Chip Conley is an entrepreneur who has built a number of companies from the ground up, and also served as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy at AirBnb. He’s also someone who has made it his life’s work to speak out about anxiety and depression issues, and advocate for better mental health. He does that in part by sharing the wisdom he has gained through years of trial and error, and calling out unnecessary generational tensions in the workplace. He speaks with host Morra Aarons-Mele about b...
Apr 26, 2023•48 min•Season 8Ep. 16
Codependency is the existence of unhealthy relationship where one person fixates on taking care of or even controlling the other, forgetting their own needs and letting boundaries fade away. These relationships might stem from childhood but have impacts in our adult lives, especially at work. In fact, many types of high stress jobs seem to be built for people who struggle with these issues. In this episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks to a leading expert on codependency, Melody Beattie, about ...
Apr 19, 2023•41 min
We’ve seen an increasing number of headlines around the study and use of psychedelics like psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA and LSD. As research continues, many are wondering how these studies can be improved - and how they apply to work and leadership. In this episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with clinician Lebert Lester III of the Behavior Wellness Clinic about the application of psychedelics for depression or trauma, and how to increase the number of people of color in clinical trials for the...
Apr 12, 2023•57 min•Season 8Ep. 14
Those of us who put pressure on ourselves to achieve do it in all aspects of life - from school to work to family. That means that when our sense of self gets shaken by any perceived failure in any of those realms, our anxiety or depression can easily flare up. Martin Sinozich is an investor, entrepreneur and senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. Like many leaders, despite a very successful career, Sinozich long felt impostor feelings and fears. Now, he aims to now be open and honest with ...
Apr 05, 2023•36 min•Season 8Ep. 13
Disruption is the name of the game in so many businesses today, and that’s the case for many high performing individuals as well. But how do we think about drastically changing our life and our career, without letting anxiety and fear take hold? Whitney Johnson is an author who formerly worked with Clayton Christensen, and who has chased her dreams through a winding and unexpected career path. She shares lessons on disrupting yourself while trying to manage the anxiety that might come with that.
Mar 29, 2023•41 min•Season 8Ep. 12
On March 10th, the FDIC announced the closure of Silicon Valley Bank, marking the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. If you were watching the minute to minute news on social, this development might have felt even bigger - and anxiety inducing. We live in a time when social media is able to amplify stories and speed up the spread, and it can have a big impact on our mental health. In this episode, Morra speaks with Isa Watson. She’s CEO and Founder of Squad, and one of the entrepreneurs...
Mar 22, 2023•34 min•Season 8Ep. 11
The film and television industry is incredibly pressure-filled, high stakes, and visible. That’s true for the actors and actresses - but there’s often just as much pressure for those behind the scenes. Jimmy Horowitz is a senior executive at NBCUniversal, and he shares his story of his battle with depression in 2019 - the first time he’s faced a mental health crisis. In this episode, he explains why it wasn’t easy to be transparent, and how he’s working with his organization, and psychologist Dr...
Mar 15, 2023•46 min•Season 8Ep. 10
The question of how and when to show certain emotions at work is evolving, and it’s subject to a lot of bias. There are still double standards around behavior for many groups of people, and today we’ll talk about the negative -- and positive-- impacts for women who show emotion in and around the workplace. We’ll learn how far we’ve come - and haven’t - from Stanford sociologist Marianne Cooper, who was also lead researcher for Sheryl Sandberg’s New York Times bestseller Lean In and co-authors th...
Mar 08, 2023•43 min•Season 8Ep. 9
Have you ever had to go into conversation where you needed to advocate for yourself and really feel like you weren’t coming from a position of power? Learn how to calm anxiety, and regain your negotiating power. For most people, anxiety is a fear or concern about the future. And having that anxiety going into any negotiation can really feel like a loss of power. But emotions are a normal part of negotiation, and you can use them to your advantage. Moshe Cohen teaches the next generation of busin...
Mar 01, 2023•35 min•Season 8Ep. 8
You know that cliche phrase "leaving to spend more time with my family" that so many people us when they leave a job? For Lenny Mendoca, the phrase didn't have much life. After serving as senior partner at McKinsey, Mendoca went on to work as an advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom. He announced his retirement from Newson's office with the standard phrase. But within a few weeks, after starting to process his clinical depression, he shared it with the public. It's not an easy thing for an...
