Modern Wisdom - #315 - Melody Wilding - Succeed If You're Empathetic & Driven

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Melody Wilding is an executive coach and an author. Being a driven but sensitive individual is a fairly interesting blend. You have all the desire for high achievement and go-getting but also overthink pretty much everything which slows you down. Thankfully, Melody is a specialist at coaching what she calls Sensitive Strivers. Expect to learn how to channel your emotions into an advantage, why trusting your gut is a skill, how to let go of being a perfectionist, how to stop over-thinking, why empathy can help you to beat the competition and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 20% discount on all pillows at https://thehybridpillow.com (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Buy Trust Yourself - https://amzn.to/3gJnOHk Check out Melody's website - https://melodywilding.com/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello my beautiful friends in podcast land. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Melody Wilding. She's an executive coach and an author and we're talking about how to succeed if you're empathetic and driven. Being a driven but sensitive individual is a fairly interesting blend. You have all the desire for high achievement and go getting, but also overthink pretty much everything, which slows you down. Thankfully, Melody is a specialist at coaching what she calls sensitive strivers, and we get to go through her framework today. I expect to learn how to channel your emotions into an advantage, while trusting your gut is a skill, how to let go of being a perfectionist,

how to stop overthinking, why empathy can help you to beat the competition and much more. I genuinely do think that this combination of empathy and drive is a very unique way to look at the business world. When we think about successful, commercially successful individuals, we think about the wolf of Wall Street, go get us success by any means. We don't often think about the person who's laying awake at night considering whether that awkward exchange with a colleague is going to come up tomorrow during the meeting or not. It offers some very unique opportunities for that person because of how they see the world,

but it also offers unique challenges, and I'm glad that Melody is coming at this from a neuroscience psychology and a biology perspective. It helps us to really kind of see under the hood about what's going on here. I'm happy to be here. Why is being empathetic and driven an interesting combination for people to have? driven an interesting combination for people to have? Yeah, you know, I think we don't think of them together. I think we don't think about the combination of traits and challenges that happens when we bring together those two qualities of someone who is highly sensitive, so observant, empathetic, kind, but also very driven in their career. It's interesting, isn't it?

Because a lot of the qualities that people think of when they talk about being driven sort of ruthless, quite self-centered, not really caring about others, the sociopath, wolf of Wall Street type kind of approach. But success can be driven by a number of different factors, right? Absolutely. And yes, exactly what you're saying, we traditionally think of success of business with someone who is fast, someone who is merciless,

with action. We don't equate it with reflection and careful thinking and kindness and compassion, which is odd because what the research shows is that actually those traits actually lead to higher performance, better teams, higher revenue. So it's counterintuitive that combining those two things would actually create better results because it's the opposite of everything we've been taught and told and condition to believe. And it presents a very specific set of problems that need a very specific set of solutions and that's what we're going to go through today. So one of the terms that you're going to relate to a lot is sensitive striver. So let's define our terms before we get into it.

What is a sensitive striver? A sensitive striver is a person who combines those two aspects of someone who is highly sensitive, meaning they think and feel everything more deeply, but they are also high achieving. So they are driven, they reach great heights in their career. They may not necessarily aspire to be top of the pack and CEO, but they have a strong drive to be the best version of themselves.

And so when those two qualities come together, it can be a tremendous asset and a super power, but can also lead to a very specific set of challenges that comes out of that as well. How can people identify if they're a sensitive striver? Is there an MOT that people can run through a checklist? Absolutely. And so, I should specify that being a sensitive striver is about, we're talking about 15 to 20% of the population here. So one in five people, I'm sure everyone watching

or listening to this knows someone who is a sensitive shriver or works with them or is one themselves. And so sensitive shrivers, they are highly attuned to their own emotions as well as those of other people. We are deeply caring. We give our 100% to our work, all with an inner world on overdrive.

So we process information more deeply than the average person, more more affected by our surroundings, which again makes us observant, perceptive. We anticipate eventualities. We are the person who is able to spot opportunities or highlight gaps before things become a problem. But at the same time, being so affected and processing everything so deeply can also lead to stress, overwhelm, overthinking, especially if you don't have the right set of tools. What are some of the main disadvantages that you get as a sensitive striver? How does it hold you back? Yeah. It might be helpful to go through the framework I've defined in the book of

really identifying yourself, the qualities of being a sensitive striver. We can talk about that because each one has an upside to it, but also has a downside to it that I think will provide more color. In the book, I share this strive. Framework, very easy to remember, sensitive drivers, your core qualities are strive. And this is the place I start with anyone who comes to coaching or works with me in any of my programs, because it's very overwhelming to be a sensitive person.

You can feel like there is so much you want to improve or change about yourself or be different that you don't know where to start. So the strife framework is a way of prioritizing where your biggest opportunities are. Our first quality, the S, probably unsurprisingly, is sensitivity. Now I know that may seem obvious that, of course, a sensitive shriver is sensitive, duh. But this specifically refers to sensory sensitivity. So it is having a more exaggerated nervous system or a heightened nervous system response to everything that's happening within and around you. So again, you are attuned to your environment, you're attentive to what's going on,

you're very perceptive, but at the same time, you can become very easily overstimulated. So, when sensitivity, your sensory sensitivity is balanced or able to become decomposed, even when there's a lot going on around you. But, if not, you can be very easily stressed. You can have a very exaggerated fight or flight response. So many times I will see unbalanced sensitivity come up

with people speaking up in meetings or being put on the spot. For example, people get paralyzed and freeze when put under pressure in that way because they just go into fight or flight and don't know how to deal with it. So that's our first, our S, which is sensitivity. Then we have thoughtfulness, which is the T. And sensitive shrivers, we are very creative, reflective.

We contemplate issues. We're intuitive. But at the same time, if your thoughtfulness is not managed, that can become overthinking, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, indecision, criticism. We're almost so self-aware that we're the hardest person on ourself because we're so aware of our own behavior. So we have RS, RT, then we have our R in the strive, which is responsibility.

