Melody Wilding: For the last 12 years, I’ve been working with highly sensitive high achievers in the workplace, and this can be a really tricky combination because on the one hand, you are incredibly perceptive, thoughtful. You are driven to excel. You notice nuances that other people miss. You care deeply about the quality of your work.

You have an amazing capacity for empathy and understanding complex situations. On the other hand, you might struggle with overthinking every interaction, taking feedback to personally finding it impossible to disconnect. At the end of the day, you might exhaust yourself trying to prove your worth while simultaneously doubting your abilities. And this contradiction, it has probably left you feeling completely puzzled because you’re smart, you’re capable, you’re accomplished. So why does everything feel so much harder for you than it seems to be for other people? Why can’t you just toughen up or let go like everyone else keeps telling you to?

I see so many sensitive strivers who feel overwhelmed by the mental laundry list of things they want to change about themselves. They want to take things less personally. Stop second guessing every decision. Speak up more confidently. Set boundaries without guilt. The list goes on and on. And with so many areas you wanna work on, you often just don’t know where to start, so you end up spinning your wheels, or just trying generic advice that never seems to quite fit.

Imagine if you had the granularity to know exactly what lever to pull first. What if you could pinpoint the specific imbalance that’s causing most of the root of your struggles, rather than trying to change everything at once? What if you could see the subtle connections between your sensitivity and your self-sabotage patterns with crystal clear clarity?

Well, today, my co-coach, Wendy Cary and I, we are going to unpack a model that has helped hundreds of our clients finally understand that root cause of their struggles. And that really helps them start turning their sensitivity into an asset rather than something that holds them back.

So Wendy, welcome. I am so happy to have you joining me for this conversation today.

Wendy: Hi Melody. Thanks so much for having me. , So I’m an executive coach. I got. My coach training through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching, and I have my professional coach certification from the ICF, the International Coaching Federation. But seven years ago is when this journey really started.

After decades in tech, I was burnt out. . I was really ignoring my high sensitivity. , I had been told for years and years, it was all in my head. It’s not real. When I burned out that time, my boss, uh, really did a 180 on me. He had been supporting me and suddenly was like, I don’t ever wanna work with you again.

I decided I needed to, to really take control of and responsibility for my sensitivities and my life and my work experiences. So it was around then that I found you, melody. , and found out that I’m a sensitive striver. I joined your Resilient group and now I’ve been co-coaching with you for two years for both groups and individuals and with your Strive Diagnostic giving debriefs on that.

Melody Wilding: Yes. , that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is , the Strive Diagnostic, which is really the, the model that, , we use in our programs that helps our clients conceptualize why do I struggle? With the things I struggle with. Why am I good at the things I do feel like I have strengths in?

And I appreciate you joining me for this conversation because you understand this from so many different facets. You understand this from your lived experience, being a Sensitive Striver yourself, having these challenges in the workplace and your career, and, frankly having to navigate through it with a lot of trial and error that many times.

But as you were saying, you were also a member of Resilient, the very, very first cohort way back in in 2020. And so you’ve lived the program, you now coach others through it. You helped me develop it further and you are our resident Strive Diagnostic expert, so there’s really no better person to talk to to help us kind of deconstruct this model and also help people understand , how it can help them help themselves.

So if the person who’s listening to this, if they put into practice or they embrace and leverage what we’re going to talk about today, what do you think can change for them?

Wendy: A lot of people who take the diagnostic and meet with me to come up with an action plan, they are feeling really inconsistent in their behaviors. , they feel like from day to day they don’t know what to even expect from themselves. And so they, through taking the diagnostic can feel a lot more consistent in their day to day, and that raises their confidence. It also can identify whether they’ve, , been experiencing burnout and how that’s manifesting for them. It’s different for different people and depending upon what type of burnout you’re going through. And then, , also learn where they may be overcompensating or over-functioning or over-indexing on a certain scale.

