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This week I speak with Taryn Raine who is the founder of an online wellness platform called The Remote Yogi, which helps women seek support in their transformation through the foundations of yoga.

Taryn spent her life chasing after the perfect life – the marriage, nice home, and corporate job until she had it all and felt nothing but anxiety and emptiness.

She turned to yoga, mindfulness practices, and spiritual tools to help her find confidence within herself and the badass energy she needed to leave behind her “perfect life” for one of travel and the unknown. 

Listen on to find out how Taryn has been able to transform her life as a traveling yogi.

 

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Listen Below:

 

 

Show Notes:

Debbie: 

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I am here with Taryn. . How are you?

Taryn:  

I’m doing great. Having a great time over here in Thailand. How about you?

Debbie:  

I am good, thank you. Can you tell us a little bit more about you and why you live in offbeat life?

Taryn: 

Sure. So I am still shocked every day that I wake up living the life that I live. So currently I live out of my suitcase and I’ve been doing so for the last couple of years, traveling the world in a different country almost every other month. Just kind of moving through the paces and the reason I say I never really pictured me being here is because most of my life I had sought after that picture perfect life where you have the marriage and the home and the nice job and all those things that I went down that path and began living that life and it just didn’t work out for me. I found myself with everything I ever thought I wanted and having daily panic attacks and just completely miserable. So 1/80 my life and am now a completely different person. That’s kind of a great intro to everything I’ve been through.

Debbie: So what was that defining moment that led you to finally just leave? What you knew, what you’ve done before to become this other new person that you didn’t think that you are going to be?

Taryn:  

I think it was a number of little movements here and there that really started to push me. I can remember having a few panic attacks that just sent me to the edge. One, in particular, I literally couldn’t get myself off the floor and my husband, I was married to at the time was super drunk and I wasn’t able to lean on him at all. And I remember having to call my dad at three o’clock in the morning to drive an hour to where I live, to pick me up from my own home as an adult because I needed somebody to take care of me. And I think it was that moment that I realized it wasn’t working.

Something radically needs to change because this isn’t who I want to be. This can’t be my life and throughout that time, I had already been getting into yoga. I had been going through the yoga teacher training and through that I had been surrounded by people who for the first time in my life weren’t judging me for showing up less than perfect every day. And they were really encouraging me to seek better for myself.

And it Kinda just bloomed into my teaching and building a community of students who looked up to me and saw me as somebody who they wanted to be because I presented this face that had everything together and it felt really unauthentic to me. And I realized that in order for me to really be the person I needed to be for my students and for myself, I needed to leave that situation that I was in, that marriage, that lifestyle and seek freedom and something else that was totally off the beaten track as you’d say.

Debbie:   And that’s something that’s really hard. Obviously, it was really hard for you to realize that you needed to make that change because right now you’re standing at this moment where you are really loving your life. But at that moment where you had panic attacks and also thinking about all the changes you are going to make, is a really difficult position to be in. And for a lot of people, it’s a really scary thing. How were you able to push yourself to finally make that change?

I talk a lot about perfectionism and most of my life I grew up needing to always please everyone around me. And this I think started with growing up in a really, really strict Christian household where we had to live up to these high expectations and when I felt like I wasn’t living up to those expectations, I would hide that part of myself and just keep showing up like this “perfect” figure. Through high school, I was head of every club, graduated early, became a student of the month for my city, just looked really good on paper. And at the same time, I was off getting drunk and high every night, just unable to cope with the high expectations, the high standards. And this continued through college and working two jobs while trying to graduate and then straight into a marriage where I jumped in like, I’m gonna keep this perfect persona going and have the perfect little house and then jumped right into household duties.

I read every blog on being the perfect wife and being a homemaker while working full time and running small businesses cause why not do it all? And you know, I was just trying to keep up looking like I had it all together and I didn’t, I convinced myself of this life that I wanted when I really never stopped and thought, is this what I wanted? Or is this what I think I should want because of the world’s expectations and what everyone else has put on me. When I finally got to that point, I had to finally be comfortable enough with myself and know my own worth enough to say, okay, enough with everyone else’s expectations. What do I expect for my own life? What do I expect for myself? I always talk about it as stripping off all the layers of everyone else’s shoulds and how your life needs to look like and things like that. And stripping that away and rediscovering who I was at the core of all that before I let anyone else redirect me.

