ELIZABETH OLDFIELD: Becoming Steady, Connected, and Fully Alive

The Double Win

Michael Hyatt

Productivity, Teamleadership, Mental Health, Business, Leadership, Selfleadership, Personaldevelopment, Intentionality, Influence, Achievement, Selfdevelopment, Self-improvement, Management, Health & Fitness, Education

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the key to thriving isn’t managing your circumstances perfectly—but rooting yourself in the connections that matter most? In this heartfelt conversation, Michael and Megan talk with Elizabeth Oldfield, author of Fully Alive, about reclaiming depth, community, and soul-level steadiness in a culture addicted to speed and distraction. Elizabeth draws on ancient wisdom, modern insight, and her own experience living in intentional community to offer a hopeful path forward.

Memorable Quotes

“You need to put your roots down deep into love and work out how to find some steadiness.”
“When we are honest about our full humanity, we give other people permission to do that, and that's a necessary starting point for actually growing up our souls rather than pretending that we all know what we’re doing and we’re holding it all together.”
“Where we put our attention is essentially who we become.”
“I have this sense that fully aliveness is in connection, deep connection, horizontally and vertically.”
“Hurrying and destruction are not how we flourish, and we’re constantly being encouraged to do those things. So we need to provide some counter pressure towards slowness and steadiness and presence.”

Key Takeaways

Connection Is the Core of Flourishing. Relationships—messy, costly, inconvenient—are where we become more fully human.
Attention Shapes Who You Become. Distraction isn’t just a nuisance; it’s a soul-shaping force. Guard your focus.
Structure Time Around Your Values. A “rule of life” puts what matters most in place first, so the rest fits around it.
Commitment Fuels Depth. Vulnerability without commitment fizzles; together they form lasting community.
Ancient Practices Still Work. Sabbath, liturgy, and shared rhythms anchor us in what endures.

Resources

Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield
The Sacred podcast by Elizabeth Oldfield

Watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/-anckhHSdHM

This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's costly living in a community. It's costly being in a congregation. It's costly being a neighbor
0:04.6	because we are not in control of other people and they imping on our space and they come up difficult
0:09.3	times and it's not efficient. And when we remove ourselves because of those difficulties,
0:16.1	I think our souls shrink. I think we've become less fully human.
0:21.6	Hi, I'm Michael Hyatt. And I'm Megan Hyatt Miller. And you're listening to The Double Wind Show.
0:26.5	Well, today we are so excited to share our recent conversation with Elizabeth Oldfield.
0:32.7	So this conversation, y'all, I cannot wait for you to hear because she is a kindred spirit.
0:40.0	And Elizabeth is a writer, a speaker, a podcast host, and she's focused on ethics, culture, and human flourishing, emphasis on human flourishing underscore.
0:50.6	She is formerly the director of Theo's, a think tank exploring faith and public life,
0:55.9	and she's host of The Sacred, which is a podcast featuring deep bridge-building conversations
1:01.6	across ideological and religious divides. She's a frequent media contributor on topics of
1:07.2	meaning, spirituality, and contemporary culture. And what we're going to talk about with her today is her book, which came out last year.
1:14.1	She's just getting ready to come out in paperback called Fully Alive.
1:17.6	And it explores the subtitle is Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times.
1:22.5	And she talks about reclaiming depth, connection, and purpose in a modern world.
1:26.6	And in some ways, I feel like that
1:27.7	really doesn't do it justice because she's talking about how do we steady ourselves in a world
1:34.6	that feels like it's changing faster than we can keep up with. It's unsettling. It's overwhelming.
1:41.3	You know, what do we do? And so we get into that in detail, including her story.
1:45.6	She lives in an intentional community.
1:48.2	She calls it a micro-modestery in London with her husband and children,
1:52.3	and she embraces shared rhythms of life and hospitality.
	...

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