And that is more of the striver side, which sensitive strivers are dependable. We can be, we follow through. We have a high drive for commitment and dedication. But at the same time, we may over function. We may take on more than our share of responsibility. We may people please and put other people's needs ahead of our own. So we are the one who will sacrifice our own weekend and you know work 10 hours to get a job done. So we're really willing to sacrifice our own while being overly

responsible at times. That brings us to our eye which also is the striverside. So the eye stands for inner drive. And you know, sensitive strivers, we are the one who wants to exceed expectations and everything that we do. We want to check the boxes, get the A plus. So we set a lot of goals and we usually achieve them. But sometimes we can over burden ourselves with too many goals. We can overwork because we want to reach the next echelon of our career. And probably most of all, we can fall into perfectionism, where we have this very binary, all-or-nothing view of success,

either I accomplished my goal and I'm amazing, or I didn't, and I'm a failure. And sometimes that perfectionism can lead us to set such an unrealistic high bar for success that we end up setting ourselves up for failure because it's not something that can be accomplished. So then we have our V, which is for vigilance, and that's being very attuned to the subtleties in your environment and nuances going on around you. So sensitive drivers, we are very good at reading people. We can sense a change in somebody's body language even over Zoom or just pick up on the general mood of a meeting, for example. So again, very attuned to the environment, but it's almost as if your antennas are up

all the time just gathering information about what's going on around you Which can be really draining on your battery? And most of all we tend to read into situations even when there's not danger there we can perceive something as dangerous like Getting some benign feedback but thinking oh my gosh, it's the end of the world, and I'm going to get fired. That's our vigilance on overdrive. And then our last key is emotionality. So as you probably guessed,

and sensitive drivers who are listening or watching can attest to, that we have big, complex feelings about a lot of things, both positive and negative. So we are the one who can experience the richness of positive emotion and inspire that in others, joy, gratitude, excitement. But we can also get stuck in emotional spirals, anger, fear, anxiety, and stay, stuck there longer than most people if we don't have the right tools.

Does a basis for this in, is it biology or neuroscience as well that's being discovered? Can you explain that? Yes, so the trait of high sensitivity in particular has been studied for over 30 years. And the original researcher who discovered it, Dr. Elaine Aaron found that it was a biological

and evolutionary trait that evolved because it kept a certain amount of people in the group safe. It was very beneficial and prehistoric times to have someone who was deliberate and thought before they acted. You wanted someone who didn't just rush into an unknown situation. You wanted someone who paused before they acted. So that's why the trade of sensitivity has existed and persisted over time

because it does provide an advantage. And they have found that this trade of high sensitivity exists in over 100 hundred different species. So everything from dogs to insects can be highly sensitive. And the research also shows that people who have this trait of high sensitivity tend to have different brain patterns. So we have different activation in parts of the brain related to things like attention, concentration, action planning, decision making.

And another interesting finding is that our mirror neurons, so the part of the brain, the neurons that are responsible for empathy, understanding people, being able to read behavioral nuances, we tend to have more active, mirror neurons, so our brain lights up more when we see social interaction, or we see someone upset, for example, our brain lights up more. So it's very interesting that it's a very real thing because I think for most people who are sensitive drivers are just highly sensitive. At least for me, I know my whole life, I grew up trying to stifle this and just thinking, what's wrong with me? Why am I inadequate? Why

am I so fragile and I can't get it together? Not realizing that it's a part of my personality. And once I named it, identified it and understood it could actually use it and leverage it as a superpower that it actually is one of your clients or followers I think Summarized it in the book in the best way that I saw where they said I over everything Mm-hmm And that's just such a good way to put it because it is it's just all of the all of the things that you do turned up to 11 all of the sensitivity and the interpretation and the overthinking and everything just do turn up to 11, all of the sensitivity and the interpretation

and the overthinking and everything just gets turned up to 11. And yeah, I'd say I think I would probably fall somewhere on the spectrum of this. I'm going to guess that sensitive strivers skews female. Is that right? You know, that's a very interesting question. And first, you're absolutely right, that is it, it is a spectrum. It's not a binary thing, just like you can be on a spectrum of introversion to extraversion. And some people are in the middle as

amberverts, it's the same thing. So you may relate to some of these qualities more strongly than others, and that's completely normal. But you know, the research does actually show there's not a more strongly than others, and that's completely normal. But the research does actually show there's not a huge difference in the number of men who are at least sensitive versus the number of women. Now, anecdotally, what's really interesting is the more that I've talked about sensitivity and become more public with this as a part of my business and my personal story, the more men I've attracted into my community and that I've worked with in my coaching services and programs.

So that's been an interesting discovery. But I think socialization really does affect how sensitivity shows up. So for women in particular, we're always told, don't be so emotional, right? Women are the emotional gender, they say. And young girls in particular are really groomed to be perfectionist. We're really groomed to follow all the rules and be a good girl. And certainly I can relate to that, that I want it to be a good girl. And, you know, certainly I can relate to that, that I want it to be a good girl and please everyone. And most young girls, by the time that they're

in their preteens, about half say that they cannot fail, that they are not allowed to fail, which is a really, really dangerous conditioning for young women. Um, and so they, we take that into the workplace with us and it can form something I call the honor roll hangover, which is that, um, that conditioning, those qualities really following you over into your career. So for a lot of women, we face that double bind as well because we have to be, we can't be overly emotional, but we have to be empathetic and warm, but we also have to display competence. So it's a tightrope for women, whereas for men, so many of them grow up with conditioning that says, you can't be sensitive.

