The Anxious Achiever

By Morra Aarons-Mele

Business Careers

What's The Anxious Achiever about?

Host Morra Aarons-Mele is on a mission to reframe how we think about anxiety and mental health in the workplace. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. We desperately need better models for leadership and a more holistic view of mental health. Our culture tells those of us who suffer from anxiety and depression that we can’t succeed, but we tell a different story — without sugarcoating the tough stuff. We feature stories from people who’ve been there and experts who can help you thrive.

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Want To Run A Good Company?...

11.29.2023

The working world has gotten a lot more open about a lot of things, from mental health challenges to the realities of being a working parent. But a topic that is still taboo for many is the subject of menopause. ...

The Anxious Achiever episodes:

11.29.2023 Want To Run A Good Company? You Can’t Ignore Menopause Anymore The working world has gotten a lot more open about a lot of things, from mental health challenges to the realities of being a working parent. But a topic that is still taboo for many is the subject of menopause. ...
11.22.2023 How Your Family History - and Tensions - Affect You At Work Many in the U.S. this week are celebrating the holiday of Thanksgiving - which, unfortunately for many, can mean difficult conversations with family about money, politics, and even the past. At a time when old habits can re-emerge for people, ...
11.15.2023 Building Your Career When You Have Borderline Personality Disorder Today’s guest always seemed to seek out chaos in his career. It wasn’t until a diagnosis that he learned to manage his emotions, stay still, and practice consistency as a leader. Bryce Seto is an SVP of Business Strategy and ...
11.01.2023 Farnoosh Torabi on Fear, Money, and Career Success Farnoosh Torabi is a veteran journalist and personal finance expert who has spent much of her life trying to help others have a healthier relationship with money. But we all have hangups, and varying degrees of anxiety when it comes ...
10.27.2023 LinkedIn Live: How to Speak Up Speaking up is an essential skill in work and in leadership, but it can be scary and anxiety-inducing for many of us. This week, Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with executive coach Nihar Chhaya about how can speak up more strategically, get ...
10.25.2023 Leadership, Burnout, and Breakdowns (and Why Coaching Can Help) Everyone needs support at work, whether that comes in the form of coaching, therapy, some combination - or something else. In this episode we look at the specific kinds of challenges that executives face with burnout and breakdowns with executive ...
10.18.2023 Mood and Food: What You Need to Know About Gut and Mental Health While information about the connection between food, gut health, and our overall well-being has come into the spotlight in recent years, it can still often be something that only the privileged have time, money, and energy to devote to. Kimberley ...
10.16.2023 The Israel-Hamas War and Managing Grief It was an emotional and scary week for millions of people around the world following the horrific attacks in Israel and subsequent ramp up of war. In this episode, we return to Rebecca Soffer, author of “The Modern Loss Handbook.” ...
10.11.2023 20 Minutes a Week Devoted to Culture Building Can Improve Mental Health for Grocery and Retail Workers Anthony Sartori knows just how overlooked the mental health of retail workers can be. After finishing college in 2018, and seeing the plight of frontline workers during the beginning of the global pandemic, Sartori started the nonprofit Evolving Minds. He ...
10.04.2023 Mindfulness to Be A Better Colleague - and Stop Being Passive-Aggressive We bring ourselves to work - or to our Zoom calls - every day with the desire to be professional and to achieve. That often means trying to put whatever else is going on in our world aside, but it’s ...
09.27.2023 “He’s a Jerk Who Got Rich and Now He Hates Everybody” Gabe Howard had a successful tech career when, at the age of 26, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. To the outside world, many people thought it was merely a case of an inflated ego. After going through a divorce, ...
09.20.2023 "I Have Everything to Gain and Nothing to Lose, and I Have a Responsibility to Use My Voice" A huge part of breaking down stigma around mental health challenges at work is about being open and honest about our experiences. Mita Mallick is head of Inclusion, Equity and Impact at Carta and host of the LinkedIn podcast Brown ...
09.15.2023 “When I Was Diagnosed with PTSD I Was Treated Like Damaged Goods” (Part II) We continue the conversation with Dean Yates, a Tasmania-based mental health advocate, former journalist, and author of the book Line in the Sand.
09.13.2023 “I Wanted to Cover War Without Having Any Clue What War Was Like” (Part I) Dean Yates was a foreign correspondent and worked for Reuters for decades until the traumatic events he witnessed took their toll. Over time, he realized he was struggling with PTSD - while at the same time realized his company was ...
09.06.2023 “I Didn’t Know What the Word Burnout Meant”: One Teacher’s Mental Health Journey The public school system in the U.S. lost at least 300,000 public school teachers and administrators between February 2020 and May 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Post-pandemic, some of that strain has abated, but many of the ...
