Latest / Making Cents / How to Embrace Ambition Without Burnout, with Mindset Coach Sarah Robb

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How to Embrace Ambition Without Burnout, with Mindset Coach Sarah Robb · Making Cents

• 0:00
  Being ambitious is not the problem.
• 0:03
  Wanting more, working hard, caring about what you do, none of that is what's burning you out.
• 0:10
  But a lot of highly performing people do burn out.
• 0:14
  They do become exhausted.
• 0:16
  And while there can be many complicating factors on why that's happening, an unfortunate reality is that really, we're the only ones who can create the system to break that cycle.
• 0:29
  Now, Sarah Robb is a mindset coach and speaker who specializes in helping us with exactly this.
• 0:36
  She has this very annoying habit of saying the things that we know are true deep down, but weren't ready to admit just yet.
• 0:45
  People don't get burnt out.
• 0:47
  We actually burn ourselves out.
• 0:49
  And it's a lack of our understanding of where our energy is going to.
• 0:54
  We make around 30,000 choices every day, and if you want a different outcome in life, it starts by making a different choice.
• 1:01
  Because however we get into this cycle, usually we're the only ones who can break ourselves out of it.
• 1:07
  We've actually overcomplicated it all.
• 1:10
  We've overcomplicated life.
• 1:12
  We've got stuck in these patterns.
• 1:14
  But actually the basics work change is simple.
• 1:18
  Simple and easy answer can you actually.
• 1:21
  Be ambitious and not destroyed?
• 1:24
  Or is exhaustion just the price of entry when you want to build a bigger life?
• 1:29
  A lot of people think that doing this inner work is glamorous, and we read all the books and that's just the surface level.
• 1:35
  When you're actually doing the deeper inner work, it's chaotic, it's messy, it's confusing.
• 1:41
  It's not this pretty glamorous picture that we see on Instagram, that's for sure.
• 1:46
  So welcome to Making Sense.
• 1:48
  It's the podcast for people who want financial freedom without giving up their coffee.
• 1:52
  I'm Frances Cook, a financial journalist and fellow financial freedom seeker who makes money simple for you.
• 1:59
  And today it's the ambitious woman's guide to not burning out.
• 2:04
  This episode of Making Sense is supported by Odoo, the all in one solution to make running your business smoother and more affordable.
• 2:11
  Go to odoo.com that's O D double O dot com for more.
• 2:15
  I want to help as many people as possible reach financial freedom by taking control of their money.
• 2:21
  You can help me in that mission two really easy ways.
• 2:25
  First, hit subscribe wherever you like to listen, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast player.
• 2:32
  Then send this episode to a friend so we can all level up together.
• 2:36
  Then the show grows and I can keep giving you the money info that makes a difference for your life.
• 2:42
  Okay?
• 2:42
  Back to it.
• 2:43
  Welcome, Sarah.
• 2:45
  So glad to have you in.
• 2:46
  You first came across my feed telling me some harsh but fair truths.
• 2:50
  I think talking about how often ambitious women can get in their own way.
• 2:57
  It's never like fun to hear these things, but sometimes we need to hear these things.
• 3:01
  Talk to me a bit about that and how you started seeing this pattern.
• 3:06
  Yeah, it's one of those things.
• 3:07
  Women and men, we can always be our own harshest critic.
• 3:11
  Right.
• 3:12
  And we can get very in our own way and be our biggest block.
• 3:16
  And I definitely was in, you know, in the past, my biggest block as well.
• 3:20
  And so I'm looking forward to chatting a little bit more about that today and giving your audience some golden nuggets of how they can begin to change, you know, their mindsets and start to work with, you know, whether
• 3:32
  they're feeling burnt out, exhausted, not feeling good enough.
• 3:35
  I see it all the time.
• 3:36
  Well, yeah, so tell me about your work because you are, you're dealing with people on exactly this all the time.
• 3:41
  What do you actually do?
• 3:42
  I help women and men really unlock their subconscious mind.
• 3:46
  Now our subconscious mind is 30,000 times more powerful than our conscious mind.
• 3:52
  And I mean, we go through school learning maths and English, but no one really ever teaches us how powerful our minds really are and how we begin to not only work with the mind, but also the body.
• 4:04
  I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not worthy.
• 4:06
  Self doubt imposter syndrome.
• 4:09
  How do you actually begin to break through those things and step into the version of yourself that you want to become?
• 4:15
  So if someone gets in touch with you and says, I feel like I'm blocked, I'm not achieving the things that I want to achieve, where do you start with them?
• 4:24
  You got to start understanding what's happening subconsciously, what's actually at the root.
• 4:29
  We have been conditioned and programmed right since we were born.
• 4:33
  And those programmed society for our parents, they are always playing out in our adult life.
• 4:40
  And so when we start, it's about actually starting to look inwards.
• 4:45
  Whereas in life we have a lot of the time being conditioned to look outwards for the answers, whereas we actually have the answers within us.
• 4:54
  But we have been conditioned to look outside of ourselves.
• 4:58
  So you've got to create that level of awareness.
• 5:00
  One thing I always say to clients and keynotes is that you can't see the labor when you're in the jar.
• 5:07
  And a lot of women are operating in the jar with their old patterns, their old belief systems and wanting something to Change, but they're just rearranging the furniture in the same jar.
• 5:18
  And so you've gotta be able to create a level of awareness first before you can begin to change those patterns in the subconscious mind.
• 5:26
  So how do you create that awareness?
• 5:28
  How do you start to dig into that with people?
• 5:29
  It must be quite tricky.
• 5:31
  Yeah.
• 5:32
  So awareness, especially for women, I see, is so many women rushing through life, constantly on the go, with the kids constantly on the go, you know, and then they get in this kind of spiral of like just go,
• 5:45
  go, go, go, go.
• 5:46
  And not only does that dysregulate the nervous system, it also means that we're operating from, from autopilot.
• 5:53
  And so the first part is to create a level of awareness by actually slowing down, starting to self reflect, starting to actually check in with, you know, how you're operating, what your mind's saying, what are the behaviors that
• 6:07
  are being portrayed in life.
• 6:10
  And the other thing is that so many people are either living in the future or living in the past.
