Mind Matters: Be Your Own Best Friend: Tools to Manage Anxiety, Overwhelm, and the Pressure to be Perfect

Transcript

Stuart Crainer:

Hello, I’m Stuart Crainer, co-founder of Thinkers50. Welcome to this special series of webinars Thinkers50 is presenting in partnership with Silicon Guild. During May, we will be highlighting Mind Matters to mark Mental Health Awareness Month. We have four great webinars lined up on Tuesdays throughout the month, with some fantastic speakers. The webinars will be moderated by Morra Aarons-Mele, author of The Anxious Achiever and host of The Anxious Achiever podcast. No one is better equipped to guide us through the many complex issues and global best practice in workplace mental health. We had a great session last week to kick things off with Rita McGrath, Poornima Luthra, and Andrew Barnes. It is now available to watch on YouTube.

Today, Morra is joined by three more brilliant speakers. We have Sanyin Siang. Sanyin is a professor at Duke University where she leads the Coach K Leadership and Ethics Center. She writes a column for the MIT Sloan Management Review and is the author of The Launch Book. Most importantly, she’s also a Thinkers50 award winner. Along with Sanyin, we have Lenny Mendonca. Lenny is a director emeritus from the Washington and San Francisco offices of McKinsey & Co. Among other things, Lenny lectures on inequality at Stanford, was chair of Children Now, co-chair of California Forward, and founder and chair of Fuse Corps. Most importantly, he and his wife are the founders and owners of the Half Moon Brewing Company and the Mavericks Beer Company. And finally, but not least, we are joined by Julie Lythcott-Haims. Julie is the author of How to Raise an Adult; her memoir, Real American, and Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. She’s on the Palo Alto City Council. She’s a writer, speaker, teacher, mentor, and activist.

So welcome, everyone joining from throughout the world. Please let us know where you’re joining from and share your queries, thoughts, insights and observations at any time during the session. Our title today is Be Your Own Best Friend: Tools to Manage Anxiety and the Pressure to Be Perfect. There’s a lot to talk about, so over to you Morra.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Thanks, Stuart. I am so thrilled to be back with you all. I am joining you all from a WeWork in London. The noise situation is not ideal, but because this session is about being kind to yourself, I’m just going to go with it. I actually would love you to go with me on one more thing. I want to do an experiment before we dive in here. So, if you’re willing to go on this experiment with me, I would like you to close your eyes. This is inspired by a wonderful meditation on gratitude I did this morning, from a man named Pascal Auclair. I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to think about two qualities about yourself that you like or admire. Now, this could be a quality like, I make a mean coffee cake, or a wonderful coffee, or it could be something big like, I’m solving world peace. I don’t care.

Think about two qualities that you like about yourself, and really see them. See them in your mind. And now, I want you to think about two things you’re grateful for. Again, these could be small things, like an amazing cup of coffee you had this morning, or it could be something big and full of love, two things that you’re grateful for. And just hold that for a minute. Those two simple questions are tools that I use when I’m feeling like the world is hard, things are uncertain, and I’m not sure I’m up to the task. That’s what today’s session is about, and we have amazing people to share their stories, their tools, and their own personal battles with anxiety, mental health, perfectionism, inner critic, you name it.

I wrote a book called The Anxious Achiever, and I work with people who hold themselves to very high standards. It’s funny, I did a poll on LinkedIn and 87% of you said that you hold yourself to higher expectations than you hold other people. I get it, but again, do we have to do that? Do we have to do that? So we’re going to talk about that today. We’re going to talk about being practical, keeping that drive for success, which we know and love in ourselves, but being a better friend to ourselves as well. And audience, this is your session. As Stuart said, jump in, tell us where you’re from, ask the panel questions, lend us a comment. I promise I will get to you, we’re going to have some remarks from our speakers and then a dialogue. And I’m going to kick it over to Sanyin to start us off.

Sanyin Siang:

Oh, Morra, first of all, thank you for the exercise. I feel myself tearing up because there’s all these memories that are just images that are flooding in.

Sanyin Siang:

First of all,, it’s a joy to be here, and I mean that, joy to be here with friends who I admire and respect, and in a session that is formed by two communities, Silicon Guild and Thinkers50, that I’m so honoured and proud to be a part of. So I did say, on my LinkedIn when we’re talking about this session, that we’re going to get real. So, I’ll start off in my remarks with a personal… I’ll get personal, and I’ll talk about three perspectives that were helpful for me that I hope will be helpful for those who are listening, and then conclude with something that’s also personal and meaningful.

So for those who see me, I’m usually a butterflies, unicorn, and rainbows type of person. However, none of us is immune to anxiousness, to sadness and last spring, I was feeling really sad and having some not-so-great thoughts. And I talked to my husband about it, and Chad, who’s a physician, said, “Sanyin, so much of this is also neurochemistry. So, let’s get you some help.” So I started seeing a therapist, and what that insight was so helpful for was, one, every one of us face this, and we all need help, but where there’s help available to be able to accept it, because that’s our gift to ourselves. And the therapist is wonderful, she asked questions. She helped me unpack a lot of things, because there was really no reason for me to be sad, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be sad.

