835: How to Thrive amid Stress and Irritation with Dr. Sharon Melnick

Pete Mockaitis
Sharon, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Sharon Melnick
Delighted to be here, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love it if you could kick us off by sharing the story of the time you said, “No, thanks,” when the White House asked you to come on over and present your research.

Sharon Melnick
What a claim to fame. Well, it was early on in my career, and there was one of those multi-artists rock concerts, and I went down to Washington, DC where it was being held. And as I entered the stadium, there was a cluster of people over to my left, I looked, and there was one person who I recognized. It was Tipper Gore, she was the wife of the then Vice President Al Gore, and she was a champion for women’s empowerment and families.

Without overthinking it, I went right over, I shook her hand, “Hi, I’m Dr. Sharon Melnick. I do research at Harvard Medical School. I help people from difficult childhoods be confident and resilient and kind of have the adult contribution that they want to.” She’s intrigued, we start to talk, we’re having a little bit of an estrogen fest going on together.

At a certain point, she turns to her chief of staff, and she says, “Melissa, would you get Dr. Melnick’s contact information? We want to bring her down to the White House, share the policy implications of her research.” So, I go home, I write up a little something, I send it off. Several weeks later, I’m lacing up my sneakers to go for a run, the phone rings. It’s Melissa.

And she starts telling me about all the initiatives that Tipper is doing around the country, helping millions of families, and she pops the question, she says, “Will you come down to the White House to share the policy implications of your research?” So, Pete, I picture myself around that table at the White House, and then I respond, and I say, “No.”

Well, I don’t exactly say no, like, I said, “Well, you know, I’m still trying to figure out what the research says,” but, essentially, I declined an invite to the White House. Now, why? Why would I do that? Because, like I said, when I was picturing myself around that table at the White House, I was thinking, “Those people are going to judge me for not knowing enough.” I thought that they would think that I wasn’t smart enough, so I wasn’t going to give them the opportunity to do that.

What I did was I prioritized my own evaluation of myself over the contribution that I could’ve made for millions of people. In other words, I gave away my power.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, that’s powerful. And it’s interesting because I think I’ve totally done that on different stages, different scales, daily, weekly, or monthly, in terms of, “Ooh, this is a cooler opportunity.” It’s like, “Oh, but…” Or, maybe I have an idea, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t know if it’s ready yet, if I’m worthy.” Or, even if I get a cool email.

I remember I think I was in high school, and there was a girl I met at Journalism Camp, I thought she was really cute and cool. And she sent me an email, it’s like, “Oh, okay, okay,” and then I wanted to really make sure to send her a very witty and clever and flirtatious and perfect email back, but then I didn’t have any good ideas. And so then, I just sort of let it slide, and then it would get weird, like, “Hey, thanks for your email a month ago.”

Sharon Melnick
We’ve all been there.

Pete Mockaitis
She called me, actually, it’s like, “Well, if you wanted to ‘stay in touch’ as you said in the card, then…” dah, dah, dah. So, yeah, that notion of you want to look good, to be awesome, be perceived well, gets in the way of doing some real good for folks.

Sharon Melnick
Well, what’s a real takeaway from your story, and I think mine, is that other people might really want to hear from us and really want to kind of get the best that we have to offer but what we are doing is that we are kind of being subjective, not objective. It’s all going through the filters of how we evaluate ourselves.

And another thing, I think, I hear in your story is all the angst that went into writing that email. We’ve all been there, right? And it’s so relevant, actually, because when we’re in situations that are stressful and, especially, situations where it feels like the other person is the one who can determine kind of our worth, you know what I mean, or how we should feel about ourselves, and however they respond to us is kind of like a referendum on our worth.

And it puts us into a mental swirl, and it has us kind of go over things, and over things, and then maybe even be paralyzed and not take action. And that’s a really good kind of example of what it’s like when we’re out of our power.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, thank you, so that ties together. I like your story a lot better than mine for its illustrative power and relatability. But, maybe, could you kick us off by sharing, you’ve done so much research here, is there a particularly surprising, fascinating, jaw-dropping discovery or insight you’ve made over the years about what it takes to be in your power?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah. So, I’m going to share two with you. The first is not my research, actually, but it’s a colleague of mine in the Marshall Goldsmith Top 100 Coaches, Ron Carucci. And he studied executives who rise into power for 15 years. And so, he studied power and how you use it and what it looks like. And his finding was that the biggest abuse of power is not using it.

