Melody Wilding:  I’m good at what I do. Imagine how it would feel to say those words out loud and actually believe them. Not as something you say to pump yourself up in the bathroom mirror, but as a truth you carry into every work interaction you have for many of us, that simple statement, I’m good at what I do. That feels almost impossible to claim.

In this conversation, you are going to hear from Grainne, a creative professional who spent many years believing she had to hide parts of herself to be accepted at work. The phrase speak up more was feedback that followed her from childhood school reports straight into her professional life, and despite her talents, that nagging belief followed her.

I’m just not good enough. Today she shares a glimpse into how she finally bridged the gap between her accomplishments and her self perception, what she has done and has to offer, and how she sees herself. Going from someone who questioned her contributions to someone who could proudly own her expertise.

Spoiler alert. Grainne is not going to tell you that she suddenly became the loudest person in the room or that she mastered some magical communication technique. She developed something much more valuable, the ability to trust herself. To act without second guessing so much. To share her ideas before they were perfectly polished. To recover when things didn’t go as planned.

That practical application of self-trust has saved her countless hours and given her mental bandwidth to step up to bigger challenges and opportunities. And she did it all through small consistent actions, not grand sweeping changes, which is why her transformation has been so long lasting.

I think something you’ll appreciate about her story is how eerily familiar some of her struggles will sound if you consider yourself to be a sensitive striver like her, and like me. Grainne puts into words things you may have experienced but never had the words to describe. Her story also challenges the idea that confidence is something you either have or you don’t.

So if you have ever thought, but I’m someone in my thirties, my forties, my fifties, it’s too late for me to change these ingrained patterns that I have. Grainne’s story proves otherwise because now at 50 years old, she says, I own what I have to offer, I advocate for myself. Grainne is a proud graduate of Resilient, and she’s going to talk very honestly about how it has changed her life.

But this is not one of those stories where someone tells you they have completely conquered all of their hangups and they are 100% fearless. That is not possible. That is not reality. What makes Grainne’s journey useful is that she still has emotional reactions to workplace challenges. She still feels things deeply.

Now, instead of getting stuck in a rumination spiral that takes her out for three days, she can catch herself more quickly. She recognizes when she’s heading down that familiar path and she has practical tools to pull herself back out of it. That is what real progress looks like for us as Sensitive Strivers, not never feeling doubt, but recovering from it faster.

All right, with that, let’s get into my chat with Grainne.

Grainne, thank you so much for joining me. It’s so wonderful to have you here on the podcast.

Grainne Slavin: . Always a pleasure to have a chat with you, Melody.

Melody Wilding: I’m just so thrilled to have you here because you are one of our amazing, resilient alumni, and I’m grateful that you wanted to come on, talk about your experience, your story. Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and then we’ll go from there.

Grainne Slavin: I’m Grainne , I turned 50 last year, , that’s very prominent in my head. So that’s, , so I’m just gonna mention that that was a bit of a milestone. , I’m based in Leeds in the uk. . In terms of work, I have worked for quite a few years in marketing and communications, having done a, an English degree and then a graphic design degree.

So lots of kind of work for charities, , doing lots of kind of campaigns and website content and newsletters and social media and all that lovely stuff. Alongside that, I’ve done freelance graphic design work. 

 A few years ago, I started designing some things to sell. So designing patterns and putting them, , onto different products , and selling them. 

Melody Wilding: I’ve seen some of your designs, I know you’ve had them behind you on some of our calls, and , it’s incredible work. And like you were saying. You keep yourself busy, which is classic sensitive striver. Definitely the striver side, no doubt about that. , that’s of course the term we use that refers to being someone who’s a deep thinker, deep feeler, but also driven, puts a lot of pressure on themselves.

So I guess you would say you relate to that. Yes.

Grainne Slavin: Oh, absolutely. I absolutely kind of typify all of that really. , I was looking back because , I couldn’t quite remember when I’d come across high sensitivity and I looked back, it was , 2018, so it’s not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.