Melody Wilding: Absolutely. Yeah. I think there’s also something magical to being able to put language and vocabulary to these things that have felt. and intangible and confusing to you? , I’ll just speak for myself, even confusing to me at times, but when I can use, I use this model all the time and I can say when I’m struggling in a situation, now I have a tool to go to and say, alright, , why am I feeling really reactive here. Or, what feels off for me right now, and I can pinpoint a certain component on the Strive Diagnostic and say, oh, this area is unbalanced. And because of that, it’s almost like more precise, like triaging and problem solving instead of trying to boil the ocean, like I was saying, we all have this mental laundry list of things we wanna change about ourselves.

We can realize, oh, in this situation my ability to ask for help is I’m not using that enough. Or my assertiveness, or my intentional productivity, whatever it is that is unbalanced and we can be so much more, , tactical and precise with then what do we do next? How do we direct our energy so we’re not just running in a million directions?

All right. That’s wonderful. Let’s back up. For a moment, and we’ve mentioned this idea of being a Sensitive Striver. It’s something I’ve talked a bit about on the show, but I wanna get in into this a little bit deeper because it, of course, it’s the foundation of this entire model, the Strive Diagnostic.

So I, I would actually love to hear your definition, Wendy. And then I’ll also , fill in the gaps. What does it mean to be a Sensitive Striver?

Wendy: Sensitive Strivers, they’re both highly sensitive and they’re high achievers. So when as a high achiever, they, , strive to do better, be better than they were the day before. Always seeking to improve and always seeking that from others as well. Being highly sensitive. We feel the world, we experience the world just a little bit differently than other people. We feel everything more deeply. We can sense other people’s feelings. We process more data points, so there’s a lot more information coming in and we can understand a lot more, have a richer, , understanding of the world around us.

And we can have some really high expectations both for ourselves, for others. A lot of sensitive strivers like to follow the rules. They like others to follow the rules. This is the way things are done. Let’s do it that way. Yeah.

Melody Wilding: Absolutely. , I think some of us feel like this is a flaw or a choice, and so I really wanna drive home that , this is part of our biology, this is part of our wiring that there is about. 20 to 30% of the population of people who just have a more active nervous system.

Like think of it as a spectrum on reactivity. Some of us are on the higher end, some of us are in the middle, some of us are in the lower end, and those of us with higher sensitivity. We’re on the higher end. And that means, we’re processing more of what’s happening around us, but in our brain, certain brain areas are lighting up more, whether that’s related to decision making, how we’re synthesizing parts of information.

And you were mentioning that we, feel other people’s emotions deeply, I know that I tend to be pretty pragmatic and sometimes even skeptical, and I think back in the day when I would hear things like that, I would say, all right, that sounds like very fluffy pop psychology.

But they have done real MRI studies on this where they look at the brains of people who are more highly sensitive and their brain areas, things that are called mirror neurons, which are the empathy neuron that allow us to perceive and understand other people’s behavior in people that are more sensitive, they light up more. And that’s what we mean when we say we feel other people’s emotions because we’re sensing that more deeply. It’s almost like we’re, we’re taking in more bits of information and we’re breaking that down at a more like nuanced and granular level. , you can even hear in what our saying, in what we’re saying, that you could see how a lot of this could be a strength.

That being able to connect with people and understand , their pain points, their motivations, whatever it is, allows you to be able to communicate with them more effectively and solve problems.

But it can also get in our way big time. So Wendy, now that you’ve been in coaching and resilient for over two years, you’ve done, , dozens of Strive Diagnostics, probably hundreds at this point.

What patterns of self-sabotage do you see most commonly come up for people who consider themselves to be sensitive? Strivers.

Wendy: A lot of people who are Sensitive Strivers, they don’t understand their wiring. All of that scientific stuff, you just brought up all of that. They don’t understand that and they don’t understand that, that it’s normal. It is, , a part of their biology. Not a flaw in who they are. , they don’t understand that wiring their habits, their tendencies and patterns as a Sensitive Striver.

