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In Season 3, Episode 4 of A More Beautiful Life Collective podcast, we’re exploring why clarifying your “why” is the keystone to living with purpose and avoiding burnout. We unpack how hustling without direction leads to overcommitment, comparison, and exhaustion, while a God-given mission statement provides traction, focus, and freedom to say no. Learn to align gifts, burdens, and seasons with your calling, filter decisions through a simple mission, and turn everyday influence—parenting, ministry, creative work—into fruitful Kingdom impact. Perfect for Christian women seeking intentional living, faith-centered productivity, and clarity of purpose.
S3E4 – Clarifying Your Mission: Influence, Ministry, & Your Why – A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast
In Season 3, Episode 4 of A More Beautiful Life Collective podcast, we're exploring why clarifying your “why” is the keystone to living with purpose and avoiding burnout. We unpack how hustling without direction leads to overcommitment, comparison, and exhaustion, while a God-given mission statement provides traction, focus, and freedom to say no. Learn to align gifts, burdens, and seasons with your calling, filter decisions through a simple mission, and turn everyday influence—parenting, ministry, creative work—into fruitful Kingdom impact. Perfect for Christian women seeking intentional living, faith-centered productivity, and clarity of purpose.Read the full post here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/clarifying-your-mission-influence-ministry-your-why/Get the 30 Days to a Life You Love Challenge here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/30-days-to-a-life-you-love-challenge-tracker-slow-living-printable-tracker-faith-simplicity-peace/Get the Full Life You Love Toolkit here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/a-life-you-love-toolkit-christian-intentional-living-planner-toolkit-for-women/Get the Build a More Beautiful Life: 5 Days to Align Your Faith, Family and Work here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/build-a-more-beautiful-life-faith-and-family-devotional-workbook-5-day-christian-pdf-to-align-faith-family-and-work/Get The Faithful 12 Goal-setting Kickstart Planner Here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/your-12-week-year-pdf-guide/ Get Cultivate: A Faithful Framework for Aspirations, Goals & Habits here: https://amorebeautifullifecollective.com/product/cultivate-a-faithful-framework-for-aspirations-goals-habits-christian-goal-setting-workbook-faith-based-planner-printable/ …Visit our Shop to get a copy of any of the resources mentioned in this episode: I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and you can learn a little bit more about me here. While you’re here, would you consider leaving a comment, rating, or review? You can find our podcast, A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or watch on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog for access to our latest content and some freebies. I love creating and sharing resources with you. You can find all of our resources at A More Beautiful Life Collective Shop.Keep creating a life you love, and cultivating your heart for God.
Hey everyone, and welcome to Season 3, Episode 4 of A More Beautiful Life Collective Podcast. I am your host, Cayce Fletcher. I’m so glad that you are here today, because we are going to be talking about the keystone component of our series on finding your purpose. You have to start with your why.
The Drift Without a Why
My husband works in construction, and one of the givens of this field is the big ole’ white work truck he has to drive around everywhere. It’s a necessary part of his work that he uses to drive his trailers, haul tools, and get materials with. But, one of the unseen parts of a big ole’ work truck is the likelihood that at some point you’re going to get it stuck in the mud somewhere.
When he was renovating the house we previously lived at, he decided to go out and try to tame the jungle of our backyard. He loaded up his truck with his tools and headed out back. But the recent rains had saturated the ground. He drove over a soft spot on the hill leading back up to his house, and the tires began to sink in the mud. The harder he drove, the lower the spinning tires got.
Long story short, his truck was stuck in the backyard for a week. (A week!)
And no, this wasn’t the last time he’s got his truck stuck in the mud. I know some of you probably have your own stories that you could tell of the same thing happening.
Recently, I was thinking about my work on this blog and everything that goes with it, and I began to feel a little like that truck stuck spinning tires in the mud but going nowhere.
I was trying to do all the things – show up on my social media every day, post content, start Facebook groups, redo the website, and have a growing email list. But the harder I spun, the lower I sank in the mud. I was going nowhere.
Maybe you can relate. You are busy spinning your tires, hustling, and working all the time. But the spinning isn’t getting you anywhere. You’re stuck.
In moments like these, we often don’t need to do more.
We’ve recently had a string of rainy days as we head into hurricane season, and the front of my husband’s shop is starting to become a muddy mess. On one of those days, he went back out in his big truck, loaded up to go work on site. As he got ready to pull out, I could see the telltale signs of spinning, sinking tires. In that moment, he didn’t need to just press on ahead. He needed to change direction and move to a place where he could gain more traction.
When we feel like we are stuck spinning, we also need to get a clear direction. To develop a clear compass.
What if you could filter every decision through a simple, God-given mission statement that reflects your true calling?
