Robyn Savage (00:00.974)
Hi friend, it's Robin and your 17 minutes starts now. Okay, so I'm gonna tell you a story about how this all, like how 17 minutes, how my identity work, how really coming back into myself, like the real me started. And I just want to invite you to notice like what parts of yourself also
live in this story. Okay. So this part of my journey really started like two ish years ago. And I remember this moment, I was standing in the kitchen and I was yelling at my kids to try and get them to like move faster to get out the door to go to school. We have pretty challenging drop-offs in our house. One of my daughters has pretty bad separation anxiety. It's really triggered by school.
So that transition in the morning is pretty difficult for us, okay? And as I was yelling, I like remember having this feeling of like, my God, I feel like I'm yelling at employees or like staff members who aren't doing what their boss is telling them to do, which was a really shitty feeling, you know? And my husband looked at me and he didn't say anything, but he had this look in his eye that was kind of like...
man, like this isn't helping, you know? And I stopped because I knew that he was right. And in that moment, I recognized that the way that I kind of move through life or the way that I moved through life in this period of time was as if everything was an emergency when actually...
nothing really was. There was this sense of like urgency, like I've got to get it right. We've got to be on time. We've got to go. I've got to nail this. I've got to have kids who listen. I've got to get my point across. I've got to, I've got to, I've got to. And you know, at this time I was running a seven figure business. I was the emotional support pillow, like all around the house for all the people. I was keeping up with the social life, paying the bills.
Robyn Savage (02:18.242)
you know, managing all of the schedules, the calendars, all of the things. And I thought if I could just keep it all together and manage the employees, like make sure that it all works, then I was good, you know? Like if I could juggle it all without dropping a ball, then that meant that I was worthy. I was a good wife, good mom, entrepreneur, good.
that I was good, that I was worthy, that I was on the right track, that my life was moving forward. And though this was the day that I realized that I wasn't being who I wanted to be. I was being a version of myself that I thought I had to be in order to keep it all together. Okay. And then a couple of weeks later, this mentor came into my life.
who taught me and opened my eyes to behavioral science. And as I dove into behavioral science, I started to understand myself, like why I was always moving at hyper speed, why I needed everything to happen now and my way, and why I felt like if I did slow down that everything would just actually fall apart. So,
I ended up working with this mentor for like a year and a half and I learned so much about myself, but I started to make some really serious changes and you're going to hear all about these in the coming weeks, but here's what I want you to know right now. Okay. If you are moving through life, like I was like everything's an emergency. If you're treating people,
like employees, like people who need to help you get things done in a certain way, on a certain deadline, on your timeline, right? If you're exhausted from trying to keep everyone happy and functioning, and if you're sort of like showing up as this person who needs to hold onto control in order to make sure that everything works, then there is a really good chance that this isn't who you are either.
Robyn Savage (04:41.868)
Right? It's like conditioning. It's a survival mechanism that's running your show. Because what I learned through training and getting certified then in behavioral science is actually that the truth of who you are doesn't need to be anyone that you are not. And what I mean by that is like the real you doesn't need to have control on external
people, things, schedules, et cetera. The real you doesn't need to prove anything to anyone. The real you can drop a ball and handle it. The real you can allow other people's emotions to be their own emotions without needing to fix them. The real you can move at her own pace and trust that everything is still gonna get done. There's peace in there.
Right? There's trust in there. There's laughter, there's access to joy, but I had lost touch with most of those things unless everything was going the way that I thought it should. So joy was only really accessible when everything was working. Or celebration was only really something I could do if all of the boxes were checked and things in my life were like working.
or pleasure, know, like connecting with my husband and pleasure was only really available to me if like all of the responsibilities and all of the things that I had to do and all the roles that I was playing and all of these other areas of my life didn't need me in that moment. And I remember, you know, my early thirties even. like this disconnect for me, this feeling of like,
having to adult and be serious and be in control all of the time wasn't actually who I always was. And if you've been following me for a long time, then you might even hear me talking about some of these things and thinking to yourself like, what? I had no idea you were like that. Cause I am a free spirit and I'm so creative and I'm so loving and I'm so open and funny. And I'm like this goofy, hilarious, expressive woman. But somewhere in my early thirties, when the responsibilities got really
Robyn Savage (07:06.104)
heavy and started to just add up, like more responsibilities, pressure to serve more people and support more people. Caregiving was a big one for me when I started to care for my grandmother and my husband's aging figures. That put a bunch on my plate. And then being responsible for paying bills and all of these things just started to add up and it started to change.
