From Evacuation To Empowerment: Rewriting A Hard Year With Mindset, Service, And Redefined Success

What if your hardest year became the one you’re most proud of? I open up about evacuating our home with a three‑week‑old, navigating grief, managing injury in the family, and facing a quiet season in a two‑decade performance career—then show how a few daily choices turned chaos into clarity. The heart of this episode centers on redefining success in a way that’s resilient and human. Rather than chasing credits, cash, or clout, we build a scoreboard you can actually influence—presence, kindness, learning, and consistency. When success equals how you show up, you create value on slow days and stormy ones alike. 

Share this episode with someone who needs a softer start to their year, and tell me: what part of success will you define for yourself today?

You can watch this episode on YouTube here:

 https://youtu.be/5i-trz5Ddaw

Thank you so much for being here. If you feel called to, please follow Essence Embodied, share the show with someone who needs it, and leave a rating or review so more listeners can discover these conversations. 

You can keep up with Tyne on instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/tynestecklein?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr 

Join Tyne's email list here: https://shy-band-100.myflodesk.com/mrxyszsu5h

I'd like to say a massive thank you to my editor and dear friend, Nikki Dalonzo, for supporting me on this journey! 

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you want 2026 to be big and bold and beautiful, and you want to look back on it and say, wow, I am really proud of what I accomplished this year, then this episode is for you. Welcome to Essence Embodied by Tyne Steckline. I am your host, and I am so genuinely grateful that you are here with me. I have wanted to start a podcast for quite some time, but fear of the unknown and doing something different and new and not having enough time has gotten in my way. But here I am, and I am really excited that you are showing up with me in this space. It means a lot. I think I'm starting a podcast, to be honest, to connect for myself and for you. Because we are going through so much in the world right now, in our country, in our lives, and it's so noisy and full and chaotic. And I hope to just be a space where we can kind of come down from that and settle and find some calm and some grounding. If you don't know me, I am an artist, I'm a professional dancer, I'm an actress, I'm a painter, and I am also a mother. And I've been really fortunate that I've had some really amazing mentors in my life over the past decade plus who have led me to study and learn about things that were so far from the art forms that I pursued, but that really taught me a lot as a person. Things like Chinese alchemy, spirituality, meditation, mindset work, grounding, breath work. Things that when I look back on my career, I think, wow, if I could have had some of the tools and some of the knowledge that I have now, I maybe could have been more present for some of these experiences or handled them a little bit differently, handled them in a way that would have made me feel more supported in my self-worth. So I'm gonna be sharing on this podcast a lot of stories from my career or from my personal life and the lesson that I learned in case that it's relatable for you, so that you can connect and feel maybe a little less alone in a struggle that you may be going through. 2025 was a pretty wild year for myself and my family. We live in Los Angeles and we got evacuated from the Palisades fire very early on in January, and we had a three-week-old baby, our third baby at the time. So we were uprooted with a newborn and spent the next three weeks traveling to more places than I can count at this point to find safety and to get away from the fires and the danger that was real, but also that was really exacerbated in my mind from the fires that were happening all over Los Angeles. I want to talk about how this began the year out for me in true fight or flight mode, which a lot of times right now we are living in fight or flight mode just because of how busy our lives are, and because we open a news app and see everything that's going on and it puts our body into fight or flight stress. But most of the time we are actually safe in the moment, but we're getting in our head and feeling that we are not. But when we evacuated, we truly were fleeing to be safe. And that idea of where is my family safely sleeping tonight really, really got locked into my body and my mind. I did not feel safe in my environment, my home, my community that I love, even once we were safe to come home, because I was so kind of locked into what that experience had done to my mental health. And so I realized my mind was not in a good place. And I had to get some help with that. Let me take a moment to say I am not a mental health expert. And so if you need that kind of help, then please seek that out and know that this podcast is not professional medical or mental health advice. This is just me talking about my experiences. But I had to get some help to, you know, get myself out of this fight or flight mode that I had been living in. And then once I kind of came down out of that true fear of am I, am I safe? Am I safe right now in my body, in my home, in my life? And