I must have been having a bit of an issue and Googling something. , I just thought, that’s me. That’s absolutely me. And it made so much sense. , just in terms of how, how I react to things, how I tackle things, and how I am in the world.

That kind of opened the door really to, to that whole world. , and then subsequently I found your work, , which has been an enormous help to me.

Melody Wilding: Let’s go back to the time when you joined Resilient, a few years ago now, which, you know, pandemic time, it, it all feels like a, a blur. But bring us back to that moment before you joined the program. You mentioned you relate to a lot of the struggles of being a sensitive striver.

So what were you going through at that time where you were like. Something needs to change. I need more support. What was going on for you?

Grainne Slavin: The bottom line was I didn’t feel good enough, which I know is also a really common thing. So despite , working really hard, being accomplished at lots of things, even people telling you good things, you still just think.

 I’m just not good enough at this. , for me, that kind of manifested, , in, not being able to cope with any kind of criticism, feeling, very overwhelmed by too many things going on by heavy workloads and that type of thing. I really struggled with speaking up.

And that was something , that came from childhood really. I was really shy as a child. , , , all my school reports said, should speak up more, and I, I just always had that in my head. , in meetings. Things should speak up more, should speak up more.

I think the worst of it was suffering what I would call emotional hangovers after work. , terrible rumination over things. It might be something that somebody said might be something I’d said, maybe I thought I’d upset somebody. , maybe it was a difficult meeting. All manner of things could lead to really dreadful rumination and just feeling really exhausted and having to recover all the time from work. And I had a sense I wasn’t really fulfilling my potential, , all of that lost time worrying about things that really didn’t need to be worried about.

Melody Wilding: Thank you for sharing all of that too, that term emotional hangover. I was like, oh yes. That’s such a perfect way to put it because it is like this thing that follows you and drags you down, I wanted to ask you because , what we observe in Ilian all the time and just having done this work for so long, is that yes, the experience of the emotional hangover is draining in itself, 

just the constant churning it over and not being able to focus fully on the thing at hand. But there’s almost , this other layer of self recrimination or blame that comes with it too, of why do I seem like I’m the only person that is struggling with this?

It’s the experience itself, but it’s then also the self judgment of that. .

Grainne Slavin: Yeah, there’s a whole load of sticks with which to beat yourself. So it’s kind of perfectionism and imposter syndrome and, , over-functioning and which , I didn’t have a term for that until I did resilience. 

It was really good to get a name for that for, , overcompensating because you didn’t want to get negative feedback and feeling like you had to do everything yourself. 

And, yeah. How, how do other people just seem to let things roll off that, . It just doesn’t bother ’em. It just kinda, you know, seems to, they just seem to carry on and why do I get so bothered by things .

Melody Wilding: I appreciate you you sharing all of this too, because I think some of us then hop to the external solutions to solve some of this where maybe I just need to be better at time management. Like maybe I’m just not working fast enough or maybe , I just need a different role or a different team. , 

. So tell me, when you came across resilient, what made it stand out to you?

Grainne Slavin: , it just looked, like nothing else I’d ever really seen. , it looked, the fact that it was four highly sensitive people, sensitive drivers as you call them, , was extremely attractive.

It looked very, extremely well organized, of course, , very thorough, amazing testimonials about it. , lots and lots of detail as to how it would benefit you. I liked the idea of being in a group, so that was attractive. , ’cause there’s nothing like learning from other people and sharing your experiences and your struggles.

Melody Wilding: , I wanna ask about the group dynamic for a minute because you mentioned, , , you maybe struggled with speaking up in the past, so what, what did attract you about the group? Because , sometimes we have people who come into the program and say, I’m an introvert.

I don’t know if this is going to work for me. .

Grainne Slavin: Well I was that person. , I was exactly that person. And I think , in terms of speaking up particularly, , being in a group like that where you are there for that, very specific reason and you’re all there to learn, , it’s a safe space to, to test out speaking up.

, I literally kind of thought I found my people, I just felt so at home with other people who struggled in the same way as I did. , I don’t think I’d ever spoken to anybody who had experienced those things. So just finding this whole group of people was absolutely incredible.

