Episode
Soul Weary: When the Work You Love Starts Draining You | Margaret Benefiel, Ph.D & Margie Buchanan-Smith
- Podcast
- Create Magic At Work®
- Published
- Aug 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1979
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Summary
What happens when work rooted in service slowly disconnects you from the very values that called you to it? For leaders working inside humanitarian crises, nonprofits, healthcare, education, business, and other demanding systems, exhaustion can become more than physical. Margie Buchanan-Smith calls it “soul weary,” the feeling of dragging yourself from one demand to the next while losing contact with purpose. Amy, Margie, and Dr. Margaret Benefiel , explore what it takes to stay human when need is immense, resources are shrinking, and systems increasingly reward compliance, metrics, and upward accountability. Margie brings the reality of decades in humanitarian leadership. Margaret brings a spiritual lens to organizational life, asking how leaders can draw on inner resources when systemic dysfunction cannot simply be worked around. Replenishment emerges not as escape from responsibility, but as part of how responsibility is sustained. So do values alignment, contemplative practice, community, and the willingness to take thoughtful risks. The work does not become less urgent when a leader pauses. Sometimes the pause restores the ability to see clearly. A breath, five quiet minutes, or an honest question about whose rules we are following can reconnect leadership with the people, purpose, and inner knowing that made the work matter in the first place. Moments That Create Momentum: When Compliance Pulls Leaders Away From Purpose – Explore how an intense focus on reporting, accountability, and organizational requirements can disconnect leaders from the people they serve and the values that brought them to the work. What It Means to Become Soul Weary – Understand how sustained pressure in purpose-driven work can slowly deplete a leader’s inner resources, and why burnout can…