In the unpacking, we landed on one key thing, which is this feeling that I didn’t feel like I was worthy. I was struggling with this idea of mattering, and I was so focused on my deficiencies that I was overlooking whatever proficiencies that were out there. And as we were unpacking that, I realised, “Oh, that ties with my superpower’s work, because the entire idea of superpowers is what makes us extraordinary to everyone else is also one of our biggest blind spots, because we don’t value… It’s our normal, so we don’t value what comes easily to us.” And that extraordinariness may not only be in things that are achievement related, but it’s also the ability to be curious, the ability to bring joy capital, and we need a bigger way of seeing the full range of value or worth.

The thing is, we all have that value. We all have that worth, because we’re human beings. And so we need others to help see ourselves clearly, then we can also help others see the extraordinariness in them. So that’s one, recognize, accept. What if instead of saying, “Oh, what do I bring to the table?” We flip it, and we say, “I have something to contribute. Let’s discover what that is. And others have something to contribute because they’re human, and they have experiences. Let’s discover what that is.” And I landed on the second thing, which is this idea of withness, and that’s the underlying theme, is in order to cultivate, discover our differentiating contributions, to make the biggest possible difference in the world and to become our best selves, it’s actually with others. Joy is infectious. So let’s be infected by other people’s joy. We have blind spots. We have blind spots on what makes us good. We have blind spots on what makes us where we can be better. Let’s invite others in, and then conversely, we can be that person that helps others see they’re extraordinary.

So let’s take this idea of imposter syndrome, which I love talking about because at its heart it’s this feeling of belonging and oh, boy, I get imposter syndrome in spades. Look, Thinkers50 and Silicon Guild, I’m surrounded by the most brilliant people in the world. So yeah, when I enter into these meetings, I’m going to be questioning my intelligence. I’m in awe of all of you. I can see you’re extraordinary. I’m like, “Ugh, what do I contribute?” But let’s flip that around. Well, one is, I realised when you’re thinking about that gratefulness exercise, I was thinking, I know I can bring heart and we don’t have to compete on heart. Everyone can maximise on heart and there will still be an abundance. I bring heart. I know that. That’s what I hold on to, and then the second thing is, recognize other people may be feeling imposters.

So the best way to minimise, I found, imposter syndrome for myself is to minimise it for others. Shout out their contributions, shout how amazing they are. And then the third aspect that helped me on this journey, and it is a journey, because it’s not like suddenly, oh, I’ve arrived. I’m happy all the time. It’s a journey. The third aspect is the sense of awe. So I’ve been reading up on Paul Keltner and Jonathan Haidt’s work on awe, and then there’s a British author named Katherine Mays, that I’m just recently introduced to, and her work is on enchantment. And I think, if you look in my office, there’s plants. I love gardening because I think when we tend to things, first of all, gardeners have faith in the future because when we plant something we don’t see its blossom until much, much later. And when we tend to something, we learn to love it, and maybe we not only love what we tend to, but we learn to love what we tend to.

When I think about that, there’s so many moments of wonder in all around us, and we’re in a world where we are, talking to Martin Lindstrom, he was like, “Why are we doing this all the time when there’s this?” And so being infused with that sense of awe and wonder, and there are all moments all around us. And then finally, when I think about all those things, instead of striving for perfection, what if we strive for mending? And here’s what I mean by that. In 2020, the last trip we took before 2020, one of the last trips, was a trip to Asheville. And there my family made a beautiful – it’s crooked and everything, but I think it’s beautiful – little bowl. And it meant so much to us during the pandemic because I look at that and I think, “Oh, we’re going to go back to Asheville again. Someday this is going to be over and we can go travel again.” And one day, my 7-year-old son broke the bowl, and I was just devastated, and he felt terrible.

All right, so let’s search for how we can mend the bowl. And I found this Japanese art of kintsugi, which is broken bowls mended with gold and it’s actually an art form. So we did just that. And the thing with  kintsugi is, once it’s mended, it’s mended towards the more beautiful. So instead of trying to protect ourselves from breakage, because it will inevitably happen because we’re human, and life is messy and life is hard, what if we focus our energies on becoming master menders? Except in our life, instead of mending it with gold – by the way, this is craft gold, but in real kintsugi it’s real gold – instead of mending our lives with gold, we’re mending it with moments of awe, friendships, and a deep belief and acceptance of our extraordinariness because we’re human.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

That’s so beautiful in so many ways. It’s my turn to tear up. I’m going to ask you a question that I ask a lot of extraordinary leaders, which is, after they’ve gone through a period of pain, of learning, maybe in therapy, of introspection, how did that experience, or did it, change how you lead?

Sanyin Siang:

Well, to lead others, we have to have the right relationship with ourselves. We have to lead ourselves first. And that acceptance of one’s flaws… I play my mistakes over and over in my head. I’m learning how to be better at not doing that, but I still do. I remember something from when I was age seven and think, “Oh, why was I such an idiot?” That was years and years ago, but we end up in that moment. I think being able to accept that and say… I work with Coach K and Coach K is always saying, “Next play, do you want to look in the rear-view mirror all the time? Next play.” Having those mantras, having the advice of, these are some amazing mentors right behind me. By the way, the way I have my office set up, there are days when I want to quit, and I’m so mad, and I turn around, I’ll be like, “What would Marshall say? What would Frances say, right?” Having conversations with these amazing… It’s withness all the time. But having that better relationship with myself can help make us even more compassionate when dealing with our teammates.