Debbie: It’s really interesting right now especially in social media and you’ll hear a lot of people talk about people having expectations, unrealistic expectations from you, especially for women. And you can’t be perfect all the time. But what I find to be really true is we are our own worst critic and enemy. So we can even go beyond what other people are thinking about us. Honestly, that doesn’t really matter if you are really happy with who you are, you won’t even consider what other people are talking about even if it’s something negative if you are really content and happy with yourself as a person.

So for me, it’s interesting when I read a lot of things like people talking badly about women’s body or women in business. When we should be tackling our self-worth first before we look at the outside. Because if we just look at ourselves internally and we begin to accept who we are and be happy with ourselves.

Taryn: 

Yeah, absolutely. And that was the biggest part of it was understanding my own worth and what that looked like. And this seems to be like the major theme in a lot of the coaching I do with my clients as it all comes back to self-worth, but I never labeled it as such because we all think that we have gotten our worth figured out in some regards. And that’s typically the problem. But also, when we’re lacking our own worth, our own appreciation and confidence on who we are, the world just reflects that back to us. So as much as I wanted to be frustrated with my ex-husband for telling me things like, oh, I don’t listen when you talk because your voice is so annoying.

That’s a really crappy thing to say, but I’ve always thought my whole life that my voice is annoying and who would want to listen to me talk, right? So he’s just repeating back to me exactly what I think of myself. And so when we can start to sit back and say, okay, the world’s only beating me up because I keep allowing myself to beat myself up and they’re just reflecting that back and you know, choosing to see it differently. It has been such a big thing in my life. I don’t show up perfectly every day. I still beat myself up throughout the day and when I notice I’m doing it, I have to say, okay, I choose to see this differently. I choose love instead of whatever this is right now.

Debbie:    

Absolutely. We see a lot of really confident women and a lot of people will ask them, well, why are you so confident? And they say because I surround myself with the right people and also because I am confident with myself. So if you start thinking that way where you are really confident with who you are and you’re happy then everyone around you will feel the same way. As you said, we kind of just start telling people how we think. I’ve been around so many beautiful women and even they will tell themselves that they’re ugly and they’re hideous in pictures.

And we all say that to ourselves. Other people who are looking at their images are thinking, oh my gosh, I want to be like that. Meanwhile, they’re saying to themselves, I’m so ugly and so hideous which is really crazy to me how we can totally switch that mindset and everything else will change with the way we take a look at ourselves and how other people see us as well.

Taryn:    Yeah, and I think you also brought up a good point earlier, about social media. We’re living in a time where we’re all looking up to these influencers and even my audience, the way they look up to me, I have to constantly remind them, remember that I’m putting the best days on Instagram, especially as a traveler, right? As I’m traveling the world, I’m posting the days that I’m hiking, I’m out. And drinking coffee in exotic locations,

I’m not posting the photos of me in my underwear at my laptop, pounding away 12 hours a day, you know what I mean? I don’t post that, but it’s there. And so I try to remind my audience of that as much as possible that everyone from super famous celebrities too the people that you look up to on social media. Everyone has insecurities. Everyone has bad days. Today I was telling my audience I’m having a really, really bad week, one of those weeks where I’m just smothering myself in Gelato and crying about it and not even caring, you know? And I have the tools, to take care of my life and get rid of my anxiety. But some days it’s just not possible. And that’s okay. You know, we’re not all here to be perfect every day or have sunshine and rainbows every day.

Debbie:  Absolutely. And I think that’s why there’s a huge push for people to be more authentic and to show the realities of it. Because like you said, when we post on social media, we usually just put our best foot forward and we just show the beauty of it. But most of the time, probably 60 or 70% of it is a lot of hustle and struggle and failures that you don’t see. And that’s really what makes you grow in the long run.

Taryn:  Yeah, exactly. And you know, it’s, it’s the uncomfortable moment, the being really vulnerable and awkward and you’re flawed humanness that we’re able to actually cultivate the most connection with other people. So I always remind my friends and family and my clients have that as well. Like, it’s really, really awkward and you’re probably going to lose people, but the people that you lose are not there to be there for you anyway. Right? I always tell people, I lost a ton of people when I got married at 21 because all my party friends said you’re so boring now. Goodbye.

