His Emotional Fitness Journey
Below, we share Rob Robertson’s journey, how self-doubt, abuse and anxiety inspired him to discover Emotional Fitness to build his resilience, healthy self-esteem, genuine inner trust and freedom. To live his dreams that always had previously seemed a distant reality.
Rob is a founder & CEO, Author, energy healer, spiritual guide and Sports Mental Skills Coach specialising in Emotional Fitness, empowering people to move from head to heart to find flow, that high-performance business and sports performance edge.
Rob’s most significant gifts have come from the emotional learning from sexual abuse as a 7-year-old. Not feeling good enough was the driver of his lifelong journey and fascination with personal motivation, emotions and mental skills to learn the best techniques to release anger and self-doubt. Those tools and associated lessons have led to Rob being recognised as an Emotional Fitness pioneer.
Today, he feels very grateful for the enormous benefits his experience has taught him. Having experienced both sides of the self-esteem divide, Rob is passionate about helping people grow by teaching others what has worked for him. While he is always learning anything he can about emotions, the impact has been a massive personal transformation and vastly higher mental toughness in sports.
The Self-Doubt Journey
His love of sport started as a naive 11-year-old country boy growing up in the farming town of Methven, New Zealand. At that age, he was selected for the Mid-Canterbury rep soccer team. While very proud of the achievement, he felt out of depth at this higher level. This massive self-doubt was reflected in not excelling under pressure. A similar situation occurred a few years later when he was selected to play tennis for Mid-Canterbury. Massive self-doubt again stifled his performance. These experiences helped trigger his thirst to learn everything he could about growing his inner confidence, releasing self-doubt, gaining a high-performance advantage in sports, and then applying this to business.
A significant junction was leaving home as a 17-year-old to live at Lincoln University in the halls of residence in New Zealand. After two consecutive nights with ZERO sleep, thinking he was going mad, considerable relief was found when a counsellor labelled his knotted stomach as anxiety. During that first year away from home, the anxiety became depression, providing a massive reality check on real life and the transition to adulthood.
Part of this journey is explained in the following 10-minute TED-style talk recorded on the 1st of August 2017 in Auckland. In this talk, Rob Robertson shares his Emotional Fitness journey, followed by 8 minutes of questions about Emotional Fitness.
Making it through year one of University felt like a victory to him with all these major emotional ups and downs. This was only possible due to the critical support of a counsellor. Then things changed in year two, after completing a 4-week Mind Power course by John Kehoe, as positive thinking changed everything.
The next ten years of using positive thinking was an escape from the reality of mental illness, although at a price. An unrealistic positive thinker was born by turning everything into a positive in the head. Yet this seemed like the answer to everything. Inner freedom to be able to escape from the uncomfortable emotions he was experiencing. To feel safe in the head.
While this provided a reasonable level of success in sport and business, under pressure, consistency was lacking due to his unconscious self-doubt. This was evidence that we don’t get what we want in life; we get what our unconscious ‘stuff’ creates.
Then, in 2001, it all changed by discovering massive anger and suppressed emotions entirely hidden by positive thinking. This anger and many other emotions had been hidden for ten years by turning every negative feeling into a positive in the head, without consciously knowing he was suppressing his negative emotions.
This discovery of hidden emotions was terrifying, a critical turning point that started an incredible Emotional Fitness journey, learning to connect and understand emotions fully. The process of moving from the known safety of the head to embracing the full spectrum of emotions in the heart.
Part of this journey was forgiveness, with the help of psychologists, exploring and letting go of memories of sexual abuse as a 7-year-old child. This support was an important element in building self-esteem.
In 2001, after discovering all the suppressed anger, his Emotional Fitness journey led him to a Men’s Anger Group when he was living in Sydney, Australia. It was a good support network, which he chose to attend on his own. Later, learning many participants in the group had been sent by the Police to this group to get help. This was the start of an incredible journey, opening up hidden anger, sadness and some challenging lows. This learning and his fascination with understanding all he could, from personal development programs to understanding the power of the heart, provided critical insights for developing the Emotional Fitness Workout.
Then, in early 2017, significant evolution became more apparent. The shift from self-doubt and low self-esteem to a more healthy self-understanding and belief was evident in his more relaxed inner calm and greater self-belief. It was no accident that it coincided with his business taking off, reaching a new level of turnover.
Further evidence of his journey into new bounds of Emotional Fitness was in mid-2017 when he noticed the ongoing anxiety of the first half of 2017 had subsided. The Emotional Fitness Workout helped him process this anxiety for new personal growth. This was an important milestone on the Emotional Fitness journey to break the pattern of anxiety to reach a new level of inner calm and connected peace.
The outcomes have resulted in a much healthier inner self-belief and self-esteem, accompanied by a newfound zest, passion, and excitement reflected in his speech and connections with people. This was also shown in a significant improvement in his national rankings on the tennis court. Starting in 2007 with a national doubles tennis ranking as a D6, which was positioned just in the top 3000 NZ doubles players. However, through Emotional Fitness growth and improved mental toughness, he climbed into the top 250 as a D3 in 2019. The key thing was these improved rankings were achieved without significant tennis coaching or changes to biomechanics.
Then, with tennis coaching in 2023 to modify his biomechanics, he experienced temporary setbacks. As he lost confidence when learning a new serve technique and improved his volleying skills, his NZ doubles ranking dropped to 349 at the start of 2023 in the male doubles ranking of all current players in New Zealand.
Rob’s business has also evolved and changed over the years. Following redundancy from his role as 2IC of Combined Insurance NZ, responsible for over 100 staff across New Zealand, he established the Unboxed brand at the end of 2013, offering executive coaching and team culture strategy.
Early in 2021, Rob purchased land 50 minutes north of Auckland to create the Stargate Forest retreat space, which is set on 40 acres of native bush. This has been a long-term dream to own a beautiful venue to nurture and grow people.
Life changed massively in June 2022 after the first-ever retreat on this land. The dream came alive at Stargate Forest after more than 15 years. He had been a Reiki Master, yet self-doubt had always stopped him from publicly discussing this passion. At that 2022 retreat, he learnt a new intuitive energy healing methodology. The passion for doing what he loved and the reduced self-doubt empowered him to reveal publicly that he was a channel and spiritual guide. He had been doing this work as a channel for more than ten years.
To read more, visit robrobertson.nz, which contains his blog. Click here for a blog post sharing his newfound vulnerability about the struggles of this Emotional Fitness journey.
True emotional strength is about being real, not afraid to say the truth, being vulnerable if appropriate, and living with passion from the heart. By not covering up his emotions, Rob Robertson has the inner strength to be real and vulnerable. To love life, both the highs and also to embrace the lows, to live with passion, purpose and genuine heart.