# Swell AI Transcript: Morra Aarons Mele - Meta Performance (First Edit).mp3

SPEAKER_04:
Welcome to the Beyond High Performance podcast featuring content and conversations from me, Jason Jaggard, along with our elite coaches at Novus Global, their high performing clients, and the faculty of the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching. On this podcast, you'll hear some of the world's best executive coaches and high performing leaders, artists and athletes discuss how they continue to go beyond high performance in their lives and businesses. In this episode of the Metta Performance Show, I sit down with Maura Ahrens-Mealy, Harvard Business Review featured author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom, An Introvert's Guide to Getting Out There. She's the host of the Anxious Achiever podcast, a 2020 Webby Award winner for Best Commute Podcast and 2023 Media Award winner for Mental Health America. She's a top 10 LinkedIn voice for mental health, was shortlisted for the THNKRS 50 2023 Distinguished Achievement in Leadership Award, and is frequently working with Fortune 500 companies, startups, and government agencies to help them rethink their relationship to mental health and success. And if that isn't enough, Maura is a 2020 Iris Award winner for Entrepreneur of the Year, founding the social impact agency Women Online, and created its list of female influencers, The Mission List. Maura is an expert in helping people talk about hard things, who know that they are brilliant and have more to offer the world, but need to push over a mental hurdle that they are dealing with. In this episode, we discuss the differences between good anxiety and the anxiety that can become mental illness, how to do a body scan in order to identify where your anxiety is living, how a leader can turn perfectionism into productivity, why your body and time is a precious resource that you need to invest in wisely, the importance of creating intentional relationships, even if you're an introvert, along with many helpful tips and tools to manage your anxiety. Enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_00:
The wait is finally over. Our new book, Beyond High Performance, what great coaches know about how the best get better, is available for purchase wherever books are sold. This USA Today bestseller is more than 250 pages of expertise, anecdotes, and insights from Novus Global coaches, as well as faculty from the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching. We are so excited to put our proprietary framework that has helped thousands of leaders achieve more into your hands. And we can't wait to see how you'll use the book to enhance your life and leadership. To learn more and obtain this essential resource for yourself, visit novus.global.com.

SPEAKER_04:
Maura, thank you so much for being on our show. I've been looking forward to talking to you for a while.

SPEAKER_03:
Oh, Jason, thanks.

SPEAKER_04:
Hi. Just to say this to our audience, before we started recording, Maura and I were talking a little bit, and we could have done a four-hour interview with Maura. She's got two books, the podcast, there's all these, her work on presidential campaigns. We're going to touch on some of it. We're going to skip a rock across some of these things, and we're going to go deep into her newest book, The Anxious Achiever. But there's so much to talk about. Maura, again, I really appreciate your time. And shall we jump in? Yeah. Excellent. So one of the things I love about you is your work on anxiety and introversion and things like that is not like theoretical, although you do massive amounts of research. I was so impressed with how much research you've done in your books. They're so like dense in the best way, like they're thoroughly researched, but it doesn't just come from like a theoretical place. It's also like your story. And so, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about your journey with anxiety and being an introvert or more introverted or maybe even shy or anxious in those ways. Could you tell us a little about your history through the lens of anxiety?

SPEAKER_03:
Oh, gosh. Again, how long do we have? So, I got my first diagnosis of clinical anxiety when I was 19. I'm 47. And, you know, when I think about my life, I can't think about my life without my mental illness, even though I'd like to. You know, I've had a history of, you know, periods of very intense anxiety, several really sort of deep depressions. And then my normal state is a little bit hypomanic. and very anxious. Well, I have a diagnosis from some doctors that I have bipolar 2 and some say no, but I run really hot and I run hyper and I run really anxious. And so, you know, it's just really led me to work in a very different way and to be really curious about how other people like me with brains that are a little bit tricky, but who have a lot to offer the world, how do they make it work, right? Like, there's a lot of wisdom there. So I built sort of a body of work around that for decades now, literally. And I've learned, it's the gift because I've learned. I get access to the world's greatest experts for me, but as well as for my audience. And the last thing I'll say is that I am extremely introverted, but I am a big ham. And so that is confusing for people, but there's a lot of us out there.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, well, and speaking of a lot of us out there, one of the things I was surprised about when I was reading the beginning of Anxious Achiever is just how many people, especially quote, successful people, deal with mental illness and or anxiety or some subset of that. Can you tell us a little bit about just how prevalent it is?