• 6:16
  Future anxiety, overthinking, overwhelm, worst case scenario, thinking, past, trauma, grief, resentment, grudges.
• 6:25
  And so many people are navigating between the past or the future that completely forget one of the most important things in life, and that is presence, the power of now.
• 6:36
  And to create awareness, you have to understand how to come back to presence to be able to actually understand yourself.
• 6:44
  Otherwise you'll repeat what you don't repair.
• 6:48
  It is so easy to get caught in these cycles.
• 6:50
  So what do you see when you've got people sort of dysregulated, living in the past or too much in the future?
• 6:56
  Are there any sort of regular behaviors or patterns that you see over and over in the people that you coach?
• 7:03
  Yeah, so many, especially in women.
• 7:06
  Overthinking self doubt.
• 7:08
  The big one that I see in women, you know, that I really help women with is this self criticism and always shooting on themselves.
• 7:16
  I should be doing this, I shouldn't do that.
• 7:19
  And when we're doing that, what we are doing is we're creating this internal war with ourselves.
• 7:24
  And so, so many people are trying to heal and do this inner work while still in this space being negative towards themselves.
• 7:33
  And you really need to learn how to practice self compassion.
• 7:36
  It is a constant, constant work on.
• 7:39
  But you cannot change while still being at war with yourself.
• 7:43
  So part of the first work that I do with women is really starting to change the relationship with themselves in their internal world.
• 7:50
  There is a difference between self love and self compassion.
• 7:54
  Self love is often the external things Self compassion is everything that's happening in your internal world.
• 8:00
  Start there.
• 8:01
  Because when you start doing the internal work, the external will then start to change.
• 8:07
  That's interesting, drawing that delineation.
• 8:10
  Okay, how do you start to build the muscle of self compassion?
• 8:14
  Well, you firstly have to create the awareness, right?
• 8:16
  And you have to be able to notice when you're your own harshest critic, what you're actually saying to yourself.
• 8:23
  The thing is, is that the brain doesn't care what is true.
• 8:28
  The brain cares what is repeated.
• 8:30
  So you've got to ask yourself, for how many years have I been speaking to myself like this?
• 8:35
  Because if you've been doing it for years, it just becomes automatic because it's just repeated so many times.
• 8:41
  And so a lot of the work that I do is actually helping people retrain the brain, retrain the subconscious.
• 8:47
  And it's all done through repetition.
• 8:49
  But if you don't have someone showing you how to do that, it's kind of like walking around in a dark forest without a torch.
• 8:56
  You just go round and round in circles.
• 8:58
  And, and a lot of the women I work with work with me because I've applied these things in my own life and they can see that the embodiment and integration is more important than actually the knowledge itself.
• 9:13
  I think it's interesting, isn't it?
• 9:14
  Because especially even as I sort of climbed the media world for a long time, I remember having some quite stark realizations as I got to bump up against people who were very outwardly successful and had built something really
• 9:29
  big and that I had always looked up to.
• 9:30
  And then I start working alongside them or near them and you get more of a sort of, you get to know them as actual people and realizing A, that they're just people, but B, that there's quite a lot
• 9:44
  of mess and self doubt behind the scenes.
• 9:47
  And that actually a lot of these people who I had put on a pedestal and were like, they are so successful and they're, you know, who I want to be when I grow up.
• 9:54
  We're deeply struggling, really struggling.
• 9:57
  What do you encounter when you see people who can look very outwardly successful but are either at or approaching that point of burnout internally?
• 10:10
  A lot of the external success, especially in business owners, is actually coming from deeper trauma.
• 10:17
  And a lot of entrepreneurs are had really challenging past same as high performers.
• 10:22
  There's a deep correlation between high performance and your childhood.
• 10:26
  And the reality though is that when they're outwardly successful, a lot of the time it's coming from this need to prove Prove that I'm enough, prove that I can do it.
• 10:36
  Even me.
• 10:37
  I've caught myself in that pattern because as a child I didn't feel good enough.
• 10:41
  I was always seeking my parents love.
• 10:44
  I always wanted to win, but it was always coming from this actual deeper wound that I didn't feel good enough.
• 10:51
  So I would outwardly try to succeed, to feel enough, and to actually mask that wound.
• 10:57
  And so a lot of high performers and a lot of successful people are trying to prove themselves to actually mask a deeper wound.
• 11:05
  I imagine when you're in that sort of cycle, probably there would be never enough.
• 11:10
  I see that pretty frequently as well.
• 11:13
  But that's why doing this inner work on yourself is so important.
• 11:16
  Because for me now it's like, I've got big dreams and goals, but I'm not operating from a place of proving myself.
• 11:26
  And I always talk with my clients about are you operating from your wounds or are you operating from your scars?
• 11:32
  What does it look like when you're doing the difference there?
• 11:35
  So for me, and I'm sure we'll get into a little bit of that, but you know, I've been through a lot of challenges in my life and now I operate from a place of like, that did happen.
• 11:44
  And it is part of my journey and part of my story.
• 11:48
  But I'm no longer operating from a projection or of a wounded place.
• 11:52
  I'm operating from a place of like, that's a scar and I've been able to heal that and I've been able to do the work around that and now I can help other people from that.
• 12:03
  Whereas when you're operating from your wounds, you're unaware of yourself, you're unaware of how you're operating through the world, your projections, the way you're treating other people.
• 12:12
  And this is why, like, actually understanding yourself is the most important journey you'll ever go on.
• 12:18
  Because you think your relationship with your kids and your, your husband and your family is the most important relationship, but the most important relationship you'll ever have is the one with yourself.
• 12:29
  So would it be a fair summary to say if you're operating from a wound that you are probably unconsciously repeating patterns that you haven't thought through and that probably aren't serving you?
• 12:40
  And if you're operating from a scar, it's something you've thought about, you've worked through and you're, maybe it's still impacting you, but you're operating off lessons learned.
• 12:49
  100%, you're operating from the lesson and realizing that everything that we are experiencing in life is here to evolve us.
• 12:58
  It's here to help us grow.
• 13:00
  We don't grow from our successes and triumphs in life.
• 13:03
  We grow from the pain, the heartache, the challenges.