And then when I got divorced at 24 I lost all of the perfect houses, perfect wife kind of people, you know? And as I shed people away over and over again. And then again when I started traveling, I shut away all the friends who couldn’t be there for me when I wasn’t physically there. And as painful as that was, those experiences were able to open me up for bringing more people into my life who were actually there to accept with my flaws instead of only wanting to see the side of me that they’re willing to hang out with. You know?

Debbie:  And that’s really the moment where you find true friendships is when you’re making those transitions and you’re making big decisions and really hard decisions that you’re going to find out who will be there for the long run. And that’s a blessing honestly for all of us.

Taryn: 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it reminds you what kind of friend do you want to be? When your friends are going through it as well when you’ve been through the trenches so to speak, how can you show up better? And one of the things I’ve learned through this whole process is, with my good friends and my business partners, we always stop and ask each other, how can I be better supporting you? Because I think that that’s a question that we’re not asking enough because everyone needs support in a different way and needs friendship in a different way.

Debbie:   That is such a great exercise to do with friendships. And I think a lot of times it’s just very surface. Our conversations with each other. How was your day? Maybe sometimes we complain about certain things, but we don’t really analyze how we can become a better friend or partner for everyone around us too. And just evaluating how we are as individuals for ourselves and for each other. Taryn: Yeah. And even in the workspace, me and my business partner, we end every meeting with – is there anything I can better support you at this week? And usually we got it, we’re on our own work, but every now and again we say, hey, actually yeah I could really use your help with this project I’m doing.

And thank you so much for asking. Cause you know, a lot of us have been conditioned that we don’t ask for help, right? We’re independent women. We get everything done on our own. Like, you know, badasses over here hustling. But sometimes we need to slow down and ask for help and that can be a really uncomfortable and vulnerable thing to do. So if you can open the door for somebody and say, hey, how can I be more helpful to you? It allows them to ask the question in a place that’s a little less scary.

Debbie:     

I think a lot of people will think it’s a weakness when you start asking for help. But honestly, it’s gonna make you grow. You can’t do everything on your own. And if you have a team around you that will support you, why not, right?

Taryn:      Yeah, exactly. We can’t do everything out here as much as we think that we’re superwomen were not, you know, especially women. We were created, to form these bonds and to lean on each other. And that’s where we find the most power. We’re never going to be as powerful, on our own, doing our thing. But when we’ve got our crew of girls behind us, we’re able to move forward. I always say when I rise, she rises. We’re able to help everyone in our vicinity rise up around us.

Debbie:  

And when you do that, you help each other grow and you don’t know what can happen. It just becomes a bigger thing, bigger than yourself, bigger than what you wanted to start with. Now Taryn, let’s look back to when you finally decided to leave everything behind and start a new career for yourself.I know you do a lot of consulting. You also do remote yoga, which is an interesting career and business to go into. How are you able to do that?

Taryn:    

I was working as a lifestyle director and a part-time yoga teacher before I started traveling. As a lifestyle director did a lot of events and communications for an association. And then I did the yoga teaching part-time and I also had two other businesses. I’m one of those – let’s never sleep kind of people. And I had filed for the divorce and on my Facebook feed an ad popped up for this company called remote year. Have you heard of that?

Debbie:    

Yes.

Taryn: 

So remote year is an organization that takes people on a trip around the world, usually for a year, but now they’ve got shorter programs and you’re with 50 other people who all work remotely in the same vicinity, whether they’re freelancers or full-time remote workers. And you travel the world together for a year. And I thought, you know, I can’t stay in this small town I was living in, now divorced and feeling so lonely and I just decided this life didn’t work out. Let me sell everything. I have a three bedroom house to myself. I sold everything and got everything down to my suitcase and set out for this adventure. But it was one of those things where you come up with a plan and you’re like, okay, I’m going to do this and I have absolutely no idea how it’s going to work. At this time I was like, I’m going to go do this world travel thing.

But I was working as an event planner and yoga teacher, not things that you can take online. Right. So I thought, how on earth am I going to be able to find a remote job to be able to travel because I didn’t have savings to be able to do this? I plastered my house with photos of people working from their laptops all over the world. I put the logo of remote Europe all over my house, in my car and my shower. It was everywhere and I just said, I have no idea how I’m going to do this, but something is going to come up, and something’s gonna work out for me. And I found a job working in sales for an event company. So it was kind of in my realm. I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to be doing forever, but I thought it’s going to help me travel the world, boom, jumped in and still had no idea how I was going to keep doing yoga because it’s something I loved.

