The Anxious Achiever

Blog & Newsletter Archive

Editors, journalists, and podcasters: connect with Morra here.

Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Are You An Anxious Leader?

Pursuing new opportunities can be exciting and daunting, especially in our careers. It’s normal to feel anxious about the unknown and the pressure to succeed but how do we make sure this doesn’t stop us from achieving all that we’ve set out to?

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Where's My Ritalin? What The Stimulant Shortage Tells Us About Mental Health Care

Why is there a shortage of stimulant medication in the U.S, and what does this tell us about our broken mental health care system?

This is a fascinating topic -- and one that has huge implications for people who take medications like Ritalin and Adderall to treat ADHD or other conditions. My guest Lindsay Scola offers her perspective; she needs Adderall to treat narcolepsy, and finding it has been a nightmare.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Struggling With Your Boss?

Today Chip Conley, entrepreneur and NYT bestselling author, and me offer tips on how to manage a manager who makes you anxious.

Read More
Article Morra Aarons-Mele Article Morra Aarons-Mele

Wall St. Journal: When Bringing Your ‘Whole Self’ to Work Is Too Much.

Morra is featured on The Wall Street Journal! She speaks about how to set boundaries on what you share with your co-workers.

The pandemic made many of us more comfortable talking about our mental health at work, surveys show. Feeling less pressure to act like we’ve got it all together, some people now swap struggles with burnout and impostor syndrome almost as freely as they talk about sore joints after a weekend 5k.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

All About My Mother

My mother was here last week for my book launch. (Yes! My new book – The Anxious Achiever – an FT Book of the Month, no. 1 New Anxiety Release on Amazon and Next Big Idea Club Book of the Month is on sale now!) In earlier conversations, I told my mother it was a bad time for me but she came to visit anyway.  I really needed physical and emotional boundaries from her to focus on my work and my own complicated emotions about my work. But I did not set those boundaries. Despite years of therapy, I did not protect myself. I fell back into the co-dependent pattern of my childhood.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Anxiety has increased since 2022: How to make friends with it

If you're not anxious, are you really living? Digital consultant (and Lexington mom) Morra Aarons-Mele hosts “The Anxious Achiever“ leadership podcast, in which she slices into the gritty underbelly of what so many working parents face: a sense of imposter syndrome, of striving and wondering why, of nerves around finances (college, anyone?), and that endless slog toward contentment.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Fast Company: How to Harness Your Anxiety

The brain’s main job, quite literally, is to keep us alive. It does this not only by regulating things such as heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature, but by constantly scanning our environment for potential threats. All of this occurs without our conscious awareness in the limbic system, thought to be the oldest, most primordial part of the brain.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

The Boston Globe: Parenting Unfiltered

If you're not anxious, are you really living? Digital consultant (and Lexington mom) Morra Aarons-Mele hosts “The Anxious Achiever“ leadership podcast, in which she slices into the gritty underbelly of what so many working parents face: a sense of imposter syndrome, of striving and wondering why, of nerves around finances (college, anyone?), and that endless slog toward contentment.

Read More
Morra Aarons-Mele Morra Aarons-Mele

Do you **need** to be right?

Leaders must make decisions. The buck stops with somebody – probably you. Sometimes leaders have to be right, says Martin. That’s good. But if we always need to be right because we’re scared to be wrong, our anxiety is managing us. Here are three things your anxiety might be telling you.

Read More
HBR Morra Aarons-Mele HBR Morra Aarons-Mele

How High Achievers Overcome Their Anxiety

Morra is featured in Harvard Business Reviews magazine and explains the 11 most common thought traps—all-or-nothing thinking, labeling, jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, filtering, discounting the positive, “should” statements, social comparison, personalization and blaming, ruminating, and emotional reasoning—and recommends strategies for overcoming all of them.

Read More