Email (or Slack, or Instant Messaging, or even texting) brings up so many anxious feelings for us. Imagine: you get an email from a client with whom you don't feel 100% comfortable. The client asks to talk tomorrow at 10. Where does your mind go? What anxious thoughts do you immediately have? That she's mad at you? That you're getting fired? Do you lose time in between receiving the email and the actual meeting to anxiety and worry?

My guest Nancy Koehn, Harvard Business School professor and historian, speaks about great leaders-- leaders like Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, and Rachel Carson-- and their mental health. Nancy goes deep into the lives of history’s greatest leaders to understand why and how they became great, especially during moments of crisis.

I think it’s fair to say that money makes most of us anxious. Money is often the first place we act out anxiety. The hardest lesson I had to learn as an entrepreneur was how to separate my emotions and my money. After 11 years, was I successful? Yes, and no.

If you’re like me right now, you might be sitting doing work when a news alert comes in, and then you’re flooded with uncontrollable worry, sadness, and helplessness. You may feel like you want to scream, or protest… this. very. Minute. But you have a deadline to meet. How do you process these feelings with the respect they need while still managing your work? I asked Carolyn Glass, LCSW, for advice.

Anxiety can cloud this process. My podcast guest this week, Carissa Gustafson Psy.D is an expert in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) a form of therapy that asks us to accept that our anxiety and distressing feelings are part of life. Instead, we can commit to changing how we respond. The linchpin in ACT is understanding your values, and having a way to come back to them when things get hard and your mind wants to stay stuck in anxiety.

Right now is an incredibly uncertain time, for a million reasons I don’t need to name here. And so when we show up at work, we are carrying all that uncertainty with us. And perhaps, things that 3 years ago wouldn’t have made us anxious, do now. I think we’re all a bit more fragile-- understandably so. And so whenever we can provide clarity to each other, our anxiety lessens and we feel better. And work better. Reduce anxiety through clarity.

I am so sick of hearing about Elon Musk. He is the epitome of entrepreneurship porn, of the myth of entrepreneurial genius who is a little unstable, unpredictable, and chaotic. This myth has persisted far too long and in truth, it lets a lot of people get away with a lot of bad behavior.

Ambient anxiety is like a free floating black cloud that likes to check in on us at inopportune times. For instance, what do you do when a tweet stops you dead in your tracks?

Like so many of us, if you’re stuck in the Impostor Cycle, you’re both fearing feeling shame, and working to gain others’ approval. The Impostor Cycle, Lisa Orbé-Austin explains, is triggered by new and challenging situations. You may fear failure or being “found out.” The situation may trigger ghosts from the past. Once you’re triggered, you have performance anxiety. And then you overwork, or self sabotage and procrastinate.

Are you working harder than everyone else, just to keep your head above water? Have you ever wondered why? Emma Broyles is an achiever. The current Miss America is many “firsts”: the first Korean American woman and the first Alaskan to win the title. She’s also been diagnosed with ADD and a type of obsessive compulsive disorder called dermatillomania. She compulsively picks at her acne, until her face bleeds.

Many of us are triggered at work, and we’re so used to it we don’t even notice. Our personal boundaries are crossed, we’re shamed, micromanaged, stripped of our autonomy, or just plain disrespected. Workplace triggers can be intense racial slights, as Minda describes, or it can be something like always being talked over in meetings, or constantly sent emails too late at night when nothing is urgent. We all react emotionally to specific triggers at work.

How much anxiety is “good”? When you understand how to manage it, anxiety can be creative, motivating, and help us do our best work. But we all know the downsides to out of control anxiety. Neuroscientist and professor Dr. Wendy Suzuki is the author of “Good Anxiety,” and I invited her on the podcast to help us discover our own good level of anxiety.

What if you thought about a negotiation not as a win but as a success--one that makes both the other party and you feel good? My podcast guest, legendary negotiation coach and former FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss says: understand your counterpart’s motivations and be curious. And use your empathy.

How are you putting anxiety into your body? How often do you rely on a drink, drug, muscle relaxant, or over-the-counter pain relief over the week? So many of us react to stress and anxiety with our whole bodies. This means that to take action to alleviate stress and anxiety we need to listen to our whole bodies.

Being compassionate with yourself is hard. When you’re an achiever-- or more, a perfectionist, it's near impossible. But I want to pose this to you: Who said you had to be perfect? If you’re constantly diminishing the quality of your work, your ability to manage things, or even your worthiness, ask yourself: Why do I have to be perfect?

Right now is very difficult. Renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg offers a short meditation you can do any time of day when anxiety hits. If you're feeling anxious about being anxious, this short exercise is for you. Hang in there.

Nothing establishes trust more effectively than the emotional connection fostered through empathy and shared humanity. This is why being open about your own anxiety can be so powerful. It builds trust when you can ask teammates, “How are you?” and they don’t feel as if they have to lie or put on a happy face.

So many of us act out our anxiety in ways that frustrate our colleagues. We micromanage, or we overwork, or, as my guest today points out, we’re inconsistent in our attitude and feedback, which can send our teams into a rollercoaster of uncertainty. Micromanaging, inconsistent feedback, overwork: All of these are traits no one wants in their manager!

Here’s the thing: staying mentally healthy is a commitment. If you’re someone who has struggled with a mental health disorder, the fear of a recurrence is always present and so you build infrastructure to stay well: this could be therapy, medication, exercise, spiritual or religious practice, trusted peers.

I believe anxiety can be a gift. I believe it’s a leadership superpower. Now I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. Living with anxiety is hard; I know. If you learn to understand and manage your anxiety you’ll decipher what it’s trying to tell you, manage how you respond to anxious feelings, and channel anxiety’s creative energy and drive.