SPEAKER_03:
Right, well, the data's fuzzy, right? So it's not like I can say 27.5%, right? There is data that shows that high achievers feel more anxiety. Now, whether that's because that's how we are and we are high achievers because we're anxious or because as we achieve more, we feel more anxious because the stakes get higher, right? It's sort of a little chicken or the egg. But in my experience, again, having interviewed hundreds of people at this point, There are a lot of us who are what I call anxious achievers. We feel deeply, we care deeply, we are very career-identified, we find a lot of our self-worth in our achievements, for good or ill, and we worry. And also, and this is where I get super fascinated, we often have come from childhoods where we took on roles maybe that we weren't ready for, that made us a bit anxious, made us hypervigilant, and we bring those learnings to the workforce where we often get rewarded for them, yet often we really struggle and get burnt out.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, it's like a double-edged sword. I think you even mentioned in one of your books, I can't remember which one it was, but you said that you took on like the parenting role, the responsible role early in your home. And then that played out, even I think you mentioned in your marriage, that plays out.

SPEAKER_03:
everything. With my pets, it plays out. Yes. And I'm really, I have a chapter in the book and I've done a bunch of podcasts on family systems theory and how we play out our family roles at work and what Jerry Colonna calls our childhood hurts. Even if we don't qualify in the ACEs scale for big traumas, how do we play out those childhood hurts and also those childhood achievements, right? Like a lot of the people I talk to are like, I was captain of the debate team, and I was, you know, MVP of the baseball team, and I was this, and I was this, and I was this. And the expectations that build around that achievement can drive a lot of anxiety, but also a lot of adulation.

SPEAKER_04:
That's your story, right? So you felt anxious, and then you were, I do want you to walk us a little through some of, and by the way, I want to ask about how anxiety, you talk about in the book about being a superpower, and you, how you leveraged it even before you really understood what it was. as a high performer early in your career. And so I'd like to talk about the presidential campaigns and you being the youngest executive at a global company and those things. Before that, though, you mentioned the West Wing in one of your books. And I just wanted to have a moment of silence and pour one out for our homies, for all the people who are listening to this who love the West Wing. Because that's one of my favorite shows. And we just hired a new chief marketing officer for a company. And in the first 15 seconds of her and I meeting for the first time, she dropped a West Wing quote. And I knew... That was it. That's all I needed to know.

SPEAKER_03:
Did you do a walk and talk?

SPEAKER_04:
We did. We did a little Tommy Schlamme walk and talk. That's right. We did it. So feel free throughout the course of our conversation to drop as many West Wing references as you would like. But take us back in time a little bit in terms of how anxiety showed up, quote unquote, a positive way through the early parts of your career before you made this your life's work.

SPEAKER_03:
I think anxiety showed up in a way that just drove me, that made me feel like the stakes were really high. Even if I was scared to go for a new job or promotion, I felt like I had to. It never occurred to me not to always be pushing myself. And often to put myself in really scary situations that I would be sick with anxiety about, and yet so driven by it, right? To prove what? I don't know, to prove something. So that was the positive side, you know, really also just sort of being prepared, scanning the environment for threats, thinking ahead, pushing myself. The real downside, though, was that I have always been the kind of person who's the worst case scenario all the time with a tremendous fear of loss. And that also is really limiting. And so I call anxiety a gift and a curse. And for me, it truly has been. But even these days, it just never occurs to me not to always try to go for it, because I always feel like I have something to prove. I interviewed Congressman Adam Smith yesterday. He's a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, so a huge job. And he's very open about his anxiety and his depression and his journey. And he said he had this aha moment in therapy a few years ago where The doctor turned to him and said, you don't feel like you have the right to exist. And that really resonated. How many of us don't have that inner core? And so we're constantly driving and achieving.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. Well, when that shows up, I would imagine, I think about that with myself sometimes because I tend to like slouch and like, I try to like, so I'm six foot two and I've been tall. Me too. Oh, nice. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah. So then you, you would understand this probably maybe even more so, you've probably been tall for a long time. You probably were tall since you were like 13 or something. Yeah. And so for me I find myself actually like spreading, this is gonna sound weird to describe rhetorically, but like spreading my legs apart to lower my center of gravity so that I'm more on height of other people. If people kind of watch me in social settings I'll kind of like straddle my legs a little bit so that I'm lower rather than towering over people and I oftentimes slouch or kind of cross my legs or hunch. And it is like a trying to make myself small. It's because there is like a little bit of a, the smaller I am, the less of a nuisance I am. You know, I'm not bothering people as much. It's not okay to stick out. It's not okay to stand out. It's not okay to be, to exist. Tall poppy syndrome. For sure. But the irony of that is, and I'm curious more if you have had this as well, obviously, you know, I also, in my early thirties, dyed my hair white. For real? Yeah, like Steve Martin, Anderson Cooper. It was like a fashion decision. And I would go to, like, I'd be, like, in a three-piece suit at these swanky, you know, things for my work with, like, this blazing white hair, as if to say, like, here I am. This is an artistic choice. And so there's this kind of weird tension. I know you're not, you know, a therapist, but, like, there's this, like, weird tension of making myself small, but also desperately wanting to be seen and, like, straddling that.