And I say this, actually, because I think that we think of this idea of power as being kind of a negative, or selfish, or force other people, and manipulative, and all of that. And that’s really only the case when someone is in power, in a position of power but not in their power. So, then they might act toward other people in a way that tries to get that feel good or feel one up within their selves.

So, the theme of kind of what your story and my story, and what we’re talking about here, is the opportunity is, when you’re in your power, is to be able to be good in you, to have a sense of sovereignty, like you decide who you are, you have ways of kind of filling yourself up, or feeling confident and secure and valuable and worthy within your own self, and you don’t have to look to people, or get permission, or hope, or control them, or any of the things, you know what I mean, that we try to do in order to get them to act towards us so that we can feel that within ourselves.

And that’s really the essence of kind of being in your power, because when you know how to kind of get back to good in your or stay good in you and not react in a situation, then the way that you act can actually make the situation better, it can get you the outcome that you want. And not only make it better for you but for everyone involved, for all the families that I could’ve touched with my research, for the romance you could’ve sparked if you had reached out.

And I think that that’s what most of us want these days. It’s like we want to use our emotional energy toward making a difference, not spinning, wondering what other people are going to think about us, and trying to get them to think a certain way.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. So, given all that, how would you summarize the big idea or core thesis of your book In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others?

Sharon Melnick
Yes. So, when you’re not in your power, and let me just give a little context here because any of us can get kicked out of our power kind of at any moment. It has nothing to do with kind of your level of accomplishment or anything like that. You could be a talented woman who feels overlooked or under-recognized in the workplace. You could be a leader of a team and you just can’t kind of get your people to live up to expectations. Maybe it’s in your personal life where you have someone who is really kind of selfish and kind of difficult to deal with.

And what happens in these situations is that you can get emotionally hijacked, you can get into that mental swirl, and the problem is that the way that you try to make the situation better often makes it worse and it kind of perpetuates the situation. So, that’s why it’s really important for each of us to have the skills to stay in our power because when you do that, then when you act, you can actually get unstuck, you can get the outcomes that you want, and you can make it better for everyone around you.

So, in my book In Your Power, I try to really break it down for people, “What are the things that you…what does it really look like?” It looks like a sense of agency, like you feel like you have control. It looks like a sense of sovereignty, like you decide who you are. And it looks like a sense of efficacy, so that when you act, when you say things, it lands, you move people, you make it better, and then you just kind of create a virtuous, a positive spiral from there.

Pete Mockaitis
And I was intrigued when you said that sometimes the way we try to make things better makes things worse. Could you give us an example or two of some common ways that materializes?

Sharon Melnick
Oh, so many of these. So, for example, I had a woman start coaching with me, and from the very first moment, she starts off by saying, “I can’t take it anymore.” So, she’s a very capable, competent person in her organization, and some of her peers are kind of not doing all they need to be, and everything is kind of rolling downhill onto her plate.

Her manager is reaching out and interrupting her from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and she’s responsible for making sure that people around the world are getting paid, so she’s in a very important position. So, she, prior to us kind of helping her to get back in her power, she was going to her boss, saying, like, “Okay, fine. All hours of the night, just come to me and I’ll kind of fix it.”

She felt like she had to prove herself 24 hours a day in order for her to be appreciated. She was kind of blaming her peers in her head and telling them they needed to do it differently, and nothing was changing. In fact, it just kept spiraling into more and more hours. She hadn’t had dinner with her husband in a year. So, this is an example of she wasn’t really kind of understanding what was the underlying problem in this situation.

So, just as an example, how she approached the situation is she brought all the people together who were involved, and she really helped them to understand what the underlying issue is, kind of the anatomy of the problem, so to speak. And, of course, when she had tried to get them to put things back on their plate, they don’t have a lot incentive to do that, so she just would be resentful and angry at them that they weren’t voluntarily kind of taking things back from her plate, but she didn’t kind of really understand how to influence them effectively, how to really put things in terms of what’s in it for them so that they would be motivated to kind of do these things.

