The Provocateurs:

This podcast episode discusses mental health conditions including anxiety and depression. If you experience any personal mental health concerns, please consult a doctor, mental health professional, or seek help from a recognised mental health organisation. 

Stuart Crainer:

Hello. I’m Stuart Crainer, I’m the co-founder of Thinkers50, and I would like to welcome you to the monthly podcast series, Provocateurs, in which we explore the experiences, insights, and perspectives of inspiring leaders. Our aim is to provoke you to think and act differently through conversations with some fantastic people. This is a collaboration between Thinkers50 and Deloitte. So my co-host today is Geoff Tuff. Geoff is a principal with Deloitte and a leader in its sustainability strategy and innovation practices with Steve Goldbach. Geoff is the author of two bestselling books, Detonate, which came out in 2018, and Provoke, which inspired this series. Geoff, welcome.

Geoff Tuff:

Thanks, Stuart. It’s great to be here again. It’s been a little while since you and I co-hosted one of these, so looking forward to it. And I’m really excited to have our guest on today, Morra Aarons-Mele, in part because I think she’s done some fascinating work, fascinating writing herself, but in part because I know that once we get into some of the subject here, I’m going to benefit personally from this conversation. A little bit about Morra. Morra is a speaker, consultant, author, and host of her own podcast, The Anxious Achiever. Her books are also bestsellers. One is called The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower, which was published this year, I believe, right, Morra?

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Last month.

Geoff Tuff:

Last month, there you go. And then Hiding In The Bathroom, great name, How To Get Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home). It came out in 2017. Morra helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their success. And in addition to her work in workplace mental health, Morra founded the award-winning social impact agency, Women Online, and created its database of female influencers called The Mission List. So, Morra, there is a lot to get through here. Thank you very much for being on.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

It’s great to be here.

Geoff Tuff:

Why don’t I kick things off here, Morra, with the first question? What’s striking about The Anxious Achiever is that anxiety is universal, but you never really see it in a book title. And so we’d love to hear a little bit more about that central message to the book that anxiety is normal, but the way we hide it is not. Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of the book and where the ideas came from?

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Absolutely. I mean, it was always a mystery to me why in leadership and personal development and workplace self-improvement programs, we never named anxiety, depression, ADHD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, trauma. And it’s really important to me in my work that I name it. So many of us, 86% of us, at some point in our life will experience a mental illness and anxiety is one of the most ancient, fundamental, and normal human emotions that there is. We all feel it, it’s part of leadership, and so it’s really important to name it. And that’s a growing movement in general I think. The genesis of the book is that I’m an anxious leader. I have managed my own mental illness since I was 19 and first diagnosed, and throughout my work in the first dot-com boom in the late ’90s, and then in national politics, in consulting, and then finally for the past 11 years running my own business, my mental health and my anxiety, and often my depression, traveled with me. I had to learn to manage it, and I wanted to learn the stories of other people who manage too.

Stuart Crainer:             

So how did you manage it, Morra? I mean, you’ve had a stellar, really, really interesting mixed career, but you’ve been working with mental health issues throughout that period, as you say. So how did you learn to manage it rather than avoid confronting it or seeking other strategies?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I mean, like a lot of us, I tried to avoid it for many years. I moved to new countries. I took new jobs. I drank too much. I overworked. I acted out my anxiety in ways that a lot of us do. There are millions of people like me. In fact, there’s data that show that high achievers actually manage more anxiety and more depression. So many of us are doing it, we just don’t talk about it. We keep it a secret. I learned through trial and error and mostly through great therapy, great psychiatry, and building an infrastructure to my life that I could manage it for really sustainable leadership. Because leadership is a long haul.