That’s the point where they fall into self-sabotage. They’ll do things like keep quiet in meetings. Because they don’t feel like they have the right things to contribute, or other people in the room are smarter than them, or there’s a dominant personality in the room. They have a really hard say time saying no to other people.

They want a certain level of understanding and acceptance from other people, , because so many people have not understood them like their whole lives. Saying yes is their way of getting acceptance. And so they’ve never learned how to say no. , and by not saying no, they’re agreeing to do things that they don’t necessarily like doing or even want to do.  , they’re not focusing on those things that they’re really passionate about and performing at their very best.

So , with their unbalanced strive qualities, they, , may be, , really on top of things one day, but exhausted the next day. And so that inconsistency shows through to their team, their boss, uh, other people that they work with, and people don’t feel as secure and safe with them as they could, and they oftentimes feel like they’re broken and by feeling broken, , they lose their confidence and so they self-sabotage themselves through that.

Melody Wilding: , we’re always talking about in resilient how . We act consistently with our beliefs about ourselves. And , if you have this belief that. I am broken. I am flawed. I take everything personally, right? I shouldn’t be how I am. Well, then you’re gonna look for more evidence of yes, how you’re not measuring up or how you did sound like you were rambling in that meeting and a person didn’t like what you said .

You’re going to find all of the evidence that confirms how you see yourself. And so I think the thing is to realize that, okay, we may not have a choice in, in being wired this way, but we have a choice in how we manage ourselves now that we know this, ? So this is powerful knowledge then we can, we can do something different .

Another one of my favorite phrases that I like to say is that we repeat what we don’t repair. If we don’t understand the root cause of , why am I doing these things? Where is this coming from? It’s going to feel impossible to change them because it just feels like , this mystery to solve.

We need to be able to diagnose what’s happening underneath the surface, that we’re working on the right challenges, so that we’re not just spinning our wheels, we’re getting frustrated, we’re finding ourselves in the same situation again and again and again.

We mentioned this concept of the Strive Diagnostic, and this is the core model that we use inside of Resilient, actually in our one-on-one coaching, and in all of our work, this really under beds, everything.

This came about because , as I was doing this work, I kept having people come to me feeling like, you know, I, I, would say, it’s almost like you have this giant ball of yarn. Everything feels really, interconnected and you don’t know where to start. And people would say, I almost wanna know what thread , what single thread do I need to pull to actually start feeling results? Because I’ve tried all the books, I’ve read all the podcasts, I’ve gone to therapy, I’ve done other leadership coaching programs, and I feel like I keep landing back in the same spot.

 The reason is because many of the assessments out there, the tools or programs, they don’t take into account our wiring and our genetics and our unique way of approaching the world. The Strive diagnostic , is meant to do that.

So let’s go through the Strive Diagnostic measures us as Sensitive Strivers.

It helps us dimensionalize , our way of viewing the world, , so that we can more tactically address the problems we’re having it breaks down into six. High level areas , each of those six areas have three components inside of it. So in total, the diagnostic is measuring you across 18 different components of really how you show up in your work, your career, your life.

. The first is, Sensitivity. And I should say conveniently, all of those six qualities, the high level qualities, spell out the acronym strive. So the first of those is sensitivity.

So Wendy, , in this model, what does that mean? Because it’s like, duh, I know I’m sensitive, but what are we measuring here?

Wendy: With sensitivity, it’s really sensory sensitivity. , and it relates to your nervous system response both to what’s happening, within you and around you. This is what being highly sensitive is all about. Having a more finely attuned nervous system, which in prehistoric days was really a huge benefit.

It means that you can be very in touch with yourself and your needs, but on the flip side, makes you more susceptible to over stimulation and burnout. And the components of sensory sensitivity are groundedness restoration and energy management. And when a person’s sensitivity components are balanced, they have a calm and composed demeanor.

Even under pressure, they get great, , rest and downtime, and they’re able to use their intuition as a tool for better decision making. But when sensitivity components are unbalanced, they sacrifice their health and wellbeing. They have poor sleep habits and don’t take breaks at work, and they’re frequently anxious and feel a little maybe amped up and not doing anything to resolve that.