But when she did actually bring everyone along, she created the solution. She suggested a reorganization. And, actually, they all went along with it. She was offered a $75,000 retention bonus, and the CEO of the company called her in a meeting, and said, “We’re putting you on the fast track for chief technology officer, so you got to get busy grooming yourself.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful.

Sharon Melnick
And she was ready to leave, though, because she didn’t feel like she had any power in the situation but she had so much power to look beyond the finite problem, and to look more toward infinite solutions that were available if she could just see them.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, in terms of how we get there, you’ve got 12 power portals: precision, perspective, physiology, purpose, psyche, proficiency/persuasion, partnership, protection, powerful truth, people, and position. You may have noticed, listeners, these all start with the letter P. I would love to get your take on a couple of these portals that is just the most leveraged or effective in terms of just a little bit of effort gets you a whole lot of results.

And for the results, I’m particularly interested in is reacting less, because sometimes it feels, I think that’s, in my experience, it really does feel like it’s outside my power, like I’m in less control of myself, not that I’m just screaming at people or flying off the handle, but it’s really interesting how, like, the body, just biochemically, naturally, you’ve got a stressor and then you’re different afterwards in terms of how you’re operating, some of that narrowing, or the fight-flight-freeze business.

And I recently had an insight, I banged my head on a light fixture that was hanging low because it was over a dining room table, and I was cleaning up. Anyway, I banged my head, and I noticed that even though I understood how that happened and it didn’t hurt a ton, my body was filled with all the stress stuff, and I was just mad at all kinds of things for the next 20 minutes.

And it’s, like, even though there was not an issue that I had to deal with or sort through, it was a very primal thing – head hurts, feel stressed, now irritable for the next 20 minutes. And I thought, “Geez, I’d love it if I could just take the shortcut and flip the off switch on this real quick.”

Sharon Melnick
Okay. So, let’s flip the off switch and then we’ll come back to kind of things that you can do maybe to prevent a reaction, but let’s take you in the moment where it’s too late, you’re already there.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, whether you banged your head or someone sends you an email that you find offensive.

Sharon Melnick
Totally.           So, if you’re already kind of having a reaction, what’s really important is that that reaction is going to stay kind of swirling around you, like you experienced. You have to actively do something to move it through your system. You have to kind of complete the stress cycle, because what’s happened there is that the stress reaction has been activated, and then it’s doing its job to kind of swirl around in your body, and you have to move it through until its completion, and then you can get back to a state of calm.

So, there’s a few different ways that you can do this, especially if you’re really in kind of intensely emotional state, like you might’ve been, or if you’re offended by an email. Really, one of the best things that you could do is whatever it looks like for you to move it through your system, and I mean, like, you got to get it out.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you say it, are you thinking, is there like a biochemical basis we’re talking about here, like cortisol? Or, what do you mean by it?

Sharon Melnick
Yes, that’s exactly right. So, there are stress hormones that have been activated because there’s something that was out of your control, or violates your values, or literally is a pain response. And so, it feels like we’re taken over, it feels like we can’t control, but actually there’s many things that you can do.

So, for example, each person listening needs to develop their own personal repertoire of things that you can do to move it through your system. So, one thing that’s really great, like if you’re working from home, is if in between Zoom calls, let’s say, is if you can do like a dance break and put on a rave song, and literally just get it out for two minutes.

And I have for listeners, if you go to InYourPowerBook.com, I actually maintain Spotify playlists for different emotional states, and you just pop in the song and it immediately puts you kind of in the state to dance it out, or whatever it looks like for you. Like, earlier today, there was a boxing gym, boxing bag in my gym, and I went down there and kind of just bruised that bag for just five minutes. Also, at InYourPowerBook.com, there’s videos there of where I have these energy techniques where you literally can kind of like push it through.