When we help ourselves flourish, we help our teammates flourish. And by the way, if we want to be a quality human person, if we want to become our best selves, the best thing we can do is surround ourselves with people who want to see us flourish. So that unpacking, that compassion towards ourselves, I think it can help us be even more compassionate towards others and that’s what the world needs.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Thank you so much. Lenny, over to you.

Lenny Mendonca:

Thank you Morra and thank you Sanyin for kicking us off with those wonderful thoughts, get us in the right mindset here. So I will start with a disclaimer that I am far from an expert on this topic and my perspective is from an N of one, from my own personal experience, having had challenges with that in the past. And let me take you back to a little over four years ago, at the beginning, the early days of COVID. And Governor Newsom in California sent out a press release that I had resigned as his chief economic and business advisor to spend more time with my family and my local businesses. And when you send out a press release on Friday afternoon, it usually means you’re trying to bury it, and that while that statement may have technically been true, something else must have been going on. Most people who knew me assumed that I had gotten in an argument or something, and I had gotten fired or resigned, and I didn’t respond to any request for what was going on for several weeks.

Well, what was going on was something very different. I had had a panic attack a few weeks before and spent the night in the hospital, and the next day after that press, I voluntarily got checked into the involuntary psychiatric ward at Stanford Hospital for 10 days for severe depression. I had not been sleeping, not eating very much and was having horrible thoughts about what was going on in the world and how it was going to end. And that was clearly not me, but I didn’t know what was going on because nothing like that had ever happened to me or anyone that I knew. Fortunately, I had a very attentive wife, and children, and friends who picked me up and said, “We’re going to the hospital and you’re going to check yourself in.” I also was fortunate to be able to have the healthcare coverage and access to Stanford University within driving distance, and those are all real privileges. And I got the kind of care I needed and 10 days later I checked out and was on the path to recovery.

Looking back, I needed that intervention. It wasn’t something that I was going to ever be able to handle myself. I was spiralling into a view of what was going on with me and the world that was not going to end well, but it took others paying attention to help me get the kind of help that I needed. And I’m really grateful for that. It was a few months of recovery, but there were really three things that helped me through that that I try and do today. One was, get enough sleep. It sounds so basic, but many of us, including me, was in an all-encompassing work environment where it was hard to sleep because it was always something else you could be doing and it was hard to clear your mind when you’re getting ready to go to sleep. And so I was not sleeping very well. That’s not a problem today.

Secondly, I made a particular point of getting out daily and exercising outside, even in crappy weather. So both the getting a little heart movement happening and being out in nature really is, was for me, it continues to be something, that helps clear my head and start thinking about other things other than what was right in front of you. And the final thing, and again, this was at the encouragement of my wife and my daughters, I decided to tell my story and I wrote an opinion piece on it in CalMatters. And I’ve probably written a hundred opinion pieces in my life, and I got an order of magnitude more response to this one than anything else I’ve ever written. And a lot of it was from people I didn’t know who reached out and said, “Thank you for talking about this,” and wanted to tell me their story.

I now will make, if anyone asks to come talk about the topic, and it’s often at business settings or government settings where people want to have an excuse to have a prop, to have someone else talk about the topic so that they can talk about it, I do that. And the combination of being able to sleep, getting out and getting exercise, and then being open and honest about my own challenge on this front, is really helpful to me. I talked about in the piece that I wrote that I, a few years earlier, had broken my leg riding a bike and you can’t hide when you’ve got a broken leg. And people see you, they ask you, “What happened?” Well, if you have a mental health challenge, people don’t necessarily see it and you have to talk about it in a way that helps people understand the issue because it’s just as pronounced as when I broke my leg, and I honestly try and talk about it as though it’s the same thing.

I broke my leg, it was painful, I had a cast on, had to do rehab, had to get back in shape again, but eventually I was walking and riding a bike again. The same thing with the mental health challenge. You have to take care of it, do the rehab, recover and it will get better. So that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Thanks Lenny. I’m going to ask you a question from the audience, Michael’s question, but I’ve interviewed you. I know a little bit about your origin story. I know that you have been an incredibly high achiever in high pressure situations your whole career. As you recovered from your depression, did you reflect on that lifetime of achieving and pushing and the impact it had on your mental health? Did you feel a connection there or no?

