Welcome back, everyone. Robin. I’m so excited to sit down with you today. How are you?
I am doing really well. I’m a little bit sick today, but coping, but life is good. So no complaints. So as we sit down to record this, it’s the end of October and I’m curious for you. First of all, what, how did.
This year go by so quickly. I know.
Holy moly. Very fast. But I’m curious for you. What is what’s alive? What’s real? What’s going on in your world right now? Oh, gosh. What is alive and what’s real? I think that If I were to be like completely honest, I felt wrapped up in a bit of a whirlwind the last month or so.
And just I don’t even know where it came from, but I just felt carpet got pulled out from under my feet and there’s this what am I actually doing with my life? What do I want to do? What do, what feels good, which is really at the core of all the work that I do.
And now I’m just like, Oh, how can I simplify? How can I find those little bits and pieces that I know pull me back into myself and make me feel like myself and how can I focus on those, but it’s funny it just felt all of a sudden I know what I’m doing. Okay, we’ll come back to the basics.
We’ll get back there again. So that’s what’s really alive right now is this sort of like reorientation, I guess you could say.
Oh, that’s so powerful. And I’m so grateful that you shared that because now I don’t feel so alone because I imagine I’m not the only one for sure. You’re definitely not the only one.
I get to spend a lot of time with women at the table, as I’m sure you do. And there’s a trend happening. I, and I feel like that’s been, A big thing all year is a lot of questioning and Ooh, this is the way. And then it’s Ooh, wait, Nope, that’s definitely not the way.
How does this one feel? Let’s try this no way. And I feel like as we’re getting closer to the end of the year, it’s like more layers are being peeled back and it’s simplify. Yeah. I’m so with you on that. I think there’s no sexier word than simplification these days. Oh, gosh. Yeah, for sure.
In our all black sweaters. I’m like, yeah, that’s what I’m wearing today because it’s easy.
Let me just get my thought process this morning. What am I going to wear? I’ll just wear black.
Yeah, simplification is I’m so excited you’re here and for those of you that are just hearing and learning about this amazing woman, Robin here today, I’ve had the pleasure of knowing her since our first conference that I did in 2019, the rise conference out at Azure bridge.
And I just remember our first call when I discovered your work and, it was an absolute fuck. Yes. I was like, we need her on that stage. Everything that you stand for is just so incredible and our lives and our pasts and what’s going on in the world for the last couple of years.
We’ve been out of touch, but as soon as I really wanted to bring this conversation to the collective, to our community, you are again, the first one in my mind that, we gotta. Bring you back as a facilitator inside the community because your work is so powerful. So I’m excited for our conversation.
And as we begin, I already know there’s going to be multiple parts to this conversation. This is a good 1 to lace up your shoes and go out for a walk if you can, because we’re going to take up the full hour for sure. And leave you hanging with a part 2. I can already tell you. I already tell that.
I love it. Then I’m gonna read your bio so everyone has the opportunity to understand a little bit about you and the amazing work that you do. So Robin Hilton is a pleasure based online business strategist. Her lifelong passion is in supporting women to be their most authentic selves, to let their guard down so they can shine brightly and confidently in all areas of their lives.
But most importantly, in their capacity to experience the joys of embodiment and sexual pleasure. Robin is known for making esoteric practice feel accessible and enjoyable for everyone, creating welcoming environments for self development, holding impeccable space, and skillfully guiding her clients and students towards inviting pleasure as a foundation for running their businesses and sharing their very important work with the world.
Robin supports online business owners with strategic and system support, launch strategy, and messaging alchemy. Her work bridges her expertise as a sex coach and yoga studio owner with the wisdom she’s gathered through running an online business for over 17 years. I love it. We need more of that. I told you it was going to be a juicy one.
So make sure that, make you, make sure you got your headphones on and the kids are out of the room. And we’re going to talk. And. We all need more pleasure. We need more joy. We need more pleasure. And I feel like if we’re going to have a conversation about joy and we’re going to have a conversation about pleasure, we really need to start with having a conversation about what’s in the way of that.
Yeah. Yeah. Why are we so depleted? Why are we so burnt out? And how does that impact our ability to actually experience joy and pleasure? What are you hearing from? What’s the conversation over and over again with this? I think you, what you said is exactly it as you were talking like we’re, my answer was just going to be, we’re just exhausted, we’re exhausted.
And when you get to that point of utter exhaustion, it’s so hard to, and pleasure just feels so far away. It feels so hard to get to a place where, you know, that feels like, It’s like that would feel like a priority it’s almost if I even just think about my own journey and, when we started this conversation today, talking about that feeling of like landing and being like, wait a second, this isn’t right.