You have to be macho and be tough and don't cry, you know, only sissy's cry. So a lot of sensitive men really disowned that part of themselves, and cry, you know, only sissy's cry. So a lot of sensitive men really disowned that part of themselves and only, you know, later in their lives when they discover this is a very real thing, come around to actually owning it. I think what you identify there is that when we try and force people into boxes or archetypes, inevitably everybody loses, because if you have a pre-prescribed idea of where someone's supposed to go, and the out that their internal state doesn't match that external state, everybody, whether you send women too far left or men too far right, it still ends up being, and I would totally, totally agree, I think, for a significant period of time,

I saw my empathy as a weakness. And still, it would be nice if I could give some of it away. I've got, I have it in excess. If there was a button. Yeah, just to turn it down a little bit. I could just give some, you know, like charitably. But after a while, you do realize, okay, like this is a relatively immutable source code part of myself. And it's probably not going away. So I might as well learn to make it as good as I can

or to utilize it. And one of the advantages of that is that it means you can get insights about the world and about the people around you and about yourself that very few other people can. And that's a competitive advantage. For the guys or the girls who have absolutely no sensitive striver in them, and are fearless and are able to just

make decisions and roll with the punches and deal with obstacles as they come, there are also competitive advantages to them. But your competitive advantage, you're not going to beat me on finding insight. It's just not going to happen. You're not going to be about a podcast to them, because you can't tell all of the different nuances

about what's happening in the conversation, the way that someone feels and looks and their body language and their tone and all that stuff. But I'm also not going to be able to run a high-paced, high-pressure, high-stress business organization that requires a million decisions a day with kind of flow thought as opposed to forethought and planning because that's your wheelhouse. And I really do think that the sensitive strivey thing, I like giving things a name without putting

them into boxes, clashing it as a paradigm, I think, is a smart way to kind of give it a label. But also, it really does identify such an odd oxymoron as we went back to before. What does it mean to be empathetic and driven at the same time? What are the unique challenges that that gives people, but what are the unique opportunities? And then how can we double down on those opportunities? There's a quote that you have from Glennon Doyle, which is Awesome says I understand now that I'm not a mess, but a deeply feeling person in a messy world I explained that now when someone asks me why I cry so often is for the same reason I laugh so often because I'm paying attention I had Jordan Peterson on the show a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about the difference between

Looking and watching he says attention attention isn't looking. It and watching. He says, attention, attention isn't looking, it's watching, it's watching to see what happens, it's watching to see what the other person's doing, taking in everything that you can. And yeah, the question of whether it's a blessing or a curse to feel things so deeply is one that I guess curses only sensitive strivers, but that quote really sort of sums up a lot of interesting insights, I think. Yeah, and when I read that, I was like, oh, that one hit me. And I think there is so much there to the aliveness and the awakeness of being a sensitive striver, but that gets to balancing these qualities because so many times sensitive strivers are on autopilot, on autopilot trying to

overcompensate for their insecurities by trying to do more and prove themselves and source their self-worth through achievements and validation from other people that we're giving all of our attention away to others. And we're not channeling any of it inward. Or being slow with our attention, like you were saying, rather than just fast and reactive to everything that's happening around you, but really actually taking it in and leaving room for that processing. Because to me, that's happening around you, but really actually taking it in and leaving room for that processing, because to me,

that's the difference between looking and watching, is that watching goes a layer deeper of having meaning and interpretation and purpose to what's going on around you. You talk about this on-a-roll hangover, which is straight-day students that have come through school or college or university and then they get into the workplace and they constantly feel this need to over deliver.

They're likely to be perfectionists, they're likely to be people who will reread the email 20 times before they send it and stuff like that. How can people get past that? If I'm just pinging off all of the different things that someone that's listening to this does, they think that's me and that's me and that's me. How can someone get past this? Yes. And so, you know, the the honorable hangover is I define as that intersection of perfectionism, people pleasing and over functioning. So the perfectionism piece as you were, if you were saying kind of overdoing it, for really perfectionism

is about self-criticism and being hard and judgmental on yourself. The people pleasing, putting others before yourself, knocking down your own opinions and favor of others, and the over-functioning is being the one to swoop in, to fix every situation, taking on responsibility. It creates a dynamic where if you are over functioning, you create a dynamic where others can under function.

So you actually disempower them because you're fixing everything and doing everything for them, they don't have to think for themselves. So when the first way to really start unhinging yourself from the on a roll hangover is you have to make more space in your life. Because with the on-eroll hangover, you typically have what I call goal collected. You've typically taken on all of these ambitions and aims and obligations. Many from yourself, because you want to push yourself to achieve more and do more, all of these ambitions and aims and obligations,

many from yourself because you want to push yourself to achieve more and do more, but also because you feel overly responsible or somebody else said this would be a good idea to do or you just feel some sort of sense of obligation, like a good employee would be involved in this initiative, right? And so in the book, I call it the strategy of giving up goals, which is really taking

stock of how you are spending your time and looking for areas where you need to rethink a goal or priority or give it up altogether. How can you identify those? So the first one is looking for places where the goal is not yours in the first place, where you are driven by a sense of comparison or as I said, obligation anywhere where you are telling yourself you should, you have to, you need to do something versus wanting to do something, wanting to do something. Very important distinction there. So you want to make sure that anything you're undertaking is really motivated by the

right fuel, that you are motivated by an inner longing and desire rather than a fear of missing out. So that would be one. A big one that I see for sensitive strivers is when giving up the goal, when it starts to bring you more distress, then it starts to bring you benefit. And this is a really important one. I have been here many times in my life, where in the name of pushing myself outside my comfort zone, I push myself way outside my comfort zone to the point of, you know, dread sleepless nights in the book. I tell the story of my own very severe burnout that my goals really led me to a place where I was having heart palpaltations. My hair was

falling out. And those goals were bringing me a lot more distress, almost death, than benefit. And so, yes, I am all for discomfort. And in the book, I have a whole chapter about taking on more risk and getting comfortable with this comfort. But there comes a point. And you have to develop inner discernment to know when a goal has pushed you far beyond your comfort zone to the point where it's damaging your health. And then the last one I would say is when you're fixated more on the results and the outcome, then you are on the process. So if you are fixated entirely on getting a title, a certain salary, getting your business to a certain revenue, rather than the process, it takes to get there. For example, if you want to scale your business

