A Life of Choice

In this episode of Wildly Unplug, I had the pleasure of speaking with Robyn, founder of A Life of Choice, about personal transformation, overcoming adversity, and using tools like the Enneagram and motivational mapping to better understand ourselves. She also shares how nature has been a guiding force in her life, from childhood to today.

Practical Tips to Unplug & Connect with the Wild:

Robyn’s tip? Start where you are.
🔌 Observe the nature closest to you—even from a balcony.
🔌 Notice the small details—the texture of leaves, the sound of birds.
🔌 Take a mindful walk without distractions—leave the headphones behind.

Nature doesn’t have to be a grand adventure—it’s about slowing down and appreciating what’s around you.

📧 Email: Robyn@alifeofchoice.ca
📸 Instagram: @MasterHolisticHealer
🔗 Website: A Life of Choice

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Transcript

Welcome to Wildly Unplugged, sharing stories of nature, conservation, and creativity. Discover what develops when you unplug and step outdoors.

 Thank you for joining us on the show today, Robin, and thanks for having me. And before we start talking about your website, alifeofchoice.ca, can you tell us a bit about your journey before that?

Certainly. Yeah. Growing up, I was a very curious kid. And I really wanted to know why people did what they did. I came from a very challenging background. Alcoholic dad, abuser, mom, mentally ill and suicidal. I really had that questioning mind and sometimes I'd get in trouble for asking those questions.

I played it pretty safe during my life. But I grew up around nature. We lived in a lot of very rural areas. And so nature and animals were my kind of saving grace [00:01:00] because people weren't reliable. I've always had that affinity. And then I went through my life working at a big corporation, which was great.

I got to do a lot of different things. And then I had breast cancer 24 years ago this year. And that shifted, I reconnected with that spiritual part of me. And it was really interesting, I'd gone to this beautiful retreat center. And it was just, I opened up my, I didn't even put my curtains because I opened up to the ocean and the mountains.

And we were just nurtured during that time. And I really realized how I'd shut down that part of myself. And how important nature was to me. So then when I started to move towards Going on my own, building more confidence in myself and what I could do on my own and being able to retire early because I'd worked there for so long.

Then it's okay, how do I incorporate all this? I'd learned to teach the [00:02:00] meditation and healing system and I was doing that on the side. And then I brought in other skills I'd already trained in psychology, counseling, conflict resolution, all these different things to help me understand people. And then I brought in.

Some newer tools, the motivational map and the enneagram, for example, and being able to dive deep into ourselves into our shadow selves to see where the parts of us that we disowned and where are we not fully connecting with ourselves. And to me, nature is one of those biggest pieces. to help us to reconnect with who we really are.

What inspired you to create your website and all the services that, that you have right now? Was there a moment or did it just all accumulate just through the years? I think a big part of it was so often we can fall into victimhood, like I really found that when I went through the cancer experience, [00:03:00] like everyone kept coming up to me and saying, why you, they wanted to reason for it.

And I would see people I had attempted to lead the Women's group post treatment, and I just found a lot of people were just stuck in their story going over and over it again and what's the next medication I can take and I'm going to take that one for 10 years. And for me, it was, I was taking the post treatment medication, and it's this is making me feel awful.

And the side effects are other cancers. Like, why would I do that? Why would I take this? And so I just had this feeling having reconnected with that deeper part of myself. I don't need this. It's not going to come back. Why would I want to live in fear? So we really understanding we have a choice in every moment.

That we don't have to go back into that victim mode. And that's what I saw growing up with my mom, right? We lived on [00:04:00] welfare. She was always at the mercy of other people. There wasn't the support then for leaving an abusive husband. Her parents were immigrants from Ukraine. Didn't even speak English.

There was no support. And it's like learning to support ourselves. And then I've learned through my Enneagram work that's a big thing for my type is support. So no wonder that's been a big focus for me. But it was really, and I love the book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. He was in a concentration camp and he said, they couldn't break me because I had choice.

I could connect in my mind to nature, my family, whatever I had outside of here. So they could never break my mind. They could hurt me physically. And so out of that came a specific type of psychotherapy. You've brought up Enneagrams a couple times and for our listeners, I'm [00:05:00] familiar with it for our listeners.

Can you explain what that is and which number are you? Absolutely. Yeah, so I've been studying it. Actually, it came through the Motivational Map, which gives us our nine motivators and how we get energized by what we do and what demotivates us and what saps our energy. And it's partly based on the Enneagram.

