Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out

Ep.25 Smart Girl's Guide to Intuition with Dr. Robyn McKay

May 23, 2022 Dr. Robyn McKay Season 1 Episode 24
Perfection Not Required: Growing an Online Business from the Inside Out
Ep.25 Smart Girl's Guide to Intuition with Dr. Robyn McKay
Show Notes Transcript

What's it really mean to be a "smart girl" and what's the best way for us to tap into our intuition - that hunch, the inner voice, the knowing.  How can we access that to guide us through our day and life?  That's exactly what Dr. Robyn McKay and I get into today!

Robyn takes us through the journey of shedding the identity she was cattle run through as a smart girl and how that left her in crisis at 27,  the woman she wanted to be - nowhere in sight.    We'll hear how she set about changing her reality, living for herself and moving into a position to share her research, knowledge and expertise with others.  Can't wait for you to listen!

Here's some of the key moments in this episode!

  • What would your younger you think of you today?
  • Are you waiting for an existential crisis to make change?
  • How to tune into your intuition
  • Catapulting forward with your "something's gotta change" moments
  • Reevaluating your bullshit tolerance
  • You're NOT a cog in the machine

For full show notes and for all the links mentioned in this episode go here.

Resources:  Want to know 7 things you can do today to make leaving corporate easier?  Grab it here!

Let's connect!  Come join the Breaking Up with Corporate Facebook Community👯‍♀️

Follow me on:
Instagram
Website
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube

Loved this episode? 💕  Leave a review and ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  rating here

Support the show

Break free from the redundant admin of building your business and focus on the parts you love. | Grab your Ultimate Automations Guide for Coaches & Podcasters here!

Robyn McKay:

I think it's so important. I think it's so important to remember that that so many of the people who have had remarkable breakthroughs in their work in finding new jobs in landing new positions in leaving the corporate space, if that's what they want to do, are tuning into their intuition. But the thing that I have found disrupts intuition is the emotions of fear, worry, doubt, you're managing those. That's the hardest part of intuition is managing your emotions, so that you've got a clear lens through which to view your intuition and take action on it based on the best of what is possible rather than going down into the bad neighborhood of your scary imagination and thinking that you're going to be you know, living in a van down by the river if you leave your corporate position.

Jamie Stephens:

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Breaking up with corporate each week I chat with everyday women that ditch their nine to five to bet on themselves. We break down their journey into entrepreneurship, unpack the lessons learned and create the vision of how this life gets to be if you're willing to get uncomfortable and step into your potential. I'm your host, Jamie Renee, to time corporate escapee and coach to burnout women looking to plan their escape. Let's go. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Breaking up with corporate today. I have Dr. Robin McKay. And Robin is a psychologist and executive coach, speaker podcaster. And I am excited to have her here today. Good morning, Robin.

Robyn McKay:

The morning. I'm so happy to be with you.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, so let's just jump right in. I know that we speak to kind of a similar audience, which is women that are kind of getting over the corporate job. They're just kind of hanging out wondering what's next. So tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how you got here. And then we'll then we'll get into everything else.

Robyn McKay:

Guys, it's been such a long time that I've been out of corporate. But as I was preparing to meet with you today, I was thinking about my own story. And I think that a couple of things are important one, I spent the early part of my career working in biotech. So from the time I was about 24, until I was right around the time I finished grad school, I was also working in the corporate space primarily in tech and sorry, primarily in biotech in the pharmaceutical industry as a medical writer, as a clinical scientist, and as basically in the lab also just working with pretty dangerous microorganisms at some point. And I burned out, I burned out at 27. I also realized around that time that I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing with my life. But I knew it wasn't getting up every single morning, getting in my car, driving 35 minutes in heavy traffic to work, stopping at the Krispy Kreme store and getting to doughnuts and a Diet Coke. Like I didn't, I knew it wasn't that, but I didn't know what it was. And that really began my what's become my lifelong quest to find fulfilling work to pursue my calling. And somewhere along the way, I realized that I didn't want to just be working with data and research that was outside of people, I really wanted to be helping people directly. So whether it's mentoring, advising, coaching, those are the areas that I feel I can give my best contribution to in the world. So that's kind of been in a nutshell, my transition burnout early, making a decision to pivot into psychology, getting my PhD in psychology, going back into corporate and at the university level. And then finally in 2013, and leaving for good and starting my own executive coaching practice, which I've been doing all this all this time since then.

Jamie Stephens:

Gotcha. Yeah. So that I mean, that seems like a long path to burnout so early and that I mean, I'm sure it's just, you know, all the school, the education and then jumping straight into work. And then I mean, I think that's where a lot of us find ourselves so right it's just like you're doing the thing and you're checking all the boxes that you think you're supposed to check and then it's like you wake up when your day and you're like, shit, like, I'm not happy. Like what now?

