Meet Robin Higgins

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Robin Higgins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Robin below.

Robin, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

I have always enjoyed working hard and I also love having wide swathes of relaxed downtime. My work ethic has never felt like it came from external sources, but from the rewards of seeing something I am involved with reach completion. Whether it is digging my garden, doing the dishes or facilitating a group, I try to see each task as another moment of the day that is part of the fabric of a well-lived life. Suffering often settles in when we want a different moment from the one that we are living. If I can be fully present when I am with someone sitting in my counselling office or for attending to the paper work on my desk, I don’t need to be a perfectionist or have a rigid work ethic; it is more about meeting each new instant of aliveness with full engagement.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

For most of my professional life, I was a counsellor working with children, teens, women and university students. In the last years, this work has expanded to include community development projects that have involved facilitating group training, retreats and workshops.

I am currently developing and teaching a program for Afghan young women on resiliency skills, emotional intelligence and confict transformation. Most of the curriclum for this project (https://www.kaajeducation.org/) comes from my recent publication of a facilitation manual that explores ways to engage humans of all ages in personal and group learning.

If you are interested in developing your facilitation skills or need lesson plans for interactive learning events, my compilation of social-emotional activities could be helpful for you:

https://www.amazon.ca/Pathways-Connection-Facilitators-Emotional-Engagement-ebook/dp/B0DVS4ZCB7

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

In my profession as a counsellor and educator, curiosity, empathy and creativity are the qualities that have deepened my impact on the clients and communities I work with. When I live in a place of curiosity, my mind continues opening to exploring the values, beliefs and cultures that we all inhabit. Empathy helps me to listen carefully to people’s stories and enter their worlds. A colleague once said, “Robin thinks outside of th box, in fact, I don’t think she knows there is a box.” To me this statement captured a creative spirit shapes my work with people. Finding ways for individuals and communities to engage with art, food and rich conversations, has helped me bring people together in ways that are fun, nurturing and healing.

Hey folks! You who are starting out in the fields of education, human development and community engagement – stay flexible and trust in the people you are working with. They all have intricate life stories and lived experiences. Your job is to help them access their inner resources so they can find the resilience and interconnections that help them to flourish.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

When I am overwhelmed I return to the forest. Trees with their networks of roots webbed beneath my feet and branches twisted in sky, help me come home to myself. My nervous system slows down when I am surrounded by moss and ferns and see that my life is just a small bit of this intertwined natural world. Often when I am scared or stressed, my ego is bruised and worrying that I have messed up or I am not good enough, but somehow the movement of branches and the calls of birds help me to unfurl that coil of tightness and relax into just being.

My other favourite way to unwind is to access my inner world through creating collages. As soon as I start cutting out images from magazines I can feel my stress dissolving. As I rip, cut and paste, metaphors emerge. It is a dream-like process, where I look at the finished collage and find images and messages that help me clarify dilemmas, values and new directions.

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