Feb 23, 2023•45 min•Season 8Ep. 7
Meredith Arthur is a self-described recovering overthinker. She is chief of staff at TwoTwenty, a in-house incubator for new projects at Pinterest. She’s also a mental health advocate and author of the book Get Out of My Head: Inspiration for Overthinkers in an Anxious World. Meredith speaks to host Morra Aarons-Mele about being diagnosed with anxiety at age 40, life as a product manager in the start up world, and how she manages anxiety now.
Feb 15, 2023•37 min•Season 8Ep. 6
Craig Kramer was someone with an impressive corporate career. His son, Peter Lee-Kramer, was on a track of academic and athletic success. Then mental health issues surfaced - and sent the father and son to both re-evaluate their priorities and shift their career goals. Today, Peter is in a graduate program to become a licensed therapist, while Craig serves as a mental health ambassador for Johnson and Johnson. In this episode, they share their story of how they grew together as a family and shif...
Feb 08, 2023•49 min•Season 8Ep. 5
It might be a confrontation with a colleague who is constantly late to meetings. You might need to finally ask for that raise. Or it could be approaching a coworker to disclose a mental health issue you’ve been struggling with. We all face difficult conversations - and difficult people - in our careers. Amy Gallo is a conflict expert, a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review, and author of the book Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone (Even Difficult People). She speaks with host Morra...
Feb 01, 2023•39 min•Season 8Ep. 4
Most offices are rife with sports metaphors, from hitting the target to being a team player. There’s a lot we can learn from athletes and those who train them about performance and mental health. And high-profile athletes from Michael Phelps to Simone Biles have contributed to the broader conversation around mental health in recent years due to their openness about their struggles. In this episode, we speak with performance psychologist Alex Auerbach, who works with the Toronto Raptors, about ho...
Jan 25, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 8Ep. 3
There are a lot of challenges in our lives that can help us achieve. And then there is the reality that there ARE going to be times that are traumatic, tragic, sad. We face depression, death, and grief - because we are human. Today we have two guests who face those things boldly. First, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Susan David talks about the tyranny of positivity and how it seeps into the workplace. Then, listener Jessie Lytton speaks with Morra about her journey as a caretaker for a ter...
Jan 18, 2023•57 min•Season 8Ep. 2
People who end up in leadership positions at huge companies are usually overachievers: they’ve succeeded in school, internships, early career jobs, and as managers and leaders. But all that success can also hide a whole lot of feelings that we push aside. Newton Cheng, Director of Health and Performance at Google, spent a year facing those challenges head on. The world champion powerlifter took mental health leave from the company, a phrase he feels strongly about. And it let him interrogate all...
Jan 11, 2023•44 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Harley Finkelstein is president of Shopify, the e-commerce platform that has processed over 1 billion orders. For years, Harley’s anxiety troubled him but also gave him tremendous drive and energy. He realized that anxiety could actually be an advantage, and today he manages his anxiety through therapy, daily meditation, exercise, breathwork, and scheduling that protects his personal time. His deep self-awareness has enabled him to identify the tools he needs to be an effective leader and to kee...
Jan 04, 2023•37 min•Season 7Ep. 17
Much about mental health care in this country is pretty broken. In her role at President of Behavioral Health and Executive Vice President at CVS Health, Cara McNulty is working to help fix that broken system. At America’s fourth largest company, Cara has a platform to implement new policy and change minds. She also brings her own personal story that impacts her daily work, sharing her journey with post-partum anxiety with host Morra Aarons-Mele. The Anxious Achiever returns in January with more...
Dec 21, 2022•44 min•Season 7Ep. 16
Work can be stressful and downright anxiety-inducing; but we also know that bit of anxiety that comes from bumping up against a deadline or having to give a big presentation to the board can spark positive energy and creativity. Bonnie Hayden Cheng, associate professor at HKU Business School, looks at the ways in which our jobs can create anxiety, and shares science-backed guidance on how to get the best out of your anxiety. The Anxious Achiever is nominated for a Signal Award. Head to their web...