Robyn McKay:

Yeah, so some of some of the people that I work with will say, and I love this description that they were cattle tracked into a career or into a profession from the time they were old enough to go to kindergarten. And then I think a lot of us do that we lock stepped into these careers based on what other people tell us So you're supposed to be doing I'm a Gen XOR. And as a Gen X, or when I was in high school, if you were a smart girl, you got told you should be an engineer, a doctor or a lawyer. So those were our three kind of major areas. There were others, but those were kind of the three big, big ones. And by the time we finish everything, it's like, did I even want to do this? And what did I actually want? Was that something somebody else wanted for me? Or is that what I'm actually meant to be doing here?

Jamie Stephens:

So how did you I mean, if that was like your history all through growing up and you know, into your 20s, early 30s, like, how did you kind of break free from that and realize, start asking those questions of yourself, like, Is this really what I want to do?

Robyn McKay:

Well, I had an existential crisis at 27 or 28. Yeah, tell us about it. Well, what I mean by that, I really think it was an existential crisis. I remember sitting on my floor in my living room, in my lovely home in the suburbs of Kansas City, married to my college sweetheart, and I found a picture from my high school graduation, cap and gown. My eyes are bright, I looked like I had the world by the tail, I was getting ready to go to college, I'd gotten my scholarships. I graduated third in my class, typical high achiever. And in the ensuing 10 years, I had a lot of things go kind of go sideways. In my life, my parents got divorced. I got mononucleosis, right out of the gate in undergrad. And I spent about 10 years depressed and anxious, but still functioning because I could. But at that time, when I saw the picture, I just looked at the girl who I was, and I thought, where are you? I know you're not here. And I also recognize that she was saying to me, is this is this the best you could do? Like, really, this is nothing like I envisioned when I was 16, and fearless, what are you doing? And that was really a turning point for me. Ouch. In terms of my in terms of just recognizing, in a very intimate and insightful way that I needed to make a shift, and to do something different. I thought, at that point, I was going to die of boredom. And there was nothing wrong with my life, as you know, I mean, we create very good lives for ourselves. But I just felt really at a core level I was living somebody else's life. It certainly wasn't the one that I had hoped or imagined when I was younger.

Jamie Stephens:

So what did you do after that? Like once you had your breakdown crisis is that whenever you went back to school for psychology, or

Robyn McKay:

Oh, no, before I went back to school for psychology, I decided I was going to lose weight and get my my college athlete body back. I put up you know, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts every day on the way to work.

Jamie Stephens:

way of sneaking up on you or like,

Robyn McKay:

really, what are we doing here? So, ready sign, it'll get you every 100%. So I started a weight loss journey, because I was going to be 30 someday. And I couldn't imagine being 30. And, you know, being frumpy or whatever I whatever I imagined it to be. So I started with weight loss. And I thought that's all I needed is just to get my body back. But it turns out that weight loss for me was an activator. Because then I started bringing my intuition back online, I started really listening to the voice of my soul again, my soul from the time I was about 17, or 18, had kept on telling me go into psychology go into psychology. And I didn't listen because I had been cancelled tract into STEM. Nothing wrong with that. But it was just like, I needed to refine my listening skills to be able to really tap into what I was meant to be doing. Weight Loss started first, I divorced my college sweetheart. His biggest dream for me was that I would that he would make enough money so that I could stay home. And we could have babies. And I could be a soccer mom. And I think that his idea for me to do that was came from a place of his own childhood wounds of his mom working and he had to go to daycare and eat potato chips and watch Sesame Street after school or whatever. He didn't like it. He didn't want his kids to have that experience. So that was his big idea for me. And I thought you don't know me at all. And that wasn't that wasn't that I didn't want to have children. But I wasn't done with my own development. Yeah. And so that was kind of a that was that was kind of a big deal to divorce your college sweetheart and make that shift after I did that. That's when almost immediately after moving out of the house that we shared. I applied for grad school, got in, started my master's work. And then within a few months of that had connected with a couple other professors from Kansas where I did my PhD, and they just encouraged me to apply, which I did. And I got in and that just fast tracked everything else in my life, it started to move forward in the direction that I knew it was supposed to move forward to get my PhD.

Jamie Stephens:

So would you say at that point, like everything just kind of started clicking into place? How did that journey look for you?