But whatever it is for you, go smack some golf balls, smash pillows, whatever is right. I had a client who had a really, really narcissistic boss, and just was having really needed to not have her boss’ insecurities kind of be moving through her, like taking place in her system. So, she went into her car and rolled up the windows, and like let it rip with a scream, and she goes like, “Oh, I feel way better after this.”

Like, literally, whatever it takes for you, especially if you’re angry. But you might be in a more kind of hurt or sad or grieving kind of place, that’s why you want a playlist that’s kind of right for the moment. But that’s really, really important because it brings you back to a sense of mental clarity. And, especially, when you get back in your body, that’s when you remember who you are, because when you’re having that reaction, it’s really going to skew and kind of see the situation through an emotional filter.

Another thing is kind of you want to have all of these feathers in your quiver, is to really allow that emotion to move through you in a way, like taking the analogy of a wave, and kind of surf the wave. And we know that the intensity of an emotion only lasts 90 seconds. So, if you can kind of allow it to move through you and not act on it or just know that it’s going to kind of dissipate over that 90 seconds even though it may take a few 90-second waves.

But to take yourself out of that moment, and to put yourself in the future of 90 seconds from now or in a few minutes from now when it will have passed, and do that and to do deep breathing, to reconnect to your emotional centers, which have taken you over, back with your thinking centers. That’s when you can have mental clarity.

And we can go to kind of our next topic of discussion, which is, “How do you not see that situation in a way where you take it personally and react?” So, very, very important to move it through your system until you have a sense of completion. Crying is a great example of this, and this can be fraught, especially for women. But actually, most women cry when they’re frustrated not when they’re weak. But after you have a good cry, you have that sense of, “Oh, I feel different, like I feel better. I feel in a different place.” That’s that sense of completion.

And always, always, after you’ve moved through kind of a negative emotion, you’ll always want to fill it back up with something that’s fun, pleasant, kind of gives you that sense of like you’re lit up in your body. And that’s why on the Spotify playlists, we also have songs that will do that for you within a minute after you’ve moved it through your system. So, these are really good ways, moving it through your system, filling it back up with good, and then deep breathing or anything that’s calm, that reconnects you with your thinking centers.

Pete Mockaitis
And this 90-second wave is the idea that there will be multiple waves that follow a 90-second arch of peaking and troughing?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah, sometimes it just moves through you in one 90 seconds. If it’s really an intense emotion or if you think of the situation again and rehashing it in your mind, you might get another wave that gets re-triggered. And then there’s also a whole suite of techniques, mind-body “techniques” that have been developed that really help.

Ones that I’ve used and recommended are, like, tapping, like emotional freedom techniques, or havening, or even for people who have particularly intense trauma-related emotions like EMDR, so there are things. It’s the state of your nervous system that really determines kind of whether you’re back in your power or not. And so, I think this is something that we’ve all learned in these times, is to really prioritize taking care of our nervous system.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love it, so I know a little bit about tapping and EMDR. I do not know it all what havening means. And I think with your strong credentials, I would love to get your hot take on, well, one, what are these things? Two, is the research base pretty good behind them, or is it sort of way out there and, like, question mark, we don’t know yet, but some people love it, and maybe it’s placebo, maybe it’s not? Like, what are these things? And what is the state of research on their efficacy?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah, I think it’s pretty good. I think these are all techniques that have been shown to help people who are in, especially, intense states of emotion because something has become activated in you. We call it triggered. And these are all techniques, and there’s others, that kind of work at a kind of physiological level to help you reconnect with a sense of calm, and to reconnect your emotional centers with your thinking centers so you can have more perspective and mental clarity.

And it kind of de-intensifies the emotion and helps you sooth yourself and come back to a place of safety in your own body, which we don’t always feel when we’re…especially if you’re facing overwhelming kind of stress. It can feel very activating of behavioral patterns or emotions that’s maybe longstanding that you felt before.

A definition of a trigger really is a situation that you, in which you feel out of control, that you’ve been in, let’s say, too many times before in your life, and it kind of reactivates that sense of feeling out of control, which can make people feel unsafe. I think, also, finding someone who is safe for you, who you feel comforted by, who can hold your emotion with you and not dismiss you or make you feel bad or less than for being who you are, or having the experience as you are. That person can kind of lend you a little bit of the calm that they have in their nervous system and can help to calm you down. That’s why we call the parasympathetic nervous system kind of the safe and social part of our nervous system.