to a million followers, let's say, but you don't want what comes along. With that, the building, the internal side of your business, perhaps managing a team, creating more content to support that big of an audience, then that is a sign that you might want to rethink that goal as well. I can't remember who it was. I want to say Seth Goldin, I was talking to and he was discussing exactly the same thing, talking about how many people want to be a rock star

but hate playing the guitar. You're like, no, you don't understand. It's the other way round. You want to love to play the guitar and rock style come along for the ride. You talk about a fake it until you make it. What you thought about that? For the most part, I don't love the phrase because fake it until you make it suggest being something you're not. And so many sensitive drivers, the honorable hangover tricks us into thinking that we can fake it to a point where we have earned worthiness and approval if we only check a certain amount of boxes or meet a certain requirements. And so I think in that way, this idea of fake it till you make it, pushing yourself further

in the name of trying to be something you're not can really lead you astray in the wrong direction. That's interesting. So you're saying that fake it till you make it is kind of like there's also almost a sense of self deception in there saying that I'm not good enough for this thing. It inherently implies that you need to have ticked these boxes before you can get to a particular level. I'm going to guess that fake it to the make it also feeds

into imposter syndrome somehow. Oh, 100%. Yeah, because if you're, if you think you're an imposter, you will just fake it and put on a mask and pretend to be something you're not so that people won't think you're an imposter. And what I really think is the biggest slippery slope with fake-at-til-you-make-it is that we bypass

looking at the real problems. Especially with imposter syndrome, we just think, well, if I look and I act confident, then I will feel confident, rather than addressing what's really... Why am I not confident? Why am I not confident? What are the thoughts that are generating that feeling?

How do I deal with the emotions of shame and doubt rather than wrestling with the difficult things we try to bypass? We try to go over instead of through. Well, also, ask yourself, do you deserve imposter syndrome? This did come from South Godin where he said, if you're doing a thing that you've never done before, you quite rightly deserve your imposter syndrome. You are an imposter, you haven't done it. It's like I reframed it as adventure syndrome.

If you are mapping new territory, then how do you know if you're going to be able to succeed or not? But on the flip side of that, this is something that I try and tell as many people who bring up imposter syndrome to me as I can. Your imposter syndrome should only be able to survive being disproven in the real world so many times before it just leaves. If you start clinging onto it, imposter syndrome and believing that you are not worthy of the successes that you have isn't the same as being humble. And I think a lot of people believe that it is

somehow that, oh well, if I hold onto this imposter syndrome, it's keeping me rooted to the floor. It's like, no, no, no, no. Your goal is to have the most accurate self-view that you can at all times. That's it. And by holding onto your imposter syndrome, if the imposter syndrome makes you feel less than you are, that's inaccurate. And if the fake it till the make it makes you feel more than you are, that's also inaccurate. Just try and have a relatively rational worldview about yourself and about your capacities. 100%. Yeah.

And, you know, when I very talked to people about imposter syndrome, I always say exactly what you were saying that sometimes doubt is a normative response. And where it becomes imposter syndrome is when your sense of doubt is out of sync with your self-perception or the facts of the situation. So if the facts of the situation are that you've never done something, it's unproven, this is new to you, then it's completely normal to feel a sense of doubt. You're just having a normal human response to a situation versus imposter syndrome would be, I've proven success here, I've received great praise and accolades, I have training in this area, yet I still don't

feel like enough and I still feel like every moment someone's going to come along and say, I'm a fake and I'll be found out. So that's a very important distinction that I don't think a lot of people realize we group them together. Yeah and the fake it to the make it as well is going to it's going to cause a buffer to sit between you and whoever is complimenting you or the award that you win or the accolades that you managed to achieve. You've hit this year's target, well yeah but I was faking it until I made it. So that still isn't internalized and it until I made it. So that still isn't internalized. And that basically means that you're kind of strapping yourself to the tree that is your own fake it to the make it imposter syndrome. You're just going to stay there. So you split the book into three sections and you go into the

second section now where you talk about what people should give themselves permission to do. What should they give themselves permission to do? people should give themselves permission to do? What should they give themselves permission to do? Yeah, you know, a lot of things, but specifically permission to succeed. So many sensitive drivers are afraid to be who they are. They're afraid to do well because they're afraid of success, which is, sounds funny to say that someone could be afraid of success, but you can. which is, sounds funny to say that someone could be afraid of success, but you can. And so they need permission to succeed, to feel like they're not outshining others, or they're not the tall puppy that's going to get cut down. What would people think of me if I do well?

And specifically, to get out of their own way, thinking that there's one right way to accomplish something, that someone out there prescribed that there's certain steps you need to take or an exact model that exists and you just need to find it. That's not how the world works. So you need to get give yourself permission to take matters into your own hands, listen to yourself, and starting before you feel ready, starting before you feel completely qualified or prepared. That would be first. Yeah, I was going to say just how can people, what are some of the techniques that people can do to instantiate that? Yeah, you know, some of this is what they need to stop doing. And so with our type of personality in particular, sensitive strivers, we tend to over prepare

and we get into procrastal learning as I call it, which is a diversion tactic of over researching. I will have clients who will say they want to accomplish something and then they will spend weeks planning and putting together spreadsheets and, yeah, but I need to put together my strategy plan, my business plan, and they overcomplicate. And they spend so much time researching and thinking

about something rather than just acquiring knowledge as they go. Or I see this a lot with my clients who are business owners, for example, they will spend so much time creating a website when they don't even need a website right now. They could go out and get clients through referrals, for example. And so it's a diversion tactic to focus on the comfortable thing, instead of the thing that feels a little more challenging and exposing to us. So that would be one way. But another thing I love to go through with my clients is having them remember and root