Robyn McKay:

Yeah, it did look at professionally and educationally it clicked into place, being a talented woman. And by the way, just for your listeners, understanding my PhD is in Counseling Psychology with focus on gifted and talented girls and women. I wrote a book with my mentor called Smart Girls in the 21st century, which is about gifted and talented girls and women. So I have this background, professionally and understanding giftedness. And what I mean by that is, how faster processing speed is. So the the high achievers who can figure things out quickly make sense of things and know what to do about that. I say that because when I when I refer to myself as a smart girl, that's what I'm talking about there. I'm not. And whenever I identify somebody, as a smart girl, they say thank you. And I say I'm not complimenting you, I'm just telling you what you are. So I say this, because educationally and professionally, everything started coming together. I've always been good at school. And I've always been really good at finding jobs, professional jobs for myself, I just listen to my intuition, follow my intuition and land these jobs that have always been really great for me. So that was never a problem. Where I struggled was in my relationships, and I had to do a lot of healing around past traumas, from, you know, my childhood, my parents divorce, I had remember anxiety and depression. So there was some stuff going on just internally that I had to process through. So I spent a lot of time while I was pursuing my PhD. And simultaneously, by the way, working in the pharmaceutical industry, as a medical writer, clinical scientist, to understand myself and understand and lists start listening, really listening to my inner voice, the voice, what I call the voice of my soul, in terms of navigating how I was meant to be doing life and how I was meant to be contributing to the world.

Jamie Stephens:

And so how do you specifically tap into your intuition, your inner voice, I'm just kind of curious about like your process?

Robyn McKay:

Well, I want to give you a contrast, when you are experiencing high levels of anxiety, or depression, or social anxiety, or you're just really sensitive to stress, what that what's actually going on is that your brain is running really hot, it's very activated. And everything that you think feel experience perceive gets filtered through this highly activated nervous system. So you're on high alert all the time. And any information any thinking any deeper feelings, or knowings, that we all have get filtered through that lens of will say anxiety and depression for me, especially. So I've always been intuitive. I would know things when I was a little kid, like when a teacher was going to have a pop quiz and science class. And I would just study the stuff and then get an A on the test. I wasn't cheating, I would just know that that's what I needed to study. And then I was actually surprised when Oh, this I just studied this. How ironic. So for me, it was about first of all, calming the nervous system. And by the way, I should say, I didn't like set a goal of like, I want to be really intuitive. I just knew that I couldn't sleep at night, I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking thinking thinking couldn't get back to sleep. So I would literally get up out of bed, get dressed and go to work at 4am in the morning to beat the traffic and to start my day that early in the morning. That's how crazy making my life was before I started calming the nervous system, so really, for me, and what I teach people how to pay attention to their intuition, a lot of it comes from just soothing the nervous system through meditation, through exercise, through nutrition and supplements. And through intention, frankly, I mean, if you're intuitive and you you intend to start listening to that inner voice, then that's a powerful it's kind of a powerful laser that cuts through all of the nonsense and really allows you access to that inner voice you have to decide you want to do it first I think

Jamie Stephens:

I'm just curious, do you hear your Where do you in your body? Do you hear your inner voice I'm just trying to ease this in for my listeners because I've This is topic has come up on a couple of different podcasts and I just I want to start to tease people with the kind of the little information. So like, for me, it's it's definitely in my gut is where I feel it but I know other people like, hear it in their heart or you know, I was just curious where your intuition lives in your body.

Robyn McKay:

So there you probably already know this, but there are basically four or five different player senses. The clear audience is clear hearing. clairvoyance is seeing It's your imagination, your inner vision Clairsentience is feeling like you feel it in your body. Which one did I miss? Claire cognizance is just No, I know that. I know that I know. My most active sense intuitively is Claire audience. And then quickly followed by clairsentience. I feel things I call it my spidey sense. Like, I just feel I feel everything I'm like, what is that? So Claire audience I hear, I really do in my inner ear, I just hear, go here, go there, I've had entire essays download into my inner ear just so they could write them out and win a scholarship. So those are I know, that sounds a little bit strange to hear. But it just that's how i That's how my body and mind work. And then the inner vision too, I think is so important. When you're imagining what's possible for you in the future. Somebody said, I don't remember who the best way to predict the future is to create it. And I think one of the gifts that we have as, as creative human beings is to access and activate our imagination. That's one of our superpowers. So if we're looking at, like, what's possible for me, and thinking about the and better for that, that's really a big gift, because then we know where we're headed. If we can see it, if we can create it in our mind's eye, we can create it in our reality as well.

Jamie Stephens:

I mean, I feel like for a long time, my sense of play and imagination was just shut down just from childhood trauma, those sorts of things. I mean, like, I remember being in therapy in my 20s. And like, my therapist showing me like this feelings chart, because I'm like, I'm fine. You know, fine, fine. That was my feeling. So I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Looking at this chart. It's like, oh, well, I'm angry, I'm frustrated. I'm alone, you know, all of these things. And so, like, where do you start when people are have kind of pushed that away for so long? Like, how do you get people back to that? Imagination point,