Melody Wilding: That’s the S in our model. Let’s go to the T, which is for thoughtfulness.

Wendy: This is your ability to think deeply and be observant and perceptive. The sensitive brain is more active in areas related to planning, decision making, and synthesizing details. And if the average brain takes in a thousand data points a second, yours is taking in and processing 10,000.

This means you can be reflective, creative, , intuitive, but if you’re not careful, you may overthink things and become self-conscious. The three components under thoughtfulness are decisiveness, self-compassion, and perceptiveness.

And balanced thoughtfulness looks like this. You are reflective and able to think , deeply and act purposefully. You practice constructive self-talk and have solid self-confidence, and you offer creative, innovative, and nuanced ideas that others missed. But when thoughtfulness is unbalanced, you stay busy with menial tasks. You talk yourself out of taking meaningful action. Or maybe you remain silent in meetings afraid that you won’t add value.

Melody Wilding: So we have our S sensory sensitivity, we have thoughtfulness. How about R, which is responsibility.

Wendy: Responsibility is that sense of commitment and accountability you have toward both others and yourself and how well that’s balanced. Many sensitive drivers are strong on that first part, being dedicated toward others. And so you’re probably loyal, really hardworking. You step up and you lend a hand whenever necessary.

I remember feeling like, , I wanted to be wherever I was needed most, , when I was in corporate. But you might overdo it, taking on responsibilities that aren’t yours. And your self accountability might need some work, especially if you put everyone else ahead of yourself.

The components here are self integrity, assertiveness, and asking for help. And when the components of responsibility are balanced, a person is dedicated, but with strong boundaries. They delegate effectively and empower others to solve problems. They maintain personal standards for excellence without caving to pressure, comparison, or people pleasing. Unbalanced responsibility would include swooping in to fix situations and keep people happy.

Overworking because they aren’t feeling, like they’re contributing enough. And struggling, , alone on projects. Not saying no or even asking for help.

Melody Wilding: So we have sensory sensitivity, thoughtfulness, responsibility. Let’s go to I, which is inner drive.

Wendy: Inner Drive one of my favorites. Your internal motivation to pursue your goals, achieve more and really be the best version of yourself is all here in Inner Drive. But this can also lead you to set a really unrealistically high bar for yourself, fall into perfectionism and constantly move the goalpost on what qualifies as success.

Aligned ambition, intentional productivity and balanced goal setting are the components of inner drive, and if one has a balanced inner drive, they zero in on those high impact tasks. And they have a sense of control and foresight in their work. But when their inner drive is weak or in overdrive, they struggle to distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s truly important. Their work style tends to be more reactive than proactive, and they spend too much time on admin tasks or work that’s really someone else’s.

Melody Wilding: We have two more left vigilance and emotionality. Let’s go to vigilance first.

Wendy: Vigilance that involves your awareness of and attunement to , subtleties, and nuances in your environment. Your acute awareness makes you excellent at risk management and identifying potential challenges or opportunities that others might overlook. It allows you to pay attention to changes in people’s body language and change your approach if needed. But constantly being on high alert can be draining, and you might sometimes imagine danger where there really isn’t any. Such as reading too much, too benign feedback.

The components of vigilance are harmony, , strategic risk-taking and discernment. And vigilance is balanced. When you have attunement with others, you are creating strong relationships. You’re able to assess risks and make good judgment calls, and you channel attention inward pursuing what’s right for you. Unbalanced vigilance, on the other hand, you might please and cower to others at your own expense. Read into situations even when there’s nothing to worry about, or you might even play it safe in your career.

And then onto emotionality. Emotionality refers to the degree to which you experience and express your feelings. Sensitive Strivers tend to feel things in a really big way, and they have complex, emotional responses, both positive and negative. They’re able to experience the richness of positive feelings like joy and gratitude. They’re able to connect with others easily and build relationships. But they can also get stuck in intense modes with fear, anxiety, and anger, and they stay stuck in them longer than most people.

