Win Today: Your Roadmap to Wholeness
by Art of Leadership Network
Life is complicated, and quick fixes won't address the deeper challenges you face in your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. "Win Today" provides practical guidance for lasting growth. Each week, you'll hear from trusted leaders and experts who offer wisdom, insights, and a durable plan to help you overcome obstacles and create real, sustainable change. This isn't about temporary solutions—it's about building a foundation for transformation and maturity from the inside out.
Episodes
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"Nice" Isn't a Fruit of the Spirit. Ryan Miller on The Hidden Power of Meekness and the Distraction Keeping Us From Intimacy with Jesus
Perhaps you have learned to be agreeable rather than obedient, careful rather than courageous, quiet enough never to be accused of pride, and somewhere along the way you began calling that Christlikeness. If the fire you once carried has been sanded down into something polite and manageable, and...
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The Hidden Faces of Narcissism. Chuck DeGroat on Narcissistic Traits vs. Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Why Self-Awareness Isn't Enough to Change Your Patterns
Somewhere along the way, the performance became the person, and now you can't tell where the effort to look faithful ends and actual faithfulness begins. You know the language of sin and repentance; you can name your type, and people call you disciplined, loyal, even authentic, yet underneath…
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Philip Anthony Mitchell Exposes the Greatest Threat to the American Church
Sitting under preaching every Sunday is not the same as knowing the Scriptures well enough to recognize when you are being led somewhere the text never meant to take you. A sermon that never confronts your sin can feel like grace, until one day you realize that your discernment and your hunger…
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If Everything Is Trauma, Nothing Is. Dr. Les Parrott on Overthinking, Trauma Culture, and Why Love Refuses to Coddle You.
Dr. Les Parrott joins me for a conversation that refuses the comfort of our cultural vocabulary. As a clinical psychologist, Les insists that pain isn't the same thing as trauma, and that the difference lies in what an experience has done to your capacity to feel safe and function, not in how…
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Seen by Everyone, Known by No One. Ian Simkins on Why the Image You Curate Is the Reason You're So Lonely
You've become very good at being seen. You know how to read a room, how to offer just enough of your story to seem open while keeping the deepest thing safely out of view, how to hand the world a competent, admirable version of yourself. And still, underneath the feed and the applause and the...
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Your Addiction to Comfort Is Avoidance in Disguise. Jonathan Eckert on the Happiness Crisis, and Why Joy Grows Only Through Struggle.
Jonathan Eckert has spent more than three decades watching what happens to people, young and old, when comfort becomes the organizing principle of a life, and in this conversation he draws the line most of us have blurred: the line between happiness that is circumstantial, self-focused, and...
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The Real Reason You're Stuck Is Hiding in Plain Sight. Elevation Worship's LJ Mitchell on Why Hidden Reps Lead to Longevity and Character, and Why It's Time to Confront the Thing You Can't See
LJ Mitchell has spent a decade as the music director of Elevation Worship, and he joins me for a conversation that begins with performed faith and refuses to stay on the surface. Because the reason we broadcast the walk is the same reason we cannot put down the role: we have confused what we do...
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How Healing Becomes an Idol. Toni Collier on Why We're More Obsessed With Healing Than Becoming Holy.
Toni Collier joins me for a conversation that started with one sentence she posted online, watched go viral, and could not fully explain: some of us have become more obsessed with healing than becoming holy. We sit with what that exposes. Toni is the founder of Broken Crayons Still Color and the...
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Why Did We Trade Hard Truth for a TED Talk? Jacob Coyne on the Commercialization of Christianity and the Wilderness Where God Actually Builds You.
Jacob Coyne joins me this week with the credibility of someone who has lived on both sides of that gap. He built a platform of more than a million followers and a suicide prevention movement that has reached a generation, and then received a warning that reordered his life: you cannot build a…
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"Self-Help Culture Is The Truest Form of Satanism." Christa Black Singh on Manifestation, the New Age Counterfeit in the Church, Psychedelics, and The Trap of Christianity Light.
You set out to have more faith, not to practice witchcraft, so nothing about your prayer life ever felt like sorcery. You were quoting Scripture the whole time. You learned to declare the promise, stand on the Word, and pray until the breakthrough came. But somewhere in there your prayers quietly...