Robyn McKay:

here's the gift in my education work, my pursuit of my PhD is that I got to study people who are like me, I got to choose my path of what it was going to look like for me in my education. And two, I got to study intuition. One of the ways that I start with people, is to show them who they are on a personality level. So I have a personality assessment that I give, I can give this one because of my credentials. And one of the factors of that personality profile is called openness, openness to experiences, it involves having an active imagination, having a real sensitivity to your own emotions, and the emotions of other people challenging the status quo, loving ideas and a love of learning that kind of thing. And so a lot of the people who come in to me are score very high on this particular factor of personality compared to average people in the general population. So right off the bat, I get to point to that and say, I'm gonna guess that your intuitive, I'm gonna guess that you know, things, but you can't necessarily explain why you know them. Yeah, I'm gonna guess that maybe you even had dreams when you were a little kid that would come true. And you couldn't figure out why that was that I'm gonna guess if you brought that up to anybody. They probably told you, you were making it up in your head, or that you were crazy or something along those lines? And they're like, Oh, my God, yes. You're totally describing me. So that's the I go to data first. Yeah, I'm not if somebody is in my office, and it happens. I can't even think of a time when it has happened. Or I've had somebody who's not intuitive at all. But there are people on the planet, just on a normal distribution curve, who are not particularly intuitive. Most people are, on average, pretty intuitive. And then there's a group of us who are who have that high capacity for intuition. And I'm guessing that you're one of those two, if you were to take that assessment, we would probably see something like that for you.

Jamie Stephens:

I'm just curious. I used to work psychologists and had to do all sorts of batteries.

Robyn McKay:

Oh, yeah. So you would know it's the Neo, the Neo five factor personality assessment. It's the gold standard of personality assessments that we've been using for I'm gonna say probably 70 years at this point, to understand personality in the population. So that openness factor is really kind of a first touch, at intuition. Remember, I work with engineers, I work with dispositions, emotionally intelligent leaders in business. And a lot of them, even if they have that, which most of them do, they're not going to talk about it. And they're certainly not going to be out of the closet about it in their positions. So a lot of what I do is normalize it for them, by sharing my own experiences with it, and I'm, you know, obviously, it's part of my practice, I tap my intuition all the time, as I'm working with my clients. So they're hearing my language, they're seeing what I'm doing, and they're experiencing the results of the work that we do. So they're getting more comfortable just sitting with somebody who's open and honest and finds intuition, the most powerful of all of our senses. And they're like, oh, wait, maybe I can do that, too. And, you know, Einstein said that intuition is a sacred gift. And reason is our faithful servant. We've created a culture that honors the servant and has forgotten that, yeah. So my role really, is to bring intuition front and center into people's lives, again, restoring it to its rightful place in our lives. I love that. I think it's so important, I think it's so important to remember that that so many of the people who have had remarkable breakthroughs in their work in finding new jobs in landing new positions in leaving the corporate space, if that's what they want to do, are tuning into their intuition. But the thing that I have found, disrupts intuition is the that the emotions of fear, worry, doubt, go for managing those, those those, that's the hardest part of intuition is managing your emotions. So that you've got a clear lens through which to view your intuition and to take action on it based on the best of what is possible, rather than going down into the bad neighborhood of your scary imagination and thinking that you're going to be, you know, living in a van down by the river, if you leave your corporate position. All of that,

Jamie Stephens:

I mean, that just blocks your intuition. Nothing else. I mean, it's crazy how you can have that. And then it just, I mean, like you said, it's a practice that you have to hone every day, because all of those other emotions are just ingrained. Those are normal. So like, whenever you start to do that, it's really something you have to cultivate and really start to listen and start to check in. And yeah,

Robyn McKay:

yeah, it's the self care hygiene that I think we miss. When I'm thinking about people who are sitting in corporate listening to us talk about this right now. And what I would say is that, if you're on the gerbil wheel, you know that you're familiar with it, too. It's like punch the time clock, go get my coffee, say hi to Fred, whatever, like and I know, it's changed in the past couple of years because of the pandemic and everybody's working from home. But there's a version of that that you're in. So intuition doesn't operate real well, it kind of goes to sleep when you're on the gerbil wheel. I mean, why wouldn't it? It's got nothing to do. It's nothing to create. It's just you're just recreating the same thing over and over again, the intellect is quite good at recreating the same thing over and over again, right? Yeah, for sure. But if you want to add the magic into your life, and if you're feeling bored with your life, the best approach to doing that is tuning into what does my heart want? What were those dreams that I had when I was 16 and fearless or 25. And, you know, just starting out where wherever you were, when you had that moment of going, Oh, my gosh, I could really see myself doing this. And how disappointed you might be in yourself and in your career and in your life at this moment. Places you at an existential crossroads, which is a good thing, because now you can lead into something that's quite different from what you've been doing over and over and over again.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah. Have you worked with a lot of women that during this COVID transition that have been laid off and that sort of thing, and are really just kind of exploring? If I want to do something else, I'm just kind of curious, like what's happening in like high achieving corporate women, like you know what I mean, like, from your perspective,

Robyn McKay:

