”When the temperature in your life rises…
are you steady?”
I’m not talking about when things are smooth. Not when results are strong. Not when everyone agrees with you. But when pressure builds. When expectations stack. When someone questions your leadership. When conflict shows up in the room. When life doesn’t cooperate. Almost anyone can lead when the room is cool.
The real question is who you are when the heat rises.
The Calm in the Fire Assessment exists to give you a truthful account of how you handle life in the hardest moments. Not your best day. Not your highlight reel. Not the version of you that’s polished and prepared.
Your lived experience. The day the dog chewed your favorite shoes. The meeting ran long. The email tone felt off, and you’re tired from carrying more than you’d like. Pressure doesn’t create your leadership. It reveals it.
This assessment helps you see what you naturally reach for when the temperature rises. Is it control, performance, approval, withdrawal, or grounded alignment.
Good News! There are no right answers. Only patterns. And awareness of your pattern is the first step toward sustainable success.
Be honest. This is for you.
There are 10 questions.
Each question has three options.
Choose the answer that feels most like you on a normal day.
Not the day everything is clicking, choose based on how you naturally respond when life turns up the heat.
Remember to record your choices to create your assessment scores.
The Assessment
1. When things get intense at work…
1️⃣ I take on more and push harder to keep everything moving.
2️⃣ I feel the stress and carry it long after the moment passes.
3️⃣ I pause, settle myself, and then decide how I want to respond.
2. When someone questions my decision…
1️⃣ I feel the need to defend or explain myself quickly.
2️⃣ I replay it later and wonder if I missed something.
3️⃣ I listen, consider it, and stay steady either way.
3. My confidence mostly comes from…
1️⃣ Producing results and hitting targets.
2️⃣ Knowing the people around me are good with me.
3️⃣ Feeling aligned with who I am and how I’m leading.
4. When I don’t have control over an outcome…
1️⃣ I work harder to regain control.
2️⃣ I feel unsettled until it resolves.
3️⃣ I stay grounded even in uncertainty.
5. In hard conversations…
1️⃣ I focus on solving it quickly so we can move on.
2️⃣ I try to keep the peace and avoid escalation.
3️⃣ I stay present, even if it’s uncomfortable.
6. When I make a mistake…
1️⃣ I worry about how it affects my credibility.
2️⃣ I take it personally and carry it longer than I should.
3️⃣ I own it, learn from it, and move forward.
7. When I’m exhausted…
1️⃣ I push through and keep going.
2️⃣ I withdraw or shut down at home.
3️⃣ I recognize it and adjust before I burn out.
8. If work slowed down tomorrow…
1️⃣ I’d feel restless without momentum.
2️⃣ I’d feel unsure without people needing me.
3️⃣ I’d still feel steady about who I am.
9. When I walk into a room…
1️⃣ I think about how I need to perform.
2️⃣ I think about how I’m being perceived.
3️⃣ I think about how I want to show up.
10. At the end of the day, I feel most successful when…
1️⃣ I produced measurable results.
2️⃣ I kept relationships steady.
3️⃣ I stayed aligned with my values.
If you’re already thinking, “This is exactly what I need,” don’t wait. Imagine the feeling when you improve your emotional resilience, reduce your burnout risk, and live with calmness under stress.
Claim your Calm in the Fire Alignment Session now.
Understanding Your Results
Before you think about what you “scored,” pause. What did you feel while answering?
Because this isn’t about numbers. It’s about noticing what you reach for when life gets hard. Most of your answers likely leaned toward 1s, 2s, or 3s. Each number reflects a pattern — a way you’ve learned to stay steady when the temperature rises. And every pattern once served you.
The question is whether it still does.
ZONE 1: The Overdrive Zone (0–10 Points)
Calm Through Control
You stay steady by tightening control and increasing effort. Your strength is performance under pressure.
Your risk is exhaustion masked as excellence. When control slips, tension rises quickly.
Core Question:
Who are you without momentum?
ZONE 2: The Absorption Zone (11–20 Points)
Calm Through Harmony
You stay steady by managing the emotional climate. Your strength is empathy and awareness.
Your risk is carrying what isn’t yours. When tension rises, you feel it first.
Core Question:
Can you stay grounded without softening discomfort?
ZONE 3: The Grounded Zone (21–29 Points)
Calm Through Alignment
You stay steady by anchoring internally. Your strength is regulation under pressure. Your growth edge is sustaining alignment as the fire grows bigger. When tension rises, you pause before you move.
Core Question:
How do you protect this steadiness at scale?
🦄 The Unicorn (30 Points)
Rare Alignment
A perfect 30 means your calm isn’t dependent on control, performance, or approval — it’s anchored internally. That level of alignment is rare and powerful. The real work now isn’t proving it… It’s protecting and strengthening it as the fire grows.
Core Question:
Is your calm anchored… or just well-managed?
Calm Alignment Session
You took the assessment. Now let’s talk about what it revealed. When pressure rises, patterns show up. Some leaders tighten control. Some absorb stress. Some perform harder. Some disconnect.
Very few stay fully aligned. The Calm in the Fire Alignment Session is a focused 75-minute private breakdown designed to help you understand exactly how you respond when life turns up the heat — and what that pattern is costing you.
This is a foundation piece to aligning you to operate from the safest, most authentic version of yourself, personally and professionally.
Who This Is For
This session is for leaders who:
• Feel the weight of responsibility
• Operate at a high level but sense internal tension
• Want sustainable success, not just survival
• Are ready to lead without armor
If you are content staying reactive under pressure, this is not for you. If you want to remain calm when the temperature rises, this is your next step.
What’s the Investment
This is a private, one-on-one session. Focused, transformative and practical.
Most people don’t realize how much energy they burn trying to hold themselves together under pressureThis session shows you how to lead from alignment rather than from the top down. Together, we will:
• Break down your assessment results in detail
• Identify your default pressure response
• Pinpoint where that pattern is helping you succeed
• Expose where it may be quietly creating stress, tension, or burnout
• Build a practical, real-world strategy for staying grounded when the fire rises
You will leave with specific shifts you can apply immediately in both your personal and professional life.
Meet Your Guide
I’m Rob Cook — a retired 21-year U.S. Air Force combat veteran, former security forces leader, and the founder of Life After Trauma™.
I’ve led in high-stakes environments where the pressure was real, the consequences were heavy, and staying calm wasn’t optional. I’ve also walked through my own recovery from PTSD and rebuilt my life from the inside out.
What I learned is this: Sustainable strength doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from internal alignment.
Today, I work with high-performing leaders, executives, and organizations who carry responsibility, operate at a high level, and want to remain steady when the temperature rises. My work blends lived experience, principle-based leadership, and real-world application — not surface-level motivation. I teach what holds when the fire shows up.