Geoff Tuff:                   

So, Morra, I know personally what you’re talking about here, having always felt some and suffered from anxiety over time, and I come from a fantastically anxious family, and each one individually will tell you the way it’s manifested in them. But for our listeners that know a little less about the subject or maybe who have not either been diagnosed or felt anxious in the past, would it be possible for you to describe: What does anxiety feel like? What does it look like? How does it interfere with the way that any of us try to interact either in our business lives or personal lives in a way that might be able to help listeners identify what it is?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Anxiety exists on a spectrum, and at the bottom end of the spectrum is what I have experienced and sounds like maybe, Geoff, you have too, where anxiety is quite debilitating. Maybe it’s getting in the way of you doing what you want to do. Maybe you’re having panic attacks. Maybe at times you’re finding it difficult even to leave the house or you’re walking around feeling so anxious that you can’t concentrate. In the middle is moderate anxiety, which I would think most people today are experiencing because we’ve just been through a global pandemic, the world is extremely uncertain, there are so many factors, ChatGPT-4, all these factors driving uncertainty, a worry about the future, dread. And at the top end of the spectrum is what neuroscientists call good anxiety, and that’s the kind of anxiety that I felt just before coming on your podcast or you might feel before you’re going to deliver a paper or enter a swim meet or take the stage. It’s that motivating energy where you’re nervous, you’re nervous about the outcome, but you’re channeling it into high energy.

Anxiety feels different to different people. For me, anxiety is extremely physical and for most people it takes a physical form. So if you’re trying to get in touch with, am I anxious or am I not, it’s very common to feel a racing heart, maybe shaky fingers, shallow breathing, tightness maybe in your chest or your jaw, your stomach might get upset. A lot of people when they are anxious, they can’t sleep very well, they don’t eat very well. And then, mentally, it’s often presented as a fixation on the future. And this doesn’t have to be the long-term future. This could be five minutes away and a worry loop, things don’t feel okay. And it’s often spurred for many of us by past experiences, by things that may be in our biochemistry. But right now, for a lot of us, it’s spurred by the extreme uncertainty and lack of control we feel. And this is really true in business today, I find.

Stuart Crainer:

I was thinking about my own anxiety and I would’ve said, when I was younger, I didn’t really experience it because I was too ignorant and insensitive, I suspect. But as I’ve got older, I get more anxious now. I was giving a speech recently and I was thinking, “I’m quite anxious about this,” and it felt wrong.

Geoff Tuff:

Can I just point out, by the way, that for three anxious people we’re actually having a pretty productive conversation? So, obviously, this is something we can deal with. Sorry, Stuart, continue.

Stuart Crainer:

It does change with age, doesn’t it? And my rational thought was, “I’m now older, more experienced. I’ve given lots of talks, talked to lots of different groups throughout the world. I shouldn’t be anxious about it.” But you’ve got to go with it and you’ve got to realise that it is natural, but it’s still unpleasant and uncomfortable at times.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

It’s funny because you just did a classic anxious person thing where you said, “I shouldn’t be”, so you’re blaming yourself. It’s really interesting because, actually, data show that people do get less anxious as they get older in general. But things like imposter syndrome or performance anxiety increase the higher you get in your career, which is really interesting. And I just think it’s because you care. Anxiety is often telling you that you are invested in an outcome.

Stuart Crainer:

Which I guess you don’t get when you’re young because you think, “If I screw it up, there’s millions of other opportunities to do it right in the future,” and it doesn’t really matter because you’re not that important in the organisation or whatever. Whereas when you get older you think, “Well, I haven’t got many more opportunities to screw up.”

Geoff Tuff:

That’s a great way to think about it. Thanks for that, Stuart.

Stuart Crainer:

That’s cheered everyone up, hasn’t it?

Geoff Tuff:

So, Morra, one of the premises behind this podcast and behind its inspiration, the book that Steve and I wrote, is that some of the best leaders in the world, those that are able to provoke the future that they want to live in, are those that spot trends earlier than others, and I’m simplifying the idea here, but spot trends earlier than others and then take action to essentially drive towards that future that they envision. The story I’ve told myself in preparing for this podcast and then hearing a little bit about you is that you probably spotted the trend about rising anxiety or at least rising acceptance of the acknowledgement of anxiety earlier than others and then you took action to talk about it, to bring it out into the world. Can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to actively talk about it at this point?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I was invited to speak at my alma mater, Brown University. I was invited to keynote an evening of 250 of the most promising seniors and then their mentors who were women who were alums in various careers. And I talked about my anxiety and my depression and the time when I was at the Brown Library and had a panic attack that was so bad they had to call my roommate to come fish me out and my career having 10 jobs on three different continents in my 20s as I was trying to find a geographical cure, and then how, in my 30s, I finally started to work things out. It was the only time in my life that I ever felt like Oprah.