 And, , the, the support from that group , was just amazing.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And , it’s always so remarkable to me how, how quickly the group bonds and how you all have shortcuts with each other because we don’t have to explain ourselves. , when you talk about your thought process or. Why you may feel you need extra time for something or whatever it is. , these things we feel have made us like oddballs or weirdos for decades of our lives.

No one looks at you with side eye. Everyone’s like, yes, yes.

Grainne Slavin: There’s so much nodding.

Melody Wilding: Yes. There’s so much nodding.

Grainne Slavin: you know, really just, yeah, yeah, I get that. Yeah, totally get that. Yeah. Been there. It’s just, yeah.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, well talk to me too, because some people have said to me, I don’t want glorified group therapy. So I would love to hear from you and we can get more into, I wanna talk more about specifics around your journey through the program.

Grainne Slavin: mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: , what would you say to someone who says, I don’t want glorified group therapy.

That’s not what I’m getting into this for. How would you describe resilient then?

Grainne Slavin: Ooh. , I didn’t, I don’t think I thought of it as therapy really at all. , I saw it as more of a course, , and more of, , , a real deep learning experience. , really quality. A thorough learning experience. .

Melody Wilding: Yeah. , we try to make sure that , it’s not, this is not where we are venting and we are saying, oh, woe is me. I’m someone who is sensitive and , we’re all trying to, I like to say now that sensitivity is neutral, ? We can use it for us or we can use it against us. And our goal in resilient, especially with the Strive diagnostic and that whole model is to make sure that we’re getting you out of the downsides.

Grainne Slavin: Hmm.

Melody Wilding: Of the trait, the way it’s holding you back and we’re getting you into and giving you tactics to leverage. The upsides of it, the perceptiveness, the thoughtfulness, the ability to connect with others and be loyal and dedicated without burning yourself to the ground. And so, , I think , what you’re saying is that yes, there was this shared understanding with the group that created safety that.

At least what, what I have found over the years is that safety then allows people to put themselves out there, take more risks or , feel confident unpacking these things and even challenging themselves to try different techniques because we have this basis of understanding and support. , but we’re not here to wallow and spin in the woe is me.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah. Absolutely. And there wasn’t, there was none of that for me. . It really was very practical, very, . Focused on , what you could do, what steps you could take, how that went, , how other people had experienced similar things. , absolutely no wallowing a wallow free zone.

Melody Wilding: Wallow free zone. That’s right. Now tell me a little bit about, ’cause you were saying some of the challenges you were facing, things like self-doubt, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, speaking up. So let’s talk about the self-doubt in particular, , because it sounds like that kind of permeated through or maybe was at the basis of a lot of other challenges.

So how did that change for you over the course of the program?

Grainne Slavin: I would say that it changed considerably. And , I think what I found was breaking things down into different sections. So for instance, , the strive qualities and the Wheeler balance and,, you’ve broken things down into six areas. And to me, I think I just saw sensitivity as one thing, one big thing, and breaking it down into different areas and kind of seeing, well, actually, .

I’m kind of quite balanced in that particular area. So, , for me , inner drive was very balanced. Emotionality was the least balanced. , that was really helpful to be able to hone in on, well, a kind of feel like, oh, , I’m not bad at all of this. It’s, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got, pretty good at that bit.

I’m all right there. I need to improve this bit. . So kinda starting out with really, really small, small changes and tweaks in what you were doing. And it didn’t really matter which area that was, that you were tackling that gave you some confidence to then do some other things. , my very first thing that I did was to ask for help.

 In something really small because that was a big deal for me. , and then it built up into kind of really tackling the speaking up stuff. And then again, start small. Just kind of say things, get your voice out there, and then gradually, , get used to it, get more comfortable with it, build up to , slightly higher stakes stuff,

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Grainne Slavin: and all of those things.