Growth mindset, emotional clarity and emotional regulation are the components of this last quality. And balanced emotionality allows you to take in positive feelings like joy, pride, satisfaction without guilt. Effectively process and work through emotions to take constructive action, and really respond to emotions with acceptance and flexibility. But when it’s unbalanced, you can get derailed with intense, unpleasant feelings for hours or maybe even days. Might even stuff your emotions until you have an outburst or take feedback as an attack on your character.

And it’s really important for all of us as sensitive strivers to think of these Strive qualities as neither good nor bad, but it’s something to be balanced just like any other attribute.

And if out of balance, your qualities can become overused or. Like we’ve been talking about, lead to self-sabotage and get in your own way. But if they’re balanced and channeled correctly, they can become transformative. They can be what sets you apart.

Melody Wilding: And we use this tool specifically in Resilient. Folks, take it at the beginning of the program, the midpoint of the program and the end of the program. And they get a personalized snapshot. So they’re able to see , where are you most in balance, out of balance. And being able to look at that to goal set and also start to maybe draw connections from that.

We just recently, as we’re recording this, wrapped up our most recent cohort. Do you wanna talk about some of the outcomes that came from that? ‘Cause , we saw some pretty remarkable results from this group in terms of their Strive Diagnostic scores.

Wendy: Yeah, we really did. Assertiveness, for example, which is a component of responsibility. Assertiveness, they grew by 119%. That is the highest improvement that we’ve seen in any cohort. Their second highest was a 70% growth in asking for help. So responsibility as a whole really, really came up a lot.

It, through self integrity, assertiveness and asking for help, they grew by 65% overall. That’s really a big for an entire quality to grow that much. Think about it, three months, three months working on their skills, um, improving their skills as a Sensitive Striver, and they grew by 65%. It’s truly amazing.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And when we put it in perspective, I mean the program is 13 weeks, so it’s really not that long a period of time. We’re talking about one quarter of the year here , it speaks to all of the amazing work and effort that all of our alumni put into this process.

But I also hope hearing that, gives someone who may be listening now who feels like this is so ingrained that , I almost, I’m, I’m past the point of saving that I am just such a people pleaser. I’m never going to get over this. I am just so fearful of upsetting anyone. I don’t wanna ask for help, because then that will prove I don’t know what I’m doing .

If look at how much change is possible just within 13 weeks, , because that that was assertiveness. But it has, has these ripple effects and we, we tend to talk about in the program how we see this rising tide lifts all boats effect, when it comes to the Strive Diagnostic, that if you have increases in one area, it may lead to increases in another because, yes, while while we have tried to tease out these different components of our personality and our approach to work, they are still so interconnected.

So , talk to us about some of the most common patterns you see, especially when it comes to maybe growth in one area affecting another one.

Wendy: Particularly with, with this group, I think one of the key factors for their growth and assertiveness, was self-compassion. Their self-compassion grew by 59%, without self-compassion, you can’t really be assertive. That almost needed to come up in order to bring up their assertiveness. Same with asking for help if you are not compassionate to yourself and, and believing in yourself, then you won’t be able to ask for help.

Asking for help also speaks to harmony. Harmony, is your ability to balance your needs with the needs of others. And their harmony grew by 45%. As well as their discernment. Both of those in vigilance. So discernment came up by 44%, and that really, , speaks to their ability to understand and, have an awareness of what’s going on for themselves. Without that awareness then what is there to really be assertive about? You don’t know what you really want or what you really need, so how can you speak up for yourself? 

Melody Wilding: Yeah, I love that. I was mentioning before that people, take this assessment at the beginning, the midpoint, the end of the program. Often you’re meeting with people one-on-one to, based on their results, help them prioritize where they want to focus. Could you walk us through a few examples of how you look at someone’s results and help them prioritize or set goals from there? And maybe also how does that specificity or that granularity, does that change anything for them?

Wendy: There are a lot of ahas that people get as, as we go through their results and think about the, the various components and how they’re coming up for them. , I remember specifically with one person I had pinpointed with their results that they had a low to tolerance for ambiguity.