So, these are all things. And I think the takeaway that I think you all want to have is that, in those moments when you feel full of pain or just emotion, it can feel hard to think beyond that moment, it can feel hard to remember that you will feel good in you again, or that you can have things that you want, or opportunities that you want, or success or abundance in your life again, it can feel hard to feel understood, or that you can connect with people and feel loved again.

So, these are all techniques that take you out of the crunch of that emotional reaction, and remind you who you are, and enable you to connect so that you can then experience that sense of abundance and infinity, not only just the crunch of the moment.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us the step one, two, three if I want to do some tapping or some havening or, say, EMDR? How do I go about doing that?

Sharon Melnick
Yes. So, those are all really different kinds of techniques, and they’re all really specific. And you could Google any one of them. They usually all start with kind of being in a specific experience that you’re having and feeling emotional about it, and then takes you through a process of kind of dipping your toe in, or feeling the feeling that you’re feeling, and then through a process of kind of shifting that emotion to one where you can think about it in a way that has more perspective, and then starts to calm down your system.

So, tapping, taps on kind of meridian points. EMDR tries to integrate across your thinking and your feeling, to put those together. And havening is more just a directly kind of a calming, a self-calming experience where you immediately can just soothe yourself. So, they’re all kind of different modalities but all have a similar intent.

Pete Mockaitis
I remember I met, at Podcast Movement, Gene Monterastelli who hosts the TappingQandA podcast, and he’s a great dude. And so, do I need to be working with a professional to do these kinds of things or can I just Google it and take a crack at it?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah, I think it’s both, actually. I think it depends on kind of how much you’re really affected by the stress that you’re experiencing, how much it’s bringing up kind of old emotions and patterns. There’s lots of solutions that you could use. For example, there’s a free app called The Tapping Solution. So, this is something, like if you’re having a little bit more of a mild experience and you want to kind of check it out for yourself. Maybe you’re feeling a little anxious in a situation, you can definitely take yourself through. They have many different emotions.

But I would say, if something is getting re-triggered in you that’s part of a longstanding adaptation or pattern, and it’s kind of interfering in your life, you’re not able to have the happiness and relationships or the success in your work, then I would definitely seek out a professional who can help you, shepherd you through this process, create a sense of safety and continuity in your narrative, and work it out, really, at its foundational level.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so anyway, those are responses to acute stuff, but you said that a big part of the mastery here is having a perspective or frame or context upfront so that we don’t get hijacked in the first place. How do we build this?

Sharon Melnick
So, there are many ways that you can kind of stay good in you and not react, not take something personally in a situation. I’m going to go through a few but I’m going to start with my go-to question. This is a write-it down. Definitely, get your pen or your computer ready.

So, when you’re in a situation where it just feels like things are not going your way, and you’re just, “Why is this happening to me?” the very first question that you want to ask yourself is, “Why might this be happening for me, not to me?” And that is an immediate gamechanger, it puts you in control of the situation, and points your attention toward, “What is the learning? What is the opportunity? What can I get out of this or kind of make out of this situation?”

So, just as an example, I had a woman in my group, a next-level leader coaching program, and she just got out of a conversation with her manager, and she had been passed over for promotion already, and then heard from her manager that her manager was promoting someone else who came in after her and isn’t half as skilled and hasn’t even gotten kudos from the CHRO, the chief human resources person, on all the good, like my client had.

And so, she was really upset, taking it personally, “Why is this happening to me?” in a funk. And when we asked the question, “How might this be happening for you, not to you?” she said it just immediately shifted her perspective, and she said she went from kind of victim in the situation to victor in the situation because she really then thought, “You know something, like this promotion that this other person was just put into, it’s kind of like a half-step up from a director to a senior director.”

