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My Body

Debbie Robins on the Futility of Denial and Doing What You Love

Debbie Robbins

Debbie Robins is a career coach, advice blogger for The Huffington Post, advice columnist for the Washington Times Communities, and the author of the new book Shovel It!: Kick-Ass Advice to Turn Life’s Crap Into the Peace and Happiness You Deserve.

Well-being has a direct connection to your energy, your focus, and your ability to envision next steps for yourself. So success and well-being are inextricably paired. The number one thing I do for my well-being is live a life that I’m passionate about. I was a successful Hollywood film producer for over 20 years, but there was something about it that didn’t make me happy and didn’t feel pursposeful for me. When I found the courage to face that and figure it out, I realized that I what I love to do with a passion is help other people have even better and more successful lives. That’s when I changed everything. In the movie business I was always tired, I was actually too thin, I was stressed. I was always worried and anxious. I didn’t eat well, I never had enough time to exercise. When you’re not living your life on purpose, all those things we attribute to well-being suffer. Now I’m in my 50s, but I look younger now than I did when I was 35. My body has never been in better shape. 

I’ve never been a yoga girl, so for those of you reading this who aren’t, it’s okay. It’s really okay not to love yoga or Tai Chi or the more quiet forms of exercise. One thing I learned about myself and my own coaching process, I love a very high pace to my life. It really works for me. I do exercise that mirrors that. I take classes, I love to do spinning, I love to take an aerobics class. I love the elliptical machine because I can change it up constantly and make a fun, diverse workout. I love weight training. I find it really exciting and important.

One of the biggest parts of my philosophy is connecting you to what you love to do and the way you love to do it. That’s how you succeeed in the world. So anything that is set up as denial, like a diet or making yourself go to yoga because that’s what you should do, anything that you’re doing that’s coming from that place of feeling like you should do it but you really don’t want to is a set up for failure. If you find things you can’t wait to do, that’s when you succeed. That’s how people make their dreams come true, knowing what works for you individually.

Always a great question to ask yourself is, what do I love to do? What’s fun? It’s in those answers that you can put an entire life together that will work.