SPEAKER_03:
I feel that, Jason, so much. And there's an Australian comedian, Jordan Retskopolis, and she calls us Shy Louds.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. Oh, I've never heard that.

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, it's brilliant. So she's a stand-up comic. Yeah, yeah. She's super funny. She's out there playing to stadiums. And yet, she's like, if you actually talk to me, I'm a mess. I'm anxious. I'm terrified. You hate me. All the things. And that resonates with me. I mean, it's funny. To your point, I just bought a neon yellow winter coat, like a parka. Yes, yes. And my kids were like, well, mom, we'll never miss you. And it was hilarious because I was like, I'm always trying to sort of not be that tall poppy. Also because I was, this is getting way off it, but I was like a gifted child, right? Which was really challenging, but I also got yelled at a lot. And yet I bought, and I'm wearing a neon yellow right now, actually. So yeah, I

SPEAKER_04:
Right? Yes. I feel like I can parlay that into this conversation around anxiety because one of the things I really appreciated about the introduction to your newest book was you talk about how there's like this range. If you have zero anxiety, that's actually not good. Because you need a little bit of anxiety to achieve and to go and to perform and to pursue and to strive and to aim because there actually are legitimate threats in the world. You have to pay attention, that kind of thing. And at the same time, you don't want to OD on it. And so there's this healthy range of anxiety.

SPEAKER_03:
Technically, right? Like anxiety, like a lot of mental health, like a lot of neurodivergence exists on a spectrum. And at the top of the spectrum is what neuroscientists call good anxiety. Dr. Wendy Suzuki has a great book called Good Anxiety. And this is the anxiety that we absolutely need to stay alive. And also that we feel that is what she calls activation energy that motivates us, right? So when you're about to take the stage for your TED Talk, if you're not anxious, you actually may not deliver, right? That's good anxiety, but it's usually time delimited, right? It's state anxiety. So it goes away when you're done with your TED Talk. And then in the middle is really this chronic anxiety that so many of us feel, which is really why I wrote the book. As a person who feels anxious on a perfect day, I was like, I have a lot to teach people who are feeling anxious for the first time or who, because of the way we work, now the pandemic, are feeling this sense of dread and worry. Because anxiety is either in the future or the past, never in the present. And then at the bottom end of the spectrum is when anxiety becomes mental illness, right? Which is my diagnosis of very, very common, world's most common mental illness diagnosis, generalized anxiety disorder, right? Panic anxiety, social anxiety. And that is rough and hard and needs to be professionally treated and yet also can be extremely instructive.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's one of the things you talk about actually. You talk about how, I'm going to put some words in your mouth, but like most people relate to their emotions in a non-functional way. They're a nuisance, you know, they try to bury them or they indulge in them or whatever. And it seems as though you suggest that emotions are actually information. And so we can start talking about some of the practical stuff in the book, because it really is a roadmap of how a person can get some tools for people to learn how to manage their anxiety in a healthy way. Can you talk to us a little bit about how to look at anxiety as information and what What is anxiety telling us when we're feeling it?

SPEAKER_03:
I mean, emotions literally are information, right? The problem is, is that they're not always rational, right? They're not always appropriate, but they're ours, right? Feelings aren't facts, but we feel them. I mean, the thing about anxiety that is so amazing is that it is a threat response. Right? And it's a feeling we get either when we're anticipating a threat or something from our past triggers the warning, the feeling that a threat is imminent. And so it's really instructive because what it's saying to us is, you're not safe. Something's wrong. You're having a lot of big feelings about this. Why? And if we listen to it, we can either say to it, oh, that's interesting. I'm having nausea and a migraine and I feel sick before I meet with my boss every Thursday. I hear this all the time, by the way. Why? Why do I have an anxiety attack before I go to this meeting every Thursday with my boss? That's interesting. And then you can also tell it to piss off. Like, no anxiety, you're not helping me right now. I need to get on this plane. Chances are it's not gonna crash, and here's why, so can we talk later? But when you live with it and you treat it, and again, you try to get in a more functional relationship with it, it can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_01:
Hi, my name is Mike Park, and I'm a proud graduate of the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching. The faculty of the Metta Performance Institute not only provided the training, tools, and experience to learn how to coach people toward powerful growth and thrilling results, but also advocated for that kind of growth and results in my own life. I had the unique opportunity to have world-class executive coaches invest in my development, both professionally and personally. It's a privilege to be part of a tribe of coaches fiercely committed to exploring what we are capable of together. If you're looking to become a coach or to set up your coaching practice to reach the next level, I highly recommend the certification from the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching. To fill out a free assessment of your abilities as a coach and to connect with someone to find out if the Metta Performance Institute is for you, check out www.mp.institute.

