Energetic Leadership Index (ELI)

Sometimes the Biggest Shift Isn't Changing the Situation

As engineers, we're trained to solve problems by changing the situation.

We gather more information. We improve the process. We remove the obstacle. We look for the solution.

Sometimes the biggest shift isn't changing the situation.

Sometimes it's changing the way we experience it.

The other night, I was sitting on a bench outside Walmart waiting for my husband and daughters to pick me up after ice skating. It was around 11 p.m. I had an ice cream cone in one hand, an audiobook playing through my phone, and I was enjoying one of those rare quiet moments to myself.

Then a parking lot sweeper started making its rounds.

With every pass, it got louder. Every time it came by, I had to pause my audiobook. I remember thinking, Really? I was finally enjoying a peaceful moment, and this truck had to show up now?

Then I caught myself.

I turned off my phone and simply looked around.

The parking lot was alive. People were coming and going from the store. The evening air was cool. The sound of the sweeper moved across the lot with each pass.

Then I remembered.

Just a few weeks earlier, I had experienced sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL). For a brief period, there was a real possibility I could lose hearing in my left ear.

That night, I could hear.

I could hear the truck, people talking as they walked to their cars, shopping carts rolling across the pavement, and all the ordinary sounds of an evening I almost took for granted.

Only a few weeks earlier, I wasn't sure I would always be able to.

The very noise that had irritated me moments before became something I was grateful to hear.

Nothing around me had changed.

The parking lot was the same.

The truck was still making its rounds.

But my experience of that moment had completely changed.

This week, I received my Energy Leadership Index (ELI) Master Practitioner certification.

What excites me most isn't the certification itself. It's the opportunity to help others develop the same awareness and choice that made such a difference for me.

The Energy Leadership Index (ELI) provides insight into how we typically show up under stress and how our thoughts, assumptions, and emotions shape the way we experience the world. More importantly, it helps us recognize that we have more choice than we often realize.

Most of us already know what we want to do. We want to trust ourselves. We want to stop overthinking. We want to speak up. We want to let go of the fear of getting it wrong.

The challenge usually isn't a lack of knowledge. It's that our thoughts, assumptions, and emotional patterns keep pulling us back into familiar ways of seeing the situation.

That's what I appreciate most about the ELI. It doesn't simply encourage us to think differently. It helps us understand why we see situations the way we do, making it possible to genuinely experience them differently.

If we can consciously choose a different perspective, we create new possibilities—not because the circumstances changed, but because we did.

The parking lot didn't become quieter.

I simply experienced it differently.

And that made all the difference.