• 13:06
  And it takes a certain level of inner work and awareness to be able to look back at the past and gather that wisdom and gather those lessons.
• 13:16
  Because as I said just before, you'll repeat what you don't repair.
• 13:20
  So you've got to integrate and embody that wisdom so that you stop projecting it into the future and onto other people.
• 13:27
  Seeing as you mentioned it.
• 13:28
  Yeah.
• 13:28
  You know, you are someone who has come from.
• 13:31
  This isn't just professional to you, is it?
• 13:32
  It's personal, too.
• 13:34
  What are some of the scars that have informed how you approach this work?
• 13:39
  Yeah, this is deeply personal, this journey for me.
• 13:42
  And it started back in 2012.
• 13:44
  I was a classic scarfie down in Dunedin.
• 13:48
  And I was lying in bed this one day and I received a phone call from my mum.
• 13:53
  And I remember the drop in her voice and what she said kind of split my life between before and after.
• 14:01
  She said, you father fell off a balcony last night, Sarah, and he died.
• 14:05
  Now, in that moment, I ran down the stairs and tried to find a flatmate.
• 14:10
  And then I went back to Christchurch and we had all the formalities.
• 14:14
  After that happened, I started doing a little bit of this personal development work.
• 14:18
  Now, what made my dad's death really challenging is that my father was an alcoholic for my whole life.
• 14:25
  So I thought that by winning all the races and by being really good at sports, that maybe he'd show up.
• 14:33
  Maybe if I did this, then I'd be good enough.
• 14:35
  And so after my father died, what people don't talk a lot about is that there's grief of somebody that you love, but there's also this grief when you didn't have a good relationship with the person.
• 14:46
  Person.
• 14:46
  And it can be really complex to work through a lot of guilt, a lot of shame.
• 14:50
  Fast forward a few years and I was on my big overseas experience and I got another phone call, that same drop in voice.
• 15:00
  This time it was from my brother.
• 15:02
  And he told me that I needed to get back to Christchurch as fast as possible.
• 15:07
  Mom had had a brain aneurysm and she was still alive, but she had to have a big operation.
• 15:14
  She had the operation and the doctors came out and said that the operation had been successful.
• 15:19
  Now, if anyone's listening to this and been in ICU before, they'll know that it's a very intense place.
• 15:26
  A few days had passed by and you could still feel that agitation in the nerves.
• 15:32
  And the nurses around us, and that day they called a two o' clock family meeting and they told us that Mum had less than 10% brain functioning left and that she wasn't going to survive.
• 15:44
  And so at the age of 26, I had two dead parents, a world of grief, trauma, past, heartache to work through.
• 15:55
  And that's what's led me here.
• 15:56
  As you can see, this journey is personal because I had tried a lot of the traditional therapy, a lot of counseling, but I was sick of talking about the past.
• 16:07
  I was sick of talking about, you know, what had happened in my life.
• 16:11
  And I wanted someone to show me how to actually change, how do I actually create these shifts in my life?
• 16:17
  And that led me over to Australia, where I started to understand the work that I now currently do.
• 16:23
  I can't imagine losing that.
• 16:26
  Yeah, let me know if you need a moment.
• 16:29
  Losing two such central figures at such a young age, and you barely an adult at that point, the prefrontal cortex is just coming online.
• 16:39
  And it must have been so hard to then be like, oh, now what?
• 16:43
  Especially, as you say, you had that relationship with your dad where you were kind of always hoping and waiting for that next thing and it didn't come, and then he's gone.
• 16:51
  Where did that leave you in the aftermath of being like, okay, now how do I rebuild myself as an adult?
• 16:56
  After my father died, I had no coping strategies and no tools.
• 17:01
  My only coping strategy as a Dunedin student was alcohol and drugs.
• 17:06
  And so I found myself in some deep holes after my father died.
• 17:11
  And then one thing that my father's death really taught me is that you don't choose what happens.
• 17:19
  You choose how you respond.
• 17:22
  And after my mom's death, I remember sitting in my grief, just thinking, I've got to do this differently.
• 17:28
  I can't do the same actions that I took after Dad's death.
• 17:33
  We've come from a very long line of addiction, and I knew that I had to do something differently this time.
• 17:40
  I had to make different choices.
• 17:42
  It was only about 18 months after my mom died.
• 17:44
  I was over in Australia with my first coach.
• 17:47
  She said something to me that really changed the trajectory of my healing journey.
• 17:51
  And she said, sarah, you don't realize what you're not changing, you're ultimately choosing.
• 17:59
  And it was from that day forward that I decided that I wasn't going to be the victim of both of my parents dying, that I was going to choose healing over suffering.
• 18:08
  And I was going to choose to let this experience make me instead of break me.
• 18:13
  We make around 30,000 choices every day.
• 18:17
  And if you want a different outcome in life, it starts by making a different choice.
• 18:22
  And so this whole journey of my parents dying has helped me understand that one, life is short, every day is a gift.
• 18:30
  And two, if you want to make something of yourself, you've got to understand just how powerful your choices are.
• 18:37
  So one of your choices was going to Australia.
• 18:39
  Tell me about that journey.
• 18:41
  Yeah, so I went to Australia to understand the subconscious mind and studied NLP over there.
• 18:46
  Neuro linguistic programming.
• 18:48
  Essentially, what it means is how have we been programmed through our language since we were kids?
• 18:54
  Now, our words are incredibly, incredibly powerful.
• 18:58
  And I often share with my clients the words you speak become the house you live in.
• 19:03
  So you've got to get really aware of what you're saying to yourself every day, because that's the house that you're building.
• 19:09
  Are you building yourself up or are you breaking yourself down?
• 19:13
  You've got to have enough awareness.
• 19:14
  And then again, as I said, you've got to make a different choice.
• 19:17
  You have to realize that your choices are the things that will create change for you.
• 19:22
  It's one of those things where I totally agree with everything you say.
• 19:27
  And yet I imagine as you were going through this, it was a lot harder than it might sound.
• 19:32
  Easy to say, hard to do, right?
• 19:34
  What were some of the things that helped you actually do it?
• 19:37
  The first 18 months were just painful.
• 19:42
  It was incredibly, incredibly hard.
