Morra featured by IMD Business School Magazine
Anxiety often gets a bad rap. Yet for millennia, it has arguably helped keep us alive. It can also be a huge motivating factor that pushes us to excel. For this reason, many high achievers are known to experience anxiety, explained Morra Aarons-Mele, an award-winning podcaster and author of The Anxious Achiever – Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower.
“Without anxiety, nothing would get done,” she told me in a recent video interview. “As David Barlow says, we wouldn’t have planted crops; we certainly wouldn’t innovate. We wouldn’t make art, we wouldn’t win medals at the Olympics, we wouldn’t show up and kill it at work.”
It’s important to note that anxiety exists on a spectrum and to distinguish between “good” anxiety, which is a temporary state that passes, and chronic anxiety that drains our battery, said Aarons-Mele who herself suffers from an anxiety disorder.
As a leader, it sometimes helps to be anxious. “They’re paid to anticipate worst-case scenarios, to have a plan, to be good in a time of crisis or uncertainty, and to have creative solutions. Anxiety can drive that and help it,” she said.
Yet there is a tipping point when too much anxiety can be detrimental for the individual and the rest of their team. The key question to ask is whether your anxiety is serving or draining you.
“If you are anxious during the pandemic because you are trying to manage a team in a time of huge change, and you can’t look six steps ahead of yourself, I think that’s appropriate,” she said. “If you are waking up every single day, even when things are good, and you are feeling the worry, the swirling brain […] that might be time to get help.”
Leaders who experience chronic anxiety often unintentionally act it out on their teams. They may try to control things or worry so much about the outcome that they won’t let other people do their job. Anxiety can also be contagious. “We think we need to do things alone. We think we always need to be right. We think we have to be perfect. We always show up expecting to get fired or for the worst piece of news to happen. And not only is this hard for ourselves, it’s really hard for everyone around us.”
‘Learn to play detective’
So, what can we do to make sure our anxiety remains more of a help than a hindrance in our daily lives?
There are often cognitive, emotional, and physical clues to watch out for. Are you ruminating or overthinking? Are you starting to feel dread? Is your behavior becoming too controlling? It’s also vital to tune into your body.
“Years ago, I learned to play detective, as Rebecca Harley calls it,” recalled Aarons-Mele. “For me, my tell is my shoulders and jaw. Some people’s tell might be they don’t sleep well, their appetite changes, they feel jumpy, they can’t concentrate. People tell me they often feel a tingling in their body. We may have behavioral changes or we may have emotional changes. So, it’s really important to start to tune in.”
It also helps to understand that anxiety is common. On any given day, over a third of Americans are diagnosed with anxiety, said Aarons-Mele, while the World Health Organization has classified it as the most common mental health disorder globally.
There are a lot of tools that people can use to help manage their anxiety, ranging from cognitive behavioral therapy to mindfulness and breathwork to help relax and calm the nervous system.
Spending our days staring at screens or scrolling on our devices has been shown to impact our breathing, said Aarons-Mele. Taking a break to practice a few minutes of intentional deep breathing, to tune into your pulse and your heartbeat, can help you come back to yourself.