This isn’t me. I don’t feel connected. I feel disconnected. And if I try to do anything more, including focusing on adding in practice or the things that I know will help me to feel better, to feel more pleasure, it feels overwhelming. Like overwhelming and I think, I wish I knew why I expect that we’re all still very much dealing with the trauma of the of the pandemic as much as I think we all I, I think about, I was pretty privileged.
I actually quite. Like that ability to step back, but there was a lot that went along with that, a lot of missing out on connecting with people. I, for one, it felt weird going back into spaces and like talking to people and I’m pretty social. But I think that, in the world has changed so much and we have to be conscious of so much more in the world.
And then we also have so much input all the time. It’s just, it’s exhausting. And people that I talk to are are like we said, just really craving simplicity and really craving taking away what what’s not necessary. So that I can just be happy so that I can just experience like peace and calmness and ease and stillness.
And I wish I knew I wish I knew what could, if I had like the magic solution to help. Everyone realized the value or the potency of inviting pleasure as a priority. Yeah, I think, yeah, I just think that would be a really amazing gift I could give the world, but I’m not sure I know.
I’m not sure I know. I’m not sure I know how to do it. Even that, is validating, like someone’s listening to this right now, and now they don’t feel wrong for maybe not being able to access that, and I think that’s really important. No, yeah. And also, you said something really powerful at the start that I’ve just massaged into something, it’s if it’s not a priority, or no, if it’s not feeling like a possibility, how could it be a priority?
Yeah, and so it almost feels like pleasure is just like another thing. I have to put on my to do list that I’m supposed to magically figure out after running on empty since I got out of bed this morning and like doing all the things. And so how do we flip that? How do we even start?
Because we can’t go from. We can’t go from the bottom of the barrel, they’re like depletion to orgasmic. I wish we could, but the reality is there’s yeah, we’re not present, but like, where do we start Robin?
Yeah. I, we start, I think first with, I want to answer this really well, because Maybe I actually do have the secret, if I really take my time with this response because I think what we might be doing is imagining something that’s bigger than it needs to be like, so if I were to imagine myself. Living a pleasure filled life, I might imagine something that’s like really far away from what my day to day life is at the moment yet pleasure is so simple and it’s so accessible and it’s so available to us that what if we just started small what if we just started with Mindfulness, and if we just started to notice the simplicity of pleasure that’s already available to us, and if that’s all that we have space for, that’s better than just running on autopilot all the time and not paying attention to what is already available to us.
And we know with pleasure that when we experience it, when we invite it, when we feel it, we’re more apt to want more. And if we are, if we don’t allow it or don’t feel it, it’s really hard to even want it. And, and I think that, I can, you can take that and extrapolate it and make it be about sexual pleasure, or you can make it be like quite simple and just about allowing pleasure to be an important part of your life, period.
So it can be, it can be all things.
So what I’m hearing from you is we get to define what. That looks like for ourselves first. What is a pleasurable life look like? What is a pleasurable. Day look like what is a pleasurable moment look? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be I think, it doesn’t have to be sexual and it can be, but it doesn’t have to be.
And I think if we can just start with where it feels. Possible where it feels easy, then we can add more. And I think it’s, part of part of that is also being really conscious or intentional about where we’re not feeling pleasure and where we are, you asked initially, like what’s in the way and the exhaustion is in the way, but why are we exhausted?
It’s because we’re stressed. And what can we do to and we may not be able to change the situation, the reason why we’re stressed, but I think we have the ability to change our relationship with how we are managing stress and how we are approaching our life. Are we actually taking care to to take care of ourselves when we’re feeling stressed, are we resting?
Are we sleeping enough? Are we, the things that are accessible to us that can help us to feel like a little more of a firm footing so that we can then make these choices to add pleasurable things like little tiny rituals throughout the day that make life just a little bit more enjoyable.
Yes. Prioritizing the little things to add up to the big things. Totally. I’m so with you. One thing I’m hearing a lot lately is absolutely the crushing amount of stress for sure the pressure overwhelm these are, what, these are what I’m naming right now is not even right now. This is the unfortunate part is that this has been normalized for high achieving women is that burnout overwhelm stress.
Is just a part of our day to day life. So like that is more normal than living a pleasure full life. That is the reality. They’re 99. 9 percent of the time I sit down with a client or women in our groups or in the community. And the conversation is about what I just mentioned. It’s about the stress, the burnout.