I got a standing ovation and afterwards people just mobbed me and said, “We’ve never heard this before. Everyone comes to us and is like, ‘Yes, you can do it. You’re at Brown. The future is yours. Go girl!'” And I was saying, “There’s pain in life. You may carry demons. There may be times when you feel like you can’t do it. You may act it out.” And they needed to hear that. And so I played around with it in the intervening several years. And when I wrote my first book, Hiding in the Bathroom, which is about introversion and social anxiety and how to get out there and build your network and build your company when you don’t love to be out there, people just wanted to talk about anxiety. And I thought, “This is what I’m going to do.”

And so I pitched the podcast to Harvard Business Review in 2018, and we “dated” for a while; it was an intense process, but finally they bought it and they were like, “Yes.” And the whole premise was to talk about the things with leaders in corporate America, in entrepreneurship, and pro athletes, et cetera, that we don’t usually talk about. And that’s my mission.

Geoff Tuff:

Yeah, that’s great.

Stuart Crainer:

And I think the entire area of introversion is really interesting because I did some work with some leadership experts a few years ago and they were saying that a high percentage of very successful leaders are actually introverts. And that made me think, and actually it’s become quite interesting because there’s the Susan Kane book about introversion, and there’s a guy called Karl Moore in Canada who’s done research for Ambiverts, and I think his argument is that, as a leader, often they’re introverts, but they know when to be extroverts. They can turn it on and off in a way.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

100%. I mean, there’s so many misconceptions around leaders with anxiety, leaders who are introverted, leaders who are perfectionistic. I also like to clear up myths and what are the biggest myths about introverts is that we’re shy, we’re quiet. We’re not always. Sometimes we are. Sometimes, like me, we’re giant hams who love to be on stage, but the rest of the time we really love our alone time. We’re very sensitive to light and sound. So I think it’s really important also to help people in business increase their mental health literacy and get more comfortable with this stuff because we’re all there working together. And if we understood better how our past, our childhood hurts, our own makeup, and our mental health shows up for us every single day, work would be a much happier place.

Geoff Tuff:

Are you finding that it’s a more discussable topic in some situations or some types of companies or some industries than others? Are there any trends around that, that are worth keeping in mind?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I think everyone is willing to talk about it now, which is super exciting. I have been this past month at a government agency, a giant semiconductor company, a law firm. People get it. And the pandemic really gave it a kick in the pants, to be honest. I mean, so much came out of the shadows during the pandemic. So what I’m seeing in workplace mental health more broadly, and Deloitte, I mean, Deloitte is the leader in all of this stuff, I used to do a lot around workplace flexibility and work redesign and helping working mothers, and Deloitte was always at the forefront, because humans are your business, and so when humans are your business, they should be happy.

Geoff Tuff:

You’ve got to take care of them.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

You’ve got to take care of them. I think it’s really exciting. Most companies and most big companies have really upped benefits in terms of therapy and things like that. The disconnect is that our workplace practice is still pretty mentally toxic on most levels and most people are not always in touch, so there is often a disconnect with what the company means to do, what they want their managers to do, and what actually happens boots on the ground.