So I've taken that deep dive and become a teacher of it as well. And it's really a system to help us for our growth and transformation. It's a map of how we see the world, our kind of reality strategy. So there's nine types. We need all nine of them in the world. And we have access to other points, but our main one gives us our most direct path for our growth and transformation.

And especially doing it with teams, I find that it helps us to see how others people, other people's maps are. So then we build that kindness and compassion. We have that neutral way of looking at things [00:06:00] and seeing people for who they are. So we can do it very superficially or really deep. That's one of the things I love about the Enneagram is that there's such depth in understanding ourselves and seeing those patterns that we've created in our life.

That we can move beyond to our true self, that we don't have to get stuck in our box of personality. And what I really love about it is I'm a very practical person, and so there's the spiritual part of us, which the Enneagram can help us with, but also the very practical. So those feelings that I'm having around shame, whatever, I really understood it in a different level, to bring in kind of the, humanity with the spiritual.

And I'm a type six, which is called the loyalist. And so I really see that in my pattern with people, right? I want that connection. I want to build [00:07:00] community. And in the past, I've come and gone from groups very easily because if you're not walking your talk, I want that congruency. That's a piece of my world that I really like to have because it helps me to feel like I know where I am.

And the Enneagram gives us that path to say, one of the laws is law of three. How can I hold differing things? And then what comes out of it that's how we transform the knowing and the not knowing, for example. Holding both of those instead of that dual, either or, and then we can have that growth come forward.

Are you pretty good at guessing about what other people's traits are just by certain things that they do? a bit. I do typing services because I find the assessments can't get to why we do it because we all have the same behaviors, right? We all have anger, we all have [00:08:00] sadness, all of these things.

So we can't just go superficially. There's some better tests out there. Most of them are paid that helps you to get a direction. And then from there, you can narrow it down. I do see certain things and it gets a bit more tricky in all this Life of personal growth, where people can hide it more, for example.

So that's why you have to get into a bit more of the historical what were those personal patterns of growth for you, for example. But there's still things that kind of stand out to me, as to how people are in the world. And yeah, I think it's important. That the person find it for themselves. I'm the guide, but I'm not going to tell you.

And you'll learn, right? Because if it's not the right type, you're not going anywhere. The whole point is it giving me a growth pattern? If I'm just feeling going around in circles, it's not giving me any growth, then it's probably not your type. [00:09:00] So I'm a type seven and my husband's a type one and it has definitely helped us out and he was in the military and I don't know how many military types are a type one, but just with his job and everything I was like, Oh, I totally get why you pick the job that you did.

And then. For me, I'm more the fun type or whatever, but it really helps us to understand the way that we think the way that we do. And I also find it interesting, at least in the little bit that I've studied when I'm stressed out, I become a type eight. So knowing that about myself has really helped me to get a deeper understanding.

Is that some of the things that you help walk people through when they come to you with that? Yeah, that, the first level is just finding out your type and then we can look at the growth patterns. There's, we can go to either end of our lines. So there's three laws with the, if you look at the symbol itself.

There's a circle. So that's unity. [00:10:00] We've got the triangle, which is the law of three. And then we've got the outside lines, which is seven, right? And that's our growth paths. So everyone has a way and a missing piece. So for me, I go to the nine and the three and My growth is to really go from that angst of the six to the nine of the really calm and accepting everything.

And often people think I am a nine because I tend to be very quiet most of the time and calm and relaxed, but I've been teaching meditation for over 20 years. That I don't look as angsty, maybe as other sixes, depending on their growth path, because we have different levels of development too, and we go up and down in those levels, and as we go up, we have less restriction from our type.

And then to the three, which is my missing piece, is that ability to be out there, be visible. [00:11:00] Because as a six, it's anti narcissistic, six and nine don't like to be necessarily the spotlight. I'm easy at being a leader, but it's not because I want the accolades, right? It's more about the group and how can we bring people together.

Visibility can be a challenge for me. And that's why I love this kind of connection, because I feel really comfortable talking with people. Do you find that If somebody goes through maybe a traumatic experience or maybe a really good experience, would that change their Enneagram at all? Or maybe they've, or did, I don't know how I want to ask this.

I guess, would their Enneagram change throughout the year and different things that happen during their life? You're, you come into the world with particular temperament. And there was a study done by Thomas and Chess. And they followed children from birth to 21. [00:12:00] And they came up with nine temperaments, right?

Same as the Enneagram. So these are these magic numbers, right? That we see throughout nature. And that's one of the cool things about nature, right? All of science is there. And So we have, we come in with a temperament and then our environment, our culture, all of that kind of shapes it. So it can look different in different cultures, for example.