It’s about the pressure. It’s about the expectations. It’s about the never ending to do list 0. 1%. I sit down with someone and they’re like, you know what? I had a great week. Things are going well, my kids are out of town. I had the data. You know what I mean? Yeah, so that is why I feel like this conversation is so important because those are the circumstances and that’s the environment that not only we’re living in right now, but that’s what we’re up against as high achieving women. That’s what we’re up against as women who have put our hand up to say, we’re going to be leaders. We’re going to be business owners. We are going to create movements.
And so we have to learn how to navigate around that and say, how do we create a world and how do we create a business and how do we create a life that allows us to embody the both and right, the both and what I’m hearing you is it’s really being mindful of little choices.
Yeah, and that’s what that’s just the beginning, right?
I think what you’re addressing is something that is pretty deeply embedded in our culture. I don’t know if that’s the case necessarily. For younger generations, but I know like definitely millennial gen X women, for sure. And maybe it’s, I think there’s many reasons, I think it’s like the pressure we put on ourselves and the desire to succeed and to do the things that we know we’re meant to do and also on top of that, have families, be in relationships navigate relationships all of that is, is a lot of work. And I think when we explain, there’s a lot I can talk about when we get into talking about.
Relationship and how relationships can actually really contribute particularly heterosexual relationships can really contribute to the amount of stress that women feel and therefore the lack of desire for any kind of pleasure. But the reality is that heteronormativity. And the way that women engage with men generally in relationships and women who are in same sex relationships don’t have as many of these same experiences.
But that mental load of being both in the relationship and being in a household and managing a household, that’s a lot for. Somebody to carry and it’s that level of stress and that level of immediacy around all of the things that need to get done like that is in direct opposition to what is required to experience.
Desire, so it’s like like a losing battle when we think about the way that we’ve structured relationship and the way that we’ve structured our society. It’s it doesn’t make it really easy for us to desire pleasure in the 1st place. Fundamentally at the core of it, there’s like a lot we can do, and also a lot that needs to just change culturally in order for there to be a larger shift.
There’s got to be some hope.
So depressing. I know there is. In this podcast.
No, but honestly. There’s therapy. There’s therapy. We have to go to therapy. We have to work with coaches. We have to, I think that there it’s about getting really clear about what the priorities are and then being able to communicate those things to our partners who have grown up in a culture that doesn’t necessarily allow for the kinds of relationships that are supportive for ongoing long term kinds of pleasure.
And this is more specifically related to sexual pleasure, for sure. Yeah, totally. I feel like that I would love to go there as far as the relational piece. And maybe we’ll start with, let’s start with self. Let’s start with self, because I think if we can’t, in my experience, it all starts with us, right?
For everything, it always is. And the relationship that we have with ourself will help us create healthier relationships with others. And so if we can’t create that self, Pleasure, whatever that looks like, whether that’s, the, your morning tea or your morning routine or movement session, or whether that’s sexual or whatever, it’s got to start with you and then we can move to relational.
So maybe let’s start there. What do you have to say about that?
How do we start? How do we start?
How do we start? Robin. Bye. Let’s pretend I’m like your patient and I’m coming to you and I’m like, hi, you’re using all these words like desire and pleasure. And I can barely keep up. So you’re speaking Chinese to me.
What do I do?
Yeah, and I think, when I anytime I start working with someone and it’s the first step is to look at the reality of the life you’re living day in and day out and decide if. There are some things that need to change and probably there are, right? Is there something that needs to be communicated?
Is there somewhere that you need to ask for help? Is there something that you need to let go of that? You are doing that you just keep doing, but maybe you don’t need to be doing that thing anymore. I think when we first start with that big bird’s eye view, we can see where maybe where the stress is coming from, where the tendency to Put yourself at the very bottom of a to do list and take care of the needs of and I, I also, I want to say that like our businesses.
So for women who are entrepreneurs or who have businesses or who, whose work is very, a very central part of their day to day life, like that often is placed well above our own, like personal needs. And probably for good reason in many cases, because that’s how we survive and so we make money and that’s how we are able to to have a life that we, to have our lifestyle and to pay for things, but it’s still that.
Prioritizing leaves us at the bottom and on the brink of burnout, which isn’t going to serve like our quality of work or the quality of what we’re able to put into our business. The 1st thing is to just take that bird’s eye view and look at okay, what. What actually needs to change in this space?
So if I were, for example, working with a business owner and I, we work on strategy and building like a pleasure based business, if I were to look at their business and they were using systems that required 10 times as much work, then what they needed to be doing, it’s okay, do you have a structure?
A system, a flow is your calendar something that is like reliably consistent for you so that there is like this kind of like strategy to your life that makes sense with your own like personal capacity. So that’s where we begin because I believe like strategies, structures, systems, all of that supports pleasure.