I haven't worked with anybody who's gotten laid off. In fact, what I've been seeing is that now's the best time to make job leaps if you want to if you want to stay in the corporate space, and your job or your company isn't aligned with your most deeply held values, those things that you hold precious and dear to you. It's a great time to do that. What I'm seeing For the most part is a transition from the attitude or mindset that I'm just going to hunker down, ride this thing out, remember, remember those days, two weeks to flatten the curve like, now we're okay. I'm like, Yeah, two years somebody said recently, you know, we're going on three years of this. I'm like, so. Okay. So yeah, what I'm seeing is that, at some point, my clients are coming in and saying, Robin, I'm bored out of my mind, this isn't going away. I've got to do something different. Yeah, so they are keeping their date, I'll call it their day jobs, even though, you know, they're in professional career. They're in leadership positions, but they're keeping those and they're exploring, what would I do? If I were to make the leap, there are some who are going into incubators, there are some who are taking training courses on becoming a coach or a consultant. There are some who are saying, you know, what, I love my profession so much. But I want to step into a broader audience, I want to influence more people with my work. So they're making the leap up into higher level leadership positions from BP to C suite or from, you know, being in the clinic every single day as a physician to being, you know, a nationally recognized speaker or spokesperson for an organization that supports their particular line of work, for example. So all of it is about recognizing that I know I meant for something more than what I'm doing right now. Yeah, and perhaps they're having even if they're not saying it out loud, perhaps they're having that same experience that I had, which is I'm gonna die of boredom, if I don't do something.

Jamie Stephens:

I feel like that about every three years at a job, I'm like, like, okay, something's got to change, like, I just can't.

Robyn McKay:

So we use those, something's got to change moments as opportunities to quantum leap into something different. And I know, I just sounded super, like, what does that even mean to Quantum Leap, but you can either wake up and stay awake, or you can go back to sleep. And keep doing the same thing. There are some people who even though they're highly intuitive, they're highly creative, creative, they're also highly tolerant of bullshit. And they just stay in the same thing over and over again, I remember I talked with a dentist early on. But listen, the health care professionals have had,

Jamie Stephens:

oh, God, they're toast, oh,

Robyn McKay:

and even early on, they just to have to make the decisions and to figure out how to stay safe and also serve their, their patients and so on. It's just been, that's been a real rugged path for a lot of the physicians that I work with. There's one dentist in particular, who had approached me about working together. And I talked with him about, you know, the kind of work that I do and what's going on, and he was feeling burned out, and I and I said to him, What happens if you decide not to work with me, and he said, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. And I believed him, he has a very, very high tolerance for the status quo, so he'll just keep slogging it out. And he still is slogging it out. But he's kind of the exception to the rule around when you have that activation inside of you of what's possible. I know, I met for something more than that. Follow that. Follow that. Yeah, that's where the magic is in our lives.

Jamie Stephens:

I used to term a term that comfortably miserable, because I too, have a high tolerance for bullshit. And then it's just like, you know, I was explaining it to a friend the other day, and it was just like, you know, it's that point, you're really miserable, but not miserable enough, that you are going to seek something new, like, it's not that bad yet. And, you know, it's like one of those things where that bad quote, unquote, is different for everybody. And so like, whenever you do have that high tolerance for bullshit, then it goes on way too long. Like it goes on much longer than it really should have if I would have been listening to myself and listening right now. But you just get in that cycle. And I mean, I get it. It's, it's very intentional. I mean, you, you're gonna break. You just gotta be prepared for it. Yeah,

Robyn McKay:

the people who have a high tolerance for frustration and who aren't particularly sensitive to stress. These are two other facets of the personality profile that I was referring to earlier. When you've got that particular setup in your personality. The way that you're going to burn out is that it's going to take a much longer period of time than it did for somebody like me who doesn't have a high tolerance for stress. And it'll probably manifest as something like a kidney infection or a bladder infection or a low back pain that's chronic or, God forbid cancer, right? Something like that physically will happen. And that will be the turning point. My mission for people like that who come to me, is to increase their sensitivity enough that they start paying attention to what their body needs right now, rather than noticing that you have to pee and then like waiting six hours before you actually make it to the bathroom. For example, guilty.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, guilty. Yeah, no, that's funny. I was giggling because it's like, that's exactly what like, why I ended up going back to corporate, you know, once I left the first time, because like I said, I just, it was a broke me, I wasn't prepared, like for how bad I would feel. But it was the physical stuff. I mean, it was me pulling into the parking lot and getting physically ill like, in my stomach, just, you know, to where it was like, oh, I need to start paying attention. My body is telling me because my brain is pushing it away. You know? Yeah. Okay.

Robyn McKay:

It's tired. Yeah. I mean, when you're experiencing those physical symptoms, what we've been trained to do from the time we're little kids is to ignore a body's just push through just muscle through, suck it up, suck it up, buttercup. And in the last few years, you've heard these words repeated over and over and over again, in corporate, we need more grit, we need more tenacity, we need more persistence. And we're at a place Jamie, where those mindsets, attitudes and practices have a limited return on investment.