Geoff Tuff:

And can you maybe unpack a couple of those disconnects? Where do you see the real blockages and where there’s a difference between the rhetoric and what’s actually happening?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Email, Slack, working hours, boundaries. Where can I start? Controlling behavior, micromanaging. I mean, the number one question I get from my listeners is, “Help. My boss is making me so anxious. They’re micromanaging me. They don’t trust me. I don’t know what to do.” And oftentimes it’s because that boss is anxious and it’s because leadership is anxious. I mean, I see it existing on four different levels. The top level is really a macro societal issue, which is that we live in an anxious world and we work in systems that are not welcoming of many of us, women, people of color, people who are different, and that causes anxiety. This is well documented. At the next level is the C-suite, and C-suite leaders really, I do think, want to make meaningful change in this area, and they have the power to convene and bring on benefits and talk. One of the most powerful things a senior leader can do is tell their story.

At the manager level, managers are getting trained increasingly. They are getting made aware of benefits and how to help employees in mental health crises. And then, at the individual level, you see a lot more employee resource groups. You see people taking advantage of benefits in much higher numbers than they did before, using EAP, using therapy. And I think people are very, “We need better mental health now,” but I think it’s the managers who are getting really squeezed. And I don’t think that’ll surprise you.

Stuart Crainer:

I wonder if there’s different attitudes and behaviours surrounding anxiety in different places, if the European approach is different from the American approach, an Asian approach, and so on. Have you detected any differences?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. I mean, in America, we are generally a little bit more woo-woo. We’re into stuff I think earlier. But the U.K. has a very robust ecosystem. I mean, I don’t know, Stuart, if you would agree, but from what I see, a pretty robust ecosystem in workplace mental health. And so I always look to the U.K. I look to Australia, actually. They do a lot of interesting stuff. I have a lot of listeners in India and what I hear from them is a desire for the information and the language to talk about this stuff. And I think it’s cultural as well. It’s so intersectional.

Stuart Crainer:

I mean, what we’re seeing now, I mean, is an epidemic of anxiety. I’ve been talking to people recently whose children are suffering from anxiety in a way that was never really contemplated when I was a child, very young people expressing just constant anxiety. And that’s a real big shift, I think.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

It’s a huge shift. It makes me incredibly, incredibly sad. But I actually just interviewed someone from the American Psychological Association about this generational divide, because we’re seeing huge numbers, 55% in a recent study of 18 to 29 year olds said they were anxious or depressed. Huge numbers and much more seeking of mental health services, and so the question is, is this because they can, because they’re raised in an environment where they do have the language, or is it because they truly are more anxious and depressed than our generations were? And I think the experts I’ve spoken to have said it’s a both/and. But it’s also causing tension in the workplace, I think, which I don’t love.

Geoff Tuff:

So I’ve got another question I want to ask, but that actually triggered the first one. Is it possible to take it too far in terms of talking about it and trying to manage anxiety and creating a safe space to discuss it? 

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

So the over-indulgent thing is really interesting, and I have actually had leaders say to me, “I just want these people to work.” There’s a real bias and as a mental health person I don’t endorse that because I don’t think it’s indulgent to take care of your mental health and if you’re in crisis, you’re in crisis. But there is a way to handle it at work. And I think this is super, super important. We need to be professional. We need to have boundaries. I always say to managers, “It is not your job to be your team’s therapist. That is not in your job description. Your job is to listen, identify, and facilitate what they need.” So there’s a concept called “boundaried vulnerability” that I really love. It’s from Dr. Emily Anhalt, who’s a workplace psychologist.

This concept is about being vulnerable enough to invite connection and trust and psychological safety, and this is really helpful in helping people’s mental health at work, but being boundaried so that nobody feels like, “I just handed you all my stuff and you have to deal with it now.” Nobody feels like, “Oh my god, this person is talking to me like I’m their therapist and I don’t know what to do.” And I think that that’s a skill that people need to develop for this era.

Stuart Crainer:             

You quote an amazing statistic that “employers see a $4 return for every dollar invested in employee mental health support and treatment.” I wonder how aware organisations are of this that there is a payback.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I think they’re aware. I really do. Someone just told me, and it seems verifiable, that anxiety, depression, stress are the leading reasons why people miss work. It costs people a lot of money, and so that always drives business action. I think that employers are aware. I also think they’re aware that families are in crisis. I think that the question now is, how do we operationalize all this stuff?