Oh, yeah. If we don’t have that, then it’s we’re constantly just putting out fires and, doing more work than we need to. So that’s where we start is just making sure that the foundation is there. Yeah to mitigate the stress, to mitigate like that yeah, I love that plugging the drains to mitigate the loss of energy.
Yeah. And then from there, it’s like I mentioned earlier this is where you can start to add in those little moments, those little opportunities for Tapping into your body or tapping into your intuition or adding little rituals into your day that are are invitations for pleasure. And you have to just start somewhere.
And so I think like the, the very core of it, the very foundation of it is just making sure you have the space. You’ve created the space, you’ve created the opportunity to invite these other pieces in. So and that, while that might, to me, that doesn’t sound overwhelming because, as I started earlier, it’s it’s about simplification and that’s like a beautiful thing.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. What you’re saying is powerful. And it’s it’s just optimize what you got first as a first, like, where is there friction? Where’s their frustration? Where are you draining energy? I have my clients do an audit every single month for stuff like this, because I think that we don’t even realize like the things that we’re repeatedly doing that are actually just it’s you’re bashing your head against a wall and it’s wait a minute.
But that I, non repeated process or like creative burnout, I felt creative burnout over the pandemic so many times because I personally rebranded three or four times and I was like, who am I in all this? My identity was all like, but anyways, I digress. That’s in another episode. But all of these ways that my energy was being.
Holding all these directions and, I would constantly notice at the end of the day, there was no energy left for myself. There was no energy left for my relationship. It was just something that’s got to give. So then it’s, what support can you get or where can you simplify things?
So I think that’s a really powerful place to start. Okay, so we’re filling the drains 1st. Yeah, I think like you, I want to just build upon something. You just said that it came to me as you were talking. It’s a lack of clarity can be a huge better. Yeah. If you don’t know what it is, you even want, yeah, again, it’s going to make it really hard to want it a hundred percent.
Yeah. Cause you’re, your energy towards, you can’t create momentum if you don’t know the direction. And especially if you’re, pulled in this direction or this direction, that’s another just way that energy is being, it’s being wasted. And it can be leveraged.
Yeah. I heard something I hit me actually is like cortisol.
When your cortisol is high and you’re in a stress response and that that would prompt someone. And, again, like I haven’t researched the science, I’m sure there’s something to this, but it makes sense to me that you would be trying to fill that void, like seeking something.
So I, I imagine when you’re in a stress. State you just keep adding things on and go I see that in myself even it’s like, Oh, I’ve, an idea will distract you because it’s like a distraction. And then it’s just more on the plate, more away from what it is. So that clarity of what you want is so important.
I’m like, how many rabbit holes do we go down every day? So I love like an idea parking lot where I’ve learned there because otherwise I’ll just start a new business every day.
Oh yeah. Totally. That’s the creatives. Me too. I totally, I completely rebranded my yoga studio over the weekend. So totally.
Yeah, I get it. It’s so clarity. You know that question. What? What do you want? It seems like a simple question. It’s a very hard, especially in time of transition and shifting and changing. And I know a lot of us have gone through a lot of evolutions the last couple of years and. I think the answer to that question has shifted and changed, and I think it’s an important one that we continue to stay curious about, and I don’t know if this is true for you, but in my experience, when I struggle to answer that question, I often look at what’s not working.
And that gives me clues for actually what I want, like to help me answer the question of what do I want? I can go to what do I don’t want. Yeah, exactly. That feels true for you too. Yeah, it feels true. And I also would add, and I, this is completely my own experience, but often I know what I want, like deep down, but I’m just not like ready to say, or I’m not ready to go there.
Do you feel like you’ll be met with the response that yeah, or it’s just not. Yeah. Maybe I’m like, there’s a bit of fear. If y’all were to really clean that might be like more than I want to take on right now. So I think Robin, I feel that, Oh yeah that, yeah, that feels true.
I think that’s really honest. I think as women. aS humans, I’ll just, I don’t know. I can only speak for women. I’ve only been a woman, but I think there’s in my, in what I hear at the table and the women that I spend time with, it’s we want it, but we’re afraid of it, or there’s fear of who we might become if we actually did that, or there’s a fear of who we might become Not be anymore or an identity or a community or people that might not come with us if we fully claim it That’s scary.
It is. That’s it. That’s like some childhood. Like I’m gonna eat lunch alone stuff for sure Yeah,
for sure. It’s not and it’s I think it’s Maybe some conditioning around what we are allowed to have and allowed to do. And I’m just trying to think what would be in my way? Yeah. I don’t know.
I think it’s, I think you’re right. I think it’s old. It’s old stuff. It’s conditioned. It’s patterns.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think even when, even back to the topic of pleasure, it’s did it have to be earned?