08.30.2023 Behind the Scenes of Meditation and Mental Health with the CEO of Headspace The first time that Russell Glass tried meditation, he wasn’t really sure what to make of it. Flash-forward several years and lots of practice later, Glass is now the CEO of Headspace, the mental health and meditation app. He speaks ...
08.18.2023 LinkedIn Live: Weight-Loss Drugs, Food Noise, and Mental Health Host Morra Aaons-Mele has an informal chat with author and entrepreneur Meredith Arthur about how Wegovy - a drug similar to Ozempic - has changed her life, and reduced what she calls “food noise”.
08.16.2023 This Leadership Expert’s Experience Managing Autism Can Help Everyone Enjoy Work More Tara McMullin was diagnosed with autism at the age of 38, and it put her previous struggles with work and the structures we have around work in a new light. Now, she knows how to build her work day and ...
08.11.2023 LinkedIn Live: Am I Too Old for This Role? Do you ever wonder if you are “aging out?” This week, Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with executive coach Nihar Chhaya about the realities of age bias, expectations, and the stress it brings. Catch more of Morra and Nihar’s LinkedIn Live sessions ...
08.09.2023 Best of Anxious Achiever: Pressure, Achievement, and Self-Compassion High achievers and those who struggle with mental health often find it hard to give themselves compassion. We revisit one of our favorite episodes about self-compassion, featuring Mark Goldstein, a lawyer at Reed Smith who speaks about his journey with ...
08.02.2023 “I Could Work 16 Hours a Day and Not Have It Affect Me… I Thought” We don’t always immediately see the ways that anxiety, trauma, or institutional inequities show up for us - and our bodies - at work. Deepa Purushothaman began her career as a classic overachiever, until she couldn’t physically do it anymore. ...
07.26.2023 Real Leaders Get Emotional: Cloudfm CEO Jeff Dewing Today, Jeff Dewing runs a successful facilities management technology corporation. He’s had a dramatic career. Mark began his career in refrigeration repair but quickly got bit by the entrepreneurship bug. Over his lifetime he’s seen the ups and downs of ...
07.21.2023 LinkedIn Live: Is Mental Health at Work a “Gen Z Thing”? Older generations have heard the stereotypes, and maybe seen anecdotal evidence that supports these biases: Gen Z, newish to the workforce, is a bit too aware of their feelings and their mental health; but sometimes we just need them to ...
07.19.2023 How MLMs Hurt Women’s Mental Health Multi-level marketing businesses, or MLMs, offer people - often women who don’t work outside the home - the chance to be entrepreneurs, face new challenges, and grow their social circles. The reality is a situation that can prey on mental ...
07.12.2023 The “Goal Conqueror” Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder During the Pandemic Natasha Bowman always thought of herself as a goal conqueror: someone who could seemingly take on any project, multitask any number of things, and come out on top. It wasn’t until the global pandemic temporarily slammed on the brakes of ...
07.07.2023 LinkedIn Live: How to Handle Envy, FOMO, and Jealousy Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with executive coach Nihar Chhaya about what Morra calls the "triangle of doom" - envy, shame and scarcity - as part of their regular LinkedIn Live series. These concepts are natural feelings that we all deal with ...
07.05.2023 Best of Anxious Achiever: Can Workplaces Help Us Heal? With all of the issues in corporate America, in startup culture, and in workplaces biases and inequalities, it can be easy to forget the ways in which work can be a positive part of our life. Susan Schmitt Winchester, co-author ...
06.28.2023 When High-Powered Careers Come to Define Us Have you ever daydreamed about quitting your stressful job and hitting the open road? It isn’t something everyone can afford to do with their time and money. But it is something people sometimes do when they face incredible burnout, loss ...
06.23.2023 I Get This Question a Lot: Should I Try To Make My Corporate Job Work? For many people, the choice between a corporate job or entrepreneurship comes down to the freedom and flexibility they might get on their own… versus the stability and paycheck they get at work. But in a time when many feel ...
06.21.2023 The Relationship between Ambition, OCD, and Culture Many high achievers have a complicated relationship with their own health, and their own ambition. Things like anxiety can fuel us but also wreak havoc in our lives in ways we don’t always recognize or examine. Rainesford Stauffer is a ...
06.14.2023 Do Entrepreneurs Need Specialized Mental Healthcare? Michael Freeman is a psychiatrist and professor looking to better understand and better support the mental health of entrepreneurs. A fourth generation entrepreneur himself, he’s done research that looks at the higher rates of things like ADHD, depression, and substance ...
06.09.2023 LinkedIn Live: I Get This Question A Lot In this new series, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with executive coach Nihar Chhaya about some of your most pressing questions around mental health, career, and success in this new LinkedIn Live series.
06.07.2023 Entrepreneur Dan Mangena on His Adult Autism Diagnosis, and Living in a Place of Abundance Dan Mangena spent much of his early life and early adulthood struggling with severe social anxiety and insomnia. It wasn’t until he was diagnosed with a form of autism as an adult that he was able to start tackling his ...