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You Made a god Out of Safety and Control. Dr. Alison Cook on Secure Attachment to God, the Certainty We Worship, and the Security Your Soul Was Built For.
You would never call it worship. You'd call it being responsible. But look at what you organize your life around, what you reach for the second the ground shifts, the thing you cannot fall asleep without having settled. You have built an altar to certainty, and you bow at it every time fear...
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You're Not in a Rough Season. You're EMPTY. Dr. Chris Palmer on the Meaning Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight.
You said you were fine, but fine is not a spiritual condition—it's a managed one. Fine means you've stopped expecting anything, stopped reaching for anything, and settled into the low hum of a life that moves without going anywhere. You're not in crisis. You're not walking away from the Lord....
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Why We'd Rather Trick Ourselves Than Train Ourselves. Geoffrey Cain on What Steve Jobs's Wilderness Years Can Teach You About Failure, Ego, and Comeback.
You know the feeling. The world that once held shape around you — the role, the identity, the thing you built or pursued or believed about yourself — has come apart. And instead of leaning into the chaos and learning what it has to teach you, you've found a more comfortable option. You've...
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SUMMER BREAK: Sex Addiction 101. Jay Stringer Unpacks the Anatomy of Sexual Addiction and Predicting Destructive Lifestyle Choices
Sexual addiction is often treated as a behavior problem. Stop the behavior. Remove the temptation. Try harder next time. But what if the behavior is not the real issue? What if the patterns that bring shame, secrecy, and self-sabotage are actually revealing something deeper about the story you...
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SUMMER BREAK: God Won't Force You to Heal. Debra Fileta on The Reason Most People Aren't Emotionally Healthy, How "Trauma-Informed" Has Been Taken Too Far, and Why You Can't Be Spiritually Mature if Your Mental Health is in the Trash
We talk about healing as though it's inevitable. As though proximity to Scripture, therapy language, or Christian community automatically produces transformation. But God does not force anyone into wholeness. He invites. He confronts. He calls. And too many believers confuse awareness with…
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SUMMER BREAK: Not Everything Hard is Trauma. Dr. Lee Warren on What it Means to Take a Thought Captive and What to Do When You Can't Stop the Anxiety Spiral
We live in a moment where difficulty is quickly labeled as damage and discomfort is often treated as pathology. While trauma is real and serious, not every hard moment is trauma—and confusing the two can quietly undermine resilience, clarity, and growth. When every struggle is interpreted as...
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SUMMER BREAK: Therapy Culture is BLOCKING Your Ability to Heal. Dr. Lee Warren on The "Problem" with Our Brains, Getting Out of Survival Mode, and Compulsive Rumination
We are more self-aware than ever, and yet many people feel more stuck, anxious, and exhausted than before. Therapy culture has helped us name pain, but it often leaves us circling it. Insight increases, language expands, but healing stalls. What if the very frameworks meant to help us are quietly...
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When Did You Turn Jesus Into a Good Luck Charm? Bethany Wohrle Opens Up About the Miracle That Never Came and the Faith That Stayed.
Something happened that you cannot explain, and none of the explanations you have been handed since hold any weight. You prayed the prayer of faith. You declared the promise out loud. The outcome you were certain of never arrived. What you are left holding is a faith that worked exactly as it was...
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Are You Maturing or Just Getting Older? Fr. Ronald Rolheiser on the Necessary Wilderness, The Sting of Bitterness, and the Grief That Changes You.
Something shifts in the middle of life that you were not warned about. The fervor you once had—the fire, the sense that God was close, and the faith was vivid—has gone flat. And the question underneath your silence, the one you are ashamed to admit, is not "What happened to my faith?" It is "What...
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Your Faith Has Become a Job, and Jesus Never Hired You. Tim Timmons on Quitting Performance Christianity and Why We Have to Learn How to Wrestle with God.
Somewhere between the prayer requests, the small group answers, and the service rotation, you stopped following Jesus and started working for him. You know what this feels like: the quiet exhaustion under the faithfulness, the sense that God has become an employer and you have become an employee...
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Why Are You Still Performing for the Applause You Claim Not to Need? Pentatonix's Kevin Olusola and Donovan Dee Donnell on Giving Up the Ghost and Getting Into Alignment.