Dec 14, 2022•41 min•Season 7Ep. 15
Being intentional about how we spend our time and how we treat others is sometimes easier said than done. But it’s an essential piece of how we keep workers and workplaces mentally healthy in today’s increasingly chaotic and stressful environment. In this episode, we speak with Jacqui Brassey, a Director of Research Science at McKinsey, on what she’s discovered about toxic workplaces, anxiety, and how to combat both. Plus, we check in with Vivek Bapat of SAP about what he’s learned as a leader a...
Dec 07, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 14
It’s the time of year when so many young adults and their parents are thinking about a major achievement in young life - getting into college. It’s easy for overachieving parents to put that stress on their kids to go to the perfect school. But the process comes with such a roller coaster of emotions, not just about self-worth but also the value of education and the cost of that education today. Host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with New York Times Money Columnist Ron Lieber about the mental health ...
Nov 30, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 13
For all the negative stuff that social media and our online world can put out there - a lot of which we talk about in this show - there are also some pretty wonderful things. Being online can help us build community, which is something Amanda Morin spends a lot of time and energy on. She’s a mission-driven author, speaker, and advocate for issues around neurodiversity. She speaks with Morra Aarons-Mele about her own anxiety, struggles, and decision to try entrepreneurism.
Nov 23, 2022•42 min•Season 7Ep. 12
Many high performers go through their working lives struggling with perfectionism and not even realizing it - or not understanding why they have such a need to achieve. In this episode, we continue the conversation around the roots of perfectionism, how to know if it is a problem, and what we can do about it. Host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with licensed psychologist Thomas Greenspon about the research around perfectionism and how it starts when we are young. Then we hear from Eleanor Beaton, an a...
Nov 16, 2022•55 min•Season 7Ep. 11
Emi Nietfeld is one of those people who looks great on paper. Raised in tumultuous circumstances and facing mental health challenges in her early teens, she went on to get into Harvard and work at Google. Now as an adult, she’s an author and has faced the unhealthy reasons behind her perfectionism. She shares her story about overachievement, overexercise, and overwork as a method of control and emotional survival, and what she hopes our society can learn about relying too much on personal excell...
Nov 09, 2022•41 min•Season 7Ep. 10
Grief is something we’ll all experience in our adult lives, and we all experience it differently. But it’s not something the modern workplace is really built to deal with well. How do we move beyond our current system -- which often involves clear cut bereavement days but not much else? Rebecca Soffer is the author of The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience. She talks about how to use storytelling and helpful conversations as a way for ...
Nov 02, 2022•42 min•Season 7Ep. 9
Aaron Dignan is founder of The Ready - an organizational transformation and coaching practice. He focuses on how to prioritize adaptivity and autonomy over efficiency and control - which you can pretty quickly extrapolate into upsides for mental health of workers and leaders. He’s also the author of the book Brave New Work - and cohost of the podcast of the same name. Host Morra Aarons Mele speaks with him about he helps organizations and individuals realize they need to change, and how he guide...
Oct 26, 2022•45 min•Season 7Ep. 8
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has never shied away from talking about emotions, and their impact on our health. On his own podcast he brings forth topics like loneliness, the pressure of achievement, meditation and stress reduction, facing crisis when everyone wants you to stay positive, and the big questions like, what is happiness. And as mental health has come into the foreground… regulators and health leaders are also thinking about the best practices to recommend. That includes the Surgeo...
Oct 20, 2022•31 min•Season 7Ep. 7
We’re told again and again in the business world that the way to be successful is to follow your passion and to be authentic. Jill Smokler, the founder of the infamous mom blog Scary Mommy, achieved entrepreneurial success doing just that. But she has also faced some darker times, especially after selling her company. She speaks with host Morra Aarons-Mele about how your mental health can suffer when you achieve your dreams, and where she is today.
Oct 12, 2022•38 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Many people who are neurodivergent have to figure out a way to succeed outside the rules and regulations of traditional institutions. Christopher Lochhead, startup advisor, podcast host, and author, is one such person. Growing up with dyslexia, he found his way in the world and now encourages others to find their different, as the way to find their superpower.
Oct 05, 2022•41 min•Season 7Ep. 5
Every wonder what your manager or HR leader is really thinking? In this episode, host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with Vice Media’s Chief People Officer Daisy Auger-Dominquez about mental health, the great resignation, burnout and more. We’ll hear what worries her most right now for workers, managers, and HR leaders, and what she hopes for the future.
Sep 28, 2022•43 min•Season 7Ep. 4