Then just built my confidence. That in itself helped the self-doubt. , I would happily say things like, I’m good at what I do, or I’m even, I’m very good at what I do, which I wouldn’t have done before. , I just wouldn’t have done it. 

Incredible kind of shift really.

Melody Wilding: Wow. . There’s this idea of building this virtuous cycle, where , you took. A little bit of a risk or a

Grainne Slavin: Mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: and you proved, okay, I can do this right. And even if it maybe didn’t go exactly as planned, you learn from it.

You survived it, and that gave you that bit of confidence to take the next step. And , it keeps growing. The, the virtuous cycle builds rather than the vicious cycle of, I don’t speak up, and then that proves maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. And that cycle goes round and round. , do you have any stories or do you remember how you challenged yourself to speak up or any of those situations?

And I would just love to hear a little bit more.

Grainne Slavin: , I think in terms of speaking up, it really was, , start very, very, very small. , there’s lots of ways of speaking and just in, you know, for instance, in a meeting , I was of course one of those people who thought, I have to say the perfect thing and it has to be really amazing.

And of course it doesn’t have to be, you could be asking a question, you could just be backing up somebody who’s said something already. 

It’s kind of, you know, the more you do it, the more comfortable you get with it. To the point that I was very happy. I mean, one example is speaking up about, , the time when we were, are we coming back to the office? Are we not coming back to the office? After the pandemic and I was very strongly, , getting everybody back to the office full time is not the right thing.

So I spoke up about that. , I spoke up on behalf of all the introverts in the team who perhaps felt happier working at home or needed that balance a bit time in the office, a bit of time at home. , I felt like I stuck my neck out a little bit there. . I got to the point where , I was much happier owning pieces of work in public and presenting, like presenting concepts for campaigns and that type of thing, and just getting comfortable with, , you’re never gonna say all the things that you wanted to say.

You’re never gonna say ’em perfectly is fine. It’s gonna happen today. I’ve written lots of things down. I’m not gonna say them all. I will say that are not gonna be perfect. It’s fine. ’cause that’s life and that’s, , that’s the way it goes. 

Melody Wilding: What I, what I wanna underscore there is that’s getting out of the black and white perfectionistic thinking that, , it’s only successful . If I said everything in exactly the right way or this idea of, well, I only have one chance, we sort of build up these conversations in our head , to be this, this big. Almost like judgment moment. And , what I hear you saying is , you were able to step back from that. You were able to have a longer term view. You know, sometimes I, I talk about it as we have to have this bell curve mentality that Yeah, , most of the time we’ll perform somewhere in the middle of that bell curve, somewhere on average.

And then we’ll have times on both of the tails where we really. Missed the mark and we’re just like, that was a, that was a bad moment. That was an off day or times where we blow it out of the water and we’re really proud of ourselves, but we have to have that longer term perspective that everything is not riding on this one moment, this one conversation, this one person.

And I hear you taking that pressure off of yourself I, I can imagine how much just bandwidth or energy that gave back to you.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah, definitely. It also brings to mind a really, , great thing that my dad once said that, , he claims that he used to be very shy, which you wouldn’t believe if you met him. , and he sort of forced himself to overcome that by , doing things. He kind of forced himself to do things and to speak and.

But he said one time, , he said, I got fed up of listening to other people’s rubbish and realized that my rubbish was just as good as anybody else’s. Which I think just sums it up. , you’re not saying, oh, I can do it better. You’re not, you know, I’m just as valid. What I’ve gotta say is just as valid as what that person’s got to say.

Melody Wilding: That is so good. I think we need that on a t-shirt.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah. I’ll design one.

Melody Wilding: Oh, exactly. Perfect, perfect. , you also mentioned emotionality was at the beginning of the program, maybe one of your most unbalanced areas. , at the time, how did you see that manifesting and how did that change for you? By the end, ? What did you notice?

Grainne Slavin: Oh, so emotionality. Emotionality. , that’s the toughie. , that was the area in which I was. Least balanced. , I haven’t done the wheel of balance recently. Um, I would hazard to guess that it’s still the area that’s the least, the least balanced. However, a lot of the other areas, uh, much better.

