fatigue sounds like, “If I don’t hold this together, this whole place will fall apart.” So the leader says yes when the body is begging for no, attends meetings that should have been an email, and absorbs everyone’s stress like a human shock absorber.
At home, the wardrobe changes, but the script stays the same. Instead of choosing partners and friends to build with, many choose people to “fix.” The relationship quietly becomes a spiritual rehab center. Peace is in critical condition while “being needed” gets promoted.
Same soul. Different rooms. Identical drain.
Self-care lets people escape, spiritual care brings them home
Self-care has become a full-blown industry. There are candles for it, playlists for it, retreats, robes, and “Treat yourself” merch. Rest is good. Massages are of God. But self-care alone is relief, not restoration.
A person can spend a weekend floating in aromatherapy and still come home to a life completely out of alignment with what they actually value. That’s where spiritual care comes in.
Spiritual care asks two impolite questions that do not care about titles, salaries, or follower counts, What is this life actually anchored to? And does the way you are living match what you say you believe?
And to be clear, soul care in this sense is not a vague, New Age, “good vibes only” starter kit. This is not crystals under the moon and manifesting a better parking spot. Spiritual care is not an Uber-mystical side hustle for people who got bored with yoga. Healthy soul care is old. Very old.
Armies have known this for millennia. Long before Rome was stamping eagles on everything that didn’t move, soldiers marched with priests, prophets, shamans, rabbis, wise elders, somebody whose job was to pray, listen, bless, bury, and help people make sense of what they were walking into. No commander with common sense sends human beings into chaos without someone tending the invisible wounds.
Fast forward a few thousand years, the pattern continues. Major corporations now quietly employ corporate chaplains, contract with counselors, and throw real money at emotional and spiritual support. Social movements have chaplains. Pro sports teams have chaplains. Recovery communities and activist spaces regularly lean on spiritual advisors and emotional care.
If armies, activists, and Fortune 500 CEOs all understand that humans cannot be run on strategy and caffeine alone, a fair question emerges. Why is the average high-achiever still trying to DIY soul care like it’s an IKEA bookshelf?
For many, the only spiritual check-in happens for an hour on Sunday, if that. For others, spirituality lives in the sentence, “I’m spiritual, not religious,” followed by exactly zero consistent spiritual practice. Meanwhile, the weight of life has gone up, the care of the soul has not.
Spiritual care, framed this way, sounds less like, “How do I escape my life for a few hours?” and more like, “Why have I built a life I constantly need to escape?” It sounds like, “If this thing called ‘purpose’ is slowly killing my peace, something on the label is wrong.” It sounds like, “I am not God, not Amazon Prime, and not obligated to deliver on everyone’s emergency.”
It is the shift from applause to alignment.
The trap high achievers secretly love: Fixing people
High performers are often praised for “seeing potential.” That’s a gift, until it’s not. Left unguarded, that gift mutates into a habit I call fixing. Fixing is what happens when someone confuses their effort with another person’s growth.
In romance, it looks like dating a walking red flag while calling it “being patient” and “seeing the best in them.” In leadership, it looks like carrying the emotional climate of the entire team while others comfortably coast. Everyone else gets to be “on a journey.” The leader becomes an unpaid staff member for their development.
The alternative is a discipline I call measuring. Measuring asks one deceptively simple question: What is this person actually showing me in real time?
Not, “Who could they become if they finally listened to every sermon, podcast, and piece of advice?” Not, “Who are they in the highlight reel?” Just, “Who are they consistently choosing to be right now, without being dragged uphill?”
In dating, measuring sounds like, “Care is not the same as calling, and I am not your unofficial therapist, pastor, and parole officer.” In leadership, it sounds like, “Investment is earned, I will not work harder on your assignment than you do.”
Fixing feels heroic. Measuring feels grown. Fixing drains the soul. Measuring protects it.
The strong friend who finally told the truth
Consider Marcus, a composite of leaders I’ve coached. On paper, Marcus is the dream. Smart. Driven. First one in, last one out. His team leans on him. His CEO depends on him. When things go sideways, the unofficial policy is, “Ask Marcus.”
In conversation, he sounds like a leadership podcast come to life, strategy, vision, numbers, expansion plans. Everything polished. Everything under control. Everything a little too rehearsed. Then comes a question that does not care about the script, “Where are you tired in a way that sleep is not fixing?” That is usually when the strong friend’s face glitches.
