Trust Yourself

Trust Yourself offers career and wellbeing advice from a sensitive striver’s point of view, a introvert-leaning character type that comes with plenty of positive traits but is also prone to burnout, giving practical tips on breaking free from stress and perfectionism for a healthier, more balanced life.

Knowing where you stand in life is the first step towards a successful path. Many of us are sensitive strivers without even realizing it. If you identify yourself as someone who is highly emotional and easily affected by your environment, you’re a sensitive striver. While it doesn’t interfere with your career, being a sensitive person can bring you a lot of stress and anxiety.

A sensitive striver is not someone who’s necessarily a perfectionist, an introvert, or an overachiever. You just feel emotions at a deeper level than an average person. You’re more empathic and warm than those around you. In fact, these qualities have even helped you achieve your endeavors so far. And they will keep on helping you — but first, acknowledge and rate them accordingly. Know what your strengths are.

As a sensitive striver, you’ve got the following qualities: sensitivity, thoughtfulness, responsibility, inner drive, vigilance, and emotionality. Taken to an extreme, these qualities can become a liability. As such, use the STRIVE qualities scale from the book to figure out how each of them applies to you. After you do so, it’ll be much easier to determine which ones are your most prominent ones and what to improve.

If you identify yourself as an overachiever, looking for validation from sources like a promotion, someone’s approval, and you work harder every day just to feel good about your productivity levels, I’ve got some news – you’ll have to go through the worst hangover of your life! The author calls it the Honor Roll Hangover, and it’s a form of achievement addiction that you just can’t get rid of. The constant need to feel productive, work and perfect your craft, and the guilt that follows a non-productive day are all symptoms of a high-anxiety performer. Unfortunately, they can cost you your inner peace and drastically decrease the quality of your life. Therefore, you must first acknowledge your condition and then overcome it. There are three elements that drive the Honor Roll Hangover: perfectionism, or fearing failure and being too self-critical, over-functioning, which implies overworking and fearing that everything is urgent and your responsibility, and people-pleasing, consisting of the inability to say no and avoiding conflict. To fix this issue, you must first give up some of your goals and focus on the most important ones first. If a goal is bringing you more distress than benefits, ditch it. Moreover, learn to prioritize…