• 19:45
  You have your whole safety net ripped out from underneath you.
• 19:48
  Everything you thought your life was gonna be is just taken.
• 19:53
  I had to rebuild my whole identity from the ground up.
• 19:57
  And that's been one of the most beautiful journeys that I've been on yet.
• 20:01
  A lot of people think that doing this inner work is glamorous, and we read all the books and it's just the surface level when you're actually doing the deeper inner work.
• 20:10
  It's chaotic, it's messy, it's confusing.
• 20:13
  It's, you know, it's not this pretty glamorous picture that we see on Instagram, that's for sure.
• 20:20
  I actually, I saw you, you put something up the other day about when you're dealing with clients and they say, oh, I've heard this all before.
• 20:27
  But then you're like, well, okay, so then you're not doing the work.
• 20:30
  You're not putting it into action.
• 20:32
  That must be.
• 20:34
  It is so hard to put into action, where I sometimes think we consume a lot about how we can make our Lives better almost as a way to convince ourselves we're doing the work.
• 20:48
  But that's not the work, is it?
• 20:50
  You're preaching to the choir here.
• 20:52
  I see it every day, people reading the books and consuming and saving all the posts and things.
• 20:57
  But no, it's not the work.
• 20:58
  You'll know you're doing the work when it feels like chaotic and heavy and not surface level.
• 21:05
  It's something that it really doesn't matter what you know.
• 21:09
  It's about what you do with what you know.
• 21:11
  And you know.
• 21:12
  Knowledge isn't power.
• 21:14
  The application of knowledge is power.
• 21:17
  And it's one of those things where for me is like I actually stop consuming at times and just start integrating and embodying because I fully understand that consumption is the trap a lot of the time and we think
• 21:31
  more, more, more learning more.
• 21:33
  It's the answer.
• 21:34
  But it's just dressed up self sabotage.
• 21:36
  Yeah, that's such a good point.
• 21:39
  I mean, for you to have taken.
• 21:42
  I'm comfortable calling it trauma.
• 21:43
  Would you call it trauma?
• 21:44
  Yeah, this traumatic situation and to use it to rebuild yourself and then eventually build a business from it.
• 21:52
  I think it's a really interesting perspective shift where I think sometimes we see ambition and the desire to build something as like you have to pay a price of entry and you have to be willing to accept compromises
• 22:10
  elsewhere.
• 22:12
  What it seems like you've done, and please tell me off if I'm putting words in your mouth and correct me, it seems like you have actually decided to do the work in terms of how to build something that
• 22:23
  works for you as a person.
• 22:25
  And now you also work to help people create something that is still ambitious but still also working for them as a person.
• 22:36
  How doable do you think that is in terms of still having these ambitious goals but turning up as a complete, rested, not traumatized person?
• 22:49
  I mean, it all comes back to being able to understand yourself and how you operate and your energy and.
• 22:55
  And one of the things I say often is that people think, and you may disagree with me here because I know that this is really around the finances podcast, but people think we work in currencies of time and
• 23:07
  money.
• 23:08
  My belief system is that we actually work in a currency of energy.
• 23:12
  And so many people are burning out and getting stuck in these patterns of ambition, improving themselves and going after their goals.
• 23:20
  But when you have enough awareness of your energy and how you operate from your energy, you know how much you can hold.
• 23:27
  People don't get burnt out.
• 23:29
  We actually burn ourselves out.
• 23:31
  And it's a lack of our understanding of where our energy is going now.
• 23:35
  People think a lot of the time that our energy is mainly to the things externally.
• 23:40
  Other people are draining our energy, our team, our kids and all of those things.
• 23:46
  Yes, they do drain our energy, but we actually have to look in the mirror and start to ask ourselves, well, where am I draining my own battery with my own overthinking, with my own self talk, with not prioritizing
• 23:59
  myself?
• 24:00
  We are draining our own battery at times, but we are so quick to look externally, thinking that those are all the things draining our energy, whereas we actually have to have that awareness of where we are doing it
• 24:11
  to ourselves.
• 24:12
  That's an interesting reframe.
• 24:14
  So if someone is then trying to reframe in terms of, okay, this isn't working for me, so I need to change where my energy's going so it can be directed to the place I actually want it to go
• 24:24
  and not have it leaking elsewhere.
• 24:27
  How do you reframe that so you're directing it properly?
• 24:30
  The reality here is that if your energy drops and you'll know this as a mum, your awareness will drop.
• 24:36
  And so a lot of people think that I've got to create this awareness, which you do.
• 24:41
  But before you can create awareness to create changes, you actually need to have enough energy to have that awareness, because there's such a high correlation between the two.
• 24:51
  So when I'm low on energy, my goal is not to create awareness.
• 24:56
  My goal is to get energy back.
• 24:58
  And the byproduct of having energy back is that my awareness will increase, which will mean my tools are more accessible.
• 25:05
  This episode of Making Sense is supported by Odoo.
• 25:08
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• 26:09
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• 26:14
  That's Franciscook Co NZ Invest.
• 26:17
  But don't worry, I'll put the link in the show notes and the description of this podcast.
• 26:22
  All right, back to it.
• 26:24
  Are there sort of common places that people are leaking energy or spending it in ways that don't serve them?
• 26:31
  The overthinking pattern's a massive one.
• 26:33
  Having heaps of tabs open in the mind.
• 26:35
  So many people have so many tabs open.
• 26:38
  I'm like, if you had your computer running with all of those tabs on, you're gonna drain that battery real quickly.
• 26:44
  It's no different for us.
• 26:46
  And I know mums especially hold a lot of load and it's about being able to close down the tabs that you can close down or actually having some processes in place where it's not just all being held in
• 26:59
  the mind.
• 27:00
  I still catch myself in these patterns that we're talking about.
• 27:03
  I guess the difference between me and a lot of other people is that I have the tools and the awareness to go, oh, shit, I gotta do something about this now.
• 27:11
  So how do you close some of those tabs?
• 27:13
  Is it as simple as writing things down?
• 27:15
  It is.
• 27:15
  Can be as simple as writing things down.
• 27:17
  It can be as simple as being able to understand, like, come back to presence and being able to focus on one thing.