into their own resilience. And even just going through the exercise, reminding yourself of three times in your life when you have done something difficult or challenging, how did you get through it? What did you learn from that? Can really help you realize, oh, I actually do have what it takes. I've been in this sort of situation before. I can navigate through this again because often what blocks people from starting before they're ready is the self-doubt, is the sense of vinaigrettesy that I can't do this. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good enough. What are people going to think of me? And so getting your mindset right will mean that

then your actions can fall into place around that because we always want to be consistent with our beliefs and how we see ourselves. So if you see yourself as inadequate, well, guess what, you're going to keep hitting up against a brick wall when you try to take action. But if you see yourself as someone who is resourceful and figures it out as you go, well, then you're going to allow yourself to take action in that direction. It's one of the beautiful things of experience, right? As you spend more time disproving your own imposter syndrome and coming up against different challenges, inevitably you actually think, well, God,

how long can I believe that I'm an incapable buffoon whilst still disproving it in the real world? And then you have this litany, this huge library of past catastrophes that you got through and last minute submissions for work and all the rest of this stuff. And you think, well, God, there isn't much left for me not to conquer. You know what I mean, and I think that's one of the, I think that's

one of the reasons why when we see people in the business world who have been in there for, you know, a decade or a couple of decades and still quite haven't got past that needing to prove a point, constantly feeling inadequate. And you can tell when you see somebody walk into a room and sit down in a meeting, I think that's why that's so jarring because you think, come on, you've been doing this for 15 years or 20 years, like chop chop, you need to play catch up here. Yeah, there's a proving energy to it, right, versus I'm comfortable and secure

in myself. Yes, exactly. How do you channel emotions into an advantage? Yeah, you know, I was talking to somebody else about this today. And I think an important distinction here is that you can't have emotional intelligence without emotional regulation. And channelling your emotions into an advantage, you were talking about it before, that that emotional insight and attentiveness you have to other people is what

makes you successful as a podcaster. And I have one client who once told me this great story where she works in a large media company. The company was getting ready to do a huge technology overhaul. And she, because she was a sensitive striver, anticipated, oh boy, this is going to cause some conflict and friction between the product team and the technical team. And having that emotional foresight, she was able to go to each of those teams, go to one

person on each team and say, Hey, how are you feeling about this? What's coming up for you? She had known there had been some roadblocks with them before. And was the one who brought them together to mediate the conflict and really create a space for those emotions to come out and be channeled in an effective way that led to the collaboration being successful. If a sensitive driver hadn't been in that role, it might have been a complete debacle that they were able to make this technology change within a couple of months versus things like that can take years, for example. And when you have someone who has that emotional attuneness, that is how it can be an advantage. You're able to understand people's motivations. You can influence other people.

You can also use your own emotions to persuade and motivate people. So so many of my sensitive drivers as managers, leaders, and business owners, they are highly effective and they are the boss everyone wants to work for because they are someone who cares about, hey, how are you doing? How's your family? They make you feel seen and validated. They have a pulse on morale.

They know if they can tell if you are feeling, if you're dragging or feeling burned out and will work with you to help adjust your workload or give you time off. For example, so the research shows that being someone who is more attentive to emotions makes you more successful, it earns you more money. For example, teams with emotionally in-touch leaders are more successful, they're more innovative because they're stressed, people feel like they can take chances and they won't be beat up or thrown under the bus for it. But of course, at the same time, being someone who is overly emotional, especially if you,

if your strive qualities are unbalanced, can be a challenge. But those are some of the ways unbalanced can be a challenge. But those are some of the ways that it can be a benefit. And I don't think we often put those pieces together to see emotions as a strength because we're taught, keep your emotions out of it. Emotions don't belong in business when business is people. So something I've just realized there is if there is a competitive advantage to being a playmaker, it seems like the sensitive striver and the emotions would work very well in a playmaker role, multiple different people, very people oriented, very forward facing, perhaps internal as well.

If you are someone that has that capacity, think about how hard it is for you to fully open up and fully utilize those skills, accept the fact that you feel and notice and perceptive of what's going on, and then realize that not only is there only a small subsection of the entire workforce that has that capacity, but of the people that have that capacity, there's only a small subsection of those people that are prepared to utilize it because everybody has the same level of discomfort around utilizing it that you do. So you say, okay, so I'll chop that down and then chop this down and you go, wow, actually, if I can just get past myself, if I can just get over this hump, there is a very, very small group of people that I'm

competing with with this particular talent pool, because first you need to have the talent, and then secondly, you need to have the bravery or the courage to actually be able to deploy it. So yeah, I think if that doesn't compel someone to go, okay, right, I'm going to utilize my empathy here. I'm going to combine the empathy in the drive drive and I'm going to use it to make me a more effective business person. I think that should be a pretty big wake-up call for them.

100%, perfectly, perfectly said. That's what I like to hear. What can people do to end overthinking? Obviously, this is kind of the flip side of the coin, right? It's all well and good, it's talking about how insightful and perceptive and I can tell what's going on. And I can foresee problems between people before they occur.

But the flip side of that is you're going to move more slowly because you inevitably overthink complicated and you're going to overcomplicate situations. How can people get past that? That's right. Yeah. And so realizing when your overthinking is huge here, because as a sensitive driver, your natural mode is to take in more information

and process it more deeply. But when you realize you are starting to hit mental dead ends, your thinking is starting to make you stressed or anxious or is just unhelpful, that's when you're overthinking. One of my favorite tools from the book, and it's just a quick tip, but it's really powerful, is naming your inner critic, giving it a name, personifying it, creating an identity for it, the little monster, or the Gremlin. I go between the two, but that is my

intercredit for sure. I have had clients name there, Starth Vader, for example, all sorts of things. And you know, it's fun. The point is to make it a little more lighthearted so that you're not so fused with those negative thoughts that they don't feel so heavy and damaging to you, but you can actually create some psychological distance and be able to put that pause between, okay, automatic thought, and what do I want to choose to think or what action do I want to take going forward? That's a very quick one,

but definitely one of my favorites. So, the other thinking arises, you notice that you're starting to get lost in a little bit of a thought loop, and you think, oh, there's, there's Darth Vader again. Having another pop. That's right. And then it gives you, it gives you that moment to assess, to assess like, oh, I see you, I can make a more conscious choice rather than a reactive, automatic, let me just spiral out and let me just make a conscious choice.