SPEAKER_04:
I do like how you frame that in terms of in your book, you talk about sometimes most of the time, I would think probably the option of the game isn't to eliminate it is to like to develop a new relationship with it. And frankly, I would think so. I have a lot of anxiety. I wake up anxious. I have bad dreams almost every night. And there's journeys and ways to mitigate that. And you can do cognitive behavioral therapy. And you talk about that in your book and other things too. But there's also a, I compound my anxiety by hating the fact that I'm anxious versus accepting the fact that I'm anxious. And there's actually a degree of peace that comes from saying, this is a thing that's in my life. And sometimes I don't appreciate it. Sometimes I do. And there's like, just develop a healthy relationship with it versus resenting it, which just, I would think, exacerbates it.

SPEAKER_03:
right, you know, common among people who manage anxiety or depression is the anxiety that's going to come back. And that can keep you in a state of limbo, right? It's a really, you know, the anxiety we feel about feeling anxiety is really challenging for us. And so, again, and can summon past traumas and So we have to accept it. Only by accepting it can we mitigate it and deal with it. But the other thing that I've found studying my beloved anxious achievers is that we rely on our anxiety. We rely on it. We can do great things. We annoy a lot of people, but we can do great things because of that anxiety.

SPEAKER_04:
And there are tools to walk with it in a more resourceful way. In many ways, that's what the second part of The Anxious Achiever is about. And so just for our audience, I want to walk through a few practical things. I'll use my words like it seems as though like you talk about tells and triggers. So there's like, there's like an awareness thing. Can you, even you can talk about Susie's and your body. Actually, I would love for you to, to, there's a chart in the book that talks through kind of how do you pay attention to your body for anxiety? Do you feel comfortable walking our audience through just like while they're listening to this, body scan, just like learning to become aware of it. Cause a lot of people are anxious and they don't even realize they're anxious.

SPEAKER_03:
You know, it's funny, a lot of people are like, you know, I get this tingling in my arm and that's anxiety. I did an interview with one man, very senior executive in the sixties, and he said, it wasn't until I went to AA and quit drinking that I realized that I had managed anxiety attacks my whole life. So a lot of us, and a lot of us don't grow up with the words like mental health literacy in this country is not great. So a lot of us just literally haven't been given the words to associate. So when you do a body scan, you know, it's really helpful. And the thing is, you can do it at your desk. You can do it multiple times a day. But I talk about learning to play detective. We all have our greatest hits about how we react when we're anxious. And our body is like the National Weather Service before a hurricane. We have radar, our senses are brilliant, right? And so what I want people to do to become mindful and start playing detective is to start by feeling their body. You know, you could even, it's wonderful to do it after a Zoom call, if you have five minutes, Because, like, are your shoulders up to your ears? Is your jaw clenched? Is your chest tight? Does breathing feel difficult? Do your wrists and forearms feel tight? Is your heart racing? Is your stomach We hold so much in our stomach. Like, I don't know about you, but sometimes after a very stressful day, my stomach will be so tight, my muscles, my ab muscles. And that's why breathing is so amazing, right? Because you can think about, have I been breathing all day? And there's data to support this. All day up here in my chest, because I'm anxious and stressed, What would happen if I took a minute, puffed out my belly, and tried to push that breath down? Have I been eating? Have I been sleeping? You said that you have bad dreams. And so you really, my friend Rebecca Harley taught me this, you need to become the detective and tune in. Because even if your conscious mind is not saying, I'm anxious, your body is probably telling

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's good. And by the way, what she did, I don't know if you noticed, but she kind of walked through from head to toe, you know, the, the shoulders, the chest, the stomach. And so there's a process. And so I recommend you buy the book. And in the book, there's actually a chart that kind of walks you through that process. Maybe just I want to touch on maybe one or two other things from anxious achiever. And then we'll talk about your podcast, because I have a theory about how you as an introvert have done research for your book. And I want to test, I want to test that here. with your award-winning podcast. And so talk to us a little bit about, we could go a lot of different places. I'm gonna pick perfectionism and control. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've learned in terms of, by the way, I'd love for you just to define perfectionism, because I think people are more perfectionistic than they realize. So define perfectionism and how an anxious leader manages that.

