Reflecting on the book Trust Yourself - Stop overthinking and channel your emotions for success at work by Melody Wilding
Wilding says in her preface that one of the reasons she wrote Trust Yourself on blending the drive to achieve in her career with her intuitive, sensitive emotional aspects of her self, is that she didn’t have someone to guide her early on. She published Trust Yourself in 2021, a book that accompanies people like us during tough times in our careers, to explain what she had learned along the way.
Trust Yourself came out as I was nearing the end of my career, and I certainly wish that she had written the book a decade earlier. At the most stressful time of my career in my mid-40s, this book would have explained so much! And as with all good friends who accompany us, it is an inspiring and welcome meeting regardless of the timing. Reading Wilding’s book in hindsight has helped heal several wounds and provides the missing pieces in the puzzle that nagged at me - what else could I have done, was it really me, maybe I wasn’t enough. I recommend Wilding’s work to other young careerists; this book is a must-read for all sensitive strivers.
Sensitive Strivers
Wilding defines a sensitive striver as someone who is driven to be a high achiever in their career, and who is attuned to their own emotions and the difficult behaviors of others in work situations. Over time and exploration, I have realized that not all people in the workplace are attuned to the difficult behaviours of others like I was. For sensitive careerists as they strive towards their peaks, it is important to realize, and this book sets that context, that some of us do really feel it more deeply when others behave badly in trying situations. It’s important to know yourself and Wilding sets out strategies that are worth the search for something different. Let me know in the comments if you have come across other similar resources.
some of us do really feel it more deeply when others behave badly in trying situations
The reason I come back to Trust Yourself repeatedly, even though I have now pivoted away from my thirty year career as a workplace adult educator, is that upon reading this book, I experienced my first feeling of being accepted as both analytical and intuitive at work. Wilding consistently includes both intuition and analysis in her Sensitive Striver explanations and examples. For most of my career, I kept the two aspects separate. Analytical for work as an educator and leader, intuitive for non-work creative writing and studies in meditation and yoga. I always knew my analytical skills and tools well. I had confidence in explaining my analytical decision-making process. In hindsight, I didn’t have a confident grasp on how to explain to myself, let alone to others, that my sensitivity and intuition where equally important factors in my decision-making process, and were providing me with answers to my career situations, that I could not interpret fully at the time.
Trust Your Gut
Wilding’s book remains in my mind one of the few that I have come across that specifically talks about listening to your gut - at work. For me, it holds the special place of being the first to explain, I have a strong ‘aha’ connection to her revelations. Finally I am heard and seen; Wilding has understood my experience and explained what was going on in my gut. Tuning into my gut feeling on major decisions, listening to the way my body and mind reveals my intuition, noting how flashes of insight and synchronicities occur for me and how accurate they are. This chapter holds up analytical business decision making with equal importance to the intuitive, sensitive insights that arise differently than the analysis process. Wilding weaves the stories of Sensitive Strivers who wanted to excel in their career paths, as specialists or as managers, and (again in hindsight for me) if I had been aware of this different approach, I wonder if I would have been able to address some of my career challenges in a more sensitive way.
What Wilding does differently, in Trust Yourself, is to put the sensitive aspect of ourselves on the same level as our analytical aspects at work.
The other chapters that were specifically helpful include topics on over-thinking and setting boundaries. There are other books that have been trusted resources on these topics, including Martha Beck’s The Way of Integrity. What Wilding does differently, in Trust Yourself, is to put the sensitive aspect of ourselves on the same level as our analytical aspects at work. She defines six aspects of being a sensitive striver with specific features and a self-check quiz - sensitivity, thoughtfulness, responsibility, inner drive, and vigilance and emotionality - with the fun acronym of STRIVE.
I wouldn’t have been so confused for so long
As I look back on my career, I see particular trends that repeated in different workplace situations - was it me not learning the lesson, or were those situations simply the usual circumstances of the career workplace, and I was over reacting by taking it personally. If I had known how to engage my intuitive perspective earlier, would I have tried other options for how I responded to situation with perhaps better outcomes. If nothing else, I wouldn’t have been so confused for so long. It is very comforting, even as I have left that career path, to have Wilding put the empathic aspects of my career self into words, to describe these aspects in detail, with a clear and supportive book that places the sensitive traits at the forefront.