In that moment, do I want to believe Darth Vader? Do I want to buy into that? What does my wise inner voice tell me and want me to do differently? That's a practice that many people that meditate will be familiar with, right? Noting. Just providing that mindfulness gap. James, Alturka has the not useful label. If you've heard of that, yeah, which I absolutely love.

So whenever you notice his thought and his mind that he realizes is not useful, he just notices labels it not useful. And it disintegrates the veracity and the size of whatever it is you're thinking about because you go Well, I don't I don't want you don't want you in my mind But until we realize that until we create that mindfulness gap and give us that give ourselves that distance I'm going to guess that learning to trust your gut is a skill that a lot of sensitive strivers could probably do with trying to acquire.

Oh, yes, because we are conditioned as sensitive strivers. It's that people please are in us. It's the vigilant side where we're paying attention to everything outside of ourselves, to the point where we start to overvalue other people's opinions. We start to think they know what's best for us, or again, that there's a right way to do something. We get caught up in those sheds and we don't develop. I really believe that listening to your gut is a muscle.

It's something that can be developed if you give it attention. What does that mean? Is it getting out of your own way? Is it not acting on impulse? It's not acting on instinct. What does that mean? Is it getting out of your own way? Is it it's not acting on impulse? It's not acting on instinct. What is it? No. So, you know, gut, gut, hunch intuition. I group them all as the same thing, which is basically listening to yourself. And sensitive drivers, we have a more advanced ability to do this because of our processing. Because we're attuning to more of that's happening around us,

we're taking that in more, we're processing that information in a more complex, intricate way, it's like we have a bigger database to be pulling from. So intuition, you want to think of it a little bit like a pattern matching game, where when you have to make a decision or a choice, your brain and the matter fractions of a millisecond is doing these calculations, pulling from all of your past experiences, your preferences, your learnings, your memories, and is calculating how is this situation like the past and how can I use information to provide as much of an analog to what's happening now about how I should behave.

And so as a sensitive striver, we have a deeper well to pull from. And intuition can feel a little, you know, woo-woo or spiritual or fluffy because it is so unconscious and fast, But it is really that it's beyond awareness. It's almost that physiological response of something in my gut and in my body feels right. Or I call it like an internal traffic light. When you're intuition says something as a go, you feel like, yes, I know this is totally the right decision for me, but when your intuition says, maybe you should stay away or this isn't good,

you feel that resistance inside. It's interesting. I've been thinking about this a lot recently, trying to get out of our own way with things. Like just get rid of the cerebral front brain stuff. And this is one of the problems I see in the personal development and the self growth world generally that when you're constantly striving to try and be better, you inevitably lose a degree of confidence in your own existing

skill set because there's something inherent about oh well I've got to acquire more because I need I need to know about that thing and I need to improve my communication and I need to be with this and that and the other And I think One of the things that would be really interesting if people were able to do would be to periodize their Years perhaps and say okay, so maybe for a couple of months I'm gonna focus on growing and then for a couple of months I'm not I'm not gonna be too bothered about actually trying to acquire new skills I'm just going to allow the existing ones I have to kind of permeate the actions that I do and then you go

Okay, wow like look what happens when I get out of my own way and I just allow that stuff to flow Yeah, the unconscious insights that we get I think It's easy in the modern era where I mean, you know, we're here talking about personal development, but letting it go every so often and just saying, right, I'm just going to have faith that the system and all the stuff I've acquired is just going to amalgamate somewhere in the back of my brain or the base of my stomach, and it's going to arrive when it's needed. Yeah, and, you know, as sensitive strivers,

the research shows that we are great synthesizers. That goes back to what I was saying before about the neuroscience that shows our brain patterns, we make more neural connections between information. But we need space to do that. So what you were saying, you know, about really creating the opportunity to listen to yourself reminded me that when I was writing the book, I'm a huge reader. I love books. I read tons of personal development books. You can see them all behind me if you're watching the video.

But when through the process of writing the book, I stopped reading other books because I knew it was extremely important for me to be listening to myself and my own knowledge and not reading another book and saying, oh, but maybe I should try to incorporate this or make my book look like that. So that was something I did to create space to allow my intuition to come through and to trust myself that I would synthesize all of my education and learning and background into this book and not cloud it with very worthwhile information, but it would prevent me from hearing myself. That's really smart.

I did a TEDx talk a couple of months ago and I was brought on last minute for a talk that had already been delayed by a year. So the 2021 had got pushed back to 2021. And then a couple of people had dropped out when they'd announced it was the rearranged date. And they gave me, so I had 10 weeks. And most of the other people who'd been on it had had like 14 or 15 months, I think, to prepare, or even maybe, maybe even more. And so many of the people that were doing their talks had found that what they'd written a year ago, they now disagreed with, they now had these

internal conflicts around because they had moved on, the talk that they had written and the person that they then were, were jared somehow. And in a bizarre way, I knew that within the space of 10 weeks, my opinions can change quite quickly, but they're not going to change usually about something that was as core as well. I was going to talk about, and I actually felt like it was an advantage. And I actually thought, oh, okay, well,

I have, similar to you, periodizing intake with output. I didn't have sufficient time to change my fundamental views around the topic I was going to talk on. So I didn't get that, ooh, well, maybe what is my position around whether being weird is a competitive or a social advantage? What is my position around this, that, and the other? So, yeah, bizarrely, it can be, it can be an advantage like that. Another thing that you talk about is to do with boundaries. And I think that's quite interesting. Inevitably, if you are a sensitive striver, someone that wants to over-deliver and over-achieve,

you're going to take your work home with you and reply to emails on the weekend and do all that sort of stuff. Why are boundaries so hard to build and how can people build them? Oh gosh, now more than ever, they're so difficult because there is no, we don't have artificial boundaries anymore between our professional

lives and our personal lives. We used to have, for most people, used to go into the office or a co-working space. You would have your commute as time to transition into that professional mindset. Now there is no separation between that. And for many people, you have kids at home, so your home is also school. There's just, there's no external boundaries as much anymore, so it's a huge challenge now. But especially for sensitive drivers,

the misunderstanding about boundaries is that they make you mean you're having to be harsh and it goes against that identity that we have as being helpful to people and wanting to please people for example. But in the book, I really go into the fact that boundaries are meant to be helpful to both you and other people. So they serve other people as well because clear as kind. And people need to know where you stand and how to get the best out of you and boundaries are what help us with that.