• 27:23
  Like, if I'm emptying the dishwasher, like, I'm just gonna empty the dishwasher, I'm not gonna.
• 27:28
  Rather than trying to do a hundred things at once.
• 27:30
  It's like slow the body, slow the mind, come back to presence and that regulation will start to, like, translate into other areas of your life.
• 27:40
  Right.
• 27:40
  So being one place at once, that's actually.
• 27:43
  That's a really interesting one because I think I'd been doing it not quite as explicitly, but I remember taking on board a bit of advice to the whole thing of balance as a working parent.
• 27:56
  Balance is one of those words that just drives me up the wall because it's so hard.
• 28:00
  What is balance.
• 28:02
  It's constantly changing.
• 28:04
  But trying to be like, be where your feet are, you know, as a working parent, when you're at work, be at work.
• 28:10
  Don't be thinking about kids things.
• 28:11
  When you're at work, be at work.
• 28:13
  When you're with the kids, be with the kids.
• 28:16
  And don't be trying to do the work stuff.
• 28:17
  Don't be thinking about the work stuff.
• 28:19
  And that was kind of the only way to achieve a bit more mental balance for me.
• 28:24
  It'll be different for a lot of people, right, but it sounds so silly and so simple.
• 28:29
  It's actually been quite life changing.
• 28:31
  It's still working on it, but it's been quite life changing to have that as a goal.
• 28:34
  Be where my feet are.
• 28:35
  Oh, so powerful, honestly.
• 28:37
  And people think that this work is complex, like change is simple.
• 28:42
  Simple and easy aren't the same thing.
• 28:45
  We have actually overcomplicated it all.
• 28:47
  We've overcomplicated life.
• 28:50
  We've got stuck in these patterns.
• 28:52
  But actually the basics work and I think we undermine them too often.
• 28:57
  Just like what you were saying then is like, be where your feet are.
• 29:00
  I'm like, if everybody just started to do a little bit more of that, things will shift.
• 29:05
  Like this stuff isn't rocket science, but we struggle to put it into practice based on our own conditioning and our own programming.
• 29:12
  I think what you were saying before as well about looking outward for the solutions and the pressures instead of inwards is a really good point because I think a couple of things can be true at once.
• 29:24
  There are a lot of external pressures.
• 29:26
  There are a lot of things that happen that maybe aren't good.
• 29:29
  There are a lot of people making demands on your time.
• 29:31
  And I often think, you know, broad problematic generalization, but you know, the system, whatever that system is that you're operating in, but the system will usually take as much from you as it can, as much as you are
• 29:42
  willing to give.
• 29:43
  And so there can be all sorts of pressures on that and all sorts of things where you feel like you have to.
• 29:48
  And at the end of the day, we're kind of the only ones who can be like, this isn't working for me and put in place those processes to make a change.
• 30:00
  Again, simple, but not necessarily easy, right?
• 30:03
  But unfortunately, I think it does come down to us to put in place those boundaries.
• 30:08
  No one's gonna save you.
• 30:10
  And that's such a harsh reality that I came to after my parents died, is no one's coming to save you, Sarah.
• 30:15
  And it was in that realization that I realized that I had to take my own life back.
• 30:21
  And it's one of those things.
• 30:23
  It's like we've gotta take full ownership for ourselves, for our lives.
• 30:28
  For as long as we are looking outside of ourselves for the answers, it's gonna be a never ending journey.
• 30:34
  And self responsibility is what will create the change in your life.
• 30:39
  And yes, as I said, it's simple.
• 30:41
  Simple and easy aren't the same things.
• 30:43
  We can all fall into patterns of victimhood and poor me and life's hard and why me?
• 30:48
  But all of that mindset will keep you stuck.
• 30:51
  Every other species on Earth, they work on instinct.
• 30:55
  Human beings, we have the imagination, we have logic, we have creativity.
• 31:00
  We are the creator of our own narrative.
• 31:04
  And you can change the story.
• 31:07
  You get to rewrite it to however you want it to be.
• 31:10
  And for a long time in my life, it was, I'm not good enough.
• 31:13
  I'm not smart enough.
• 31:14
  I'm not loved.
• 31:16
  And then I sat back after my parents died and thought, do I want to keep believing that as my truth?
• 31:23
  No.
• 31:24
  So I was the one who started rewriting those beliefs, who started stepping into a new identity.
• 31:33
  Because you know your identity and up leveling that is a really critical part of this journey.
• 31:38
  Because otherwise you'll always default back to a past version of yourself.
• 31:42
  How did you go about first identifying some of those, you know, stepping outside of yourself and then to rewrite it.
• 31:52
  Were there any specific tactics that helped you?
• 31:55
  It is stored in the subconscious, so it's not as easy as just like, oh, I'm just going to tell myself every day I'm good enough, and I'm going to look in the mirror and do affirmations.
• 32:02
  It's not quite as basic as that.
• 32:04
  You do have it stored as a program in the subconscious mind.
• 32:07
  For me, I knew looking back at my life, I'd look back and I'd be like, man, I haven't felt good enough for a long time.
• 32:14
  But the thing about limiting beliefs is what happens is that at some point in our life, we decide, oh, I'm not good enough.
• 32:22
  For me, it was at 4.
• 32:23
  I got glasses, I went to reading recovery.
• 32:25
  I didn't believe I was smart enough and good enough from then.
• 32:28
  Then for 20 years, I stacked evidence to support that belief system.
• 32:32
  Every spelling mistake, see, I'm not good enough.
• 32:35
  See, I'm not smart enough.
• 32:36
  And then there was 20 years of evidence which made that story feel true.
• 32:40
  But I had created the whole time.
• 32:42
  But we don't hold onto our belief systems for no reason.
• 32:47
  And this is where you have to understand.
• 32:49
  A painful truth in life is that we hold onto our problems in life for a reason.
• 32:54
  And this is confronting for people to hear.
• 32:56
  There's five common reasons that we hold onto our problems.
• 33:01
  The first one is safety and survival.
• 33:03
  And we are always operating because that's our need as an animal species is to survive.
• 33:11
  So Anxiety, overthinking, worrying, worst case scenario, like, why are you holding onto that?