So for example, a woman in a culture where they're not allowed to be as out there in that type eight, who is more that protector defender, will look different than someone in a different culture. So that partly depends on it and also we see this with people who, in the sense that they've gone along with a particular type for maybe 10 years and once they get through some of the layers of the trauma and the healing, then they realize they're actually a different type.

So it's more about having that core [00:13:00] and how do we get to it and, if we're too defensive then we're not ready to look at what are some of those core issues for us. Okay. Thanks. I'll Also on your website, I saw that you have a book called Confidence Secrets, which I think a lot of us suffer from a lack of confidence.

I know I do more than I care to admit. What are some of your favorite secrets to share with people to give them that courage to be confident? A lot of it is learning to be ourselves, and that's why I love the different tools, right? The more we understand who we are. outside of that external because our society, especially in North America are so much geared to how are we doing out here?

And that's a false premise, right? We do have that when we grow up. We need to have that value returned to us. At the same time, if we're always looking for outside validation, we can't learn to do that for [00:14:00] ourselves because it's not out there that we build the confidence that's within. And taking those incremental steps what is that small thing I can do instead of, I need to go from here to, running my own summit.

It's, or, doing whatever it is where I'm going to show my huge confidence. But for example, for me, like getting into a program with my speaking teacher and then I got to build up and practice with people who supported me and finding those ways of getting the support and getting to those underlying reasons what is it for you?

Is it, I'm feeling I'm going to be attacked for what I say? Is it? So many people are afraid to say what they think these days because of conflict and stuff. So it's part of it, learning to deal with the conflict internally and externally and being able to really hold our boundaries, right? We don't learn [00:15:00] good boundaries and that's why I like the meditation course because you get energy boundaries.

So the small steps. Learning to keep your energy for yourself and not leaking your energy to others. Owning your values and what's important to you. And then I think those little steps help us to say, Give us more options to say, yeah, that's not serving me, so I'm not going to go into that area that is just depleting my confidence and my energy because it's not in alignment with who I really am.

You were talking about like leaking energy. Is there, I've heard the term before, like an energy vampire. Is that like really a thing? And how do we protect our own energy so that Yeah, we're not, we're setting those healthy boundaries. Yeah, energy vampires are real. And [00:16:00] yeah, if you think about it. If you have a friend, or even let's just say you go to a party, and you're feeling great, you go there, and part of it is being empathetic, where you allow that energy and you feel it.

But for people who feel like, you've got the energy, and I want that. They'll energetically take that from you and so we learn to say no energetically where it's no, this is my energy and that's why the shielding and these kind of tools are really important. But the problem is often we don't realize up to us too late, right to the extreme of abuse in a relationship.

So the one partner may be gradually helping them to take that energy from them. The other is just feeling drained and not really sure why, and then they're getting, their defenses are down cause maybe [00:17:00] they're not sleeping and they're seeing the other person as the leader in their life.

And so they're not even taking responsibility because they can't even see it for themselves. And, this is why we see people who go back to back relationships and stuff. One piece, there's many pieces, but one, because it's oh, this is normal to me, right? Because they keep having to feed back on them again.

And we see this even in relationships. You might get rid of someone in your life, they come back about seven years later. Yeah. Let me see. So Oh gosh, what do I even want to ask? Because I was looking at your website. You've got so many different things that you're trained in teaching people and guiding people through what is the ideal person situation when they come to you, what type of person are you looking for to work with?

I would [00:18:00] say someone who's curious and often a transition or wants more in life so that, as we, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is a psychological tool for motivation, at the bottom we have, the, our basic needs, food, shelter, all those things. As we move up, there's that self actualization piece.

And, we used to see it more with the idea of midlife crisis, those kinds of things. But we have that all the time now. It's not just a specific age. It's like when things aren't working for us anymore, you thought that was the path you were on. And it just doesn't feel right for you anymore.

So having that openness and curiosity, it's like, what else is out there? What more can I learn about myself? And rather than saying that's just the way it is, right? And nothing's going to change. And it's true. We like our comfort and, but it doesn't have to be as [00:19:00] drastic. And I think that's part of it.

And it doesn't happen overnight. I get a little bit. Concerned about people say yeah, just do this. And it's gone. It's like these are patterns. We've had our old our whole life and we forget ourselves again and again. We have to just like showering or anything else, right? We have to do it again and again.

And that's our mind and our safety. But our neural pathways can change if we allow it in a gentle, kind way, instead of going in there, I'm changing everything tomorrow. It doesn't last. So it's like being open to doing it gradually, taking the time to do it, and willing to see other perspectives.