SPEAKER_03:
Perfectionism is either a thought or a behavior that is about tying your self-worth to your achievement or to an outcome. So perfectionism is the thought, if I don't make this budget report absolutely flawless, I'll get fired. I'll suck. It has to be the best. It can be the behavior of, I'm going to work every night until midnight until this is perfect. And also, I'm not going to let my colleagues and my direct reports look at it because I have to make it perfect. But it can also be, I can't start this project because if it's not perfect, I'm going to get punished. So I'm just not, I'm going to avoid it.

SPEAKER_04:
I want to double click on that because it does seem if a person's wondering if they struggle with perfectionism, avoidance, I would guess, is one of the biggest indicators or could be one of the biggest indicators because I'm avoiding starting because what if it doesn't live up to the thing, right?

SPEAKER_03:
Absolutely. Procrastination and avoidance. Absolutely. Yes.

SPEAKER_04:
And what's the antidote to that? If anyone's listening to this, how do you fix that?

SPEAKER_03:
Therapy. I mean, so many of these perfectionistic beliefs are very deeply held. They don't come out of nowhere, right? So we've either learned them, in elementary school, in college, in our first job. We were born that way. We seek control because we grew up in a chaotic household, right? And so it's not your fault. And perfectionism is anxiety. And that's a real aha moment because in our culture, we laud perfectionism because we misunderstand it. And so I went through a couple of months where every time I read an article in a business publication, I noted when they use the word perfectionist or in the art section of the New York Times. It's used a lot because we think it means people who are amazing and relentless and obsessive.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. It's almost like a humble brag a little bit. Totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:
But that's actually not what it is. And the pursuit, Thomas Greenspan is an expert in perfectionism, and what he says, and you'll hear this a lot in the literature, is the pursuit of excellence is not perfectionism. Perfectionism is the anxiety. about what it means for who you are if you don't achieve an impossible ideal that you set.

SPEAKER_04:
Is control related to that? Are those cousins? What's the distinction between perfectionism and control?

SPEAKER_03:
I mean, control is underpinning a lot of anxiety because we feel anxious when we don't feel in control, and some of us seek control more than others, and we feel anxious as humans when things feel very chaotic and uncertain because we're bred to stay alive. Right? So it's important to remember. It's like, oh, it's just my brain trying to help me stay alive. It's just that my brain doesn't understand that it's just like my 4 p.m. sales meeting, right? There's no bear waiting to eat me. Yes, right. So a lot of us anxious people seek control, right? Again, because we were raised in a place that felt scary or that's just how we are. And so perfectionism and controls are like peanut butter and jelly, right? Because it's like, when I'm perfectionistic, I have to have tons of control because it's all about me. And I have to make this perfect, and other people can't make it perfect, and other people will judge me if it's not perfect. And here's where your body comes in, right? As I'm saying this, my body is getting super tight.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, I can see it getting tense. Yeah, that's incredible. And so then I appreciate the honesty of the answer of therapy, but your book doesn't just suggest therapy. Your book actually has some like tactical things. So like, what are some tactical things before we pivot to the podcast? What are some tactical things people can do with perfectionism and control?

SPEAKER_03:
Okay, well, my two favorites are one is like super practical and one's a little risky. The super practical one is to literally set limits, is to use what they call heuristics, right? To say, okay, I'm really nervous about this project. And my tendency when I'm nervous is I just go crazy and I work all hours. But you know, the last time I did a similar project, it took me 40 hours. And the client was really happy. My boss was happy. I felt good about it. Okay. So I need 40 hours. How am I going to do that? Because what you're doing is you're putting limits on your habits.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_03:
And I have found that extremely helpful. The more risky approach would be to say, I'm just going to try to turn down the temperature on this one. A lot of like when we're perfectionistic, it's because our emotional investment is so high. And so it could be to really play with, if this was the worst outcome, play out the worst outcome, would I get fired? Is this worth my ultimate emotional investment? because not everything is. Some things are, but not everything is. And then the third thing, which I've just started doing is because I really like to think about athletes. You know, athletes view their body and their time as a precious resource. So why can't you?

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. So what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_03:
My body and my time is a precious resource and I have to invest it wisely and I have to recover.

SPEAKER_04:
I do want to skip a stone across your first book, which I also recommend to people, Hiding in the Bathroom. And you talk about setting boundaries in that first book. Do those things overlap for you?

