The Anxious Achiever Press and Newsletters

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Get To Know The Family Ghosts In Your Leadership

Do you feel the need to make everyone happy, all the time? Can’t stand a quiet moment and feel compelled to make a joke? How about making sure everyone has coffee or water before the meeting? These behaviors could be legacies from your childhood showing up at work. This week in the newsletter MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Deborah Ancona walks us through common “family ghosts” that show up in executives she coaches.

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Power Up For A Better Work Day

When I think about my typical day on endless Zooms, I can’t imagine a life more disconnected from my body. That doesn’t feel good to me. Add in stressful meetings, angry moments, and anxiety, and I often feel trapped in my body. Something's stuck inside, and it can't get out. Can you relate? Emma Seppälä, Ph.D. says that emotions are "energy in motion."

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"CPR" For Times When Work Makes You Feel Sick

In my recent poll 87% of you said you’d gotten physically sick because of another person or situation at work (n=1170). It happens all the time, and while the easy advice is to find another job, that’s not always realistic or even always advisable. Sometimes you can make a difficult situation better and sometimes you can’t. So how do you work when work is making you feel sick?

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The Anxious Achiever wins a Bronze Medal in Leadership at the Axiom Awards

The Axiom Business Book Awards are the largest and most respected critical guidepost for business books in today's new world of publishing. These prestigious and competitive awards are presented in 25 business categories and serve as the premier list to help readers discover new and innovative works. Axiom Award-winning books will help readers understand changing trends and technologies affecting the business world and point out opportunities in our complicated new economy.

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What is accent bias and why does it matter to our careers?

We humans are amazing at judging each other, aren’t we? This week I unpack accent bias and its ramifications for our career advancement. Accent bias creates anxiety for English speakers who are negatively judged for the way they talk. My guest Heather Hansen knows accents convey power, and that there’s no such thing as a “neutral” accent.

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Liberate Yourself From Anxiety By Embracing Uncertainty

Maggie Jackson knows unease doesn’t equal weakness. To thrive in the world, we need to welcome in the unknown. We need to reframe uncertainty-- not as something to fear, dread, and avoid at all costs, but a chance to lean in to curiosity. We need to embrace the future with “curious eyes.”

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How To Trust Your Gut When Work Feels Toxic

Have you ever worked in a place that’s toxic? Not annoying or challenging or even full of difficult people….but toxic. Unhealthy, unsafe. It can be insidious. Your gut tells you something isn’t right… but you also don’t trust yourself to make the call .. or speak up… and maybe you just swallow the horrible situation until you just can’t anymore. Or even worse, until you get pushed out or layered over.

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How To Get Out Of Your Head When Your Brain Is Swirling

Are you addicted to being busy? I definitely am. As I shared with you last week, I had a professional setback recently that turned my already anxious mind into a swirling category 4 tornado. It’s just the kind of basic life disappointment we tell our kids to be gritty through, but let me tell you, it sucks.

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Is Your Anxiety a Habit You Need to Break?

Are your bad habits part of the toolkit you rely on to get ahead? How ironic is that? Many anxious leaders rely on bad habits and unhealthy reactions that may seem effective in the short term, but ultimately, make them more stressed, deplete their energy, and undermine their leadership.

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Why We Can’t Expect People To Fix Themselves At Work

For many high achieving professionals, the post pandemic “workday” has turned into a 18 hour blur. It's not unusual for people to be emailing at 11 p.m. and then again at 5 a.m. Many forces conspire to stress us out, but the erasure of time-delimited boundaries and the reliance on digital media is a big one. It’s difficult to be well when you’re in a constant state of arousal and anticipation.

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How A Congressman Discovered The Path To Inherent Self-Worth (And Less Anxiety)

Do you believe you are worthy? Truly? For many years, United States Congressman Adam Smith managed anxiety and depression. And he hid it, and pushed through, until he couldn't anymore. After a lot of work and therapy, here's what Smith knows now: You can still be the same ambitious, obsessive, successful person but without "the self-loathing." Imagine that!

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