Yeah. That’s a huge one is pleasure earned or are you bad for having pleasure?
Think about, women I don’t know how many of us were burned in this, burned at the stake in another life, but it’s if you want pleasure, like you’re maybe called a name. It starts with an S or something like that, or too much of it, and someone has an opinion, or not enough, and someone’s got an opinion, or, having to earn it, not like it’s, it’s just a part of life, right?
Yeah. I always talk about how from day one, you have to eat all of your gross veggies before you can have your dessert. Yes.
You know, do all your homework and then you can watch tv.
Exactly. We always have to earn the reward. And we don’t just get to experience the joy for the joy’s sake. And that’s, I think that’s very much a product of, um, probably a product of capitalism and a product of , just the kind of culture consumerism that we, it’s like we have to earn things, but, the simple joys in life, we certainly don’t have to earn.
We, we, those are our birthright. They’re inherent.
Yeah. Yeah. So notice what’s coming up for you, anyone listening what were you told as a kid and how has that shaped and how has that formed your beliefs around, your worthiness with pleasure or ability to experience pleasure. Is it positive?
Is it negative? Is there a certain saying that comes up, be a good girl or, do, go to your room. I don’t know what was the thing that, that really came up for you. And if that is. Hijacking your ability to experience joy and access pleasure, um, today, then it might be an opportunity and an invitation for you to take a look at that and create a new narrative and a new story, which isn’t the job of the hat, but maybe this is bringing some awareness to the table.
If you were to imagine yourself, earning pleasure. So of course, then what do you, how are you going to structure your day? You’re going to do all of the things that are external to you, that have to be done all of the things that are external expectations.
And in that piece that I said earlier about putting like your business or your work at. Higher up on the priority list, then like you’re the things that make you feel good, the pleasure, taking time for pleasure. What if you flip that? What could you bring to your work? Or what could you bring to your business?
What would be on the table if you actually came fully like fulfilled and full of pleasure, like what kind of creative process would be available to you if you allowed yourself to come to work with that instead of coming to work depleted.
Yeah. It’s like building from a place of joy, not a place of depletion.
We talk about that in our community and it’s so many women are living life on empty and we have celebrated that women should run their business from a deficit and we’re just building from a deficit and it’s not sustainable and there’s no long versus if we fill ourselves up, if we choose ourselves, if we build from a place of joy from a place of overflow. We’re actually able to, be more sustainable, we’re able to find more joy in the day to day, but it doesn’t make sense in our minds sometimes because it’s like, Oh, there’s so many things. How could I do that? But it’s, as my mind is bending as we’re talking to, and it’s just oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, of course. That makes sense. If I am prioritizing my joy, if I’m prioritizing my pleasure, it’s going to have a positive ripple effect. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. I started leaving my cell phone in my office again recently. I had to do a reset. It’s the end of the year, when you come back and you look at what you were supposed to do at the beginning of the year.
And I’m like, oh, yeah, reset. That’s a thing. And the last two days have been like, I’m so time rich
because… Oh my gosh, I need to do that. I just, I just hit a boundary and I was like, I have an Alexa dot. Why am I using my phone as my alarm clock again? And then I’m like sneaking a few things in right before I go to bed.
Or, you get sucked in as soon as you pick the device up. And it’s blah, your energy is just gone. And just that simple thing I feel like I read three chapters of my book last night before I went to bed. That’s incredible. I caught up this morning, like literally, I caught up this morning, and I did, I made a, I made coffee, I read another chapter of the book, I did a 30 minute Peloton session, and then I looked at my phone, and it was, Like I was a new fricking human being like this.
Oh my gosh, that sounds blissful. See, and what’s so funny is like, when I hear you say that, and I’m going to guess that when most people listening to this here, you say it, they’re like, that sounds like what I want. I want that, right? And yet we have these devices have this choke hold on our attention.
But again, I think it’s like that stress, right? That seeking sort of behavior of I need to fill this something that I can’t quite figure out what this feeling is. We fill it. Yeah. We fill the space. Yeah, so I think these are always just reminders and what I’m sharing and what you’re sharing is not rocket science.
It’s just a reminder that I hope someone needs to hear. It’s these opportunities to take our power back and it’s so easy. My husband and I were having this conversation on the weekend and it’s it’s just an addiction. So many of us have addiction. And again, society is like normalize this thing.
This device rules our life. Everyone can access us on it. We do all of our things from it. We fricking pay for stuff on it. Don’t, every moment this thing is running the show and it’s just take your power back for a minute. And what can you do with that time instead? It’s not something we get perfect all the time.
