Are You An Anxious Achiever? Turn Your Fears Into Your Standout Strength
This article was originally published on LinkedIn and is excerpted below. See the full article here.
During the Spring season, we are encouraged to bring into focus key issues around both stress awareness and mental health, and are reminded that signs of depression and anxiety can be hidden in plain sight—particularly among leaders. Take, for instance, the recent experience of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who received treatment for depression following a “downward spiral” he described to newsmakers this month.
In my own prior work as a marriage and family therapist and now as a career and leadership coach, I witness firsthand how mental health issues can be extremely common among high-achieving individuals. Yet at the same time, mental health challenges can be debilitating and interfere with healthy functioning, effective communication and interpersonal dynamics. Often, depression and anxiety may not be readily apparent either to the individual suffering from these challenges, or those people working and living alongside of them.
To learn more about how our mental health can impact our leadership and success, I caught this month with anxiety expert and top podcast host Morra Aarons-Mele, author of the new book The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower. Aarons-Mele speaks to the “performance of wellness” and how a better understanding of our mental health can shape leadership and success—by transforming a perceived weakness into a critical strength.
Aarons-Mele is the host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. Aarons-Mele helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations. She has also been named among LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Mental Health in 2022.
Her book The Anxious Achiever strives to normalize anxiety and leadership. As leadership expert and self-proclaimed anxious achiever herself, Aarons-Mele argues that anxiety is built into the very nature of leadership and it can—and should—be harnessed into a force for good.
Here’s what Aarons-Mele shares about being an anxious achiever and thriving as one:
Kathy Caprino: Morra, what is an "anxious achiever" as you define it? How do we know if we are one?
Morra Aarons-Mele: An “anxious achiever” is an ambitious, career-focused individual who succeeds in life and professionally while also struggling with mental illness on a day-to-day basis. Anxious achievers are all around us, and they rarely take the time to rest their bodies or their minds. You, yourself, might be an anxious achiever if you find that you are goal-oriented, future-oriented, and take your work extremely seriously. An anxious achiever tends to be composed of three shared characteristics: the drive, the voice, and the traps.
An anxious achiever has an ambitious drive for success, a strong work ethic, and always wants to achieve utmost excellence. But the voice inside an anxious achiever’s mind acts as an inner critic, telling them that they are not good enough. Because of this inner critic, anxious achievers often find themselves getting stuck in negative thought traps.
But there are many benefits to being an anxious achiever. We are prized team members because we go the extra mile, and in our minds, nothing less than the best will do. We create extraordinary outcomes because we are driven to always strive for excellence. We can learn to channel our drive and anxiety to help us achieve excellence. We can learn to take back control from the inner voice that acts as our toughest critic. And we can learn to manage through anxiety and ultimately put our anxiety to work.
Caprino: What advice would you give a business leader who feels deeply anxious at work and constantly strives for perfection?
Aarons-Mele: Understand that anxiety shows up at work, in ways big and small. It shows up no matter if you’re brand new or you’re the CEO. We have this preconceived notion that industries prefer business leaders to never break a sweat or show any emotion beyond ruthless drive. But anybody at work can feel anxiety in their day-to-day life. Anxiety shows up in our emails, presentations, meetings, our interactions with customers and each other, and in our management and leadership. It shows up because life is stressful, and people are human, and anxiety is a normal human emotion. So be kind to yourself. First, acknowledge that you’re anxious and work is making you anxious. Just get it out. It really helps.
For instance, you can say to yourself, “I’m anxious. I think it’s because I’m really dreading this meeting with my boss.” When you acknowledge that you feel anxious, you give yourself a little distance from the emotion and take some of the teeth out of it.
Then, practice noticing when your anxiety spikes. What happened before? Did you bring the anxiety into work, or was it set off by something at work? We’re all triggered at work. Start playing detective and try to isolate what triggers those anxiety spikes.
Read the full interview on Kathy Caprino’s LinkedIn