SPEAKER_03:
So boundaries are different than limits, right? And boundaries are intangible. Boundaries is just a feeling, really, that something uncomfortable is happening or something is not right. And again, this is about tuning in, right? This is why mindfulness is so helpful and so popular, or dialectical behavior therapy, because a lot of us, we just don't even know our boundaries, or we've let them be trampled on for years. And so to set limits, you have to know your boundaries, because they're all different. And so some people love late night emails. It makes them feel important. They're like, great. Some people feel absolutely spooked and freaked out and overwhelmed by late night emails, right? People are different. So you've got to learn your boundaries and then you set limits. And limits are the real demarcation of like, I'm gonna put my phone away, if that makes sense. But when I go talk to teams now, they're like, we're not allowed to have boundaries.

SPEAKER_04:
Is that true? Or that's the emotion they're carrying, which stops them from creating that in the workplace?

SPEAKER_03:
Well, it's the culture, it's the system, and then the emotion that habits they develop by being in that system.

SPEAKER_04:
So then what does a company do if that's true as a way of solving or creating space for boundaries in the workplace?

SPEAKER_03:
A company has to set limits, which is really hard to do.

SPEAKER_04:
Can you give me an example of what that might look like?

SPEAKER_03:
Well, so one of my favorite examples is, it's kind of old now, but it's still really powerful. So Leslie Perlow at Harvard Business School did a thing where she worked with teams at Boston Consulting Group, which is like obviously famously a challenging, elite and difficult consulting firm, right? You're like always on. And she knew that these consultants who were huge achievers, who worked in a system where it's like all about the client and you weren't going to be like, I'm tired. I'm going to go to the gym. And so what she did was she created working with them a schema called predictable time off, where if a team was on a case, every team member got one predictable night off a week. And they knew that their team would cover for them. And the teammates wouldn't be resentful because they would get a predictable time off. And it was all super clear. I think that that is brilliant because part of what keeps us from taking care of ourselves is the anxiety that we're letting others down, we're not meeting expectations, or that we'll be punished.

SPEAKER_04:
A phrase that I think of a lot and say sometimes when I'm working with clients or at our firm is like stripping the screws. So like at our company, we talk about high performance and we actually talk about going beyond high performance, which we call meta performance. And what's interesting is a lot of people think that going beyond high performance is just like high performing harder. You know, like double downing on high performance. And it's like if you were white knuckling before, meta performance is like really white knuckling versus finding creative ways of getting more done in less time. And like the irony of that is I would think that the strategy that you just shared, if everyone's working every night, the quality of that work isn't as good as they think that it is. And a predictable night off actually increases the quality of the work. And if you do it in a way where everyone where the customer is still getting served, the client still getting served, but everyone's able to, like like a relay race, take a little bit of a break to refresh, then that actually increases performance. That's a perfect example of meta performance is a strategy where you're increasing the quality of the output, while also decreasing the amount of time everyone's having to contribute to that output.

SPEAKER_02:
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SPEAKER_03:
How do you think about helping people take time to recover?

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's a great question. I've learned from our probably same as you. So we have a division that works with professional athletes. And you know, Dan LaFleur is the head of that division, and he's a good friend of mine. And so I learned a lot from him and the other coaches who work with athletes. I think LeBron James sleeps like 12 hours a day. You know, and so there is like a building in recovery time thing. I'll say with our coaches, our coaches, it's great because we work together, but also everyone is able to manage their own schedules. And then we just try to figure out a way to make it work for everybody. And so, uh, I don't know if this is interesting or helpful, but like our coaches, especially on the holidays, some of our coaches just say, I'm not coaching in December. And so they'll let their clients know, you know, like, Hey, I'm taking December off, we can displace calls or whatever. Sometimes you you build a 12 month contract, but it's only an 11 month contract, you're going to take them, you know, a month off or whatever. And we have about 40 coaches in our firm right now. And I would say some of our coaches are pretty good at that. Other coaches are recovering high performers. And so this is a little harder. And then we take turns being drunk again on the drug of high performance. So we're figuring it out. We have a lot to learn. And I'm sure there are some folks on our team who say that I'm like a pacesetter leader where I'm trying to invite people to do more and do more. And I'm sure that in some ways, that's true. I don't ever want people to do more at the expense of sobriety, health. I'm obsessed with ways of increasing productivity without increasing time to be productive.

SPEAKER_03:
The reason why I'm obsessed with leadership anxiety is because what you just said. Am I the pace setter leader who myself is thinking we all need to do more? And when you understand your anxiety and how it shows up for you as a leader, you can be honest with yourself and say, as I had to when I ran a company, money makes me so anxious because of my childhood. I am always feeling like failure, losing my house, homelessness is around the corner. That's my anxiety. So I have a choice. I can make people nuts, make them work all the time, micromanage them, live in fear, or I can understand that this is my anxiety speaking and this time it's got to go away and take a walk. That unlock is life changing.