Set and Uphold Boundaries
Say yes to tasks, situations and people that serve my needs. Play by my own rules. Know what working conditions work for me. Setting boundaries and strategies for upholding them makes a lot of sense, and I have found additional resources like Terri Cole’s Boundary Boss that explain strategies and tools, and it all sounds like good advice in theory. In practice, I am still learning what serves me, what my own rules are, how to uphold a boundary.
it all sounds like good advice in theory - in practice, I am still learning
The unlearning of what others have taught me, the incomplete conclusions drawn in the past, are heavily weighted on improving the analytical aspect of my striver self. When I needed it most, earlier in my career, there weren’t a lot of resources and guidance to also include, with equal attention to the intuitive, sensitive aspects that were in play. I knew about it from my yoga and meditation studies, but could not integrate easily into my workplace circumstances. So the intuition got ignored or overlooked for my career goals and decisions.
And when intuition gets ignored, my experience is that the body pays a price. Even today, I find these parameters are always evolving - just as soon as I think I have it figured out, something changes. I continue to find unconscious layers that go back to prioritizing analytical mind over intuitive body. It’s not a one-time self-help task to make a list and be done with learning about how this all works together. It’s a lifetime of self study work to go deeper into the inner knowing and to release what is not serving my needs.
Overthinking
Of the ten ways of overthinking that she lists, I see myself in all of them, and in particular I overgeneralize and have emotional reasoning. It’s a good reminder of my tendencies, which I have studied throughout all of my career both in theory and in practice. Overgeneralizing as Wilding defines it, takes one unfavorable incident and generalizes it into an ongoing unfavorable pattern, instead of letting the incident remain a one-time exception. Emotional reasoning is when I make having a difficult emotion into something bad about myself, instead of letting the emotional reaction stand on its own, and let the emotion pass without assigning new self-improvement tasks.
I have a lot of analysis paralysis. Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has also been helpful with my overthinking and overfeeling. Manson’s perspective is another of my go-to resources for trying to make sense of a crisis situation that was beyond my control. Over the years, I have realized that in my particular workplace circumstances, paired with my natural emotional reasoning tendencies, I was the type of person who overgeneralized unfavorable incidents and was heavily involved in solving others problems - and then took it all personally when it didn’t work out.
When other people (in their off-balanced way) put responsibility and blame on me, to off load additional problems, I would feel guilty for not being enough to resolve and succeed at the commitments I had taken on from them. The phrase I use to describe this pattern, is that “I stayed too long.” I wanted to follow through on my commitments, to achieve success at a high standard, and yet, the circumstances of how I analyzed, but poorly sensed, the situation did not setup for my ease and peace of mind.
I am philosophical about this continuing lifelong learning of my sensitive side. I certainly don’t feel the high stakes of the peak of my career that were prevalent fifteen years ago. Yet recently, I had a new level of awareness about my elevated levels of vigilance (the V in STRIVE). Vigilance was exaggerated during the pandemic for very explainable reasons- see Zebras post- and for me, it was difficult to bring back down to a normal state. Upon arriving to a yoga retreat where everyone had donned masks due to an outbreak, my subconscious vigilance began to search for dangers, changes and subtleties that would give clues to my safety in the unexpected circumstance. The contrast of what I knew to be a welcoming and calm yoga retreat, with the masks as a symbol of contamination and risk, resulted in a rise the body sensations of panic, and fearful thoughts that I was not immediately aware of.
I meditated on how I was successful in the past because my vigilance did serve me
I had the revelation nearing the end of my stay at the yoga retreat, and in following weeks, I meditated on how I was successful in the past because my vigilance did serve me; I had been highly attuned to the moods and needs of others in the workplace and in my personal life, and could adjust myself to attend to the needs and elevate their experiences. I had a natural skill but didn’t know how to direct it or protect and nurture it, and my unskillful over-vigilance came at a cost which ultimately led to burnout and staying too long in a toxic workplace.
For those who know intuitively that your sensitive side is an ally and that we need to harness it skillfully - pick up Melody Wilding’s Trust Yourself book. It is a game changer.
As we head into a time of strife, uncertainty, and the high likelihood that we will work with others who are not handling themselves well, it is important to figure out how we want to be, how we can help our self and others with both our analytical mind, and our sensitive feelings, as a whole and skilled person in our career situations.
Have you read other similar books?
Let me know in the comments.
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"Overgeneralizing as Wilding defines it, takes one unfavorable incident and generalizes it into an ongoing unfavorable pattern, instead of letting the incident remain a one-time exception. Emotional reasoning is when I make having a difficult emotion into something bad about myself, instead of letting the emotional reaction stand on its own, and let the emotion pass without assigning new self-improvement tasks. " This is very familiar, I do this with myself and with others and it is not helpful! Personally I think I do this as a form of prediction and protection; which I use to try to change my behavior to avoid conflict. We grow as we learn 💜 Thank you for sharing this - her book is certainly intriguing!
"Direct it, protect it and nurture it." Yes.