• 33:17
  It's because you're trying to create some sort of safety with it.
• 33:19
  Familiarity.
• 33:21
  We like things being familiar and comfortable.
• 33:24
  So we keep our limiting beliefs and we keep our problems in life because they're comfortable and familiar.
• 33:29
  Most of the time, people don't even know who they would be without their problems.
• 33:33
  Then you've got excuses.
• 33:35
  We often keep our problems because we can use it as an excuse.
• 33:38
  Well, I don't have to go to that event because I feel anxious.
• 33:41
  We also wrap our identity up in our problems.
• 33:45
  Now, one of the things that helped me shift coming back to the belief systems of I'm not good enough is my coach said to me, sarah, do you even know the version of you who does feel good enough?
• 33:57
  I was like, no.
• 33:59
  And so how was I ever going to step into that next version of myself?
• 34:02
  I didn't even know who it was.
• 34:04
  So you have to be able to then create a new version of yourself and start stepping into it.
• 34:10
  So the question if this is you and you're listening, it's like, well, what is the version of me who does feel confident?
• 34:15
  The version of me who does feel good enough?
• 34:17
  The version of me who does feel worthy.
• 34:19
  How does she act, how does she operate, how does she think, how does she see herself in the mirror?
• 34:24
  And then you've got to start stepping into that, otherwise you'll keep reverting back to the default.
• 34:30
  An interesting one there, right, because you were talking earlier about so many successful people almost created by motivated by these things.
• 34:40
  So if you are someone who has been hugely motivated by I'm not good enough and trying to prove yourself, do you have people have that fear that if they heal it, they won't achieve to such a high level
• 34:54
  because then they've lost that motivation?
• 34:56
  Yeah, it used to be me.
• 34:58
  And then what it comes down to is what I was saying before is choice.
• 35:01
  I can choose now to operate and go after my goals and my aspirations and my dreams as a conscious choice, not a subconscious default.
• 35:12
  And so, yes, a lot of people are operating from their wounds and from the subconscious, but I'm still getting after my goals and going and doing the things I want.
• 35:22
  It's just coming from a much more intentional choice.
• 35:24
  What has it looked like for you now as you're operating, as you say, from the scars inside of the wounds and you're making these choices and you're building your own business?
• 35:32
  I mean, you're very successful.
• 35:34
  You do really well.
• 35:36
  Huge Online footprint, lots of clients.
• 35:38
  You're coaching so many people.
• 35:42
  How does it feel now as you are making choices from that more intentional place?
• 35:50
  What is the difference?
• 35:51
  And I guess coming back to energy, does it change the energy in your life?
• 35:55
  I mean, it definitely is based in the energy, and it's all based on what I'm saying.
• 36:00
  And so passionate about speaking about is identity.
• 36:03
  You will never outgrow who you believe you are.
• 36:06
  Every year I'm growing.
• 36:08
  I'm stepping into a new version of myself.
• 36:10
  You know, there's a version of me a year ago who would be too.
• 36:15
  Can I go on that podcast?
• 36:17
  Like, oh, man.
• 36:18
  Like, oh, what if people.
• 36:19
  And now stepping into a new place, I'm like, no, I can hold this.
• 36:23
  I can.
• 36:24
  I can operate from this.
• 36:26
  Because it's all about who you believe you are.
• 36:29
  And that is the work is being able to go.
• 36:32
  I am stepping into a new version of more capacity, more capacity to hold more revenue, more capacity to hold more clients, more capacity to hold more being seen in the spotlight.
• 36:44
  The evolution of who you're becoming is the most beautiful part.
• 36:48
  And, you know, so many people are focused on the destination in life.
• 36:51
  And it's like you.
• 36:53
  You learn very quickly when your parents die.
• 36:55
  It's all about this journey of becoming and enjoying it along the way and not getting so focused on, well, when I get this, then I'll be.
• 37:04
  And I've really stopped doing that mindset of when I get this amount of money, then I'll be.
• 37:08
  Or when I get this house, then I'll be happy.
• 37:10
  And that's the trap, right?
• 37:12
  You might die tomorrow.
• 37:14
  And the fragility of life is real.
• 37:17
  And I think that for me is like, before the age of 26, I'd been to more funerals than most people have in their lifetime.
• 37:25
  And when you see death right in your face from such a young age, you start to think about what you want your life to look like, what you want people to say at your funeral.
• 37:37
  And that was right in my face.
• 37:39
  And so I thought to myself, on this healing journey, what will I want people to say when they come to my funeral?
• 37:46
  And I didn't want to be known as the girl who was super kind and, you know, just sat back and kind of coasted through life.
• 37:53
  I wanted people, when they come to my funeral to say, she threw the kitchen sink at it.
• 37:59
  You know, she gave it everything.
• 38:02
  She enjoyed the journey, and she really went after it and got after it.
• 38:06
  That's what I want someone to say at my funeral.
• 38:08
  And so Now I'm living by that.
• 38:09
  I love that so much.
• 38:11
  I do wonder.
• 38:12
  Right as well.
• 38:15
  So much of this is about redirecting towards the things that you do want.
• 38:21
  For that to happen, you also have to start saying no to the things that don't serve you.
• 38:26
  And I think this applies to everyone.
• 38:29
  But I think particularly women are very much conditioned to put other people before them.
• 38:35
  And so to say no to things, especially if you can sometimes see how that would really help someone.
• 38:42
  But like, it's going to be too much for you to say no to certain things can be really hard.
• 38:50
  How do you start to sort of put that self preservation first, you know, put on your own oxygen mask first.
• 38:57
  How do you get people into that space where they can actually comfortably do that?
• 39:01
  Oh, it's such a good question.
• 39:02
  And I've been on this journey myself and I can still catch myself saying yes when I mean no.
• 39:09
  And I'm not perfect at this myself.
• 39:10
  And I know you can probably sit there and agree in your own life as business owners, and a lot of it's because we care, but it's really important that people understand that every yes holds its equal and opposite
• 39:24
  no.
• 39:25
  Every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else.
• 39:29
  Every time you say yes to that extra two hours at work, you're saying no to going to the gym or spending more time with your kids.
• 39:37
  So you have to have an awareness of that.