SPEAKER_04:
Yes, well even, it's interesting, people who are anxious about money unintentionally oftentimes make money the center of their lives. Yeah, they're good at it. They're very good at it. And it is interesting, I was talking with one of our coaches the other day and the question I asked was, what are you willing to lose money over?

SPEAKER_03:
Yeah, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_04:
And if you can't answer that question, then that's probably not a good sign, because that means, for lack of a better phrase, like money is your God, and money is an awful God. That God will mess your life up.

SPEAKER_03:
Mess your life up. But so many of us in our society, it's our source of anxiety because it's about loss. So often it's like, What is your fear of loss saying to you as a leader? Maybe it's loss of reputation, maybe it's fear of being shamed, maybe it's money, maybe it's love. And is that fear of loss too strong a force and affecting everyone around you?

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's very good. And yeah, that's right. And how is that affecting others around you? That's really good, Maura. So, okay, so then I do want to talk. So you have an award-winning podcast, and you are prolific, like, with your writing for all the outlets you write for, with the books, and, of course, your podcast. I have a theory that one of the ways you are able to, like, quote, do it all. To me, this is, like, a wonderful hack. My theory is that you are able to gene splice your podcast into research for the projects that you're passionate about. First of all, is that true?

SPEAKER_03:
So the thing I learned when I became a blogger in 2004 or 5 is that when you call anybody up and are like, I want to ask you a lot of questions and write about you, they're excited. They'll say yes. Yeah. And that the best way for me back then to build my political consulting business was to call up people I wanted to be my clients and be like, hey, Now, when I started doing, and then I started blogging about work and workplace flexibility and being different and neurodiverse at work and all that good stuff. And it was really driven by curiosity and it is like my lab. It is totally my lab and I love it. It's harder now because there's so much other content out there that people are like, well, I'm going to do Dax Shepard's show. I'm not going to do your show, which didn't happen, frankly, you know, six years ago when I... Yeah, because you got in early. Yeah. But c'est la vie. So, yeah, I mean, you probably do the same.

SPEAKER_04:
Oh, for sure. Well, I would say that we, frankly, I think you are part of the beginning of that, right? So when Harvard Business Review sent me your book, I was like, there's a few things I wanted. One is, I was like, this woman is fascinating. And as I started doing more research on you, I was like, I need to know more about this person. There was that. And there's also, there are other future projects, Maura, that I am passionate about. And I'm like, I bet she would have just the best take on that. And so it was like, can we please find a way to have her on the show? And then Steven and Matthew who run our podcast, they hunted you down and graciously you appeared. That's amazing. And I'm so thrilled for you to be here.

SPEAKER_03:
I mean, look, I'm just going to get nerdy for a second, which is when I was at Harvard, I studied with Robert Putnam, who basically is the leading sort of public intellectual around social capital theory. and everybody needs to know about social capital theory. And what you just illustrated is that we have become weak ties who have found an intellectual kinship, a professional kinship, and through our content, which is why I believe people, especially introverted people, should do content, and we're gonna think of each other now. We're not best friends, but we're gonna think of each other And if I have an opportunity for you, I'm going to be like, oh, that's interesting. And you might do the same for me. That's called generalized reciprocity. And so one of the amazing things that I've learned in my way too long creating content on the internet is that it becomes social capital for you, and it becomes your best connector and source of everything, really.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, we could do a whole conversation. Totally. And by the way, just to say this, I think you probably agree, I think the world in general suffers from a lack of financial literacy. and also social literacy and how those two things overlap. So, you know, we even like social capital is a financial metaphor. And frankly, I think people don't know about capital either. They don't know about capital and they don't know about social capital.

SPEAKER_03:
It's the Lions Club. It's the Chamber of Commerce. It's the fact that every realtor in your town sponsors Little League.

SPEAKER_04:
Yeah, that's right. And even, you know, it's funny. So I recently got married and thank you. And man, my wife, I am so impressed. with how generous and how much she values relationships and how her valuing relationships is like the secret sauce to the immense success that she's had in her life. And she says she's an introvert, by the way, and I'm going to agree with her just because I don't want to try to prove people wrong about who they say they are. But she is the most social introvert I've ever seen. And I watch how she intentionally builds relationship and how that later down the road ends up being a beautiful thing for everyone involved. And I can only imagine more that your podcast. I mean, how many episodes have you done and how long you've been doing for six years? How many episodes? Oh, I had one before that called Hiding in the Bathroom. So do you always do a podcast around whatever? No, my podcast become my books. Oh, yeah, that's right. So hold on. So then your current podcast is called The Anxious Achiever. So then are you planning on doing another podcast? You already got something in the hopper?