You already know something is off. The output is there. You're showing up, doing the work, performing at a level other people can see. But underneath all of it, there's a strain you can't quite name — a low-grade exhaustion that has nothing to do with how many hours you slept and everything to do...
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OCD Is Worse Than You Realize. Patrick Lencioni Exposes the Intrusive Thoughts Nobody Talks About in Church.
You have found ways to make your wound productive. You turned the thing that broke you into the engine that drives you — and somewhere along the way, you started calling that a superpower. You are high-functioning and deeply exhausted, achieving without arriving, performing your way through life...
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You're Trading Your Soul for Approval. Tyler Staton on Why Your Hurry, Your Limits, and Your Need to Be Loved Are All Connected
You've been filling your days to the brim and calling it faithfulness. Every hour accounted for. Every margin eliminated. You pull it all off, too, and you reach the end of the day unable to say why it felt empty. The people you love most were technically present, but you couldn't really see…
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You've Put God on Trial for Something He Didn't Do. Ryan Maher Unpacks Blame, Sovereignty, and What Trust Actually Costs.
There is something underneath the anger you can't quite name. It sounds like disappointment. It feels like betrayal. And it has God's name on it. You prayed. You believed. You held on as long as you could. And then the thing you were afraid of happened anyway. So somewhere in the quiet, you…
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The More You Know, the More Cynical You Become. Carey Nieuwhof on Pattern Recognition, Grief, and Finishing Well.
You have more knowledge than you've ever had, and somehow you're more tired. More guarded. More prone to walk into a room and see everything wrong with it before you see anything right. You used to believe things would get better. Now you believe you've simply seen enough to know they probably...
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Christian Self-Help Is Lying to You. Dr. Henry Cloud on What Real Change Actually Requires.
You have tried harder. You have read the books, made the commitments, restarted the plan, and believed — genuinely believed — that this time would be different. And yet, five years later, you are looking at the same patterns, the same walls, the same version of yourself you were trying to leave...
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Jamie Winship: "You Don't Know What Water You're Swimming In." The Separation Worldview and the Scarcity Lie Running Your Life.
You can feel it, even if you have never named it. The tightness around not having enough, not being enough, not doing enough. The reflex to protect what you have before someone takes it. The way your relationships quietly become negotiations, your faith quietly becomes performance, and your inner...
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Some People Like You Better Broken. Tim Ross on Dysregulation, Curated Narratives, and the Peace That Actually Holds.
You have been managing something for a long time. Maybe you don't call it that. Maybe it shows up as a low-grade restlessness, a reflexive reaching for the phone, a fullness in your chest that never quite resolves. You've done the spiritual things. You've prayed, you've worshipped, you've pressed...
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This Is Why You Keep Having the Same Argument. Jason VanRuler on the Wound Behind Every Fight You Can't Escape.
You have already tried the conversations. You have tried slowing down, choosing better words, waiting for the right moment. And still something derails it — the same wall, the same disconnect, the same feeling that you are speaking into air. What you have probably not tried is understanding why…
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Your Jesus Is Too Small. Kyle Idleman on the Domestication of Jesus, Weird Subculture Christianity, and Why a Comfortable Savior Can't Save You.
You have configured Jesus to fit your life. Not consciously, not maliciously, but you have done it nonetheless. The algorithm of your preferences, your comfort thresholds, your political loyalties, your financial anxieties — they all quietly shape the version of Jesus you bring to church, to...
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Everyone Is Spiritual. Very Few Are Discerning. Dr. Joel Muddamalle on The Unseen Battle of Deception.
You have a vague, unsettled sense that something is off—in the culture, in the church, maybe even in your own spiritual life—but you cannot quite name it, and so you keep moving, hoping it will clarify on its own. It will not clarify on its own. What you are sensing is real, and there is a name…
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You're Betraying Your Future Self Every Time You Do THIS. Jon Acuff on Why Procrastination "Protects" You and the Permission to Finally Start.
You know what you're supposed to do. You've known for a while. And yet here you are, on the other side of another day that didn't deliver what you intended, wondering why you keep choosing the version of yourself that never has to be tested. The uncomfortable truth is that you're not failing...
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You Don't Want Freedom as Much as You Think You Do. Alex Seeley Confronts Why We Like to Stay Stuck in Error and Delusion.