I certainly go through seasons, but I recently was in a season where I was like, whoa, screen time too much. Yeah, simplify.
Simplify. Exactly. Yeah. And I think it’s like a great opportunity when you notice that just to inquire. It’s what am I for me? It’s usually I’m avoiding something, I’m avoiding.
Or I’m just like, maybe I need more sleep or maybe I need, to just spend more time doing things that enrich me. And I’m just making a choice to do something that’s easy. And no shame, like we all do it and we all do it. And I think like part of the conversation around pleasure and part of this conversation, I think is really important is that we just own where we Struggle, right?
I could just be like, oh, no, I’m perfect with my phone and, and not actually say that no it’s something that I struggle with. And I think the more that we can openly share this is where I’m at, then the open space for everyone to be like, yeah, okay, yeah, then we can do something about it.
And I don’t think we can’t shift. We can’t change. We can’t make any changes in our life until we’re really radically honest. And yeah, honestly, it’s a struggle for me too. It’s an ongoing struggle. Yeah, I go put your phone in the kitchen or I was laughing at my husband ’cause he loves projects and I was like, can you please build us for Christmas?
What I want is a phone jail. So can you like phone, jail, phone, Dale?
I love it. . Just take my phone gel, I’ll paint it, I’ll, whatever. But it’s like the physical act of putting your devices in another space. Yeah and this will maybe segue into our conversation about relationships, but I feel like relationships is basically this competition between who’s on their phone less and so much so true picked up your phone.
The 2nd is like the, or they would leave the room or, yeah there’s always yeah, at the dinner table and you’re like, oh, let me just check a couple of things. Totally. I told my husband, I was like, can we just decide that there’s Two nights a week. I don’t care. Like two nights a week where we’re having dinner and we just put the phones and the devices in phone jail.
And that’s it. Like we just are calling forward our full presence in that time. And can you please make me a phone jail? I don’t think we need to go through that extreme. Do we? And I was like, I think we do actually, we do really do need this.
Quality time gets enriched. Our presence gets enriched.
The quality of our conversations gets enriched and the level of intimacy shifts as well with people. And whether that’s your friendships, whether that’s your romantic relationship. Or even intimacy with yourself when you’re not, when your energy isn’t being pulled in many, in all the other directions, you have the ability to give your full self to the moment.
And when we can give ourselves to the full, our full selves to the moment, that’s where connection can take place. And without that, we’re just bodies. We’re just passing ships. We’re not connecting at all. And. Especially for those of you who, like myself I require a lot of emotional intimacy in order to even open myself up for sexual intimacy.
It’s just not a thing. Intellectually, mentally, emotionally if I don’t if I get to be my full self, then I’m. Then you have me, but if not there’s too many things going on up here. There’s too much mental stimulation. There’s way too much mental load for me to drop from doing it all super woman all day to it’s just, it’s not going to happen.
Yeah.
How about you? Yeah. Not a hundred percent the same. I and I feel sometimes like I require a lot. And I think a lot of women require a lot and it’s hard to ask for that. And again, that’s I heard something I was I was reading through or I don’t know what it was, I was listening to a podcast or something and it was talking about sexual pleasure and I think her name is Carolyn Klein, Dr. Carolyn Klein. She’s a therapist in Vancouver, I believe. And she talked about is it the problem desire or is the problem that like, there really is nothing to desire.
Hold on. Say that again.
And I was just like, yeah, Because if and. So many women are conditioned not to speak up and say, this is actually what I want.
So if you need that, like emotional connection and like that feeling of just feeling safe and held and known and loved Asking for that for a lot of women can be really challenging. And so then desire just won’t be there. And so we have to find a way to just feel like, okay, with what we need.
Yeah. And then have partners who are one willing to support us in that, but also willing to ask for what they need to.
That’s that’s really powerful. And I think. If we don’t personally know what we need, how is someone else going to know what we need? So step one is get clear with you. What is it that you need?
And again, Back to that question about maybe what’s feeling like resistance do you feel like you can’t ask for it? Do you feel like there’s no warm up when it comes to sexual pleasure or, intimacy or whatever? Are you wanting more emotional stimulation? What is it that is in the way of that?
And get clear with yourself, um, so that you can communicate that. I think often we want our partner to read our minds. Yeah, and sadly they can’t sadly they can’t and you remember when Terry Cole spoke at rise. Yeah, I will. This one thing she said, which I will like never forget this example. It’s so good.
She’s this couple has been married for 10 years and and one night the husband says let’s go out for Mexican. And finally the woman decides to speak up and she’s I hate Mexican. And he’s we’ve been going every Friday for 10 years. Like what? And, it becomes really hard to speak up and communicate our needs if we’ve been suppressing them, not communicating them.
