How to Harness Your Anxiety
This week on the Next Big Idea podcast, I talk with Morra Aarons-Mele about why anxiety and achievement often go hand in hand. Listen on Apple or Spotify, and tell us about your relationship with anxiety in the comments below.
If you, like me, are a Homo sapien, then you experience occasional cycles of anxiety. They may be more than occasional, depending on your genetics and childhood. The question is not whether anxiety is part of your life; the question is what is your relationship with it? How do you process it?
Does your anxiety feel like a fruitless cycle of self-doubt, rudderless rumination? Or does it feel like a heightened state of attention — uncomfortable, yes, but useful for addressing the problem that is triggering your anxiety?
According my guest today, Morra Aarons-Mele, "In any given day, up to a third of the American population is walking around with an anxiety disorder. And, in truth, it's probably higher." Morra is a writer, podcaster, and mental health coach. And she’s one of those 85 million Americans who struggles with anxiety on a regular basis.
Here's the good news for those suffering from heightened anxiety and other mental challenges — these conditions are correlated with above average achievement. A 2021 survey by SAP, Qualtronics, and Mindshare showed that C-suite and executive respondents were 80 percent more likely than managers and individual contributors to report at least one mental health symptom. Other studies have observed that CEOs experience depression at more than twice the rate of the general population.
Morra has concluded, after years of interviewing hundreds of clinicians, researchers, and leaders, that you can learn to love your anxiety. You can tame and leverage it. You can turn anxiety into a loyal partner that makes you more focused, driven, resilient, and self-aware.
This updated view of anxiety was such a revelation to Morra that she wrote a book about it. It’s called The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower. The Next Big Idea Club picked as one of the top leadership books of 2023.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Here are two of my biggest take aways from my conversation with Morra:
I would describe myself as experiencing less anxiety than the average person — I thank my parents for providing me with a relatively low stress childhood and the genetic lottery for this outcome. I do suffer from — and enjoy — a moderate case of attention deficit disorder, which I prefer to describe as a "novelty bias." Like Morra, I have come to love my brain type, which is characterized by both an attraction to new information and ideas, and a tendency to hyperfocus on that which mosts interests me.
I have long believed that it makes sense that there would be evolutionary pressure in favor of a diversity of brain types. An ancestral tribe comprised of people different types of brains is more likely to thrive than a tribe of people with undifferentiated "normal" brains, much as more cognitively diverse teams have been shown to outperform less diverse teams in business environments. Last week I searched online for any support for this view (we might call this a confirmation bias fishing excursion), and I found this: A 2021 paper in the Cambridge University Press proposing a theory of The Evolution of ‘Complementary Cognition. These anthropologists failed to cite my influential 2010 blog post on the topic entitled Learning to Love Your Mental Disorder (I jest ;).
What we are arriving at, here, is a far more optimistic theory of human flourishing. We succeed in teams, and what those teams need is a distribution of personality types. Have a little anxiety disorder? A pinch of ADHD? Step right up, you sound perfect.
Coach for Anxious Achievers | Course & complimentary session ⬇
2moAnxiety can absolutely be channeled and quieted once its underlying purpose is understood. It alerts us that there's a potential problem to be addressed, which is a great advantage. *Avoiding* the potential problem, and the feelings of anxiety, is where issues can start to arise.
🚀SEO Expert in Bangladesh! 🚀Boost Your Website Traffic with These SEO Strategies!"💡. 🕵️♂️Talks about to #SEO Consultant #SEO Strategy Maker#Digital Marketig #Social Medea Marketing #Business Analytics.
2moVery informative dear keep it up
How would you describe your anxiety levels -- above average? Average? Below average? If above average, how have your harnessed your anxiety?