Geoff Tuff: 

Is there an opposite to anxiety? First of all, is there a condition that is the opposite of anxiety? And you’re probably going to say happiness, but I want to hear your answer to that. And then, is there an optimal outcome if you deal with anxiety both at the personal level and at the organizational level?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Anxiety to me is not bad or good. It is. It’s trying to tell you something. You don’t always have to listen to it. Sometimes it lies to you, but it’s trying to tell you something. And so there’s tremendous value to be gained in learning how to listen to it and learning how to manage it. And sometimes, when you get really good at managing it, you can tell it to go away. “I know it’s my performance review and my boss said that I really, really need to work on my ability to hold a room and I’m going to get fired and I’m terrible.” You can get to a place where you’re like, “That’s your thought traps. That’s your imposter feelings. No.” But you can also use your anxiety because anxiety is, as we talked about, very motivational, and a lot of The Anxious Achievers that I interview, who are skilled, know when to just go with the anxiety.

And so my advice for you to get started with that is to externalize the anxiety. If you’re feeling, I don’t know, Stuart, like you’re very anxious about an upcoming speech or deliverable, can you acknowledge that and say, “Okay, anxiety, we’re going to make a plan.” I literally print out my calendar. I make a plan because anxiety loves a job. When it’s free floating is when it gets to us, but when you can actually give it a task and put it to work, it could be super motivating.

Geoff Tuff:

Can you tell us from The Anxious Achiever just a couple anecdotes of when that has gone really well? I love, by the way, the notion of anxiety loves a job, but what are some of the best jobs you’ve heard anxiety do well?

Morra Aarons-Mele:
I’ve interviewed so many entrepreneurs who have credited their anxiety as really motivating them to seek the bleeding edge. I interviewed Harley Finkelstein, who’s the President of Shopify, the big e-commerce giant, and he’s really interesting because he started founding businesses when he was 13 years old and kept starting businesses. He never stopped until he got to a place now where he runs a multi-billion dollar company. Along the way though, he realized two things. One, I’m kind of difficult to be with. Two, I’m driving myself because, as he describes it, his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, his father had a very traumatic financial outcome when Harley was a teenager, and so a lot of fear was also driving him. And so he had to come to a place where he could say, “My anxiety is my superpower. It’s going to push me. I may be a little bit intense to work with. How can I protect my teams and how can I take care of myself so I don’t burn out?”

And I think that’s really interesting. I hear that a lot, where anxious achievers understand to use their, I mean, some people will just call it their neuroses, to keep seeking. Anxious people are great in a crisis. We’ve been preparing for a crisis, and so we’re good in a crisis. We’re good at finding solutions and looking around corners. So it’s really about managing how you react to your anxiety that’s the magic.

Stuart Crainer: 

I’m still coming to terms with the fact that anxiety can lie to you. I’ve always believed my anxiety 100% of the time.

Morra Aarons-Mele:

Sometimes it just is not telling you the truth.

Stuart Crainer:

If anxiety is intrinsic to leadership and you’ve worked in the White House, did you encounter anxiety on steroids?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I have not actually worked in the White House. I have worked for Presidential candidates as a communications consultant. Steroids, I mean, it’s funny because I get a lot of laughs that Washington D.C. is a town of anxious achievers. For some reason, lawyers love the concept of anxious achiever. I think that people who are seeking external validation can really relate to this because it’s almost like anxiety is your oxygen. Some people have been chasing those external markers of success for a really long time. And we all have to come to a place of, “Yes, I want this external success. It’s important to me, but I want to make sure I’m not burning myself out and driving everyone else up a wall in the process.”