Lenny Mendonca:

It’s impossible for me to disaggregate the proximate cause of what happened. It’s possible, as you say, more that it was an accumulation of 30 years of operating at a hundred miles an hour. But I think it’s as likely that it was the circumstances of COVID that did it, where both the external circumstances and the job I was doing made me feel like this was so bad, and we’d never seen anything like it. And I tend to be one of those  “everything has a solution“ problem-solving types, and I couldn’t see a solution to this. It was bad and it was going to get worse, and I think that’s as much of what did it. And when I, in that circumstance, thought the way to solve it was to dive deeper into it so you can understand it more and figure out something, and that just meant my mind was working all the time and I wasn’t sleeping. So, I don’t know, is the honest answer. It’s possible, but the proximate cause is as likely to have been those circumstances.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Yeah, and that’s the hard thing is sometimes we never know, right, when we go into mental illness. I’ve got comments from Rita and comments from Tina, thank you so much for sharing your story to make this just a typical conversation to normalise mental health. So Michael asked a question and anyone can jump in, and then I’m going to hand it over to you Julie. Anyone who’s been through a dark depression can relate to this question. How do you tell yourself it’s going to be okay when things don’t feel okay? Lenny, I don’t know if you have any insight on that.

Lenny Mendonca:

I do. From my personal experience, I don’t know whether this is extensible, but to me, when I was in that darkest space, there was no way I ever thought it was going to get better. And it was, this is going to end badly for me and for others, and it was an elevator going down and I couldn’t ever see it coming back up. And that’s where the people around me were crucial because I couldn’t see it and they knew that wasn’t me. And so the answer to how I dealt with it was someone else helped and got me the help I needed, because I could not do it by myself, and to think that I could was honestly arrogant and selfish. And that’s what they told me, it was like, “No, you need help. I don’t care. You’re going to go and if you don’t go, we’re going to make you go. So choose your poison.” And to me that was the intervention that was absolutely necessary because there was no way for myself I could flip where I was at that moment in time.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Either of you want to jump in on that.

Sanyin Siang:

I think it’s this idea of belief. In the moment, it feels terrible and there’s no end in sight, like Lenny says. And the power of friendships and those around you, we can’t do it alone. But you also have to hold on to say, “Okay, let’s…” If you believe it won’t get better, you’re very lost. But if you say, “I may not feel it now, but I believe it will get better.” Now, I can say, it’s not going to get better and it’s going to stay better. You’re going to be like this because that’s life, but it will go up again. You have to believe that. And it’s that belief, surrounded by others, that can get you over to the next hour, it can be hour by hour, to the next 24 hours or to the next week, but you have to believe it will get better.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

I’ll just add, can I add that I think Morra’s start for this conversation with gratitude… Gratitude has become my superpower and I know it’s available to all of us as a superpower. The more minute we can be about our gratitude, not “I’m grateful for my health” but “I’m grateful that I was able to floss my teeth this morning because my dentist tells me that’s so important and I can see the benefits.” The more specific we can be about gratitude, the more it helps us reframe that, first of all, there are good things in my life. I am more in charge than I may feel right now. It grounds us back to that microunit of what’s going on in our own lives, rather than it catastrophizing, and I have found it to be a wonderful way to reset when I’m feeling really low.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Julie, I love that. I want to just echo what you said and what Sanyin said about going small. If you think you’re not going to be okay, and again, I’m sorry, I’m not giving medical advice here, this is all personal, minute by minute, bird by bird, and making it very focused. I’m so grateful that I can floss my teeth. And Michael, the last thing I’ll share is I have bipolar disorder, and so for me when I think things are so dark, it’s very scary because it comes back and my husband will always give me evidence that I’ve dug out before and I will dig out this time.

I went 13 years without a major depression, and when I was in one a couple years ago, he said, “You went 13 years before, you did it. Before that you went six years, you’re going to do it again. You can do it.” And so again, having someone else in your life who can be there and give you evidence, is so important. We have so many great questions coming in, I’m going to get to them, but I need to give Julie the mic because she’s the best and I think has been on my podcast more than any other person.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Oh my gosh, wow. I don’t know if that should make me anxious or grateful.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Up to you.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Thank you, Morra, for inviting me. Appreciate it. Always love doing anything with our Silicon Guild and also Thinkers50, grateful to everybody who’s decided to make us a part of their diet of content. I want to thank Sanyin and Lenny for being so open and vulnerable, and really appreciate what came from both of them. Let’s see, briefly, I am Julie Lythcott-Haims, 56 years old, she/they pronouns, I’m black and biracial. And I grew up in white places with a black dad and a white mom, and that means, given my age, that I grew up knowing something was wrong with my family and probably wrong with me. I got the message from the earliest years that we were problematic, and I think it instilled in me this deep sense of, we are transgressive. Something’s wrong with us in the eyes of others, not all others, but enough others to make me worried and afraid. And just as Sanyin said, if you have imposter syndrome, you want to shout it out in others.

I think I became that person who felt so problematic, so unseen, so not valid in my origin story, that I have become that person professionally who is seeking to help anyone I interact with know that they matter, they’re seen, they’re valued. It has become my work. I did that work as a Stanford dean, working with undergraduates, And actually, since we have Sanyin in here, I have to put in a shout-out for Stanford women’s basketball because I know she’s worked with Coach K. I was consulting with the Stanford women’s basketball team this past season on how do you instil this sense of mattering within the team? How do you focus on helping others feel they matter? And this was Coach VanDerveer’s year of beating Coach K’s record for winningest NCAA basketball coach, so I have to put a shout-out for Stanford. Go Stanford.