• 39:39
  I think I see so many people putting in these really strict hard boundaries, so they just go really hard on, like I'm just going to say no and then it kind of backfires a little bit.
• 39:52
  And for me it's like again, it comes back down to understanding where your energy is at.
• 39:57
  I want to be somebody who does go above and beyond for my clients, for the work that I do.
• 40:02
  But I also know where my energy is and I know how much capacity I can hold.
• 40:07
  And it is just.
• 40:08
  It's such an important conversation.
• 40:11
  If somebody wants to learn, you know, how to say no more, don't try it everywhere in your life to begin with, just start small.
• 40:20
  That will start to put a bit of air in your sales and it will start to give you a bit more confidence.
• 40:24
  But it is a journey and it's not going to be solved in one day.
• 40:28
  Often when I talk to people, they see the idea of sort of protecting your energy as almost taking a step back and wanting less, which I wouldn't necessarily agree with, but I want your perspective on that.
• 40:41
  What do you think of that?
• 40:42
  You Created the meaning.
• 40:44
  So you know what I mean?
• 40:45
  If you think that the meaning of saying no is stepping it back, you attached that meaning, whereas you've got to be more aware of what you're making things mean in life.
• 40:57
  And I mean, that's a whole conversation on its own, right?
• 41:00
  Is like we make everything mean something.
• 41:02
  Someone doesn't text us back, oh, it means that they don't care about us.
• 41:06
  Somebody spoke to me in that way.
• 41:07
  It means xyz.
• 41:09
  We are always creating a meaning in life.
• 41:12
  One of the most important questions you can begin to ask yourself if you're on a journey of self discovery is what am I making this mean?
• 41:19
  And does it really mean that?
• 41:21
  And it's, you know, the reason that we've evolved as a species.
• 41:25
  And one of our most beautiful things on how we make sense of the world is that we create meaning.
• 41:31
  And that's how we make sense of our existence.
• 41:34
  And our greatest gifts will always be our greatest forms of suffering.
• 41:38
  And that's why we love good stories and movies and hearing a good keynote, because it helps us make sense of life and we can relate to it.
• 41:47
  Negative of that is we've created a lot of stories, a lot of narratives, and a lot of meaning.
• 41:52
  And those meanings are also the things that are keeping us in our suffering and in our pain and our trauma because of the meaning in which was formed from it.
• 42:02
  That makes so much sense.
• 42:04
  Was there anything where you've caught yourself creating stories or meanings that were not true?
• 42:10
  Oh, my whole life, everyone, we're doing it all the time, and it's all happening subconsciously.
• 42:15
  You know, my father never showed up to my sports matches even though I was winning.
• 42:20
  What did I make that mean?
• 42:22
  I'm not good enough.
• 42:22
  I'm not loved.
• 42:25
  We are creating meaning every day, all day.
• 42:28
  And that's why the awareness of what we're making things mean is so important.
• 42:32
  And then when my father died, I think it's really important to touch on this, is that you don't have to be in that person's presence physically to be able to heal from that.
• 42:43
  I don't even know if I would have been able to to heal that relationship with my father while he was physically alive.
• 42:49
  And a lot of people don't realize that.
• 42:52
  You know, my father and I have the most beautiful relationship now.
• 42:55
  And it's so healing to know that, like all of those stories and narratives that I created as a kid, my dad didn't have the tools.
• 43:04
  He was an alcoholic because of his own trauma, because of his Own conditioning.
• 43:09
  And people are always doing the best they can with the resources they have available at any given time.
• 43:15
  And so being able to do that work around my father's death has been, you know, the most empowering and enlightening thing because we have a lovely relationship now.
• 43:24
  And people think that's weird.
• 43:26
  And I'm like, it's kind of cool.
• 43:28
  Yeah.
• 43:28
  Isn't it funny as well when you hit that stage of life where you start to realize your parents are just people with their own baggage and their own things, and they might do things that are genuinely not great,
• 43:39
  but they're also operating off their own histories, for better or worse.
• 43:43
  Yeah.
• 43:43
  From their own subconscious trauma and pattern.
• 43:46
  And I mean, as we get older, you can start to see, like, when we were kids, we thought being the age we are now is old.
• 43:52
  Now we're like, we're just.
• 43:54
  Everyone's just a big kid walking through the world trying to figure it out.
• 44:00
  Yeah.
• 44:01
  I remember I had the hottest of hot seconds as a political reporter.
• 44:06
  And I remember having this really quite disorientating realization that nobody has a rule book.
• 44:13
  They're all just people figuring it out.
• 44:17
  I was at some overseas conference and saw Obama in person, which was, he's a very tall man.
• 44:25
  Very tall.
• 44:26
  And I was too overwhelmed.
• 44:27
  I didn't manage to get a selfie.
• 44:28
  Damn it.
• 44:30
  But I remember having this realization of he's just a person.
• 44:34
  And when he's working late in the evening, he doesn't have anyone giving him the rule book of what's going to be the best decision to make.
• 44:43
  He's just having to weigh a bunch of stuff up and then be like, eh, that one probably.
• 44:48
  I'll figure it out.
• 44:50
  Horrifying thought.
• 44:52
  But, you know, and you kind of realize that everyone's doing that.
• 44:55
  It does give you a lot of freedom to be like, well, there is no right answer.
• 44:59
  I'm going to make the rightest answer I can.
• 45:02
  And then I guess we just.
• 45:03
  We go for it.
• 45:04
  Oh, it's such a powerful thing that I share in my programs a lot, is that you always have the power to choose again.
• 45:09
  Yes.
• 45:10
  You know, you make one choice and everyone's like, right or wrong?
• 45:12
  I'm like, what's right or wrong?
• 45:14
  Stop working in such black and white terminology.
• 45:16
  If you're in that mindset, get out of the right and wrong and yes and no or good or bad that keeps you stuck.
• 45:22
  It's like, I've made a heap of terrible choices in my life and a heap of great ones.
• 45:27
  The beautiful thing about that is that you can always choose again.
• 45:31
  Yes, I talk to people about this with investing all the time because they get absolutely.
• 45:35
  It's a classic one for analysis paralysis where they're like, oh, I want to start when I know I'll get it all right?