I found that I was, I realized something kind of beautiful from the aftermath of being evacuated. And let me say, my family did not lose our home. And I am so grateful for that. And I have friends who did, and it was such a devastating time for Southern California and for so many people. And we were very fortunate. And I was able to realize the beauty surrounding me that I had kind of just been oblivious to for a while because it's easy to get on autopilot. I grew up in Colorado and you see that beautiful mountain line, but I never appreciated it living there because you see it every day. It takes actually tapping in, tuning in, and being aware. Like, look at this beauty around me. Am I enjoying this every day? Am I waking up to the wonder and the awe of this the same way that a child would? And so then it really made me much more aware of my mindset. What is my mindset today? So, what I want to first acknowledge for our year of 2026 is that we first want to check in with our mindset, with our mental health, and say, how am I waking up each day? And what are the first thoughts that I'm putting into my head? I know that jumping on social media or the news app is not going to be the most productive or positive way to begin my day. When we were evacuated, I was constantly going on the weather app or these special apps to find the air and water quality in Southern California because there was fire everywhere and the air and water was very poor at the time. But it was like I then continued to do this for weeks and even a couple months after the fires, and I was just obsessive with it. It could have told me that the air quality was good that day, but I didn't believe it because I was so stuck in my mind in this space of like producing this stress cortisol that I couldn't even like see the truth if it told me that the air quality was good that day. And I know we can really easily get in that habit of just feeling the weight of everything, even if everything in front of us is good or great or safe. So, how are you waking up? How are you starting your day? And for me, a big thing that I thankfully was able to tap into mid-year in 2025 was this idea of not only how am I showing up for myself today, but even more so, how am I showing up for others today? How am I showing up for my immediate circle, my family, my friends? But how am I showing up even for the stranger that I see at the supermarket or the lady that I meet when I'm on a walk who I've never met before, even though we might live in the same neighborhood? Can I impact one person today for the better? How can I be of service to one person today? And how can I also be my best self, yes, for myself, because that is going to create my best day for me. But also, how can I be my best self for my husband, for my children, the best mother that I can be for my employer, right? If I'm on a job, how can I show up and be the best version for everyone? And once we can kind of tap into that mindset, then all of a sudden we start moving through our day very differently. So that's the first thing that I want to leave you with. How can you wake up and think bigger than yourself, but like who could I impact today? Because impacting one person a day is actually huge. It's everything. If every single person made it their mission to impact one person, well, this world would be, I think, a lot brighter and a lot more beautiful than it is at the moment. And then the second thing that we can do to help ensure that we are gonna have a great year is realize that so much of life is out of our control. And as soon as I can start to differentiate between what is in my control and what is mine to carry, to carry the weight of, and what is out of my control, it takes a lot off of our plate. And it also makes it easier to be able to then move forward in a more inspirational way through your days. 2025, like I shared, it was it was on paper a tough year. I lost my grandma, who I was very close to. We had the evacuation, which I've mentioned, and then very quickly I went back to work right after we had kind of gotten home. And I had my seven-week old at the time, and I was getting on airplanes and traveling a lot with her. My husband had a pretty bad hip injury. He ended up needing a hip replacement. So I was trying to really, you know, help my family out by working as much as I could. And it would have been really easy to look at the year and say that this year is not a good one. But I was able to say, what is in my control? What is out of my control? And then how can I make the most of what is happening and what is in my control and the things that are not in my control? How can I look at those and say, what can I learn from this? Instead of getting mad about it or angry or blaming someone else, what can I learn from this experience? It ended up being such a blessing that I worked a lot in 2025 because I was fortunate to be able to bring my daughter with me. And I got this one-on-one bonding time with my baby that otherwise would have been really tricky to get when I have three kids. So I was able to start viewing this like, oh wow, what a blessing that I'm getting this special time with her. I also was able to look at my grandma's life and see how blessed myself and my family was for how many years we had her and think about all the amazing things that she taught me. And when I went to go be