my behaviors and it started to show up in these ways that eventually over time I just like I couldn't even really recognize that free-spirited self because she was so limited like she was only available in these certain windows. So what I really want to invite you to ask yourself I guess and this is something that I
continue to come back to for myself, like all of the time. So this is something that you can ask yourself in the morning, in the middle of the afternoon, right before you start a work meeting, right before you pick your kids up, even when you're in the middle of like an explosive moment, okay? But when you catch yourself operating from a place of control or urgency, you know, like everything's an emergency, like we gotta get it done, we gotta go.
for operating from this place of like, that you're being driven by the fear that it's all gonna fall apart or that you're trying to control an external situation or circumstance that isn't really yours to control. I want you to ask yourself, what place am I operating from?
Robyn Savage (08:55.786)
OK? What place am I operating from? And then you're going to ask yourself, what am I running from? What am I running from? This question for me was really important because what I'm always running from, what I was always running from was the fear of disappointing people, the fear of raising bad kids.
Like if I just run away from the fear that I might not be doing this all right and keep running faster towards perfectionism, keep running faster towards, you know, figuring it out, keep running faster towards making more money, keep running faster towards having more success or whatever, then I'm running away from the possibility that maybe I don't have it all figured out.
Or that maybe I am going to fail today. Or that maybe a ball is going to drop. Right?
And the thing is, when you're running from something, running from the feeling of not being enough, running away from not being ready, running away from not feeling safe, then you are abandoning your true self because the real you doesn't need to run. She can walk at her own pace.
She can handle big situations, hard moments, strong feelings, without needing to fix anything, without needing to glue it all back together in the same moment. Like she can handle it. And I think what I really caught myself in was the cycle of like, I'm going to keep running towards whatever feels good so that I don't have to deal with this feeling.
Robyn Savage (10:58.976)
of possibly feeling bad, right? Or of dealing with something then that I don't want to deal with. So it was like I was constantly keeping my hand on the glass on the edge of the table because I didn't want the glass to fall off and then have to deal with it breaking. But I know that I can, I know I can clean up a mess, you know? I know I can deal with it. So for me, I had to drop the urgency. I had to realize
that I was trying to control so much of what was going on that wasn't mine to control. And I had to find this like center within myself that allowed me to show up in a way that knew I could handle whatever happened and also feel peace and happiness and joy and creativity and expression and laughter and silliness in that moment.
not run towards, you know, making sure things stay together or get better, not needing to run towards being this perfect version of myself all the time, but actually sinking back into this place of trust that was like, you've got this, like, you don't need to be the one for everyone. You don't need to make sure that this moment is okay. You don't need to treat everyone like employees who need to get the job done, like,
you can relax. Ultimately, right? Like you can relax. So these two questions, okay, what place am I operating from right now? And what am I running from? Are just two points of curiosity for you. Just two places for you to get a little bit wondrous about yourself to really start to notice who's driving, you know?
Because ultimately, the more your authentic natural self is in the driver's seat, the better your life is going to be.
Robyn Savage (13:05.848)
So I love you. That's part one of my story. And next week, I'm going to get in to self-sabotage. 38 years of it. 38 years of quietly self-sabotaging myself. I'm a little bit nervous to share that episode with you because my self-sabotaging behaviors are wicked.
and they run deep and that cycle is still really present in my life. But I'm excited to have that conversation with you too, because I think that self-sabotage is sort of like a skeleton that a lot of us keep in the closet. We don't really talk about it. We just sort of quietly let it happen. And it keeps us stuck in these like cycles and loops that none of us want to be in, but we...
because we don't voice it and we don't have these safe places to talk about it, it just keeps running the show. So next week, we're gonna dive into self-sabotage. I love you and I'm really excited to be here. Go live your life. Go live your life like it matters and I'll see you next week right here on 17 minutes.