What type of long term goals do you hope to accomplish? What do you see the future like for your website? I've just added a new one for teams. So I'm [00:20:00] just, I'd already learned the teams for the motivational map, and I'm just finishing up a training with the Enneagram teams. So I really would love to see more businesses, small business owners work together and really have a super functioning team.

People, before we used to compartment our lives so much more. And I think COVID really helped to shape that we really, we want to bring our full selves to everything we do. Learning to be engaged, accept other people, it starts there, it starts with us. But the more that we can do it in a group, and see the value of the team, and we can accomplish so much more.

We can have successful businesses, we can have successful work and home life. And we don't have to feel like we have to do it all ourselves because we have that support. And when earlier you were talking about you loved going into nature [00:21:00] as a child, where was there a specific place that you would go to or thing that you would do that make you feel comfortable and heal?

Gil, you? We lived in a lot of different places. One place, we actually had a river in our backyard, which was cool, and there were some old buildings on it, so like we had chickens, and yeah, always had cats, and we had dogs a couple times, but we had chicks sometimes, we'd have them at Easter, which was lots of fun.

But yeah, being by the water, and I still resonate a lot with the mountains and the lakes, I'm here in a very flat area, but I can drive to the mountains fairly close. And of course there's the ocean here at the coast and still the lakes I think because I grew up where I was born is actually a beautiful valley with this lake and mountains around it.

Beautiful. Do you have a favorite memory in nature? [00:22:00] When I got to travel, I would say as an adult. As a young person, I remember, going picking berries, we would see bears and, lots of fun things like that. But as an adult, I got to go to Antarctica, which was amazing. And I remember just as we came into the icebergs in the area and the pristineness.

And the quietness, I just burst into tears. It was just so amazing. I just interviewed a guy a couple weeks ago named Ralph who leads tours to Antarctica. You didn't go with him by any chance, did you? I went with G Adventures. They used to be called GAP and they're now G. And I like them because it's very more eco friendly.

It's local guides. Their ship was a redo of a ferry from, I think somewhere in Scandinavia. So they're, and they had really amazing guides. That is so cool. What kind of animals did you see while you were there? [00:23:00] Yeah, lots of penguins and the birds. Let's see. Yeah, whales. We had an amazing night one night, and they had to call us in and they said that we've never seen this before there was a pot of about 12 whales having their dinner.

So you see the bellings and all the fish going in. So we're at dinner. And we went out and, of course, taking pictures and watching. And after an hour, they said, You have to come in and eat dinner so that the staff can clean up and get ready for breakfast. They said they'd never seen that amount of whales just surround the ship before.

That's incredible. Was it quiet, quieter than around here with, I heard beeping and, you hear construction and I buses and stuff going by here. Was it quiet in Antarctica? Super quiet. I think that's the beauty. And then. There's one little island, which is cool, [00:24:00] with a post office on it, and there's people that live there, and a few outstations with research and stuff, but yeah, it's just really quiet, and we were lucky, we got, they say it can be the Drake Shake or the Drake Lake, and we had the pristine lake.

both times and, or both ways, and lots of sun. This was in December, so we had to, got to have Christmas and New Year's on the ship. Very nice. The opposite end of where Santa is. Yes. Very good. And how can people find you? Robin, R O B Y N, at alifeofchoice. ca, since I'm in Canada. I'm on Facebook with my name and LinkedIn.

That's the main places on, let's see, on Instagram, [00:25:00] it's masterholistichealer. That was my first kind of account with the meditation, so I've just left it with that. And yeah, that's the main places. Before we go, do you have a tip for someone that would like to connect with nature? Take what's around you. It's very interesting. I have a balcony. I'm in an apartment. But I have this beautiful tree outside.

And so often, you can go out on your balcony or somewhere and you're looking far in the distance. But what about close up? Looking at those leaves. For me, it's and there's pinecones and birds and not having the headset on all the time. Listening to the birds. There's one spot I like to walk near the dike.

Because it's no dogs. It's really quiet. All the birds feel safe. So they come out and they're just around and you get to hear this beautiful sound. And the other thing I like to do is take pictures. I post a lot of [00:26:00] pictures on my walks and Facebook. And it's like looking at the details and noticing how things transform.

And this is great for type ones, right? About that perfection of nature and just seeing how it's beautiful in all its different stages from the bud till it falling apart and just having that awe of how beautiful it is without having to be anything different than it is. Beautiful. Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thanks for having me. And until next time, get outside and see what develops. 

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