For Marcus, the truth is simple and heavy. His marriage is not on fire, but the flame has clearly gone out. Most conversations at home sound like project management. His teenage daughter communicates mainly in shrugs. The midnight email sessions aren’t about necessity, they are about identity. If he puts the phone down, he has to sit with himself, and he no longer recognizes the person in the silence.
He knows how to be needed. He does not know how to be known. He is leading like a hero and living like a hostage.
3 soul strategy steps: The “where sleep can’t help” soulcise
To move from theory to practice, I often walk leaders like Marcus through a Soulcise, an exercise for the soul. One of the simplest and most disruptive is called “Where Sleep Can’t Help.”
Ask the real question once a week: Set aside ten honest minutes. No laptop. No phone. No performance. Just a blank page and the courage to tell the truth. At the top of the page, write, “Where am I tired in a way that sleep is not fixing?” Then wait long enough for the real answer to show up, not the polite one.
Move from fixing to measuring: Once the truth is on paper, circle one area and ask, “In this area, am I fixing, or am I measuring?” If the story involves dragging grown people uphill, at work or at home, the diagnosis is clear. You’re over-functioning, not leading.
Take one boundary-sized action this week: The final step is deliberately small, choose one boundary or one honest conversation that would honor your soul in that specific area this week. Not ten changes. Not a full life overhaul. One concrete step toward alignment, taken before seven more days pass.
Over time, that ten-minute Soulcise becomes a mirror that will not lie. Seventy-hour weeks with midnight emails shrink toward a more human rhythm, with actual edges. Teams move from crisis mode to ownership. Spouses report feeling like they have a partner again, not a stressed-out roommate with Wi-Fi. Teenagers move from one-word replies to actual conversations.
The job title stays the same. The soul behind it does not. Everyone around can feel the difference.
Why businesses don’t just need a growth strategy, they need a soul strategy
In many boardrooms, the metrics look pristine. KPIs sparkle. Slide decks impress. OKRs multiply like rabbits. The market is impressed, shareholders are pleased, and yet, the humans behind the charts are quietly exhausted.
Performance is measured. Meaning is not. That is why more organizations are beginning to realize they don’t just need growth strategies, they need something like a soul strategy.
A soul strategy asks harder questions. Can the people building this thing actually survive it? Does the culture treat humans like image-bearers or like highly functional to-do lists? Is there room to talk honestly about grief, burnout, relationships, and faith without the room getting awkward?
Militaries have been answering those questions, imperfectly, but intentionally, for thousands of years by embedding spiritual advisors into the fabric of operations. Now, major corporations and movements are catching up. The only ones left trying to white-knuckle it alone are often the very leaders the world is depending on.
Marketplace chaplains and soul-centered strategists sit right in that intersection. The role is not to turn boardrooms into Bible studies, but to reintroduce an ancient idea into modern spaces, inner life and outer success are not separate projects.
When leaders learn to care for their souls, they stop leading from adrenaline and insecurity. Wins stop being proof that they deserve to exist. Families stop functioning as emotional shock absorbers for workplace stress. Offices and homes both start to breathe again.
Start your soul strategy journey today
The leaders who resonate with this are not weak, they are simply honest. Honest enough to admit that achievement without alignment is too expensive.
Soul care, in this framing, is not a trend. It is a return, to the idea that human beings are more than output, that relationships are more than projects, and that a life that looks impressive but feels empty is not the will of any wise God.
If you recognize yourself in Marcus, or in the midnight scroller who looks successful and feels secretly hollow, the invitation is not to abandon ambition, but to anchor it.
The real question is no longer, “How high can this go?” but, “What kind of human is being formed while it grows?”
If you’re ready to build a soul strategy for your life, your leadership, or your organization, this is the work I do every day through InnerShift360, coaching, chaplaincy, and soul-centered consulting for leaders and teams who want success that doesn’t cost them their sanity.
Because at the end of the day, no promotion, portfolio, or platform is worth using a soul as the down payment.
Read more from James Andrews
James Andrews, Marketplace Chaplain and Author
Dr. J.R. Andrews is a Marketplace Chaplain & Soul-Centered Success Strategist who helps high-achieving leaders and lovers succeed without losing their souls. As founder of InnerShift360 and a chaplain, he sits at the intersection of faith, performance, and emotional health. He works with organizations and individuals to move from toxic grind to grounded grace in their work, money, and relationships. Dr. Andrews is the author of InnerShift: Spiritual Care in the Age of Distraction and Just Sayin’: A Faithful Brother’s Guide to Dating with Purpose, Pace & Peace. When he’s not teaching or speaking, you can usually find him laughing loud, thinking deep, and reminding people that peace is not a luxury—it's a strategy.