But, Nikki, my client, well, she was really doing work that was like already at a VP level or even above. Like I said, she was presenting to the chief human resources officer and across the board to leadership. And that’s what she really wanted and was ready for, and so she came to see it as like, “Actually, we are not on the same timeline, me and my manager, or this company. And this is really showing me that it’s not even what I like. It’s like a promotion I didn’t get but that I didn’t even want.”

And she started to put herself on a track for even more elevated positions, which she got within several weeks from then. So, it’s just an example of she would’ve just really stayed, like feeling done to, resentful, blaming, feeling overlooked in that situation. But as soon as she asked that question, it was like it opened up a whole field of opportunities where she had control and she could do something about it. So, that’s definitely, “How might have this have happened for you, not to you?”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s great. And then as I’m thinking about, generally speaking, so-called “negative emotions” or I might call them unpleasant emotions, what are your thoughts with regard to, we talked about waves and letting them go through us? Different folks have different points of view in terms of, “Oh, you should just think of something positive and change the channel asap,” or, “No, no, these are important messages that you’re receiving from your ‘negative’ or unpleasant emotions. Don’t suppress them. What you resist, persists.” How do you think about this dance and game?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah. So, I would definitely recommend, number one, move it through, and just move it through and then you can get back to clarity. And once you get into clarity, then you can start asking yourself the constructive question. You can kind of appreciate that what was causing, usually what causes like a pretty intense emotional response like this is the story that you’re telling about the situation.

Every kind of negative emotion that you’re having, you can always trace back to the story that you’re telling about the facts in the situation. So, that’s immediately an opportunity that you have then to start thinking about the situation in a way that is objective and not subjective. Because, usually, if you have some sort of a doubt about yourself, then you’re going to be looking to people and situations and events that happen in order to kind of decide or get information about how you’re feeling about yourself.

And so, it’s going to predispose you to look towards other people and to kind of make up narratives about what it means about you. And that totally keeps you out of your power because you’re at the mercy of other people and what they do and how they act. So, just as an example in this situation with Nikki, the story that she was initially telling is her manager doesn’t respect her. And then she just was rehashing it in her mind and kind of getting retriggered over and over again.

But when we had a chance to really think it through, I required her to tell three alternative stories about the situation, and that’s when she realized that, actually, her manager wasn’t aware of some of the work that she was doing, or maybe her manager was threatened by all the good work and visibility that she was doing. And then to tell the story of, actually, her boss was promoting these other colleagues but it was into a position that she didn’t even want.

So, you could see that once she was able to get out of that kind of taking it personally, then she was able to be more objective, and she was like, “Yeah, actually, I don’t think this even is about me. Or, if it is, then I have different options in this situation.” And so, one thing that you want to appreciate is that each of us as human beings is that, from our experiences, we may have been telling these stories along the way, and Nikki was, and she had a belief about herself that she wasn’t worthy or that she wasn’t good enough.

And so, in this situation, it’s like she had this kindling, and then the boss’ behavior was like a match, you know what I mean, that alighted her kindling, and there she was not feeling respected, not feeling worthy. But when she was able to look at it more objectively, it was like, “You know, I don’t think really that that was going on,” and that enabled her to be intentional and to create a new path for herself going forward.

And every person who’s having a negative emotion can trace that negative emotion to a story that they’re telling about a situation, and it is within your power to create the narrative, and to tell the story that’s going to enable you to show up as who you want to be and make the contribution that you’re here to make.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. All right. Well, tell me, Sharon, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Sharon Melnick
Well, another thing that I think is very helpful for people is a lot of times I’m hearing people are getting kind of a no or a non-response, and it’s very irritating. It makes us very resentful and it just makes us feel out of our power and done to. And so, before anyone kind of stays in blame and feels like, “It’s not going to work, and I just need to leave the workplace,” or the relation, or whatever it is, I would really encourage you to consider that it may be something about your approach as much as it is about the other person being defiant or not listening.

And I’ve found my clients had just turned around situations when they’ve been getting a no, when they were able to put things in terms of what’s in it for the other person. Like, just as an example, I coached a woman who came to me, she was in a sales role, and she said, “For six years, I’ve been asking my boss for these resources, and he always give the plum assignments to the younger men, and you know what I mean, and I’m not doing well in my sales, and this is concerning. And I’m starting to feel almost like a negative victim mentality when it comes to him.”