This filter becomes your compass. It becomes your guide. It keeps you from getting stuck. It helps you do the work that you actually want to do. It helps you to walk boldly in your calling.
If you are looking for a way to align your work with your calling and mission, download the free guide: Your First Business Blueprint. You’ll walk through the process of narrowing your vision and creating your mission statement.
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We Need A Mission
We’ve talked about the importance of walking boldly into our calling, which requires us to develop a vision for life and refine the values that we want that life to have.
Our unique calling isn’t some mystical thing that we need to look in a magic 8-ball to find out.
Our calling is based on our:
- Gifts
- Burdens
- Seasons
When we live in alignment with this, we can live with intention and not exhaustion. So, when we talk about walking forward into our unique calling, we are talking about work that works with our gifts, burdens, and seasons.
But how many of us revert to old habits and ways of life when the going gets tough?
When we are sleep deprived, the kids are wild, the house is a mess, and the dog is barking, do we truly show our best selves?
In these moments, we need a foundation to fall back on to make sure that we continue living in alignment with our values.
To honor our unique calling, we need a mission.
Without a Clear Mission
Without a clear mission, we drift into overcommitment, burnout, or comparison.
When people come to us with needs, we feel obligated to say yes – even if it doesn’t match our calling. We overextend ourselves and then are left not doing the work that we are uniquely gifted for, work that speaks to our burdens and seasons. We are blown and tossed by the whims of others.
Overextension almost always leads to burnout. When we are moving a million miles a minute, we never pause to think: Is this pace sustainable? Pretty soon, we are worn out and run down, and we crash. We’ve focused so much on being everything to everyone that we neglect the good work we are supposed to do.
Sometimes, we are overextended – not because someone is asking us to do something – but because we are caught in a comparison trap. We see a new shiny thing – whether that’s an ideal self, trend, or actual object – and we think that if we had that thing, we would feel happy. We see that other successful people have done this thing, and so we try to squash the work that we want to do in the mold that someone else has created. We don’t live out our unique calling because we are trying to step into someone else’s.
Social media and ministry work can become noisy—producing content, helping people—but losing the thread of what God actually asked you to do.
We just try to hustle harder and do more in order to get what we feel is more traction in our work.
We think: If only I could post one more reel, one more story, one more product, then I’ll finally have arrived.
But, in our heart of hearts, we know, the fruit of our ministry is never tied to our follower count. It is never tied to the ‘metrics of big.’
This is the danger of influencer culture. When we influence without intentionality, we can grow – gathering followers – without bearing lasting fruit with our lives.
People will like us when we entertain them, but the second we require something of them, they will leave us behind.
And, honestly, this is something that we should learn to embrace. We are in good company because Jesus experienced this, too. And, if we look at Jesus’ ministry, we can get a roadmap for how to manage our influence and ministry. And why it is so important to clarify our mission.
The Intersection of Influence & Ministry
We live in the midst of influencer culture, but what truly is influence? Is influence something that we should aspire to have?
At first, the thought of shaping other people’s lives may seem like a weight that is too big to handle, but truly, we are all called to discipleship – and discipleship is the practice of shaping the lives of others. When we have influence with the goal of discipleship, we can grow God’s kingdom with wisdom and care.
Our influence is tied to and works out of our Ministry. The word ministry comes from the word servant. Our ministry is living out the Gospel in the spaces that God has entrusted to us. We work to bring God’s kingdom to earth.
When we look at our influence and ministry together, we see how our influence can become ministry when aligned with our calling.
One example of this can be found in parenting. Parenting is a calling. It honors our gifts (of our children), our burdens (to see them grow up strong in the lord), and our season (the season of having a full next). When we are parents, we have influence over our children to shape their lives. This all lived out in our ministry – as we serve our children in an attempt to live out the Gospel to the glory of God.
An example from my life is podcasting. I enjoy and feel like I am gifted in writing and teaching. I have a burden for helping people create beautiful, intentional lives that honor their current realities. I also am in the season of littles. In this season, my influence doesn’t include lots of crowds and classes, but it can include this little space of the internet that I can pour into during nap time. I get to live out my calling through this ministry of creating podcasts and other resources for you here.
The intersection of influence and ministry can be found in so many areas of life – hospitality, creative work, church ministry, and more.
What can help us align our calling, influence, and ministry so that our lives can bear good fruit for the kingdom? Clarifying our mission.
Finding Your Why
At a mission trip I went on when I was in high school, one of my mentors gave me a book that he believed was foundational for ministry: Start with Why by Simon Sinek. In this book, he encourages readers to begin not with products, processes, or even outcomes. The beginning is always the why behind what you are doing.
Related: 5 Tips for Creating Your Dreams: How to Move Forward
When you develop your why, you have the reason that becomes the filter for your actions. Your why is your values applied to your ministry. It becomes your guide.