Okay, so Morra has me on her podcast, The Anxious Achiever, and I’m not quite sure why because I’m not anxious, but I know I’m competitive. So we start to talk about my competitive nature. I’ve been a corporate lawyer, I’m now an elected official here in Palo Alto. I’m very Type A, win, let’s go. And we’re starting to unpack where that comes from, and she’s talking to me about self-care. And people talk about self-care, what’s your method of self-care? And I’m like, “Don’t ask me about bubble baths. I do not take bubble baths. No chocolate, I do not need chocolate. I need games. I do games for fun. I do competitive puzzles for fun.”

Okay, so Morra starts unpacking. Well, tell me more. I’m like, “Well, I got this life partner, Dan, of 36 years. And back in the day it was backgammon and Scrabble, and then the New York Times crossword and we’d do it in the paper. And often he would beat me, but I was always trying to finish first. And he’s not that competitive. He doesn’t seem to care, but I care.” And now of course there’s Wordle, and Quordle, and Octordle, and Globle, and… My phone, every night I get on this phone and I’m like, “Do the puzzles. Do the puzzles. Do the puzzles.” New York Times crossword, it used to just be paper, but now you can do it online and it sends you this chime. It tells you you did it and it’s correct and I just get filled with, yes. Okay, so even when I get home late at night, like 12:00, 1:00, I go to my puzzles. It’s like I don’t complete the day. That’s my time, me time. Do some competitive word-related puzzles, geography puzzles, and I’ll stay up super late just to get that done.

So Morra’s asking me, in this realm of self-care, why do you do these games? Why are you so competitive? And I, in conversation with Morra, began to realise, for the first time, that maybe I’m so into games because in my family where I was the youngest of many and the only one who was mixed… I was so different, I was young. The language of love in my family was winning. So we played poker. When you won a hand, I felt loved. When you had a verbal repartee with somebody, when you had an argument, and won, I felt loved. And certainly every jigsaw puzzle, every crossword puzzle, Boggle, if I won, it infused in me this sense of being loved.

So I have this epiphany with Morra on a freaking podcast. I’m trying not to cry, right? Like, oh my god, I do these puzzles because I feel loved when I win. How scary is that? Enter this proposition of try a puzzle, you might feel loved but you might not, like my god. To win is to feel loved. To not win, therefore, is to feel not loved. I had this aha with Morra. We hang up the podcast, I go running out of my little office here, back into the house. I find Dan and I’m like, “Dan, I’ve learned that I need to win. The drive in me to beat you at these New York Times crosswords, where you win four out of seven times, maybe five out of seven times a week, my drive is because I feel loved when I win.” And my beloved looks at me, and he smiles so gently, and he cocks his head and he says, “So when I win, if I immediately say, ‘I love you,’ will that be enough?” And I scanned myself for my feelings and I said, “Yes,” and that’s exactly what happens now.

He still beats me four out of seven times, but every single time when the chime goes off and The New York Times… Dan beat me, he looks across the table and he says, “I love you.” And I’m like, “Thanks,” and I keep going because I’m still trying to finish, but I’m feeling it. Thanks, thanks. And that was profound. So my lessons here are, be curious about what you need and why. Whatever it is, your equivalent of the bubble bath, or the chocolate, or the crossword, be curious about where that need comes from deep inside you. It’s there for a reason. And then third, know with certainty that everybody has their thing or things. Whatever it is, we all have these core building blocks within us that have just constructed the human we are now, and if we can be curious about what someone else desperately needs and how we might be able to offer it without much cause to ourselves in the moment, then we are not only showing up for others and treating them as we want to be treated, but we’re being extraordinarily kind.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Julie, you also have helped a lot of young people and their parents separate from almost a shared investment in winning that is so powerful in your role as dean of undergraduates, dean of freshmen, at Stanford. And I guess my question for you is, do leaders need to love themselves and feel like they matter? Do parents need to love themselves and feel like they matter before they can do the work that you do, which is letting other people know how much they matter? What is that process and what are your thoughts?

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

First of all, let me be clear, I was dean of freshmen a long time ago. I left 12 years ago, not currently there.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

That’s right, but your first book-

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Yes, absolutely. How to Raise an Adult.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

… reflected on that time, as did your second.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

… How to Raise an Adult. Yeah, I’m careful not to attach brands to me that are no longer brands that I’m affiliated with, although I love Stanford dearly as an alum. Okay, do leaders and parents have to love themselves first before they can help, before they can really serve employees, serve colleagues, serve kids? I’m going to say, no, because how devastating would it be if the answer is yes, because …

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Right, because it’s really hard for most of us.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

What I am going to say is, it sure helps you to show up in a way where you can see and support another human in their growth without being attached to their outcomes they achieve. The micromanaging leader is terribly insecure, feels so insecure, they have to constantly look over everyone else’s shoulder, because they need you to be perfect, because how you behave reflects back on them, because of their own insecurity. So same with parenting, right? I need you to get that A so my friends will feel good about me, right? So when we do the work as a parent, as a leader, on ourselves to become that self-loving person who can accept our journey, and our growth, and all of that, then it’s far easier for us to successfully lead and parent. And then I think we can really resonate at that much higher level of leadership and parenting.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Go for it.

