The Anxious Achiever

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...

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, w...

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 n...

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 star...

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 st...

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 Johnso...

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 o...

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 episod...

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...

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 m...

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 dee...

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 wi...

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 t...

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, an...

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. H...

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...

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 rese...

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 em...

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 Buil...

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 speak...

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...

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 w...

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.

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.

Before many others, podcast host and author Gretchen Rubin found a way to create her own brand, run a remote company, and think carefully about mental health and work. She shares a helpful framework for understanding how expectations shape your actions and reactions, whether you suffer from a diagnosable mental health condition or not. Host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks to Rubin about her writing, her...