Facing our Monsters: Thoughts while reading “The Anxious Achiever”

Why go looking for monsters?

The last few months have been intense, between an ambitious selection of work projects, professional development, and volunteering. My body decided to remind me (through pain and inflammation that got louder & louder until I finally listened) that an extended period of elevated cortisol levels is not healthy. This prompted curiosity and reflection around which endeavors have a better impact:anxiety ratio & joy:anxiety ratio, to help me prioritize what scope to keep vs. cut.

First, get some training from Wizards

The title "The Anxious Achiever - Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower" [1] really resonated with me. Organizing chaos is second nature to me because organizing is how I have coped with chaos my whole life. I fell in love with Project Management because it provides tried & true best practices + structure for dealing with risk. Risk assessment, prevention & contingency tables? YES, PLEASE! I prefer to tackle uncertainty proactively.

The book’s author, Morra Aarons-Mele, suffers from chronic clinical anxiety & occasionally debilitating depression. She has been a leader in fast-paced environments & an entrepreneur, while also raising 3 kids. Her book flows from her top-rated Anxious Achiever podcast, where she interviews leaders about their struggles with anxiety and how they deal with it. As a result, her book has real-world examples of successful high-level leaders who have found ways to cope.

Then, recognize that the monsters are everywhere

Historically, there has been shame & weakness attached to any kind of mental health questions at work. Aarons-Mele is raising awareness that anxiety being incompatible with strong leadership is a MYTH.

When she asked Harvard Business School professor Nancy Koehn how many of the legendary global leaders Koehn studied over the last 25 years dealt with anxiety or depression, the answer was “The vast majority.”

Aarons-Mele asks a great question: "What requires more strength and courage: facing a demon, or trying to pretend it doesn’t exist?"

And, besides that, it’s not just leaders who struggle with mental health… MOST people do! Aarons-Mele quotes an American Psychological Association study that found “experiencing a diagnosable mental disorder at some point during the life course is the norm, not the exception,” and that “individuals whose lives remain free from mental disorder are, in fact, remarkably few in number.”

And maybe the monsters could become allies?

It’s the brain’s job to keep us alive & protect us from threats, but the modern environment doesn’t quite have the same dangers as the primitive world of our ancestors. So, sometimes our protective mechanisms produce a response out of proportion to the actual threat.

Aarons-Mele quotes the American Psychological Association distinction between anxiety and fear, since they may feel similar. Fear is “an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable and specific threat,” while anxiety is “a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat.”

When you put that response to work in a professional setting, anxious achievers turn out to be:

• Great at forward planning because we spend so much time thinking about what's ahead

• Infrastructure builders, because that’s good for the future

• Attuned and empathetic because we care a lot about the responses of others

• Hard workers with attention to detail because the devil is in the details

But it won’t be easy to get the monsters on board

The book emphasizes that it takes work to understand one’s self. What triggers anxiety & how one reacts to it differs from person-to-person. And while it’s not easy, Aarons-Mele provides encouragement: “Decades of research have shown that those who understand their feelings have higher job satisfaction, stronger job performance, and better relationships. They’re more innovative, and can synthesize diverse opinions and deescalate conflict.”

In addition to understanding how we feel and react, we have to recognize that not all of it is nature; some of it is nurture. Our personal history shapes us, so it’s important to understand how it influences our emotions, thoughts, and behavior.

The book provides exercises to work through this process of being curious with our monsters.

Mid-book Conclusion

Here is one of Aarons-Mele’s descriptions of an anxious achiever: “rarely still, in body or in mind. We are goal-oriented, future-oriented, and take our work extremely seriously. We are prized team members because we go the extra mile as a matter of course and nothing less than the best will do. We create extraordinary outcomes because we are driven to always excel and succeed at any challenge we set ourselves.” If you put up your hand when you read it, then this is a worthwhile book for you.

The book can instill confidence & motivation, provide tools to grow as a leader + as an individual, and reduce unhealthy behaviors. However, this hasn’t been an easy book to get through… I found “Part One: Getting To Know Your Anxiety” kind of stressful. (Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise, given the section title…) In the spirit of increasing the joy:anxiety ratio, I recommend interleaving this book with something a little lighter.

I’m looking forward to “Part Two: A Leader’s Toolkit for Managing Anxiety At Work” after a good dose of Halloween candy and a costume party.🎃

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[1] Aarons-Mele, Morra. The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower. Harvard Business Review Press.