Jamie Stephens:

I mean, you can only push so far before it just breaks. I mean, like, yes, even like your car, your engine, you know, you got to put in gas, you got to put in oil, you got to do all the maintenance and all the things and we were just so like, no working like machines and just trying to get through the day. And then you wake up and you're like, What the hell am I doing? You know, I'm not happy.

Robyn McKay:

And speaking of machines, I'd love to share this story with you. Because this has really driven my work in the past couple of years. Yeah, it was right before, we all got sent home in Arizona. So it was probably early March of 2020. I was at yoga class with a substitute teacher who I'd never had before. So she takes us through all the yoga stuff. We're at the end, I'm laying on my mat in shavasana, which is just, you know, you're just supposed to lay there and receive and relax and kind of let yourself just go. And she started doing a meditation. Speaking of meditation during this time, which is fine. It's very common. But in the middle of her meditation, she said something that popped me out of shavasana faster than I've ever like, it was like my hair was on fire. She said, And just remember, you're just a cog in a great machine. And I was like, what, what did she just

Jamie Stephens:

gave me I was like, Yeah, fuck now I'm

Robyn McKay:

like, Oh, hell no. I didn't say anything to her. But after that, I was like, Oh, my God. Like, what? If that's so deeply embedded in our culture in our world, that we are just meant to be cogs in a great machine? Or that we are just meant to be robots or clones? Is it any wonder that we, as human beings who have beautiful intuitions and emotions and creativity and genius, are suffering in these positions where we have to do the same thing over and over again, like we're clones like, we're robots, like we're cogs in a great machine. So that has been my message to my my colleagues and friends in the corporate space. As I do my lectures, my keynotes, all of the things that I do is you're not you're not a robot, you're not a clone, you're not a cog in a great machine, and you're not a resource, either. gas and oil are resources. Water is a resource, I'm not a resource. I'm a human.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, I mean, I think that that clarity, right there is ultimately like, what I deem is wrong with corporate America. Whenever you stop becoming an actual person, and it's just part of like this bigger plan to, you know, make more billions of dollars or whatever, and it's like, no, we're humans, we need certain things. And this whole environment is just not it's not doing it. That is so shocking to me, though the whole like that that would come out of a yoga instructors mouth. I mean, like you would think that they would be more in tune. And also that were you the only one that hopped up because I would have been like what

Robyn McKay:

my personal trainer was in the class with me he didn't Hop up, but I talked to him about that later. He was like, Dude, I know. Like, what?

Jamie Stephens:

Man. So

Robyn McKay:

we have video going, I'm looking at the vein and my head is popping out because I'm seeing you're like, but it was such a I love those moments in my life, when I have something like that happen that creates this welling up of righteous, sacred anger. I'm like, oh, hell, no, I'm taking this and I'm running with it. And I have been that has been the drum that I've been beating for the past couple of years is that we're not that we are the we're not. And we're not resources. And I had to walk that one back. Because in some of my early media, around this work that I've been doing in corporate for the last couple of years, I've said, I think that people are our most valuable resource. So I've had to walk that back. Because I no longer agree with that. That statement.

Jamie Stephens:

Was that hard to kind of walk back? In my mind? I don't think it's hard just because that's when I learned something new. I totally embrace it. And, you know, I think that's part of growth. But I think there's so many people that just kind of shut that part off to where it's like, okay, well, you may be learning new things, but you're really not integrating them whenever you know what I mean? You don't just say, Okay, I've grown since then. And this is how I feel. Now. I think that that's where a lot of people could benefit from undertaking that.

Robyn McKay:

I mean, your ego wants to probably not walk it back, I didn't have any problem with it. In fact, when I realized what I had been saying, I was like, Oh, shit, like, I got that 100% Wrong. So I am ready, willing and able to admit, like, we have to start thinking about ourselves in a different way. I will say in the last couple of years in corporate there has been more of an opening to taking care of mental health, and taking care of people's spirits, because of what's been going on in our world. And I think that the people who are working in the corporate space are not bad people. But I think that what we get, and I don't think that you think that either, but I think that we do get into these machines. And, you know, pick up our shovels, and we go to work every day in our hard hats, whether we work in that kind of space or not. There is that energy of same thing over and over again, like I'm a robot, and the call to awaken the existential conundrum, or crossroads that people arrive at, at some point is a call to consciously create your career consciously create your life, to come off of autopilot, and to step back into your body. So that you're mindfully aware of, what is it that I am meant to be doing with my life? I know it's not that. So what is it? Yeah, so we have to replace grit, tenacity and hard work with something. So what do we replace it with? Well, I say we replace it with mindsets like hope and optimism, experiences, like creative flow, like you and I are having right now I'm looking at the time I'm like, we're 45 minutes in, and it feels like 45 seconds have passed. That's how I know that I'm on my calling path is when I'm in flow.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, it's such. I mean, it's such a powerful state to I mean, like for people who haven't experienced, but like, that's the goal for me, like every day is to get into that to where it just, and obviously, I'm not, I don't get there every day, it's a practice, I get better at it. But you know, it is very much my goal, to just have ease throughout my day and to have things work out. You know, I mean, it's just like, I think we just kind of get conditioned to where it's like, you know, whenever you get up and go to a job that you're not particularly happy with. And you know, it's just paying the bills, that sort of thing. You just get conditioned to just kind of expect the drudgery of it. And it just, it doesn't have to be that way. And it's I love that I love that you speak to the flow of things because it's so important.