Now that it wasn’t just in the numbers, the scores they gave, it was also in some of the responses that they gave. Because with each score that you give, you can say why you feel like you’re, you’re giving yourself that score. So I saw in there a low tolerance for ambiguity. But she really felt like in intellectual situations at work, she was fine with ambiguity. She could function fine through that. So as we talked more, it really had to do with social ambiguity. And that showed up because, she had low scores in asking for help in harmony, in self integrity. And so that showed that they, she was giving more preference to, or, or deferred to others, rather than having that for herself. And that when she got into social situations that ambiguity in those situations just completely threw her off. Her energy would be off. Knowing that. The fact that it was social versus intellectual really helped her be able to target what action steps she took.

Melody Wilding: I love the differentiation between, , you called it intellectual ambiguity and social ambiguity. I don’t think I’ve ever made that distinction for myself. So, I kind of had a light bulb moment there. We often have a lead domino, there’s often a lever that if we pull that one or we knock that domino over that, that’s the one that will help other areas become more, more balanced. It may not necessarily be the area that you’re lowest in. . It may be the area that would have the biggest ripple effect that if you balanced it more would help shore up the other ones.

Any other stories come to mind for you? Especially as people are moving through? Yes, we have their initial diagnostic, but the midpoint and the end. Do any situations come to mind where people had particularly big ahas around areas they’ve improved or changes that they’ve made that come to mind for you? 

Wendy: There is someone that went through Resilient and, , she did the debriefs with me at the beginning, the middle, and the end. By the end, had scored herself at eight or above on every component.

Melody Wilding: Wow.

Wendy: And at the beginning her overall scores were 68%. At the end, they were 91%. So she had made very, very large improvements there.

Typically when someone is scored at eight, eight or above on everything they are functioning really well at a very high level at work. They still enjoy their downtime and their personal lives. They’re able to disconnect from work, giving a hundred percent attention to themselves, family, friends, and they’re generally happy, calm, and composed even through emergencies or stressful situations.

What I saw in , her graduation results were, it was some dissatisfaction with assertiveness, emotional clarity, and emotional regulation. And all three of those scores had been low when she started the program.

 I asked her where that was coming from, why she was still feeling dissatisfaction in those areas.

She made so much improvement there. . What it came down to was that she still believed herself as lacking in those areas. She hadn’t come up with a new identity. She talked about the way she handled the situations now is that she was in control introspective, that she, responded to events instead of reacting emotionally.

And yet when we talked about who she is, she was still back at the beginning of the program thinking that she was reactive and , unable to control her emotions.

 What we ended up coming up with as her action steps from graduation was to really think about her identity and who she believes she is. Because otherwise she was still stuck in the past.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Still holding onto that old image of herself. I think it’s, it is important to acknowledge that the Strive Diagnostic measures where you’re at at this moment in time. So it is affected by what’s going on for you and through the program, through Resilient. , as we, as we move along and grow with our clients, we have people who do get promotions or they get put on a project with a much bigger scope or, uh, double their team size, whatever it is, they, they have personal matters going on. They become a caregiver, whatever it is, and then all of a sudden that throws your emotionality or your sensitivity out of balance again, and that’s okay.

The goal is not to be at an eight to 10 on balance all the time. The goal is to be able to use this tool to be able to reorient yourself, and say what’s going on? Instead of just falling down the spiral.

I know something that you care a lot about is also using the diagnostic to help people uncover their strengths and what is working and making sure that this is a tool people can use long term and come back to. So let’s talk about that first question. How, ’cause we’re talking a lot about the downsides of sensitivity, right? And getting out of the unbalanced aspects of it to more of , the balanced side of it.

But how have you worked with clients, or even when you were using the tool yourself to use it to uncover maybe strengths you couldn’t see or were overlooking?