But if we don’t, we’re just continuing to tolerate and settle for not getting. And. We got to give ourselves a permission slip to let it be messy, but to let her be heard. Yeah, and I think that process of figuring out what it is we want or need again I think it, we can even go when we’re talking about the arena of sexuality is we probably already do know in some way, I think we.
I just heard this amazing, there was a video on Tik TOK and it blew my mind talking about like pop culture and specifically talking about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey and why do people care? And it’s actually why they care is because we are exploring what our values are and what we want to see in a relationship through that discussion.
And it’s like, when we see something like him gently pushing the security guard out of the way and like opening the door and helping Taylor out. It’s there’s a part of us that’s look at him. This is what I want. Or when we see him expressing his emotions, it’s look at, and we talk about it because it’s like an opportunity for us to clarify what actually we want.
And so I think we know. Because we see it and we acknowledge what we see and it’s I like that. No, I like that for Taylor, but it’s no, actually I like that for me too. Yeah. I’d be like, hit the guy beside us. I’m like, Hey, are you watching? I think so. I think we have clues all around us that we do know what we want.
It’s pretty clear. And it’s just really like, how do we feel emboldened enough to actually ask for it and say it?
Do you have any suggestions?
No, cause I’m terrible at it.
No, I heard a great quote the other day and I love that you just said that Robin, and it’s the plumber’s pipes are always broken.
Yeah, a hundred percent. The thing that we are so deeply passionate about is also the thing that we really spend a lot of time working with. And for me, that’s burnout. And for you, what is it? It’s, yeah, for sure. It’s definitely like speaking up 100%. Like being able to express. Yeah.
That’s really cool. And if I were to help someone through it, it would just be around getting really clear on, what those boundaries are, what those desires are, and then supporting them in being able to express that to their partner in a way that Wasn’t confrontational that was loving.
And that was also like, actually like with the acknowledgement that your partner might not be able to do that for you, you need to decide if that’s like something that is a deal breaker or not. And those are hard decisions. That not everyone is going to, your partner is not always going to be able to meet all of your needs.
And that’s not necessarily why they’re there.
Yeah. And again, back to the, and especially for those of you that are listening that are not in a romantic relationship right now, or don’t have a partner. Also, how clear are you with yourself? And how clear are you in what your needs are?
And how confident are you in expressing those even to you to declare those? And I remember with girlfriends back in the day, like we would write our non negotiable list or we’d write just crack a journal and it might be time to rewrite those success scripts. What does that look like for you when it comes to what you need for intimacy, emotionally, physically, mentally.
What that looks like and get clear on that yourself. And can you give that, can you deliver that to yourself as well? For me, a presence is on the top of the list I need presence and that’s not just with my husband. That’s with my. With my female relationships, that’s the intimacy in my groups.
That’s that is a requirement for me. And in order to give that and to experience that, I also need to practice that within myself. Yes. And at the beginning of this year the first thing I wrote on my, what does success for 2023 look like? What does success look like for me? And it was, my presence is my success.
And that’s why I had to do this reset with my phone because I, if I was really honest with myself recently, I’m like, I went to get acupuncture a couple of weeks ago and she’s so you’re disconnected and out of your body. And I was like, fuck.
Oh yeah.
You’re right. You’re right. And I don’t always get it right, but I’m the level of awareness that I have around it and the tools and the support and the community and the practitioners and the people.
Yeah. They helped me reset and get back in. And I think for all of us, like we got to get clear what it looks like, what success looks like, we got to not make it wrong when we’re off track, but we also get to recalibrate and come back to it. And so cracking that journal, like coming back to the, some of the questions that you’ve given us today, which are really powerful is what’s not working, what’s not feeling good.
What’s not feeling pleasurable. And then. What do you actually want? What is better look like, what is and where are we draining energy and how can we plug those drains? Yeah. And then starting small, what’s a pleasurable day? Yeah. Pleasure moment. Yeah.
Moment. Yeah. What does a pleasure based business look like, Robin?
Oh, gosh. A pleasure based business to me is one that is passion driven. So I, I’ll say one thing about a pleasure based business. It is not for someone who is risk averse in the sense that you have to make decisions that feel good and do work that feels good. And the moment you realize that.
You’re not, then you have to recalibrate. And I think there is always at the heart or at the core of a pleasure based business. Like there’s a through line that has been there always with you. There’s something. So when I think about my own, my own life, I started in, um, university.