Yeah, it's, I've got Carl Newport coming on late this weekend. New books are world without email. And so I'm going to go really deep on this. But yeah, it's weird because if you're fortunate enough to do something that you love, you can almost let it kill you. You know, if you do end up blending the passion with the boundary-lessness of life, it can become a very dangerous combination. And that's before you say,

oh, well, what if I'm not actually that enamored with my job or what if my boss is a bit of a dick? That makes it even worse. So we talked a lot about self-confidence and stuff today, but you have an entire chapter which is dedicated to strategies for it. What is some of your favorite strategies for achieving self-confidence or improving it?

Yeah, well, you know, for boundaries in particular, I think this is important one, and I wanna stay there because this is actually an area where you can use your emotions to your advantage. And setting boundaries improves your confidence because you're actually regarding yourself, your time, as important, as worthy of something. When you don't have any boundaries, you're basically sending that signal to your subconscious that you're not important.

You don't matter. Everybody else matters a lot more than you. So with boundaries, I always tell clients to start with using the data found in your emotions. In the book, I go into a more comprehensive assessment, but I would be urging listeners to look for the emotion of resentment. So bitterness or indignation towards a person or a situation, you know,

let's say you are feeling resentful that you said you would help out a colleague with something and now it's been six months and you know, there's no sign of that changing. They said it would be temporary and you're feeling resentful. That's a sign that a boundary needs to be set. So that motion can be very instructive and it can really improve your confidence to start setting those boundaries because you have to be more assertive. You have to speak up about your needs and your wants. And like I said, you start to prove to yourself that you're valuable, but more importantly, your confidence increases with the number of promises you keep to yourself.

So if you are someone that always says, well, I'm going to make time to work out tonight. And then, well, you know what, I said I had to get this thing back to my boss. Let me just do that. Instead, I can work out over the weekend. And you keep pushing it. Every time you do that, you lose a little bit of credibility with yourself. You are teaching yourself, you can't trust yourself. So setting, making, and keeping those small commitments is huge to improving your confidence. By and far. That is the number one thing that I work on with clients, building that momentum, building that chain of small wins,

helps you internalize that you can trust yourself, but then also reflecting on those wins. So I always advocate that my clients have a brag file, which is a place where you can record your accomplishments, and accomplishments can be defined as things went great and knocked it out of the park, but also moments of strength where it overcame resistance or had to make a tough decision.

Those are all brags, for sure. And the process of pausing to note those down, again, sends the signal to your mind that this is important, that this is not just, okay, yeah, today was fine. Move on to the next thing. Or the negativity bias taking over of all these great things happen, but I got one piece of negative feedback and an email from a reader, and that totally decimates my day. It helps balance out that negativity bias. The we're totally aligned on that with regards to confidence.

I think people mistakenly believe that confidence is something that's bestowed on you and it's not something that's given, it's earned. Do you have the right to be confident? It's the same as it kind of let's back to the imposter syndrome thing. If you are performing or the expectation of you is miles outside of anything you've ever achieved before, then you might actually have the right to be unconfident that you're going to be able to do it. But you can still approach that with the level of adventure

and vigor and energy and think, well, if I, if even I don't believe I can do this, then what have I got to lose? That's another way to reframe it, right? There's two quotes that I absolutely adore from things that I've read recently. One is Navale Ravakantini says, Self-esteem is the reputation you have with yourself. You'll always know. And that very much kind of relates to what you said there. It's the friend that you invite out for dinner. If they kept on not turning up to dinner, you wouldn't invite them anymore. That is very much the way that you and your internal monologue have a relationship.

Now, I had Stephen Kotler, the founder of the Flo research project on the show a little while ago, and he said that he actually bifurcates the planning self and the executing self into two different people to improve his confidence and his accountability. And he had this friend that he learned it from and he asked his friend about his level of discipline and about how he did the things that he needed to do when it came to doing them. And he said, I don't know what you're talking about, man, I just work for the boss. And he referred to himself as his own boss. And I was like, that is so cool to have that separation of the system one and the system two of the planning and of the executing.

And I'm just working for the boss. I thought that was so sick. I read a cool way to use it. Yeah. And you know, that gets to this idea of, I'm sure many of your past guests have talked about this, the idea of decision fatigue, which is that we only have a certain amount of energy to go around every day. And if you're wasting your energy on inconsequential choices

or thoughts, well, then you don't have that for the most important ones. And so really being mindful about how you're spending, your energy, and I even have my clients do energy tracking where for, you know, a week or two, they'll track the activities in their day and how much they give or take away energy. And that's that's very telling to see where you can earn back time, what is what is sucking your time and where you should lean in more. I imagine that it's challenging for sensitive strivers to stand up for themselves without feeling like they're being too pushy.

What's the strategy that people can use to deliver feedback, like, forcibly but with tact? Yes. So, because we are people who think before we speak, we're actually very well suited to give harsh, not harsh feedback, but hard feedback. And in the book, I talk about a three step or a three part model for thinking about how to be more assertive. And I call it the communication trifecta.