SPEAKER_03:
I'm going to stick with this one for a while. I work with LinkedIn. They sponsor my podcast. Harvard Business Review initially sponsored it, and then I went to LinkedIn. And I like working with a partner. For me, that's a powerful way to do it. I love it. I want to go back though. You're thinking about your wife's not an introvert. Your wife is totally an introvert. She's super social. She believes in intentional relationships. This is a lot about what my first book is about. When you're an introvert, intentional relationships are everything. You nurture them like a garden, but you're intentional and that's the difference.

SPEAKER_04:
One is she's gonna love, I'll send podcasts I'm proud of to her and she listens to them as a way of supporting me. So she'll be, I don't know if she's on a walk right now listening to this or whatever, but she's like, yeah, Maura gets me.

SPEAKER_03:
I do, I do.

SPEAKER_04:
I feel so seen by her. Yeah, because the more introverted you are, the more precious every relational investment is.

SPEAKER_03:
And introverts aren't shy always. I'm the literally hammiest person you'll ever meet. I am so not shy. I'll talk to anybody, but I'm a super introvert. I have to be alone at least two hours a day.

SPEAKER_04:
What's interesting is this is where it becomes contentious for me is because I would say I'm very introverted. I'm more introverted than my wife is. And so I get confused. I'm like, why don't you need, like, I have to go lick my wounds and like stare at a wall for half a day and you don't. And so, it's almost like a competition. Like, oh, I have the introverted Bonifides. That's funny. I'm the real introvert in the relationship. And I think that's probably not the best way to look at it.

SPEAKER_03:
Well, I'll just tell you that I've been married to my husband almost 18 years. And when you've been married a really long time, when he comes home at the end of the day, and he wants to talk, I'm just like, I don't want to talk to you right now.

SPEAKER_04:
Oh, that's great. Well, first of all, congratulations on 18 years of marriage. We could do our own conversation around that because that's no joke. That's as impressive in many ways of the Harvard Business Books and the podcast and things. Maura, I want to thank you. Thank you for your time. And if you're listening to this, you can check out her podcast, The Anxious Achiever. Also check out our older podcast. I suppose you could go find that too, Hiding in the Bathroom. Both of these books I found to be very interesting, very valuable. Maura, I want to give you the last word and also where can people find you other than the podcast if you want to point anyone someplace else.

SPEAKER_03:
Well, Jason, you're a fabulous interviewer. This was a great conversation and I feel really, I'm in a great mood now, which is wonderful because I have a stressful day. People can find me on LinkedIn, to be honest. I am on LinkedIn a lot. I really use it as my lab. So if you're listening and you're an anxious leader, or you have a story you want to tell me, message me because I love hearing from and a lot of my podcast guests are people who reach out to me on LinkedIn. So please.

SPEAKER_04:
That's great. Awesome. Well, Maura, thank you. It was really nice meeting you. And I know you've got a lot to do today. So be released for the rest of your day. But it was it was so great having you on our show. Thank you very much. Thanks. All right, we have a few more things to let you know about before we go. First, podcast reviews really help us serve more people. So if this podcast is helpful for you, we'd love your help to get it into as many leaders' hands as possible. Please leave us a review, even if it's not five stars. And if you really want to go the extra mile, let us know what you'd like to hear more of or what you think we could do better to serve you and the people you care about. Okay, second, we have more resources for you online and they're all free. We have free assessments, educational videos, articles from sources like Fast Company, written by our coaches and clients, all designed to help you use our tools in your everyday life and leadership. To dive into the free treasure trove of goodies we have for you, go to novus.global and then click on resources. Some of you have been listening for a while and you haven't yet taken that next step to hire a coach. This is your time. I can't tell you how often I've heard from clients around the world that they wish they would have talked to us sooner. If you have a sense that you're capable of more, we would be thrilled to explore what coaching could do for you and those you influence. Simply email us at begin at novus.global or click the link in the show notes. You also might be listening to this thinking, Maybe you want to be a coach or maybe you already are and you have a vision to build a six or seven figure practice coaching people you love in a way that brings life to you and your clients. Well, that's why we created the Metta Performance Institute for Coaching. It is an in-depth coaching apprenticeship designed to help you create the coaching practice of your dreams. The first step in exploring that is simple. Just go to www.mp.institute. There we have free assessments to help you see what kind of training you need to create the coaching practice the way our coaches do at Novus Global. Finally, this show was produced by Rainbow Creative with Matthew Jones as executive producer, Steven Selnick as producer, and Rob Johnson as audio editor and engineer. We love working with this team. Find out more about how to create a podcast for you and your business at rainbowcreative.co. Thank you so much for listening. We love making these for you. And remember, dare to go beyond high performance.