Robyn McKay:

It is. I think that we're at a place as people that we need to transform our relationship with time, with money and with work. Tell me more about that. Well, think about work. From the time I was young, perhaps you had this experience too, because I know most people do. We exchange work for money. It's dollars for hours. So we've got that relationship where we have just this expectation that if I work hard I'm going to make more money. If I work hard, then I'm going to get recognition for what I'm doing. And sometimes that's true. But it also creates the conditions for you to burn out. Because you get in that cycle, as you know, of the hard work for money. So it's a transaction, then we have, let's add time into that as well. We've got this busyness cycle that we're in constantly. I'm constantly busy. I mean, think about living and working in corporate, how many times a day did you think oh my god, I'm too busy. I'm so slammed. That was my phrase, oh, my god, I'm so slammed, I'm sorry. And I would use my busyness as an excuse for a while didn't get back to somebody. And it was probably true as well. But a lot of that has to do with our relationship with those three, those three concepts, time, money and work is that we just are on that cycle of busyness, busyness, busyness, we're on the cycle of work, work, work. And then eventually, someday you can retire and then you can have your great life.

Jamie Stephens:

Yeah, only then after you've given up everything else, and probably your health included, because you've been stressed out and miserable. And we all know that stress causes weight gain. And, you know, like, then you get to the age where you can retire. And it's like, Well, wait, I don't even feel good. I don't even know what I want to do. You know, I mean, it's

Robyn McKay:

we have, we're on this kind of sacrifice, we have to sacrifice we have to put our blood, sweat and tears. Think about how horrifying that actually sounds. If you were to just like, come in from some other planet and land on Earth and say, Oh, my God, like they're like sacrificing their health, their well being their relationships for this. What? And listen, I love time. I love money. I love work. I love those things. But I've transformed those relationships, so that they don't own me, they're on my team. You see the difference?

Jamie Stephens:

That's really powerful. Yeah. How did you get to that? Like, how did you transition them to your team? Whenever they're usually so ingrained, as just part of like working adult life,

Robyn McKay:

first I became conscious of them just like you are now as you're looking at these three, like, Oh, these are things that have been unconscious to me. And just Ennead like a fish doesn't know what's in water. And that's how we kind of operate with those three concepts or constructs. Once you recognize that, then you can do whatever you want to with them. I love to personify them. So if you could imagine if Which one do you want to take money time or work?

Jamie Stephens:

Let's do money, money. Okay, so

Robyn McKay:

if money were a person, kind of person would that? Would it be? Oh,

Jamie Stephens:

she's fine. She's now

Robyn McKay:

that we're entrepreneurs, and we have this relationship with money, that's quite different. When you are in corporate, what was your what would that oh person be like,

Jamie Stephens:

she's stingy. And she, it's not fair. And you know, I mean, it's just like that hole. It's a constraint, you know, I mean, it just feels like a jacket, that's too tight.

Robyn McKay:

So you transforming your relationship with money as well, because you can see that juxtaposition of somebody who's fun and free, and you can count on to show up, and she's gonna go out to lunch with you and go get your nails done and whatever versus in the past, what it might have been was stingy. And, you know, holding her money bag really tight, and maybe giving you a coin out of it for oh, I guess you did okay to that, right. So we can do that with each of those constructs time, money and work. And then once you understand that, then you can begin transforming that relationship. And one of the most powerful things besides personifying these constructs, is to write letters to them. And by the way, this is deeper, longer work than we would have on a podcast, but it is something that right intentionally you can go in, write a letter to money, write a letter to work, work, you're like a slave driver, dude, like, what are you doing? Put your whip down? I'm done. Yeah, I want to be partners with you. I want to make a contribution. I want to be in flow. I don't want to have you lording over me watching every second of my day, and making sure that I'm at my laptop, all eight hours of my shift,

Jamie Stephens:

moving the mouse to make sure that you know,

Robyn McKay:

like, Oh my God. Like, I think that when we shift that what ends up happening is that we're doing more of the work that we're meant to do and less of the busy work less of the working on work, and more of the contributions that you're meant to be making come through. So that's a big it's a big ask to change those relationships. One by one individual by individual as we do this. You'll see shifts in your life and then eventually we'll see these shifts, you know, in the You're in the bigger community as well.

Jamie Stephens:

So tell me about some of the conversations you're having over on your podcast,

Robyn McKay:

mindset, our x, I do my podcast, I have a LinkedIn live that we record as well for that, for that purpose.