One is what you do. So those are the actions you take. Being proactive, taking initiative to address problems before they become a problem and offering solutions, making explicit requests. So I see this all the time with sensitive strivers that they will dance around what they want, but they won't say it because they're afraid of being that forward. So they will not clearly state what they want or ask for what they need. They sort of expect other people to read between the lines because they do because we are good at reading between ones exactly, But the other 80% doesn't. So that you have what you do, then you have what you say, which is the actual content of your message, using your thoughtfulness to your advantage here, planning, planning what you want to say, not extensively. I have clients who will write the whole script of exactly what they want

to say. And then they get in the conversation, and it goes a little sideways, and they are totally panicked because oh my gosh, I didn't plan for this. This wasn't in my script. So really just having planning in terms of having high level structure of where you want to go and the points you want to hit. So even if the conversation gets off the rails, you can always come back to those main points as your anchors. Dropping prefaces and qualifiers, because we tend to be a little afraid of delivering

a direct message, we often soften it by saying, you know, I know this may sound silly, or I may be wrong. I hope you won't be upset or mad at me. We throw in all those qualifiers which just undermines the strength of what we're saying. So much better to say instead, I hope you won't be mad at me, but to say, I have some important feedback I want to share with you today.

Just cut it out. So what you do, what you say, and then how you say it, which is your delivery and how you show up. And luckily, again, this is where we can channel our traits to our advantage. Sensitive strivers tend to naturally be very warm people, right? We easily connect with and build rapport with people. So use that. But specifically, you know, keep a calm level tone to your voice, your body language is important. I once had a client who was going into a very important

meeting, actually was a legal dispute that he was going into. And as we were prepping for this in a coaching session, he was in his chair going like this, and I'm fidgeting all over, and he was kind of rubbing his head. And I could, his nerves were just leaking out through his body. So you have to remember that your body tells a story. And if you need a way to process your energy, have something in your hand, channel it that way, or a quick grounding exercise is to really ball your hands up in a fist and then let it

go. And imagine that you're letting go of the energy as you do that. And then last I would say in the how you say it is making choices around context. And again, this is where our nuanced thinking comes in in that you will know. Other people are not as tactful. They may deliver some hard feedback over Slack. For example, where all nuance is lost and something doesn't land well, whereas you may know that, you know, this is something I have to have as a face-to-face or a video conversation with someone. So just making wise choices about the medium,

the timing, is this something you wanna tell someone at the beginning of the morning, or do you wanna make sure you don't have a meeting planned right after that, so you have to rush the conversation. So just being thoughtful around that as well. It's so interesting about how the unique advantages that have bestowed on someone that's empathetic but driven is where you need to kind of utilize that exactly what all of these

insights are growing out of. Right? Okay, so use that. Use the perception. Right. How are you going to speak to the person? What is it that you're going to say? What's the delivery going to be like? Is it going to be done in the morning? What's that going to make the rest of their day?

Look, if you tell them on an evening, are they going to go home and immediately stew with their family? Like, you know, is it best to do it just after lunch when everybody's energized or is it best to do it in the morning when they've just got it? Yeah, I think I think that's really good. What about setbacks? I imagine that they must be the sort of thing that can sometimes hurt. Yeah, because sensitive strivers tend to personalize them. We tend to, rather than seeing setbacks as a very natural part of the journey. And Seth Godin talks about the dip, which in management and business,

in economic theory, it's called the change curve, which means that whenever you're on pursuing any sort of change or advancing yourself, there comes a natural point where you hit a down cycle where you may feel a little bit hopeless or disappointed or dismayed. So rather than realizing that's something that's very predictable, and normative, sensitive shrivers tend to personalize setbacks, and let it steal all of our motivation because we make it mean something about us. And that's my golden coaching question that I ask clients whenever they feel stuck in something is,

what are you making this mean about you? And how true is that? Or also how helpful is that story? So yes, that is why setbacks are so hard for sensitive shrivers, but this is where also so much of what we've talked about so far comes back into play to help you get out of that setback. So in the book, I talk about a process of resting, reflecting, and recalibrating. So resting is pretty much taking some time away from the problem, really addressing your own

physiological reaction to it, because you may go into panic, you may feel hurt, and you don't want to force yourself to find the silver lining in a situation. Because most of the time, again, I think we try to bypass that pain rather than addressing it. And if we don't address those emotions, they're going to come out in some other way. So resting is really about addressing the internal reaction of your thoughts and your emotions to the setback. Then we have reflect and reflect is reflecting on your successes, reflecting on what you have,

the hard things you have overcome in the past, consulting your intuition and what it's telling you, going back to your core values and what's most important to you and how does that factor into how you want to make a decision here. And then recalibrating is about choosing a path forward. So maybe you need to recommit to or reset your goals. Maybe your goals were to sky high or you need to eliminate some and give up some goals like we talked about earlier. Maybe you need to build new boundaries

because the situation has changed, or you've found the step back was a result of not having proper boundaries in the first place. And maybe you need to find a different situation for yourself. We didn't talk too much about this, but sensitive shrivers are highly affected by their environment. Again, because we're picking up on everything around us, the environment is more important.

So the research does show that sensitive people who are in supportive, positive environments tend to have higher performance than the average person, but one we're in negative, unsupportive environments tend to have worse performance than the average person. So choosing and constructing your environment to work for you is hugely important to making sure you can lift yourself out of that setback and stay out of it. And it's those mirror neurons again as well, right? Yes, that's right. It seems like a common arc between all of the things

we're talking about here is just giving the sensitive strivers that the people that are taking in more information and feeling things a bit more deeply, just giving them that room between all of the thoughts that are going on and kind of trying to let that go. It really just seemed like that's probably one of the core tenants that's coming through. It's making your inner world a friendlier place.

I love it. Melody Wilding, ladies and gentlemen, trust yourself, stop overthinking and channel your emotions for success at work. We'll be linked in the show notes below. Where else should people go if they want to check out your stuff? You can head to MelodyWilding.com. You can find out more from me there. I have hundreds of articles, a free community you can join and would love to see you. Awesome, thank you for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh Thank you.