And being able to coach my students with something I really loved and going on this trip around the world with 50 other people who are all the best at what they do, right? You’ve got photographers, you’ve got website developers, marketers, all of these different people and they’re teaching you along the way. Asking, how can I help you with what you’re doing? How can we help each other? And I just had so many friends saying, Taryn why are you not running your own business by now? What are you doing? You’re totally capable. And I laughed. I never really saw myself as a business woman or business savvy. And I thought it was silly until they sat down and showed me how easy it was and how much of the skills I already had and through their coaching, I ended up doing B school with Marie Forleo and then spirit junkie masterclass with Gabby Bernstein.

And they’re my two big leaders. I just dove in and said, how can I make this work? And was able to create what I call the online wellness platform that’s through the foundations of yoga. So it’s a membership with yoga meditations, live calls where we go through coaching practices. And it just really developed slowly over time. I kept trucking away at that sales job and actually just a couple of months ago I was able to finally leave that sales job and jump in full time into this business, which has grown into courses and coaching one on one and group coaching and things like that. But the membership is the main thing I do. And it kind of blossomed out of this year of travel.

Debbie:   

Congratulations. I’m so happy that you are able to do this. And thank goodness you had all of those people around you to push you and guide you along the way to do this. And for you to take that step and take the advice that they had and also acknowledged that you are really capable of doing this for yourself, which is amazing.

Taryn:  

Yeah. And I think that that’s one of the biggest lessons I took away. As you know, I felt so overwhelmed when I first got started. I was like, I don’t know how to build a website. I don’t know how to edit video. I don’t know how to do all these things. And was trying to build this small business while working full time in a job that really underpaid me. I was like, I can’t afford to pay anyone else to help me with these things which was really actually good in the fact that it forced me to learn so much which is really empowering. And it comes down to the fact that nowadays we have Google.

You can really learn how to run any part of your business if you put your mind to it. Because again, I never thought I would be able to do any of these things. And it just took that confidence and other people around me to remind me that they believe in me. That was so powerful and transformative in my journey into being the founder of this company that I now have.

Debbie:           

It makes you feel so much more empowered when you can do all of these things, run your business. And I am a really huge believer of outsourcing. But the first thing I tell people is to always do all those tasks yourself. Because it’s going to help you in the long run, especially when you’re hiring someone and you’re interviewing them and you’ll know exactly what to ask and look for because you’ve done the work. Or if they’re out sick, you can jump right in.

You know exactly what you’re doing. And now I’m in a place where I’m getting a VA on board and hopefully getting an editor on because as much as I love the fact that I learned how to edit video, I’m learning, you know, certain things stop serving you, your time becomes more valuable as you start to build these different spaces.

On the remote year trip, one of my biggest supporters was originally one of my best friends on the trip and has now become my partner for the last year and a half. And you know, he’s my biggest encouragement and he’s a genius at marketing. And so half the time I just go to him and I say, I can’t figure this out. Where do you need help in your business? Let’s do a trade. I don’t want to deal with this today. Like, trade me, you know? And so that’s been cool to have people in your corner that you can pull in when you just need an extra hand or an extra eye or whatever it is.

Debbie: That is amazing that you were able to find your partner on this trip too. So that’s another great reason why you should do this. To take that leap.

Taryn:  

We had just gotten out of long term relationships before starting this trip and neither one of us were wanting to be in a relationship anytime soon. But you know, when things are just thrown upon you and you’re like, alright universe, I don’t understand what’s happening but I’m going to run with it and we just keep running with it every day. And yeah, it’s nice and you get those little perks that you weren’t expecting.

Debbie:   

It’s just an added bonus to a life that you’re already building. And I’m so glad that it worked out for you. That’s awesome.

Taryn:    

Yeah. And of course, like not every day’s perfect. I still wake up with bad days. For examples, this week my website’s currently down, which I’m sure as a business owner, you know how stressful that is. And I’ve just found myself on the couch eating gelato this week. And asking, why am I doing this? Why do I even have a business? There are still those days.

Debbie:  

There’s always those ups and downs. Right? And that’s why it’s not an easy road to go into. It’s definitely not easy, but it has so much to give back that it’s worth all of the struggle that we go through. I mean, we talk about all of it now, but honestly, would you even trade this for anything?

