Helping the Helpers: Robert Haines on Self-Trust, Shadow & Engineering Your Life
What happens when you're brilliant at helping everyone else, but struggle to follow your own advice?
In this episode of The Spark Changemakers Podcast, Nikki talks to Robert Haines, Jungian coach, speaker and founder of Engineering Your Life, about the inner work that allows us to create change without losing ourselves in the process.
After a successful 37-year career in engineering, Robert experienced what he describes as a major life reset. A painful divorce led him into trauma therapy, recovery and a much deeper exploration of his own patterns, beliefs and inner world.
What began as a journey towards healing gradually became something more: a calling to help other people reconnect with their own wisdom and create lives that feel more intentional, balanced and aligned. Today, Robert specialises in helping helpers follow their own advice.
Together, Nikki and Robert explore why those of us who spend our lives supporting, leading or creating change for others can find it so difficult to turn that same care and wisdom towards ourselves.
They dive into self-awareness, perfectionism, failure, choice and intentionality, as well as Robert's Jungian approach to understanding the ego, shadow and unconscious patterns that can quietly run our lives.
In this conversation, you'll hear about:
🧠Why helping others can sometimes become a way of avoiding ourselves
🪞 How other people can act as mirrors for our unconscious patterns and shadow
đź’ˇ Why self-awareness needs to be accompanied by self-acceptance
🏆 How perfectionism and fear of failure can stop us experimenting, learning and growing
🌱 Why learning how to fail well might be one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves – and our children
❤️ Why helpers and changemakers need to prioritise their own wellbeing if they want their impact to be sustainable
Connect with Robert
- Visit Robert’s website: www.engineeringyourlife.net
- Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-haines-a072334/
- Listen to Robert’s podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EYL_Robert_Haines
- Subscribe to Robert’s Substack: https://substack.com/@engineeringyourlife
About The Spark Changemakers Podcast
The Spark Changemakers Podcast is for people who want to change the world, fuelled by passion and purpose. Through conversations with changemakers, thinkers and practitioners, we explore what it really takes to create meaningful change – in ourselves, our communities and the systems around us.