, I think what I’m, what I’m better at is recognizing it. So , if I’m heading off into rumination about something, I can catch myself earlier. And I have names for it now, and , I see it for what it is, so I can to some extent shortcut it a little bit. , I still have the emotional hangovers sometimes, haven’t completely got rid of them, I think I can manage them a bit better and I can see them for what they are more, , and not get quite as caught up in it.

Melody Wilding: What you’re saying speaks exactly to why I named the program resilient. Because the goal is not to get rid of the emotions. We’re never going to do that. That is not a realistic goal. Life is going to be life. Work is going to be work. There will be demands, there will be stressors. We can’t get rid of that.

But what we can do is improve our speed or the strength of our recovery and our response to that. And so it sounds like also, in that time, , since you’ve joined the program, you’ve been able to step up into different challenges or more responsibility. So it’s not just you’ve expanded your capacity for more.

And the level at which you’re performing. And so yes, you’re still going to have those emotional hangovers , as you’re growing and leveling

Grainne Slavin: Progressing. Yeah.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. So talk to me about that. Yeah.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah, so I’ve definitely taken on more responsibility and, , taken on some more, slightly more daunting pieces of work that I, I definitely wouldn’t have before. I’d like to say, I think you have a phrase. Is it new? New level, new devil. , so of course as you progress, like you say, , you overcome some of the old challenges.

You meet new challenges. And, it’s a constant process. Um, but I think the scare, once you start doing the scarier things, a lot of other stuff starts to feel a lot easier. , it’s kind of why I said yes to doing this because it really scared me. And if you’d asked me to do this four years ago, absolutely not a chance, , in a million years.

. Do I think doing something scary every now and then is really good and it makes some of the other stuff feel a lot less scary

Melody Wilding: Yeah, so true.

Grainne Slavin: kind of boost that progress?

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And, and you prove to yourself what you’re capable of, right? This is, this is also you sending a signal to you , that, that I can do this. , there’s a reason. My first book is called Trust Yourself as well, because that’s at the foundation of everything that is confidence is, is your belief in your ability to navigate something and come out the other side.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Melody Wilding: . How do you feel different today now that , you went through the program back in 2021. How is Grana of 2025 different today?

Grainne Slavin: I feel like

Melody Wilding: I.

Grainne Slavin: I’m able to be. Much more myself and show much more of myself to a much larger group of people, a wider group of people. And that’s really, really key to this whole thing. , if I think back to the shy kids who had a very close circle of friends and didn’t really speak to people beyond that, and now look at, you know, where I am now.

And just , , owning my skills, owning my quirkiness, , and just, , feeling like it’s okay to be that person. It’s like, no, this is me and here I am, and not kind of hiding bits and, , , downplaying your skills and, and all those things. , so yeah, I’m, I’m prouder to be me. Really.

Melody Wilding: That’s pretty life changing. What

Grainne Slavin: Hmm.

Melody Wilding: has that mean for you?

Grainne Slavin: I mean, huge. And it just, it’s an ongoing, it’s, you know, it’s of course an ongoing process. , I’m kind of now at a point where , I’ve got some choices to make about what I do next in my career. . And there’s lots of options. , I’ve got various ideas, , and I’m very relaxed about it.

I’m not kind of stressing about,

Melody Wilding: Hmm.

Grainne Slavin: =, not quite knowing what I’m doing next. So there’s a kind of a confidence there in terms of. I know it’ll work out and I know that, I know I’m good at, I know I’ve got to offer the world and I’ll work it. I’ll work it out. , which again, I just don’t think I would’ve felt like that before doing resilient.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. How do you see your sensitivity differently now, or how do you relate to it? How do you feel? You’re, you’re leaning into some of the strengths. You do have more.

Grainne Slavin: I definitely see it very, , kind of as a positive mainly. ,

 One of the things that came out in Resilient, that was one of those little light bulb moments was the fact that often =, we are thinking much further ahead. We can sort see further ahead than maybe other people can. And that’s something I’ve become very aware of.