Sanyin Siang:

Morra, you and I have talked about this idea that sometimes when we’re trying to help others, we’re actually trying to help younger versions of ourselves. And also, when we write books, or write articles, or do podcasts, it’s not that we are experts, but we’re trying to help solve problems that we’re trying to solve for ourselves. We’re seeking answers and it’s through those interactions that we can think about those things. So when we love others, when we care for others, when we’re compassionate towards others, that actually flips around. I think that’s an angle towards a way of seeing ourselves and becoming more compassionate for ourselves. So I agree with Julie, we don’t have to love ourselves first, but by learning to love ourselves, we can actually be even more effective, right?

Julie, your story, Lenny and Julie, both of your stories are so moving. And Morra, I didn’t know that about you, about the bipolar. So the courage to share that, one, is for everyone who’s listening, when we feel anxiety, or we feel anxious, or when life is good but we feel sad, sometimes we default to thinking we shouldn’t feel this way and it’s that shouldn’t that makes us feel worse. So just not go there. Two, Julie, in your story about the winning, I think a lot of times we have this feeling of not enough. We need that constant validation to prove to ourselves that we are enough, but it’s never going to come because it’s never enough if we go that angle. And so I wanted to challenge listeners out there with this idea that you are enough. That’s something my friend, Sue Gordon, always says, “You have to believe you’re enough. You have to believe that your team is enough and they have to believe it too.”

Our children, same thing. They have to believe it too. And then the third is, I think all of us here we are in the roles that we’re in because we want to help others, because in a way, maybe that’s how we save ourselves, right? But we have to also learn, something I learned in therapy is, we’re not always responsible and to alleviate that sense of responsibility because decisions are not always within our control. For our kids, our kids are the decision makers of their own lives. We can help guide, but every person is a decision maker. They own the decisions in their lives. We can help, we can foster the environment and be there, but we also have to accept we’re not responsible for everyone else. We can’t be, for all the good or all the bad that happens in their lives. And that’s a really hard thing because we all want that element of control, right? So as you were all talking, those were some of the thoughts that come to mind.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Control is a big one. Lenny, I have a question for you, and actually it’s two questions, and I’m going to start with Lenny, but either of you can dive in. And Lenny, I remember when I interviewed you, I asked you if your 35-year-old self would’ve been out there telling his depression story when you were ascending in your career. And you said, “I probably not, maybe I wouldn’t have been able to and reach the levels.” And I thought that that was probably very true and a very honest thing to say that we can all relate to.

There’s a question from Indira. How can leaders and managers create a work environment that reduces the pressure to be perfect and supports mental well-being? And then I’m going to throw in a question from Lisen as well, and you can answer whichever one and we’ll go from there. Lenny, thanks for your vulnerability and authenticity. I coach and advise a number of leaders, nearly all men, who are struggling. They worry if they reveal their truth, they won’t be able to continue to lead, others will think they’re weak. As more of us speak our truth, we normalise the reality that mental challenges are part of being human, but do you have advice?

Lenny Mendonca:

So I think the answer to your first question was the same as you asked me before. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to. I think that’s partly where I was in my own head, but also partly the environment that we are in, in today’s world versus when we were in, almost 30 years ago. I do think it is much more understandable, acceptable, and particularly for younger people, to be honest and open about what they’re feeling, and including in complicated high-stress work environments. And I think that’s actually really, really helpful, and relates to my advice on your second question around how do you help create an environment. It’s honestly why, when I speak to business groups, what they want, they want to have that open and honest conversation among themselves, but many leaders are not comfortable framing that topic or helping set it up with personal stories. And so I get asked to do it because then I’m the prop that tells my personal story and then everybody else thinks it’s okay to do it, and I think that’s fine.

I’m happy to do that, but what leaders can do is help create that space. Everyone is wrestling with something at that moment in time, some more pronounced and severe than others. And being able to understand that if you don’t have your mental game on, you’re not going to have your work game on. And so treating it as though you’re Coach K, Sanyin, and someone’s hurt, they’re not going to be able to play at the top of their game. It’s the same thing with mental health. Just treat it as though it were another part of who you are and have that kind of conversation. I am continually amazed about how open people are willing to be, to talk about it if they’re given the ability to do it. And even more so in a work setting where there is the pressure to be, no, I’m on my top of my game all the time, when that’s just not true. And to be able to comment and talk about that, actually helps not just the team but that individual perform better as a result of feeling like they can tell what’s really going on.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

There’s a wonderful comment from Eric who says, “During the pandemic, I once heard someone say that leaders are dealers of hope in tough times.” I think that’s really beautiful. Julie, Sanyin, do you want to dive in on anything? I can go to our next question. I’m also curious on the role of gender in talking about this stuff, and the role of talking about anxieties and fears… Yeah, go for it.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Can I just say something on the story… to Lenny’s point, and it’s so powerful when a guy tells stories. I think we’re – to Morra’s teeing up the notion of gender – I think we are expected to tell stories and maybe be less analytical, less financial savvy, less… Right, we’re supposed to be more soft and more story-like as women, and men are supposed to be the opposite, and of course none of it’s inherently true about any of us, I think. But I want to say that when I first wrote How to Raise an Adult on the harm of micromanagey-helicopter parenting, I thought I needed to persuade audiences with data from psychologists about how this was harming kids. And from the employment realm, they’re underprepared for work. And so I thought that looking into the research in the area and presenting, making the case, but I quickly learned that of course humans learn best from stories.