Wendy: Yeah. Um, so many people take assessments, uh, and, think about their weaknesses and they don’t even really think about their strengths and how they can leverage them to help them even do self-improvement. I like to help clients focus on their strengths for at least some of the time that we’re together and by leaning into these strengths, they can, , very clearly leverage them and it also helps to change their perspective on who they are. So even thinking about I. , that they’re good at something, like if they’re great at perceptiveness, they have a really hard score there. , which is pretty common.

Most people, , who are sensitive strivers, have really great perceptiveness, but, , they go from questioning their capabilities to thinking, oh yeah, I am really good at something. This is something that is the way that I can contribute in meetings.

So it’s not just taking, oh, I, I never talk in meetings because I don’t think I’m good at something. Instead, you can say, okay, this is what people value and it’s what people value in what I have to say and how I contribute to meetings, , or to projects.

Sometimes people come into these sessions thinking, am I doing anything right? Everything feels wrong, and they come away realizing, oh, my team really does value me because, I sense what their emotions are and so I can empathize with them better. It makes them feel trusted, makes them feel comfortable and safe around me. And so that’s how their team values them. At first they probably think that, oh, so I sense their emotions. It’s no big deal. Other people do that too. Well, no, not everyone does that. And it’s super valuable at work.

Melody Wilding: Especially if, you know, a lot of sensitive people think they are not good influencers, persuaders. And being able to understand somebody else’s, um, motivations and goals and pressures that actually makes you a person who’s great at persuading others because you can contextualize your argument or your idea or your proposal in something that directly speaks to that need. Not to be manipulative, but to connect with that person and say, I see you and I’m giving you a solution that directly solves that problem .

Another one that. As you were talking came to mind for me is, is growth mindset. That being a dimension or a component rather of emotionality.

Many times people come into resilient and their emotion regulation component and emotionality is very low, but their growth mindset, maybe much higher. And so it gives them that counterbalance to say, okay, yes, I have some work to do in one area here and being able to regulate myself in the moment, but I have this asset of, I actually do look for the possibilities, and I do look for the learning opportunity here, and I can bring that to how I manage my emotions.

So yes, I love the idea that . It counterbalances some of the negative and it can actually inform how you approach balancing the areas that you are lower in. Yeah.

Wendy: Absolutely.

Melody Wilding: And let’s talk about that, that other question of what’s you went through Resilient yourself. The Strive Diagnostic has changed. It has evolved. It’s been way updated since then. But even, even with people who are graduating now, um. There is this ripple effect of how they continue to use it, refer to it afterwards. So I would love to hear what you have heard from alumni and also a little bit about how you’ve come back to it. You’ve used it as a tool for yourself.

Wendy: . I have found when, when alumni have signed up to, , take the diagnostic and get a debrief, they’re one of two groups. One group has looked at the strive diagnostic over the years , and kept using the tools and skills that they learned in Resilient. And by regularly coming back to this Strive Diagnostic, they’ve been able to manage their lives pretty well, and their qualities keep them balanced versus some people they just have not. Kept up with this drive diagnostic, they haven’t referred back to it. And, it’s clear from the diagnostic that they’re very unbalanced and that they’ve gone through some burnout, , and some strong challenges. What I frequently recommend is to take a look at this Drive Diagnostic quarterly, at least at first, , for the first few years, just so that you become more familiar with, , all of the qualities that you understand, how they impact you and what challenges impact them as well as what opportunities impact them in a positive way.

By knowing how things are , impacted, you can build that toolbox and have a really strong toolbox for yourself to pull from when challenges come around or to know how to really leverage those, opportunities. 

Melody Wilding: That’s what Resilient the program is about giving you

those tools to weather the ups and downs, the setbacks, internal and external. Because they’re not going to go away. We can’t expect to be at a 10 all the time. That’s never going to happen. But it’s how quickly can we pinpoint, where is the imbalance happening? Where do I want to place my focus? Where am I going to get the most leverage? Move towards that more.

So Wendy, thank you so much offering so many of these great stories and experiences.

We are right now in enrollment for the next cohort of Resilient. Hopefully those folks listening will be able to join us for this next cohort that’s starting very soon.