My guest today is Morra Aarons-Mele. As an “extremely anxious overachiever,” Morra Aarons-Mele is passionate about helping leaders understand what their anxiety is telling them, and how they can put this knowledge to work. She hosts the podcast The Anxious Achiever, is the author of the books The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There When You’d Rather Stay Home, and is the founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online, which she sold in 2021. Her work has appeared in media outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review and she recently won the media award for Mental Health America.
“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.” – Morra Aarons-Mele
My guest today is Morra Aarons-Mele. As an “extremely anxious overachiever,” Morra Aarons-Mele is passionate about helping leaders understand what their anxiety is telling them, and how they can put this knowledge to work. She hosts the podcast The Anxious Achiever, is the author of the books The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom: How to Get Out There When You’d Rather Stay Home, and is the founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online, which she sold in 2021. Her work has appeared in media outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review and she recently won the media award for Mental Health America.
“Anxiety is normal. The way we hide it is not. Although so much has been done (rightly) to promote diversity and wellness at work, there’s a giant hole in the understanding of how mental health plays into not just our daily grind, but the very trajectory of success. We’re all in desperate need for better models of leadership - especially in a society that tell us mental health challenges like anxiety and depression are weaknesses.” Vist Morra’s website at: https://morraam.com
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