They relate through stories, they remember stories. And so I started telling my own stumbles as a parent, just the ways in which I have learned the very lessons I’m trying to teach y’all. And so I, with my kid’s permission, just became the storyteller in my hour-long keynote, no slides. Story, story, story, story, story, and then try to distil the advice out. And people feel so relieved that the so-called expert has screwed up and can talk about it. My stories are funny, and they’re poignant, and they’re cringey, and I have never connected so powerfully before with folks, than when I have been willing to put my vulnerability out there and say, “Look, we’re all still here. I just told you that and I’m still here. It did not crush the soul out of me to share that story with you. Now maybe you can be more attuned to the story within you and not feel judged, but feel seen and supported.”

We are all in this together. And one of my favourite phrases in that regard is Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home,” and I try to take that approach. Come on, let’s walk each other home. I am with you. I’m no different than you, and we can learn from each other through our storytelling.

Sanyin Siang:

Wow. I love that so much, Julie, and I wanted to build a little bit more on that. I think what makes this moment especially ripe for mental health challenges is different than what happened 20, 30 years ago is, one, we are increasingly siloed because of technology. We look around, I was in a coffee shop, and 10 years ago in a coffee shop I would see people talking with each other. Now in that coffee shop, people are on their screens, on their devices. And Martin Lindstrom does a lot of work on this. He’s another Thinkers50 awardee, and Martin and I talk a lot about this. We are in this moment where it’s very… Not that technology is bad, but our addiction to it has created more siloing, and it’s that siloing… Resilience comes from community, siloing is where, like Lenny said, we can’t do it alone, right?

So there’s that, and the other thing is polarisation. We’re an era of depolarization, where we have forgotten how to have conversations. And I love what Julie said in the sharing of stories, and being vulnerable, and being real, because that connection, that way of connecting is what makes us human. We were sitting around campfires sharing stories, watching the stars, at the beginning, since the very beginning. And in a world of AI, in a world of technology, we can’t compete with AI on smarts, but how we leverage AI is by being more human and this emotion connection. So I wanted to highlight what Julie said, storytelling as a powerful way of connection.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

I will add to the cringe, Julie, and one-up you, which is that there’s a conversation in the chat about is it okay to cry? Is it okay to cry at work? Is it okay to cry in front of your kids? Sunday was Mother’s Day in the US, and I am in perimenopause, and I have extreme crying jags and mood swings on top of a very volatile personality as it is. And I cried all Mother’s Day, just hysterically. I was my perfectionist self, it’s Mother’s Day, I have to show up as a good mom and I travel all the time. So I especially have to be a great mom on Mother’s Day, and my perfectionism is out of control, and I’m just crying. And I put it on Instagram, which isn’t like… I put it on Instagram, a teary… And for me it went a little bit viral.

It was like all these moms out there who were like, “I’m in perimenopause too. I cried in front of my kids. I feel terrible. Am I ruining their lives?” All of us are just walking around wondering these things. Let’s talk about crying and showing raw emotion. Michael asked, is it okay to let your kids see you cry? There’s another question about crying at work. Are we at a place where that’s okay?

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

I responded to Mike, thank you for sharing that and I saw your post when it came, and just thought it was so beautiful. And what irony, like here it’s Mother’s Day and I have to perform for other people, right? I have to be the perfect mother on Mother’s Day, instead of could this be the day when I could just be my actual self and get a pass for a day?

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

So I appreciate you shared it. I said to Michael in the chat, just in terms of is it okay to cry in front of our kids: absolutely, yes. Show them that you’re human, that we have feelings, that grownups struggle with stuff. They need to see us struggle and overcome to learn how it’s done. Don’t take your full sob out on your kids. They don’t need to become your therapist. They’re not responsible for holding you in those moments. Take that to your therapist, your spouse or partner, to your friends.

So in other words, be able to share it, right? And then smile and say, “You know what? This is hard, but we do hard things. We’re going to get through this. I have hope, I have confidence.” That is where you may be acting a little bit, but your kids need to see that you do have hope for the future. Think about the parents who are raising kids in times that were excruciating in other decades. Think about parents who managed to instil hope in children during the Holocaust and who just kept that hope alive. Hope is what keeps us alive. So we want to be the bearers of that truth for our kids. We’re going to get through this. Yes, even as we show them some of our emotion.