Taryn: 

No. No. I would never trade the bad days. The number of connections I’ve been able to make, the changes I’ve been able to make on other people’s lives. As I said, today was a really bad day, but when you have really bad days and you can look back and reflect on all the many more good days, and say life’s fine. I’ll stop wallowing tomorrow and things will be fine.

Debbie: 

You have one of those lives that people look at on social media and think, oh my goodness, I wish I was like that, or how can I become more like this? So we all have our bad days, but it’s definitely mostly good.

Taryn: 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there’s also the reminder that even the most perfect lives have bad days. Yes, I get to wake up in a cool different location most days. I’m in these amazing locations every day and, life’s beautiful, but there’s still days when I’m sick and there are still days where my website crashes and there’s still days when I miss family and I miss home and I miss western food. Regardless of how perfect your life seems, there’s still going to be times that you feel like some days you just don’t have it good. It’s always a perspective thing.

So if you can’t find the perspective to be grateful for your life exactly as it is right now, that’s not going to change when you get the job that you’ve always wanted or you get the boyfriend that you’ve been longing for or you get the money that you’ve been asking for. If you can’t find that gratitude right now, today, change of venue is not going to help that situation.

Debbie:  

That is a really great point to make Taryn because gratefulness is the key to everything. As you said, it’s not going to change anything. Even if you get $1 million tomorrow, you’re still gonna feel the same way. And I think that’s why a lot of people become depressed too because they feel like their lives are going to be better after they get this and once they get it and it’s still the same feeling. Maybe you have feelings of happiness for a day or two and then all of a sudden it comes back to it. So I definitely think practicing gratefulness is the key to longevity when it comes to personal happiness in the long run.

Taryn:   

Yeah. And so many of us live our lives chasing goals. I gotta get this job and this paycheck and this whatever. And we’re just chasing after these goals, goals, goals, and with the idea that once I get here, I’ll feel satisfied. Once I get here, I’ll feel happy. But we keep setting the bar a little further out every time we start to get closer, we set the bar further. One of my guest teachers on my blog says- is this it?

She got to her perfect life and thought this is what I’ve been stressing out and working like crazy for? Because we never were able to slow down and say, first off, is this what I really want? Is this, what’s going to bring me true joy? Because I haven’t slowed down enough to get to know myself when I’ve been chasing all these goals. And then secondly, understanding that happiness comes from within and the external world can’t change that.

Debbie:  

Yeah. And also I’m really excited to talk to you about the anxiety of running a business and trying to do it all perfectly for our extended interview. Let’s look forward to 40 years from now and you’re looking back at your life. What legacy would you like to leave and what do you want to be remembered for?

Taryn:    

That’s a great question. One of the greatest compliments I get in the last couple of years is about authenticity and how I show up as my truest self every day. And as that wasn’t the case for most of my life, I really want to be showing up and showing women to step into that for themselves. Step into the worthiness of being able to be who you are, feel worthy in that and not feel like you’re having to chase after the enoughness of somebody else’s expectations. And I think the legacy I want to leave is somebody who made people uncomfortable and stuck with my own thoughts and my own truths anyway. Even when it went against what else the rest of the world was saying because I held onto my authentic truth more than I hold on to the standards of others. And being able to set that expectation or set that standard for other people around me that they can seek that same truth within themselves.

Debbie:   

That is a great legacy to leave turn and you’re already starting it now, so it’s perfect. If our listeners want to know more about you, where can they find you?

Taryn:    

Well, they should be able to find me when I website’s back up theremoteyogi.blog, But they can find me on any social media @ theremoteyogi. I’m on Instagram a lot. That’s the platform I’m on the most and then if they’re looking for information on my membership, remoteyogitribe.com is the place to go for that.

Debbie: 

Thank you so much Taryn, for speaking with us today. I really appreciate it.

Taryn:   Absolutely. Thank you so much.

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Listen to Taryn’s extended interview where she shares how to deal with anxiety when running a business.

What you’ll find:

How did you start dealing with your anxiety and stress in your business?

• Meditating and yoga has been a crucial part of curing the mental illness that Taryn suffered.

How do you coach people to lessen their anxiety?

• Making the right choice can give business owners a lot of anxieties.
• You have to dig deeper and realize what you are really anxious about, the surface level issue is not usually the problem.

Are there any daily exercises that we can do to lessen the stress?

• Learn breathwork during these moments.
• Getting movement and being outside.
• Check-in with your diet.

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Show Credits

Audio Engineer: Ben Smith