Many people say they want freedom. They pray for it, talk about it, and surround themselves with language that sounds like transformation. But beneath the surface, there is often resistance. Patterns persist. Mindsets remain unchallenged. And responsibility is quietly avoided. This week on Win...
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MercyMe's Bart Millard on Why Suffering Isn't Your Core Problem and What God Is Actually Doing in Your Pain
You may be walking through disappointment. You may feel tempted to withdraw. You may not know how to trust God again. This conversation with Bart Millard from MercyMe will help you understand what it means to stay present, stay honest, and allow God to form something deeper in you through what…
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Your Soul Is Fragmented. Now What? Heath Hardesty on Why You Can't Receive God's Love and the Lie of Self-Improvement Christianity
Many people today feel scattered. Attention is fractured, emotions are unsteady, and spiritual life feels more like survival than formation. We move from one demand to the next, one distraction to another, and somewhere along the way, the soul begins to splinter. This week on Win Today, Heath...
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You Can't Bubble Bath Your Way to Wellness. Jennifer Breheny Wallace on Absorbing the Lies of Useless and Worthless, Why Self-Esteem Has a Short Fuse, Mattering vs. Validation, Toxic Success, and Why Hyper-Visibility is Fake Connection
We are living in a moment where the language of self-care is everywhere. Protect your peace. Take a break. Treat yourself. But beneath the bubble baths and wellness rituals, something deeper is breaking down. People are absorbing quiet but powerful lies that they are useless, replaceable, or...
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Are You Prepared for Chaos? Paige Collins on the Necessary Posture in Shaking, The Cost of Surrender, and the Exploration of How God Speaks to People in Dreams
Every generation eventually faces moments when stability disappears, and the ground beneath our assumptions begins to shake. Cultural chaos, personal uncertainty, and unexpected upheaval have a way of revealing what our faith is actually built upon. In those moments, the question is no longer...
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Selective Obedience is KILLING Your Faith. Hosanna Wong on Confusing the Practices of Jesus with Jesus Himself, Selective Obedience, How We Make Legalism Cool, The Role of Hiddenness and Crushing, and the 6 Roadblocks to Connecting with God
It is possible to practice the rhythms of faith and still miss the Person those rhythms were meant to lead us to. We can read Scripture, attend church, adopt the language of discipleship, and build entire spiritual lives around the habits of Jesus—while quietly drifting from intimacy with Jesus...
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Let's Talk About Sex (Addiction). Jay Stringer Unpacks the Anatomy of Sexual Addiction, Predicting Destructive Lifestyle Choices, Why Healing Addiction Requires Curiosity, and Why Grief Has the Power to Change What You Desire
Sexual addiction is often treated as a behavior problem. Stop the behavior. Remove the temptation. Try harder next time. But what if the behavior is not the real issue? What if the patterns that bring shame, secrecy, and self-sabotage are actually revealing something deeper about the story you...
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God Won't Force You to Heal. Debra Fileta on The Reason Most People Aren't Emotionally Healthy, How "Trauma-Informed" Has Been Taken Too Far, and Why You Can't Be Spiritually Mature if Your Mental Health is in the Trash
We talk about healing as though it's inevitable. As though proximity to Scripture, therapy language, or Christian community automatically produces transformation. But God does not force anyone into wholeness. He invites. He confronts. He calls. And too many believers confuse awareness with…
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The Addiction No One Talks About. Stephen McWhirter on Numbing with Content and Life Hacks, The Bitterness We Carry in Our Bodies, and Becoming a Resting Place for Chaos
There are ways Christians escape that don't look like rebellion. They look like busyness. Performance. Endless content. Religious activity. We stay "engaged," but we are quietly numb. And over time, that numbness settles into the body as anxiety, irritability, and bitterness we don't know how to...
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Undoing the Deception of Self-Creation. Abdu Murray Exposes How We've Taken Empathy Too Far, The Syrupy "Sloganeering" of the Church, The Liabilities of Our Post-Truth Culture, and Why Identity is a Paper-Thin Idea
We are living through a crisis of clarity. In the name of empathy, we have untethered compassion from truth, traded moral courage for slogans, and reduced identity to something endlessly self-constructed. The result is not freedom, but confusion, where words lose meaning, conviction is treated as...