Sanyin Siang:

I think it’s also important to contextualise, in our minds, we can’t expect others to be mind readers. We know why we’re crying and we know it’s going to be okay, but they don’t know that. And so to be able to contextualise it and there isn’t a habit of people being able to show emotions. So people, at work especially, so people don’t know how to take that when I cry. So I remember I was doing an interview with Keith Reinhardt and he’s telling this beautiful story about he and his wife, and I started crying, and it’s like, I’m crying because I’m crying because this is so beautiful, because I’m happy, right? Just to contextualise it. So contextualising it and like what Julie said, to say, “Okay, I’m crying because I’m frustrated, but I have hope in the future,” right? That helps people know where to place that emotion and that it’s okay for them to share that emotion.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Emotions have to be scary, right? They can be real and they don’t have to be scary. And that’s a gift we can give other people. You’re right by showing that we can be both.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Can I jump in and say, I didn’t even know I had anxiety until my kids had anxiety and they were diagnosed, and then I was able to see some of my own patterns and behaviours a little bit more clearly. And I realised, my mother, who also lives with us, has stiff upper lip British person, no place for feelings, and a whole lot of patterns around controlling her anxiety. And in other words, I was able to learn from my kids’ experience like, oh, wait a minute, I’m that way. Wait a minute, I’ve got this tightness inside me, or I get really stressed out in the kitchen. I need everything to be… And I’m offering this because I think there’s so much more available for kids now than was the case when we were growing up.

You might be diagnosed with something, you might be able to get some treatment, you might be able to get some meds. And for many of us who are Gen X and boomers, we’re still coming to terms with stuff nobody really knew about us. And we may have figured out a hack to get ourselves through life fairly successfully. But I am relieved to discover there’s a name for what I would just call, sometimes I just really get impossible to be around, really snippy, really tight. So learning about my own journey, by watching my kids go through theirs, is just the reverse of what you think it’s going to be, but nevertheless.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

We have to wrap. I want to offer each of you a quick opportunity to reflect. I’ll leave this question from Indira. What are the long-term effects of not addressing anxiety and the pressure to be perfect in one’s professional life? How does striving for perfectionism or any of the winning we’ve talked about affect personal and professional relationships over time? I think Julie, your experience of having a name for it by learning through your kids must have felt so freeing. So I invite you to reflect on that or to share one way that you are your own best friend, a tool you use.

Lenny Mendonca:

I will just say, since I’ve become much more open and willing to talk about my own circumstances, my professional relationships, in addition to personal ones, have become much, much stronger. It did not, at all, detract from my ability to lead. In fact, if anything where people could feel that they could come talk to me about something that they may have felt threatened about raising before. And in addition, you have very different kinds of conversations, and as a leader, you can help coach others in different ways if you understand the broader circumstance within which they’re operating. So I would just say, while in an earlier time in my career, I might’ve felt it was going to be career limiting, or unprofessional, or as you might say, Julie, unmanlike to do that, I think exactly the opposite now.

Sanyin Siang:

I think about this conversation we just had. I’ve known Morra, Lenny and Julie for years, and I felt we got to a deeper level in this type of conversation because we’re vulnerable with each other. And imagine, for the listeners out there, this can be the type of conversation that you can have with your family, with your friends, people you trust. And what would happen when you start having these types of conversations? You may discover that this feeling, the sense that you think it’s only endemic to you, that others feel it too.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

Yeah.

Sanyin Siang:

And we can figure out ways, share ways, get advice from each other for ways, because we all need, like Morra, what you said about your husband, those touchstone memories, that reminder like you’ve been here before, you know what? Different contexts, but you’ll be able to get there. We all need that from each other. So as I reflect on being in this conversation and how I’m feeling so much more helpful and so much more in love with all of you, imagine if we can do this more often with those others and those in our friend circles. We all have agency to do that.

Julie Lythcott-Haims:

I know that striving for perfectionism means I only feel as good as the last thing that I did. So a perfectionist is always in search of some external proof that they are worthy. And so it haunts you, it eats you up inside. And I think the long-term effect, I’m not a psychologist, but that continue hollowing out of the self, erodes you, literally, and it makes you really hard to be around. And what I want to offer is apology or at least just acknowledgy. Acknowledgy instead of apology.

I said to my kids one day, “I’m so sorry, I get so stressed out in the kitchen. I don’t know why I am this way. I’m curious, I’m working on it. I know I get anxious. It’s not about you,” and my kids’ eyes just filled with this love like, okay, mom, thanks. And I was like, “So I’m working on it, just know that I’m working on it.” And I got all of this grace back in response. I think we can also get that in the workplace, depending on the workplace, but I want to offer that being that transparent about the fact that you know you’ve got a thing and you’re trying to work on it, can really earn you a lot of grace from the people in your lives, whether work or family.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Grace and space. Y’all are the best. I’m going to hand it back over to Stuart to close us out, and I just want to thank you tremendously.

Stuart Crainer:

Wow, what a great discussion. And I’m a stiff-lipped Englishman. We’re all master menders now. Be curious what you need and why. You are enough. And I’ll be putting Julie’s Wordle story to work when I get home. I salute you all for your personal honesty. I think a number of people have commented on that because the sharing of stories is so powerful and something we hugely appreciate at a personal level. Get back to Morra’s opening invitation. Think of two qualities you like about yourself. Think of two things you’re grateful for. These were fantastic starting points on our ending points for today. So thank you to Morra, Sanyin, Lenny and Julie. And thank you everyone for joining us. Any audience which references Tolstoy is good with me. We hope you’ll be able to join us next week at the same time, when joining Morra will be Alyson Meister, Basima Tewfik, and Jon Jachimowicz from Harvard Business School. Thank you all and please be kind to yourself.