05.31.2023 Marketing Expert Dorie Clark on Being Yourself and Being Valued For It Does your career path feel uncertain, or at the very least, unsteady? In a world where jobs aren’t guaranteed, we increasingly need to advocate for ourselves and create a brand around our work. In the process of promoting ourselves, we ...
05.24.2023 A Recent Morehouse College Grad On How He - and Gen X - Handle Mental Health Anthony Hunter is someone just setting out in what most of us consider to be adulthood: just graduating from college and joining the workforce full-time. But he’s been doing a few things a lot of us didn’t do in our ...
05.17.2023 Rep. Becca Balint Has Struggled with Anxiety and Depression. Now She’s Fighting for Mental Health Support and Policies. Representative Becca Balint is a new member of Congress, joining this January after several years in the Vermont Senate. She didn’t start her career in politics, but is now working to use her power to fight for those who need ...
05.10.2023 Is American Motherhood (and Work) Sustainable? “I didn’t want to accept myself as someone who had mental health struggles. And having kids made me be like, oh no, this is a health issue that you absolutely need to keep under control because your kids come first,” ...
05.03.2023 The Ritalin and Adderall Shortage and How It Impacts Work Millions of Americans depend on prescription medication like Ritalin and Adderall each day to help them accomplish their tasks. Whether taking these prescriptions for ADHD or narcolepsy, people across the country are now facing a shortage, and difficulty getting the ...
04.26.2023 Hospitality Entrepreneur Chip Conley on Mental Health, Wisdom, and Generation Gaps Chip Conley is an entrepreneur who has built a number of companies from the ground up, and also served as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at AirBnb. He’s also someone who has made it his life’s work to speak ...
04.19.2023 Do You Have Codependency Issues at Work? Codependency is the existence of unhealthy relationship where one person fixates on taking care of or even controlling the other, forgetting their own needs and letting boundaries fade away. These relationships might stem from childhood but have impacts in our ...
04.12.2023 What Psychedelic Research Might Mean for Leadership and Work We’ve seen an increasing number of headlines around the study and use of psychedelics like psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA and LSD. As research continues, many are wondering how these studies can be improved - and how they apply to work and ...
04.05.2023 What A Divorce Taught This Leader About Facing His Fears Those of us who put pressure on ourselves to achieve do it in all aspects of life - from school to work to family. That means that when our sense of self gets shaken by any perceived failure in any ...
03.29.2023 Disrupting Yourself and Your Career Disruption is the name of the game in so many businesses today, and that’s the case for many high performing individuals as well. But how do we think about drastically changing our life and our career, without letting anxiety and ...
03.22.2023 “I Had All My Money with SVB”: An Entrepreneur on Bank Failure and the Anxious Echo Chamber of Social Media On March 10th, the FDIC announced the closure of Silicon Valley Bank, marking the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. If you were watching the minute to minute news on social, this development might have felt even bigger - ...
03.15.2023 How This NBCUniversal Exec Publicly Dealt with Mental Illness (And Teamed Up With A Psychologist to Better His Workplace) The film and television industry is incredibly pressure-filled, high stakes, and visible. That’s true for the actors and actresses - but there’s often just as much pressure for those behind the scenes. Jimmy Horowitz is a senior executive at NBCUniversal, ...
03.08.2023 Are Women Punished For Being Emotional At Work? The question of how and when to show certain emotions at work is evolving, and it’s subject to a lot of bias. There are still double standards around behavior for many groups of people, and today we’ll talk about the ...
03.01.2023 Recognizing and Working with Anxiety at the Negotiating Table Have you ever had to go into conversation where you needed to advocate for yourself and really feel like you weren’t coming from a position of power? Learn how to calm anxiety, and regain your negotiating power. For most people, ...
02.23.2023 Breaking the Stigma of Mental Health for Men in Business You know that cliche phrase "leaving to spend more time with my family" that so many people us when they leave a job? For Lenny Mendoca, the phrase didn't have much life. After serving as senior partner at McKinsey, Mendoca ...
02.15.2023 Your Anxiety Needs a Product Manager Meredith Arthur is a self-described recovering overthinker. She is chief of staff at TwoTwenty, a in-house incubator for new projects at Pinterest. She’s also a mental health advocate and author of the book Get Out of My Head: Inspiration for ...
02.08.2023 This Father and Son Transformed Their Relationship and Careers After Mental Health Challenges Craig Kramer was someone with an impressive corporate career. His son, Peter Lee-Kramer, was on a track of academic and athletic success. Then mental health issues surfaced - and sent the father and son to both re-evaluate their priorities and ...

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