. And it’s kind of allowed me to almost like shortcut some things. 

I think one really important thing actually is that I’m, , very ease with. The fact that my destiny was not to climb , the ladder. It wasn’t to climb the career ladder. And I used to think that that was what you had to do, , to show that you were progressing. That was kind of your path. And it, I’m really at ease with the fact that that’s not my path.

I love doing the doing. I love writing. I love designing, I love thinking of creative ideas. That’s what I’m here, , on the planet to do. , you’ve got to get that balance of valuing what you can do. But that doesn’t have to mean, , you have to progress up that career ladder to, yeah.

That’s, it’s not the only solution to things. ,

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Well, and I, I wonder if that also fits into coming to understand yourself better. And I don’t wanna say accept yourself, that sounds a little fluffy, but I. Realize that, that for many sensitive strivers, we spend our whole lives trying to be not like the way we are. And that also includes trying to meet the expectations of the rat race or climbing , the ladder around us.

, so what I’m hearing maybe is that this level of comfort with yourself or confidence in yourself also. Sort of led over to, you were mentioning Inner Drive was one of your most balanced areas, and Inner Drive is all about, am I focusing on work that’s meaningful to me? Am I, , going after goals in a balanced way and not overextending myself?

And that, that gave you clarity in that respect to say, actually this, this is what I wanna do, and I have the confidence to say no to this other path.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: yeah. Does that sound

Grainne Slavin: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And there’s still there, you know, ’cause I come in with a, a million ideas every day. , so I just have to. I drop them down so they’re all captured, but I know that I can’t do them all. , =, I am accepting of that, that, um, I’ll never stop coming up with the ideas ’cause that’s fun and I love doing it.

But yes, I fully accept I can’t do all of them. And, and yeah, that’s really, um, yeah. Have to focus on the important things.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, so tell me what were, you mentioned the community being one of your favorite parts of the program. What else? What else did you really love or find valuable? I.

Grainne Slavin: . I absolutely loved the calls. I just, I always looked forward to the calls every week and I was really sad when they finished. , so I think that absolutely was my favorite thing. I mean, there’s so, there’s so much good stuff about Resilient. , , there’s so many amazing resources. Just there’s a lifetime of resources there, really.

, I think. Being part of that group was really special. And that was, yeah,

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Grainne Slavin: my favorite thing.

Melody Wilding: What was it about the calls that you enjoyed the most?

Grainne Slavin: I think going back to sort of feeling like I was with my, I was with my people, it was, it was just a lovely, safe space, a lovely supportive space. I didn’t feel , like an odd one out in any way, shape or form. . And lovely people. Just really lovely people as well. 

Melody Wilding: , we’re very lucky, very lucky that we get to work with Sensitive Strivers, which, I mean, it’s, it makes it very easy because you’re all so kind and supportive and encouraging of one another. And so smart and thoughtful, everyone comes prepared and it’s wonderful. So it’s like, , we have the A plus Gold Star students in the room.

 What would you tell someone, a sensitive striver who is maybe like, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is right for me. I’ve, I’ve done other things in the past. Would you recommend the program to them? What would you say to someone who’s in that position? I.

Grainne Slavin: I literally couldn’t recommend it more highly, really. . If there was ever kind of a no brainer, this is, this is it really? , I think anybody who struggles with any of the things that we’ve touched on and you know, other things in the workplace, it will help. , it absolutely will help. , I have nothing negative to say about it whatsoever.

Literally.

Melody Wilding: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wanna make sure to mention?

Grainne Slavin: Lemme sc my notes.

Melody Wilding: Yeah,

Grainne Slavin: I, I don’t think there is, but I have a question

Melody Wilding: of course.

Grainne Slavin: for you. , so I’m interested in a, , how many resilient alumni are there now?

Melody Wilding: Hmm.

Grainne Slavin: =. I sort of think it must be so gratifying for you to be able to help people in such a profound way, so I’m really interested to hear about that.