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Not Everything Hard is Trauma. Dr. Lee Warren on What it Means to Take a Thought Captive, What to Do When You Can't Stop the Anxiety Spiral, Challenging Automatic Thinking, and What Scientists Botch on a Regular Basis
We live in a moment where difficulty is quickly labeled as damage and discomfort is often treated as pathology. While trauma is real and serious, not every hard moment is trauma—and confusing the two can quietly undermine resilience, clarity, and growth. When every struggle is interpreted as...
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Hustle Culture Creates Burnout. Brad Stulberg on The Biology of Excellence and the Art of Becoming, Rugged Flexibility, How to Curate Your Content Better, and the Two Kinds of Burnout
Excellence isn't a personality trait or a hustle tactic. It's a way of becoming. And in a culture driven by distraction, convenience, and external validation, genuine excellence is quietly eroding. What replaces it looks productive but feels hollow, leaving many people burned out, scattered, or...
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Therapy Culture is BLOCKING Your Ability to Heal. Dr. Lee Warren on The "Problem" with Our Brains, Addressing the Resistance that Shows Up When We Try to Heal, Getting Out of Survival Mode, and Compulsive Rumination
We are more self-aware than ever, and yet many people feel more stuck, anxious, and exhausted than before. Therapy culture has helped us name pain, but it often leaves us circling it. Insight increases, language expands, but healing stalls. What if the very frameworks meant to help us are quietly...
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476: [Formed.] Spiritual But Not Religious? Lisa Bevere on What an Exorcist Said About Tarot and Oracle Cards, How the Progressive Movement is Connected to Self-Deification, and Why The Church is Too Comfortable Preaching Catchy Phrases
We live in a moment where spiritual language is everywhere, but formation is rare. Many people claim to be spiritual while rejecting authority, truth, and discipline. Others consume sermons built on slogans rather than Scripture, leaving their faith thin, sentimental, and easily shaken. The…
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475: [Formed.] Are You Suffering? Dr. Craig Keener on The Necessary Theology of Suffering, How to Develop a New Mindset About Affliction, Hurdling Unresolved Disappointment, Why God is Not in a Hurry to Mature Us, and the Pressure That Shapes Us
Suffering exposes what we believe about God faster than success ever could. When affliction lingers, disappointment goes unresolved, and growth feels slower than we want, the question isn't whether God is present—it's whether our theology can carry the weight of real life. Too many believers...
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474: [Formed.] It's Just LAZY Christianity. Ian Simkins on The Fingerprints of a Disordered Life, Developing Discernment as You Train for Godliness, Why the Crucible of Formation is in the Monotony of Everyday Life, and Restoring the Fire of Discipleshi
Spiritual drift rarely announces itself. It doesn't show up as rebellion or collapse. It shows up as subtle disorder, numbed discernment, and a slow loss of fire in the ordinary rhythms of life. Most people don't abandon discipleship; they simply stop training for it. This week on Win Today, Ian...
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473: [Formed.] Comfort Won't Mature You. Dr. Joel Tudman on How We Cheat Ourselves in the Wilderness, Why "Finding Yourself" is a Waste of Time, The Beauty of Being Pulled Apart by the Lord, and Fighting to Stay Agile in a Disruptive Life
Comfort feels kind, but it keeps you immature. The wilderness is where God trains you for weight, yet most of us cheat the process by numbing pain, curating outcomes, and calling it wisdom, while our souls atrophy. This week on Win Today, Dr. Joel Tudman joins me to expose why "finding yourself...
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472: [Formed.] Will You Kill Entitlement and Self-Pity? Kristene DiMarco Unpacks Rekindling Spiritual Hunger, The Danger in Numbing Boredom, Training Your Soul for Godliness, and Laying Down Your "Right" to Be Offended by Life
There's a reason your hunger fades when life gets busy and your soul gets loud: boredom becomes a shortcut to numbing, entitlement masquerades as discernment, and self-pity convinces you that endurance is optional. This week on Win Today, Bethel Music's Kristene DiMarco joins me to confront the...
About this show
Life is complicated, and quick fixes won't address the deeper challenges you face in your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. "Win Today" provides practical guidance for lasting growth. Each week, you'll hear from trusted leaders and experts who offer wisdom, insights, and a durable plan to help you overcome obstacles and create real, sustainable change. This isn't about temporary solutions—it's about building a foundation for transformation and maturity from the inside out.
Hosted by
Art of Leadership Network
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