Geoff Tuff:                   

Your past couple of answers have gotten into the realm of the impact of one’s anxiety on others and what it does to others. Do you have any recommendations for either anxious achievers or anyone that suffers from anxiety, whether or not they are achieving, as to how they should either talk about that anxiety or, if they don’t want to talk about it openly, at least relay to another person that they’re having a conversation with or that they have to do a business deal with in a way that doesn’t create problems?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I think therapy is the greatest leadership tool that you can invest in. So I recommend, if you can, therapy is wonderful. And the good news is, anxiety is so common that there are a lot of great ways to treat it, because it’s really, really common. And I will say that if you’re listening to this and you’re feeling dark, please go get professional help. There is help that really works. I think that, again, it’s about building self-awareness. Every survey shows that people want self-aware leaders and self-aware leaders are emotionally intelligent and they understand what drives them and they understand the impact of what drives them on other people.

And so you can even be humorous. I’ve seen managers be humorous about it like, “I’m a little bit of a perfectionist and this project is really stressing me out, so if I’m hovering, tell me to back off.” You can make it funny. You can just be like, “This is a big deal that we’re working on. Let’s talk about it. There’s a lot riding on this.” I think that it’s very, very natural for people when they’re invested, when they’re high achievers, when they’re all together, to have anxiety in the room. And you can really, as a leader, take the temperature down by just acknowledging it.

Stuart Crainer:            

I suppose most people would say you don’t get promoted for being anxious or self-conscious. In fact, until that comes about where there’s an open conversation about that we haven’t really made progress.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Do you think it’s true that you don’t get promoted for being self-aware?

Stuart Crainer:             

I think there’s an awful lot of leaders who aren’t particularly self-aware, which turns it around. I think don’t self-awareness is valued greatly. Results are valued and short-term financial gains are valued, but not necessarily self-awareness.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Yeah. There’s also a lot of misery and toxic behavior out there too.

Geoff Tuff:

So, Morra, can we talk a little bit about technology? We’re obviously living in a world where technology is impacting us, I would argue increasingly every single day, and even as recently as this morning, there was all sorts of talk on the news about the fact that we need to slow down the development of AI and hit a pause and what have you, which I could imagine is contributing to rising anxiety levels. But can you talk both about what technology contributes to the epidemic of anxiety, but also what it can help solve and some of the technological tools that you feel have the most promise?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

What I think the impact of technology is on our anxiety is that it has created a culture of hyper responsiveness and hyper self-consciousness that is bad for our mental health. All of the instant messaging that is now coming into us all day long at work is really anxiety provoking for a lot of people. It’s that bot that is always telling you, “Have you responded? Are you on top of this channel? Did you use the right emoji?” And so we’re stuck in loops that make us anxious even if we don’t want to be, and social media is like that too. And so, one of my big asks for people is to develop the skill of waiting. Can we, even if we’re triggered, even if we’re anxious, can we just take a beat?

Geoff Tuff:  

That’s a great recommendation, and I should adopt it immediately because I’m one of those people that is constantly feeling harassed by emails and what have you and one of the ways my anxiety manifests is I feel most on top of things where I’ve just cleared out my inbox and I’ve responded to everything and I feel in control. But we’re increasingly never going to be in control.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I mean, look, you said it’s so beautifully. Control is an illusion and we seek control. Especially if we’re anxious, we seek control. And so the thing that is the practice is, what can I control? Because a little illusion of control is very healthy, it’s motivating for us. I can’t control that AI is coming for me and I can’t control that I have 800 emails, but I could control that in the next 30 minutes this is what I want to get done and I’m going to consider myself having done a good job if I get that done. Really, things like that. It’s hard.

Stuart Crainer:

This gets to fundamental issues about our relationship with work, and one of the things we’re often told these days, we should bring our whole selves to work because we’re multi-faceted and we’re interested in lots of different industries. Should we bring our whole selves to work? Which I’m always slightly, I almost feel, should we hold something back or put all our eggs in one basket? I mean, I think there’s probably dangers in both ways.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I can’t believe I’d say this, but we should not bring our whole selves to work. And I mean that also from our emotional investment and our total identity with work. We shouldn’t bring our whole self-worth to work and everything that we believe is good about us to work. But coming back to the concept of boundary vulnerability, we have to get to a place where we can talk about this kind of stuff in a way that, as leaders, people still trust us, they still think we’re competent, but they also see us as humans who they can connect with. That is really the ideal. But nobody wants their boss to be a mess. It’s not good. And so we have to maintain boundaries and a level of professionalism.