As I studied women’s studies and have a degree in women’s studies, so I started there, and then did the retail thing. Of course, when you have a bachelor of arts, that’s what you do. I did the retail thing for a while and and then. After I had kids started working online and having an online business and then into coaching and yoga.
And it’s what is the actual through line that is woven throughout all of that? And if I were to really think about it, it’s just really about, working with women to allow them to feel empowered, to make choices, to have the kind of life that they most desire. So it’s really just about supporting women into their greatness, into their pleasure, into their joy, into their happiness.
And that’s been a through line. And I think if that is not present in my work, I won’t enjoy it. Yeah, I will be, I’ll be disconnected. There’s something that is there at the core of it. And then a pleasure based business has like systems and strategies and structure, it’s like very organized and, and whether you do that yourself or you hire someone to do that, it’s always there, there isn’t like those leaks, so that you can just stay in your lane and do the things that you know, make you feel good and that you love to do. I love that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Optimized for ease, optimized for pleasure.
Yes. Yeah. And, trusting your intuition is a huge part of it, but I’ll, intuition is really, to me, I don’t think it’s like some.
Sort of magical thing that is inaccessible. I think our intuition lies inside our body. And so if we have a relationship with our body, as soon as we’re disconnected from our bodies, I feel like we’re disconnected from our intuition. So we stay with that fundamental connection. You can always listen and tune in and get those clues to move forward and make choices.
Yeah. And in order to access our intuition, we also need space and less noise. To actually and tune in and if it’s really noisy if we’re just moving from one thing to the next, we’re pushing down that in inner voice and that inner intuition. So carving out whatever space is available for you and to tune in and listen and make that a priority, I think is really important.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think, one lesson I’ve been learning maybe the hard way over the last couple of weeks is that you can’t force things in a pleasure based business. Even if you really want to do something, it’s gotta come with some flow and some ease. And there’s always if you’re forcing in one direction, but this other thing just keeps popping up, keep popping up this off, it’s like probably the other thing is the, pay attention.
Yeah. And I think it’s that forcing or that pushing I think is a distraction from that. Pure joy. That’s available to you if you were just to trust. Yeah.
Yeah. So powerful. You’ve given us lots to think about today and I love this conversation so much. I would love to close part one of however many parts, what’s one, one thing you’d like to leave our listeners with today?
I think the starting point really would be just to pay attention. And to take time throughout every single day and just to stop and to pay attention to whatever it is that’s happening. So if I were to stop right now and just look around me, I can see like outside my window, the sky is just this most perfect color of blue.
And, that brings me pleasure. That’s oh, it’s so pretty, and. If we just go on autopilot, we miss all of those opportunities. So I would just say pay attention and start there. That’s it’s very simple. Yeah.
Yeah. Just start paying attention. So good. Thank you so much, Robin.
Love this conversation and yeah, my, my takeaway from this is really just to be mindful of what’s feeling good and to. Create more space for that so I’m going to write my little pleasure list. What are the things that feel good and then actively. Work through that have it somewhere visual.
That’s a reminder, right? So how can I start prioritizing it more so that it just feels like it’s more a part of my day to day. So love it. Lots of really powerful reminders today. Robin and I are working on collaborating on a few things for 2024. I’m going to drop a wait list in the show notes as well as.
An opportunity for you to find out everything that Robin is working on and ways to get get in touch with Robin. So those will all be in the show notes for you. And we’ve been talking about building more retreats and ways to bring women together. And that’s a big part of my upcoming year. I’m excited.
Actually, I have a retreat coming up in December, back at Azure Ridge, where Rise was. A one day, I love retreats. I love the opportunity to give women the just even if it’s a day or two to just step out of the day to day, to step away from the to do list, the expectations, all the roles that we carry and to just be present with themselves and to surround themselves with community and other women that are experiencing similar things. I know firsthand, and I’ve experienced the firsthand, not only as a facilitator and a creator of the experiences, but as a participant, how powerful it can be to just take that time and how rejuvenating that can be for your mind, your body, your soul, your business, and your sense of connection to yourself, because we, especially as, entrepreneurs who are, generally spending a lot of time by ourselves building alone or have small teams, but we’re still like the sole decision maker. It can feel so, so isolating. And so any opportunity we can give ourselves to get into community and. To connect with other like hearted like minded women is just soul magic.
So get on the wait list to be the first to find out too, for anything that gets created for this upcoming year and give yourself that space too. I’m excited for that.
Oh, that sounds so heavenly. I’m so excited. Yes.
Yes. So needed.
I think we really need to be in community. I think I’m feeling that so much now.
Yeah.
Yeah. Robin, thank you so much for your time and energy today. And we will see you very soon. Thank you.
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