And I said, “All good. I’ll help you find another role but let’s give it one more shot in terms of influencing him.” And she said, “He’s all about him. He manages up. He doesn’t care about me.” I said, “Look, wherever someone has a motivation, you can leverage it.” So, we just took those same requests and we phrased it in terms of what was in it for him and what he wanted, and I got an email from her, like, the very next day, tap, tap, “I got every single thing I asked for and more because it was in terms of what was in it for him.”

So, before you feel kind of out of your power, and there’s no options, and you’re just all in a swirl, and thinking you have to leave, just do a double check and make sure that you’ve been impeccable for your 50% and you’ve really thought through how to phrase it in terms of what’s in it for them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Thank you. Now, could you share with us a favorite quote?

Sharon Melnick
Well, this is a lead into one of the early portals in the book, but I think, “It’s never too late to be who you might’ve been.” And that’s, yeah, by George Sanchez, a pen name, actually, for an early English author, woman author.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah. Well, there was a study that was conducted at Harvard. I’m sure that you’ve seen this, but they took a videotape of two teams who were playing basketball. One team was wearing white shirts, another team was wearing black shirts, and they had them passing the ball amongst one another, and intermingling.

Some of you might’ve seen this because they’ve done this with hundreds of thousands of people. And during this interaction, there was someone who was dressed up in a big kind of hairy gorilla suit who walked right into the middle of this interaction, and this was all filmed. And then they had people watch this videotape and they asked them, “Did you see the gorilla?”

And fully 50% of the people was like, “There was no gorilla. No, there was no gorilla. Like, stop.” You know what I mean? Like, “Stop joshing me. No, I’m telling you, I was watching. There was no gorilla in that.” And they were like, “No, really, there was.” And I’m telling you, literally, they’ve shown this to, I think, over a half million people.

And so, the point is, and they had the people, when they were watching the video, they were supposed to count the number of passes between the people with the white shirts, so they were calling their attention to something. And the takeaway here, and they wrote a book about this, is that when you’re putting your attention on something, you are blinding yourself, really, to the whole rest of the situation and what is available to you.

And I think that that really is relevant for this idea of being in your power. Because as long as we’re focused on, “That person isn’t treating me the way that I want,” or, “They’re overlooking me,” or, “They’re doing something that’s making me take it personally,” or, “I’m blaming them,” and all of that, we’re totally missing.

In any situation, you have all of these ways of thinking and feeling and solving the problem that if you would just kind of take your myopic focus, of the thing that you’re looking at, you would see that you have so much power in the situation. And this is important for each and every one of you, because when you’re in your power, you raise everyone around you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And could you share a favorite book?

Sharon Melnick
I think a great book that’s really affected me recently is Be Your Future Self Now by Benjamin Hardy. And he talks about how we’re really guided by…we make decisions in terms of wanting to be the future self that we want to be even more than being kind of drawing our past into our current state. And I think that that gives us so much hope and shows us how much power that we have to create the life that we want to live.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Sharon Melnick
Yeah. Well, I think go now to www.InYourPowerBook.com because that’s where you can download right away those playlists to help you if you are in an emotional state to immediately move that through and get into a place where you’re good in you. And you can also find there, kind of the assessment. It’s just eight questions that are just going to tell you right away how much you’re in your power and exactly what you have to do to get back in your power. And if there’s anyone who resonates and really would like to do coaching with me, or bring me in to speak, SharonMelnick.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sharon Melnick
Here’s the challenge that I want to leave you with. I want you to kind of reflect and think, as you go throughout your day, are you more like the thermometer or the thermostat? If you’re the thermometer, you’re someone who’s reacting to other people, and kind of going up and down all day long. You want to be the thermostat.

When you’re in your power, you’re the thermostat. You decide who you are. You control the situation. You bring others along in your vision. And that’s my challenge to you. Be the thermostat. Be in your power. You have more power than you think.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Sharon, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your power.

Sharon Melnick
Thank you.