Stuart Crainer:

I wonder when we lost the humanity of work, because it does strike me that I think we’re slowly regrouping and figuring it out again, but certainly over the last 100 years, the process seems to have been dehumanising work, separating things, and the technology has probably brought the issue back on the agenda. I don’t know.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I think work is just a great place to put your anxiety and get rewarded for it.

Geoff Tuff:

The whole notion of giving anxiety a job to do. So broad question with two specific aspects to it, Morra. What’s next? And when I say that, what’s next in anxiety generally? Are we going to see new waves of anxiety? Are we going to see a general decrease? And my reflection on your comment, Stuart, about when have we lost the humanity, what I’ve experienced over the last two or three years is a dramatic increase in the discussions around the human experience and what it means to be human at work. And so my hope is actually we are in a downward trend in terms of anxiety, but would love to hear generally more from you. What’s next in the world of anxiety for us? And then, secondly, what’s next for you? You’ve got a lot of stuff on the boil right now. You have multiple different platforms that you’re using very effectively to get the word out about this really important topic. What’s next? And you can start with either one of those sub-questions as you wish.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

I think what’s next for anxiety is that anxiety is not going anywhere. And I do think, honestly, the impact of AI is a huge, huge thing for those of us in the knowledge worker field. I spent many years developing content, writing social media, and AI can do that pretty well. Anxiety isn’t going anywhere because of, what is it called, VUCA [Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity]? The world’s not getting any less VUCA, and when things are uncertain and we feel out of control, we get anxious. So we need better skills, and we need to talk about it, and workplaces really need to step up. They need to step up with training. Leaders need to talk about it. There need to be benefits. Anxiety is not going anywhere, but it’s going to be part of our reality and so we need to deal with it.

Much the way that now working parents, when I first had my kids, the notion that I could just be like, “See ya. I have a doctor’s appointment”, or, “I’m working from home today because my kid has a fever,” or breastfeed in a meeting or breastfeed anywhere at work, frankly, and that’s not that many years ago. Things do change and I think that this is changing. So it’s a glass half full and glass half empty. And, for me, I’m so happy right now because, in my midlife, I hope I’m a midlife example, I ran a business and I sold it two years ago and I feel so energized by this work even though it’s about a really serious topic, and my mental health sometimes is not great, I had a panic attack just last night for the first time in months, but I feel that provoking people into this conversation is something I can do.

Geoff Tuff:

That’s fantastic. And I know we’re probably in the midst of a wind down, but any single last piece of advice, Morra, that you would have for any of our listeners on what they should do regardless of what level of anxiety they feel right now?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

The next time that you feel that feeling, you see the email pop up in your inbox and the name makes you anxious, or there’s a meeting put on your calendar and you don’t know why or Slack Bot is binging at you, take a minute. Breathe in, breathe out for longer than you’ve breathed in, say, “I’m anxious,” and then think about what you may want to do.

Stuart Crainer:

Morra, thank you very much. It’s a really interesting conversation because it’s universal and it’s something we’ve all wrestled with to a greater or lesser extent and something many of us should be more aware of, our own anxiety and the anxiety of others. I think it’s a really important message, a really important book. I would encourage people to check out Morra’s work. What’s your website, Morra?

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Theanxiousachiever.com. And reach out on LinkedIn if you want to talk to me, if you have a question. And I just want to thank you two for being open here too.

Stuart Crainer:

I’m English, so it doesn’t come easily.

Geoff Tuff:

Thank you for the time, Morra. That was super fun and I’m sure super valuable for our listeners as well. So thank you for being on.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Thanks. It’s an honor. Have a good day.

Geoff Tuff: 

You too.

Stuart Crainer:

Thank you, Morra.

Morra Aarons-Mele: 

Bye.