with her in her final moments, get to just really soak it in and love on her and appreciate her. Yes, I was very, very sad, but I also was able to just be in such gratitude for her and for the gifts that she gave me over my lifetime. And now I feel like I get to just have these moments with her all the time because I can see the gifts that she's given me, not the material gifts, but the gifts of knowledge that she gave me and how they pop up left and right. And I'm like, oh, she's still with me, even though we lost her. And even on paper, it was a it was a tough year because the industry that I have now worked in for the past two decades that I have made my career in, which is being a professional performer, dancing and acting, it kind of was nonexistent in the year of 2025. Our industry has been through some really big shifts and it's having a hard time kind of bouncing back from that. And I also am a mom. And so the very few opportunities that I got, I wasn't able to even make them work with my schedule. And I had this epiphany one night. I was sitting with my husband and I realized this is the first year since I turned 18, which is when I began my career, that I did not work as a performer. And that's a very vulnerable detail to even admit, because here I am saying I'm an expert in my field, which I have been an expert in my field for two decades, but I didn't work in that field last year. And I was able to instead of think, oh my gosh, poor me, I'm an imposter. What's happening? Am I ever going to work again? I was able to take a moment of reflection on the year. And I was able to see, I'm so happy with what I am creating for myself personally, just in my personal life with my family and with my community and with my children. The fact that I didn't work in the same way that I'm used to, actually, I got more time to set up my life, my personal life in a way that feels really important, much more valuable than how many things I got to add to my resume last year. But you see, I could have been like, why is this happening to me? Or looked at other people who did get some jobs because there was some work and say, why them? I'm that talented. I should have been on that. But if I was on those jobs, then maybe I would have missed really epic moments with my family or beautiful teaching experiences where instead of being the performer, I'm getting to teach and I'm getting to learn through my students' eyes, and they're getting to learn from me. And it's this full circle exchange of growth. So I share with you all of those details from my year because as I said, it wasn't like the best year on paper. But when I look back, it taught me so much. And I felt as fulfilled as I have ever felt checking all the boxes in a year of the things that are supposed to bring us joy. And that leads me into my last and third thing that I want to talk about for how we make this a great year. What does your definition of success look like right now? If I were to have you write down success to me is what does it look like? Because I know for myself, many years ago, it was very much about material things, a certain type of car that I hope to be able to own, certain credits on my resume, a certain amount of money in my checking account. Those things, while yes, they they can make us feel validated and tell us we're doing a good job and on the right track. They are not what bring true joy. What brings true joy is having these small moments with someone that are so connected and meaningful and waking up and saying, who can I inspire today? But then pleasantly being surprised. Oh my goodness, look how inspired I was. When we get a bit out of our own head and our own ego of what's in it for me today, but but how can I be of service today? Then that comes back to you with so much abundance. It gives you so much back. So to make this a really great year, start with what can I offer today? What's in my control today? And then what is my definition of success? And how can it be one that I actually am in control of? If success looks like being present, I have a lot of control over that. Now I might have to recheck in with myself and remind myself many times throughout the day, but I have control over that. If success looks like how can I be my most loving, I might have to remind myself a few times, but that could be a successful day. How can I just be there for my son, my daughter, my mom, my best friend, my boyfriend? And it becomes this different way of moving through our days, this different way of living. And then no matter what is happening in my world, your world, our world, I'm still in control of what I am putting out and how I am showing up, which then makes me feel much more aware of what my days and my year look like. And then I can look back and be like, wow, that was a hard year. But I'm really proud of how I showed up for myself and for other people. We're gonna get into this whole concept of embodying our essence and why I think it's everything, why it's so important to showing up in our life as our authentic self. And in the meantime, if you enjoyed this, it would mean a lot if you would share it with someone or if you would follow or subscribe along with the show just to make sure that you don't miss an episode. You could also leave me a five star rating, it would be so appreciated. And I hope you have a beautiful day. Until next time.