You need to find your why. Here are three guiding questions to help you clarify your mission:
- What has God uniquely given me? (gifts, personality, resources)
- Who am I called to serve right now?
- What fruit do I want to see in their lives?
Our mission is tied to our calling. Our calling gives us direction. We consider our gifts, burdens, and seasons, and consider the work that we could do that would honor those three things.
Our mission is our calling in action. We consider our gifts, personality, and resources, and we think about how we can steward those gifts to grow God’s kingdom. Then, we turn to our burden. Who are we trying to reach? Who are we called to serve? Finally, we think: How do I want these people to grow?
The Christian life is one of multiplication. We aren’t called to take our talents and bury them in the sand. We are called to use those talents and increase them tenfold. The good seed bears 100, 60, and 40 times what was sown.
My why is one borne out the my current life. I look at my life, and I don’t want it to be lived in vain. I want it to be truly beautiful – a life that is lived for the glory of God to the good of his kingdom. But I know how easy it is to dream up ideals that crumble in the face of the stresses we experience.
So I use my technology know-how, my ability to write, teach, and create, and the time in the margins of my day to create this space that encourages all of us to reach for the beautiful, lovely life in the midst of the messes.
I hope that you will also take what we talk about here and multiply it in your life as you influence your children, your spouse, and your community. We press on towards the hope that we have.
If you want to learn more about your calling, you can get the Build a More Beautiful Life Workbook on the AMBL shop. In 5 days, you will consider your calling and align your life to live it out more beautifully.
Build a More Beautiful Life | Faith and Family Devotional Workbook – 5-Day Christian PDF to Align Faith, Family, and Work
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Mission Filters: How to Decide What’s Yours to Do
In Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, he tells the story of a man, Eddie, who didn’t have a clear mission guiding his work. His primary career was to rake leaves. But, once he visited a house, he would continue to offer his other services – because what could it hurt? A paycheck is a paycheck, right? But with every job comes the price tag associated with completing that job. You need the equipment and supplies – not to mention the time that it takes to ‘figure things out.’
The conclusion of Eddie’s day? Sure, his $50 job raking leaves had morphed into $2000 of gutter cleaning, roof repair, and chimney restoration. However, the amount he had spent on supplies had ballooned to $2500.
We need to stay focused on our mission because, truly, we will be more ‘profitable’ that way. Our profit will probably not be measured by the number in our bank accounts. But it will be measured by our fruitfulness.
I shared before where I felt the intersection of my influence and ministry is. Even though I recognize this intersection, I have felt the pull of trying to spin my wheels to have meaningless growth.
About once every few months, I find myself asking What more should I do? Should I start a roadside bakery? A homestead? Begin an embroidery business? Maybe I should teach myself how to sew and get something going with that?
None of these things is bad. Truly, many could be good and worthwhile things. They could be life-giving.
But in this season I am in with the calling I have, I shouldn’t be distracted by them. My time is too precious to allow myself to be turned to the right or left, chasing the shiny things.
I need to keep an eye on my mission. It is what allows me to say yes to what is the right thing now.
There are a million ways we can be distracted by social media and other opportunities that can get in the way of living out our mission. That’s why I always pass through anything I do through a mission filter.
Yes, extracurricular activities for kids are great – but it may not be the season for that this year. Yes, trips can become fond memories – but maybe we have to turn our focus away from that right now. And, yes, maybe this work opportunity would lead to fast growth, but choosing this would mean saying no to my family, which is something that I am not willing to do right now.
We should say yes to what aligns with our why – and say no to what doesn’t.
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Creating Your Mission Statement
Ultimately, we are all commanded to go and make disciples. The way that we live out that commandment will change depending on our unique calling. If we use our mission as a guide, we can live fruitful lives for God.
What is your mission?
- What has God uniquely given you?
- Who are you called to serve right now?
- What fruit do you want to see in their lives?
Take some time this week to write a simple, one-sentence mission statement. Then, share it with a trusted friend, mentor, or spouse for feedback.
If you want to take it a step further – before saying yes to the next opportunity, run it through your mission filter.
You can walk through creating a mission statement aligned with your calling in the Build a More Beautiful Life Workbook: 5 Days to Align Your Work, Calling, and Family.
I’d love to hear your mission statement. You can dm me or send me an email with your mission after listing.
Remember: You don’t need to be pulled into a million distractions. Do the faithful work God has entrusted you to do in this moment.
Thank you so much for listening this week! If you liked this episode, please like and subscribe wherever you listen. You can also leave a rating and review to help others find the show.
You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at A More Beautiful Life Collective. Also, join our Facebook group where we are currently walking through the 30 Days to A Life You Love challenge.
Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God.
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