Podcast Episode #72:
The Student TriMetrix Assessment 

Overview of Episode #72 --- 

• Why self-discovery and self-worth matter more than a degree and good grades.  
• How the Student TriMetrix Assessments helps students grow into a role that makes them happy AND pays the bills. 
• How The Genius Project and Awesome Project exercises lead to a healthy ego and a true sense of self. 
• Insight into Indigo Education Company Founder's own Wake Up Eager life. 

Contact Sheri Smith

• Email: sheri.smith@indigoproject.org
• Website: Indigo Education Company
  

Timing on Recording: @ 14:21 ---

Topic 1: Why Getting a Sense of Self-worth and Self-discovery Matters So Much. Why This is Not Highlighted More?

• Two favorite quotes from Sheri’s book.
• How do you know yourself? 
• How do you understand other people? 
• How do you work on your mental health? 
• How do you cope in a world where you have every single piece of information in your phone and find the exact information you want and distill that information into something that is meaningful or matters to you?
• Education that is focused on the mind and the head and giving information to students is really not complete and not nearly adequate for the digital age that we are currently in.

Timing on Recording: @ 17:12 ---

Topic 2: Examples of Insights Where You Have Helped Adults Begin to Embrace This Idea of Self-discovery Matters, Sense of Self-worth Matters, So That They Can Make That Shift.

• 2 different pendulums.

1. Families really do believe that you have to go to the best schools and get the best majors in order to make it in life.
2. It does not matter, you don't have to be practical, just follow your passion. And if you follow your passion, the money will come.

• That might be your passion, but it really does not match with what the needs are of the job.
• What are your dispositions? 
• What are your motivations? 
• What are your skills? 
• What is the best way to get those skills in a way that allows you to have a job that makes you happy and pays the bills?
• Family example – Carpenter son.
• Indigo takes the middle road where you are matching up the practical skills with some of the passion and then opening new opportunities that families really would not have thought of.
• Helps a parent accept and see their child for who he/she is in a positive light as opposed to who they wish they were.

Timing on Recording: @ 23:22 ---

Topic 3: What Do You Hear Are the Biggest Concerns, Reservations or Unrealistic Expectations From the Parents, Adults or Teachers When You Are in the Schools Around This Process?

• Misconception - "Well, kids don't know themselves, my child, they don't really know who they are right now, it's not going to come out accurate, it's too boring for them, it takes too long."
• Underestimate how much a child or student are capable of knowing themselves, are capable of answering the questions in a way that the result is insanely accurate and many times more accurate than the adults.
• For the adults, it is getting them to take away their own lenses, their own stories that they have made up about kids and taking the data and trusting it. 
• Turnaround story - Troublemaker could mean leader.

Timing on Recording: @ 25:59 ---

Topic 4: The Results Are Insanely Accurate and Oftentimes Are More Accurate Than Adult's Results.

• Young people have less filters about what they're supposed to be.
• Students are used to taking tests in school – The assessment is low stakes, no grades.
• Students tend to be more honest in their answers.
• Adults have developed a false-self or facade that has been with them so long that they can answer the assessment from that perspective and it can turn out not as accurate as the kids.
• With young adults, they're so receptive, a lot less uncomfortable.
• The assessment helps reduce resistance.
• The assessment helps with where they want to go and how to help them.
• Kids are way more open and they really do listen to you.
• “You can change their life, you can literally change their life with one conversation.”
• The excitement is that students can know these things about themselves earlier and make even better choices.

Timing on Recording: @ 29:04 ---

Topic 5: What Are the Top Benefits You Hear From Adults Once Their Teen Has Gone Through the Process?

• Communication. They feel like they finally understand their child in a new way and that they can communicate better with them.
• Helpful to understand what motivates their children.

Timing on Recording: @ 32:39 ---

Topic 6: Exercises From Sheri’s Book, Accessing Your Genius.

• The Awesome Project
• The Genius Project

Timing on Recording: @ 39:16 ---

Topic 7: What Would You Say to People Who Worry About Over Emphasizing Someone's Awesomeness?

• With young people, I feel like you cannot over highlight authentic strengths.
• Know your “Intrinsic Genius.”
• The person at work who think they're the best thing ever, it's because they actually never developed an identity when they were young.
• Validating and building people up so that they develop a really healthy ego that is based on truth and who their true self is, is the way to prevent narcissistic behavior.

Timing on Recording: @ 43:07 ---

Topic 8: Favorite Indigo Success Story

• About a teacher.
• Teacher had been raised and educated in a system of putting kids in certain boxes and trying to make kids the way education wants them to be.
• "I finally get it, Sheri, I finally get it. Like, I'm not supposed to change kids, convincing, trying to convince kids to like science will only make them hate it more. And my job is to see the kids, love the kids and try to relate science to something that matters to them. And maybe they'll remember something about science that's valuable to them when they grow up."

Timing on Recording: @ 45:18 ---

Topic 9: Taking Indigo Into Schools, Do You Get Pushback or Is It a Mix? Tell Us a Little Bit About Your World in That Way, in Schools.

• Schools do not have a lot of budget for self-awareness. 
• The kids love it. 
• The parents love it. 
• The teachers love it because it's what they have always believed about students. 
• Tends to make people overall happier. 
• They work together better in teams.
• Gives them tools that are not possible any other way.
• There is sometimes a time crunch.
• Getting in is the tough part.

Timing on Recording: @ 47:30 ---

Topic 10: What Does a Typical Engagement Look Like?

• Students take the assessment Freshman year.
• Kids need more emotional support from our Hartman portion of the assessment.
• What are your kids like coming in?
• How can you partner students with mentors and teachers that really are going to align with them in the school?
• How are you going to help your counselors to really support the students who need the most social emotional support?
• 11th or 12th graders take it to really prepare for that college process.
• Helps students decide which college is a good fit, which majors are a good fit, how to write their college essays.

Timing on Recording: @ 49:08 ---

Topic 11: What Are the Professional Development Options You Offer?

• When a school purchases students Indigos, we include the teachers Indigos in that because we want it to be a shared experience.
• Teachers get some basic training around how to understand the different DISC and Motivators and use our dashboard.
• A.I. enabled dashboard that gives teachers recommendations of exactly how to support every student and allows them to create automatic teams that are going to work well together, be harmonious.
• More sophisticated trainings for a counselor, which is a certification, that allows them to really become the in school experts on Indigo.

Timing on Recording: @ 51:12 ---

Topic 12: Getting to Know Sheri Smith

• Who has most influenced you?
• What resources have been most helpful to you? Books, training, programs, education?
• What are some of your top mind, body, spirit activities, actions, that you do that help you create days that cause you to wake up eager and end happy for the day. Mind, body, spirit.
• If you could have one billboard anywhere, where would it be and what would it say?
• One bit of advice or wisdom you want every adult listening to this conversation today, what would you want them to take away from our conversation today?

Information Sheri Shared:

• Arbinger Institute 
  
• Christian Mystics:
  

1. Jeanne Guyon – 17th century French Christian mystic, Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ is her most famous book.   
2. Richard Rohr –  Franciscan priest/mystic, amazing, prolific author (still alive), Immortal Diamond is one of the books that most aligns with Indigo. 
3. St. Theresa of Lisieux – 19th century Carmelite nun, wrote beautiful books, I love The Little Way.  

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