Jamie Stephens:

Oh, that's fine. Tell me about that. So I'm still trying to figure out the whole LinkedIn thing, I don't get much traction over there.

Robyn McKay:

You know, I, I like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of those platforms that it really I think, is having its own identity crisis, trying to figure out, they kind of like people are over there. And they kind of try to make it be like Facebook, but it's not like Facebook, like whatever. I just, I go into LinkedIn live every single week, and that becomes the podcast. So it just is a live version of that, that just like Facebook Live or IG live. And the topics of conversation are for emotionally intelligent people who are ready to set the tone for a purposeful, positive and productive week. And then I always add on month, year, life, legacy, all the things and we talk about everything from overcoming the imposter syndrome. Recently, the topics have been very timely and relevant. There are a lot of organizations that are wanting their people to go back into the office. So though, I think last week's was on that very topic of how to make the transition back into the office, and I just give my best approach from psychological strategies and mindset. And being in a space of curiosity and open mindedness to this, rather than shifting back into the drudgery and the old ways of doing things, just how do we move forward in a way that honors all of the wisdom that we've had over the last couple of years, from being at home, our lives have changed so much. And I think that there's a lot of fear right now about like, what if I lose all of this, I actually have created a life that I like, a lot. And if I go back into the office, do I have to go back to the old ways of doing things? Am I going to just be another cog in a great machine? And how do I hold on to the things that I really love about the life I've created in the last few years as I've been working from home? So those are the kinds of topics I talked about. Yeah, I

Jamie Stephens:

mean, that's big stuff. I mean, because really, it's like, it's a great opportunity for companies to really get it right this time, or at least get closer to honoring the people that work for them.

Robyn McKay:

Well, for companies, but also for the people themselves. And that's really who I speak to, they're these high achieving women in particular who have these thoughts about I want to make a contribution. Some of them don't even want to leave corporate, they just want to make sure that they're making a difference. Yeah. And so that's my, that's really my role is to remind them and give them pep talks about how they can make a difference, so they don't go back to sleep. That's a big

Jamie Stephens:

one. Awesome. Well, as we kind of wrap up here, is there anything else that you want to tell our guests or any words of wisdom to part with? I just kind of put you on the spot didn't tuning in, give me your best words of wisdom?

Robyn McKay:

What do you got sister? I was just thinking back to when I was making my own decision to leave corporate. One of my greatest challenges was my identity. Who would I be? In the world if I weren't attached to this enormous world class university? For example? Who would I be if I weren't receiving a steady paycheck from this up and coming pharmaceutical company? Do you see what I'm saying? My identity was so wrapped up in the brand I was working for. So I had to untangle myself from the brand. And that I think, is one of the unspoken traps about staying in corporate space, is if I leave this, whatever if I leave IBM or if I leave Sam's Club or wherever you are in the world, who am I? Who am I? Well, you're you're I'll tell you who you're not just to repeat. You're not a cog in a great machine. Yeah. And you're not a worker be leaning into that question rather than contracting from it is going to speed up the process of making the decision to leave, you may not decide to leave, you may decide to stay and to rise up and have some bigger influence at bigger tables. But if you choose to leave, just know that you are so much more than any corporate brand that you might have been associated with in the past. That's my best advice.

Jamie Stephens:

I like it. It sounds deceptively simple. But through experience, I know that that is not that well. it'll take you to your knees. If you're not prepared for it.

Robyn McKay:

Yeah, I think it's important to work with somebody who's been through that and who has the skills and the abilities to help you shift out of that. A lot of it is wrapped up by the way in corporate trauma, just those everyday traumas that we have in the world. It's sort of a we sort of get Stockholm Syndrome I think sometimes about corporate my Savior and it's the sacrifice and Savior situation that we're talking about. So that's I know I just opened up a whole can of worms there that we could probably have a whole nother episode about, but that's kind of the heart of it is you have to do your inner work in order to become free. Somebody out there is not going to do it for you. You gotta you've got to initiate that.

Jamie Stephens:

Great Robin. It was so good to talk to you. I've had so much fun i The hour has just flown by. So tell people where they can find you your Instagram website, LinkedIn, whatever you want to share

Robyn McKay:

tour. Dr. Robin mckay.com is my website Dr. R OB GYN MC ky.com. You can find me there. When you go there. There's a quiz on leadership that pops up that you can take and if you are in a place of wondering what's next, the best way to start is to really deeply understand yourself and that leadership was starts the process for you. Then Instagram at Dr. Dot Robin McCain is my Instagram. Find me over on LinkedIn as well just type my name into the search bar Robin McKay and you'll find me over there LinkedIn live is I think Tuesdays at 3pm Pacific and that's just a fun place to go over and hang out with me too.

Jamie Stephens:

All right, and I will link all those in the show notes. So thank you so much.