Melody Wilding: Oh, what a, what a beautiful thing to ask. Oh my goodness. So yes, Brazilian just celebrated its fifth birthday, , because I started it. Pretty much as soon as the pandemic

Grainne Slavin: Hmm.

Melody Wilding: um, very early April, 2020 was the first cohort, and so just had its fifth birthday and we’ve had about 500 sensitive strivers go through it in that time.

, I forget how many cohorts at this point, but usually we’re running it about twice a year. , we’ve had people from. All over the world. , of course , you’re in the uk We’ve had folks from Asia, a lot from Australia, uh, all over Europe, uk of course, all parts of the us South America, Mexico, you name it.

We’ve had people there. , . part of what’s gratifying is also seeing people from such diverse backgrounds. ’cause I even in your cohort, , we can have people who are like yourself, who are in graphic design or a more creative, um, someone even more like contracting or freelance type role to folks who are in like high pressure.

Consulting like a McKinsey or A PWC, , banking nonprofits. We have lots of people in, , university academia environments. Of course your classic like big tech, consumer goods, all of that and just. People can be from different parts of the world, have different roles, yet you all have so many commonalities in terms of what brings you here, what struggles, the goals you have, the aspirations you have in terms of how you, how you wanna feel in your work and in your life day to day.

And that’s what really unites people. . hopefully that answers your first question and then to your second question about Yeah, the impact. I mean, yeah, it, it’s, unlike, I, I could have never, I could have never predicted this, and I, I think about how I dragged my feet for years before starting resilient, because I was very scared of having, I, I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this before.

I was. Very afraid of having a group program and letting people down at scale. That was my biggest fear is, oh my gosh, if I have multiple people in this program and I disappoint all of them, I, that was just unbearable for me. You all teach me, and you know this, I’ve said this before, you teach what you most need to learn, but the process of even getting this program, first of all, to get it off of the ground and then we, we really have dialed it into an extremely well-oiled machine, but also highly effective program at this point because we have now the strive diagnostic results and we can see, , cohort over cohort that people are.

Easily doubling if sometimes not tripling their level of balance and confidence from the beginning of the program to the end of the program. And so I. You know, selfishly doing these calls is so meaningful for me ’cause I get, I get to hear what you’re up to. I get to hear the ripple effect of what’s happening from this work.

And yeah, it, it is the most meaningful thing. It’s why all the running a business and doing this is, it’s very difficult. You know that as someone who sort of has, uh, your feet in that world as well. . It, it has to matter at the end of the day. And, and that’s why, is knowing, , when we have someone who comes to us , and says like, I actually sleep at night because of this program.

’cause I, I can turn my brain off and I can disconnect from work, or this was the key that helped me. Stop being underpaid. For the last 15 years, I finally had the confidence to go in and ask for that salary adjustment that, that I’ve been deserving. I just didn’t know and didn’t feel confident to speak up enough about.

That’s life changing and yeah, it just, there’s nothing like it.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah. Oh, that’s amazing. And I’m really, I’m really kind of proud to be. A little tiny part of that.

Melody Wilding: A big part of that. A big part of that. And I just, I am, I am so proud of you and honored that you even, , said yes to coming on today, because I, I, yeah, I know. It’s time out of your day. And it’s a leap. It’s a leap and it takes courage and strength to, to talk about this and share.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: it means the world to me.

And I know the listeners too, that people could. Hear themselves in parts of your story, relate to it, but also that, , you just saying things like, , now I, I can confidently say I own my expertise and what I bring to the table. That, that gives someone who’s like, wow, I wonder what that’s like, that that gives that person hope and a sense of possibility.

So just thank you for that, for, for giving that to someone who may be listening today.

Grainne Slavin: Yeah, and I really hope, that’s kind of why I did it, really a, to scare myself and, which is good. And two, hopefully, yeah. If it helps even one person in a tiny way, then I, I’ll be really happy. So,

Melody Wilding: Thank you. Thank you so much for being here.

Grainne Slavin: no problem. It’s been an absolute pleasure.