• 45:41
  And I'm like, I've changed my investing strategy several times.
• 45:44
  You know, obviously you do a little bit of work ahead of time, you do the best you can, you set some ground rules, but then you tweak, then you move forward.
• 45:51
  And I just think that applies to everywhere in life, right?
• 45:54
  It's such an important thing that, you know, everybody understands in life is how powerful our minds are, how powerful our choices are.
• 46:01
  And stop looking outside of yourself.
• 46:03
  You have all the answers within.
• 46:05
  If there was one thing that most people could benefit from stopping doing in your experience, what would that be?
• 46:13
  Believing their thoughts.
• 46:15
  60,000 thoughts a day.
• 46:16
  And people's problems isn't the thoughts.
• 46:19
  People's problems is the attachment to the thoughts.
• 46:22
  I still get self doubt.
• 46:23
  I'd still get imposter syndrome.
• 46:25
  I'd still get negative self talk.
• 46:28
  The difference is that I don't attach to the thought.
• 46:30
  I'm like, oh, that's an interesting thought.
• 46:33
  And then it goes.
• 46:34
  Whereas people are looping and creating more narrative and meaning and fueling their thoughts because they attach to that thought and then they keep feeding the thought.
• 46:42
  Think about like a fire, right?
• 46:44
  So many of people in their lives have got these fires burning in their mind and then they keep putting another piece of kindling on it and it keeps burning.
• 46:53
  Then they put a big piece of firewood on it and it keeps burning and the power comes.
• 46:57
  And when you have enough awareness to go, I'm going to stop feeding that right now.
• 47:01
  Because when a fire starts to burn, a fire starts to spread.
• 47:06
  And you've got to ask yourself, well, what fires am I spreading in my life?
• 47:11
  Are they the fires that for the life I want and for the life I choose, or am I lighting all these fires of holding onto the past, holding onto grudges, looping on what people think of me like?
• 47:23
  You choose where your energy is put.
• 47:26
  And so, yeah, fuel the right fires in the mind.
• 47:29
  I love that.
• 47:30
  What is something that in your experience, most people could benefit from either doing more of or starting to do more presence?
• 47:39
  Life is happening right now.
• 47:41
  Your kids are never going to be the age again that they are right now.
• 47:45
  But so many of us are missing it because we're stuck in our heads, overthinking, worrying about the future, worrying about what hasn't happened yet, or we haven't forgiven someone from the past and we're holding onto resentment and grudges.
• 47:59
  But the reality is right now is life is happening now.
• 48:02
  Be present now, celebrate the wins, now be in the moment.
• 48:06
  And it's one of those things where it's easy to say, but it's not done in the macro, it's actually done in the micro.
• 48:14
  Presence is done in the moments where you're having your coffee at the cafe and there's a little bird on the tree and you take that 20 seconds to go.
• 48:21
  I'm just going to observe that little bird dancing around and then I'm going to get back to my day.
• 48:27
  Whereas I think when people talk about presence, they're thinking it's these big half an hour, hour, whole day of I'm fully present.
• 48:34
  Whereas I'm like, no, it's actually the micro moments.
• 48:37
  It's the moments when you're walking inside from pulling the rubbish bins in and you take 10 seconds to go, wow, stars are looking beautiful tonight.
• 48:47
  And it's all of those little moments that will stack up and that will lead to the macro.
• 48:51
  I think that's so good.
• 48:53
  That's really good.
• 48:54
  If someone has been listening to this conversation and maybe having some hard realizations along the way, where are some places to start?
• 49:02
  What is something that people could put into action this week?
• 49:05
  The first thing is that you gotta realize that you are in control of it.
• 49:10
  You gotta start making a different choice.
• 49:12
  If that choice may be starting to actually slow down, maybe that choice is starting to become more aware of your thoughts.
• 49:19
  Maybe that choice is to actually, you know, put the laptop down and go and play with the kids and be with them for five minutes.
• 49:27
  Everybody's maybe a little bit different.
• 49:29
  But to start the journey is to start creating, creating a level of awareness of how you're operating throughout your life.
• 49:37
  But awareness alone won't change anything.
• 49:40
  You have to understand how to take action.
• 49:43
  And a lot of the time this is where people get tripped up is because they're like, I'm aware of all the patterns and I'm aware of all the things that I do.
• 49:51
  But you need to know how to put things into practice.
• 49:54
  And the action is really where that starts to happen.
• 49:57
  And those actions may look like some of the things that I've said before.
• 50:02
  Those actions may actually start to be able to write down your thoughts.
• 50:07
  Don't try and apply everything at once.
• 50:09
  Just apply one thing.
• 50:11
  And that's what I always say to my clients is like, don't.
• 50:13
  If you try and do it all, you'll do none of it well.
• 50:16
  Just choose one thing.
• 50:17
  Is it presence?
• 50:18
  Is it becoming aware of your thoughts?
• 50:20
  Is it, you know, starting to understand that inner critic inside of your head?
• 50:25
  Just choose one thing and focus on that.
• 50:28
  What a beautiful note to leave things on.
• 50:32
  I personally find your online presence very helpful as well.
• 50:36
  Just some little reminders that keep me on track as I try to make some of these changes myself.
• 50:42
  So if someone is wanting to keep up with you, where can we find you?
• 50:45
  Yeah, so Instagram is probably where I hang out the most.
• 50:47
  And LinkedIn Instagram is Spring with Sarah and on LinkedIn is Sarah Robbie.
• 50:54
  And yeah, you'll be able to find me there.
• 50:56
  Otherwise.
• 50:56
  Www.springwithsarah.com thank you so much for coming.
• 51:00
  And giving us your amazing insights today.
• 51:03
  That was so good.
• 51:04
  I'm glad.
• 51:04
  And I hope people took something from this and different choices lead to different outcomes.
• 51:10
  100%.
• 51:11
  I love that.
• 51:12
  Now look, if this episode was helpful to you, share it with a friend.
• 51:15
  We can all level up together.
• 51:16
  Until next time, have a great day.
• 51:20
  This podcast can only give you general information about how things work in most situations.
• 51:25
  It's not individual financial advice.
• 51:27
  If you're after that, a financial advisor is always the best bet.