Therapy Makes You A Better Leader with Dr. Vikas Shah

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1:26Dr. Vikas Shah: and start your free trial.

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2:13Maurice Harris: Learn more about how Notion can support your business at notion.com slash achiever. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com slash achiever and try Notion today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. Hi, I'm Maura Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes. And honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that remind you it's from another time, but I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before.

3:06Maurice Harris: If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again or even re-record it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.

3:21Maurice Harris: You know, I recently sold my small business and we are merging into a larger company. As you can imagine, as with any significant change, there's been a lot of emotion involved in this merger. And I have to remind myself every day to check in with how I'm feeling and how my team is feeling. Because we like to keep our emotions at work under the surface in the name of being professional. But the truth is, emotion is always there. And if you understand the role that emotion plays, and this includes the dark ones, you'll be a stronger leader. My guest today actually says that being in therapy and understanding his emotions made him a better business person.

4:14Maurice Harris: And Queen Elizabeth probably agrees. Joining me today is Vikas Shah. He's an entrepreneur and investor and someone who's been outspoken about mental health after a long time, not understanding what it was he faced. Welcome, Vikas. How are you?

4:33Dr. Vikas Shah: I'm doing good. Thank you. And thank you for the invitation and for having me on today.

4:40Maurice Harris: Well, I have to start for our American listeners. You are an MBE. What is that and why? Why are you an MBE?

4:49Dr. Vikas Shah: so so the peculiarity of our royal family means that we still have this this wonderful thing called the honor system and so every year the queen um gives mbes mass member of the british empire cbes which is a commander and obe which is order and to people that they determine have been and been doing some service so it could be for anything so it could be for charity work it could be you know service in the military and mine was for it sounds awfully grand but for services to business and the economy. And yeah, it's kind of fun because, you know, it's all a bit of a surprise. You get a letter in the post and then you get to go to Buckingham Palace and they pin your medal on and, you know, they make a real fuss over it.

5:32Dr. Vikas Shah: And so one of those things that you look back on and it's kind of it kind of makes you proud. Well, I bet it makes your parents really proud.

5:40Maurice Harris: It does. I mean, get much better. Well, I think for my dad in particular, you know,

5:47Dr. Vikas Shah: the length of the journey is pretty crazy, right? So he grew up in, you know, what is literally, you know, what we would more commonly call a slum in India. And, you know, for him to then come to England and then, you know, all those years later, I think, you know, to see his son go to Buckingham Palace to get an MBE, you know, the length of his journey was the weight that I was carrying that day, if you know what I mean. And that to me was really important.

6:15Maurice Harris: Yeah, that's beautiful. complicated but beautiful um I know that you are sort of anti the entrepreneur what I call entrepreneurship porn you know the beautiful hustle story and like the like I was born an entrepreneur and da da da da but it sounds like you sort of were you were a very young

6:35Dr. Vikas Shah: entrepreneur was this an accident or is this who you are it was well I didn't realize it was something that was going to be so such a core part of me because at the time I never really was interested I just wanted to be a pilot you know we grew up right next to international airport so I grew up watching the planes come and go every day and it was it was just wonderful and I was like that's that's it that's all I want to do um turns out that's a horrifically expensive career choice and unless you join the air force or have you know wealthy parents it's it was just not going to happen. Well, at least at the time it wasn't.

7:13Dr. Vikas Shah: So I had to figure out a way of paying for flying lessons. The only way I could think of was just to pick up a phone book, phone companies and say to them, look, I'll do some web design for you. I'll do some graphic design for you. And every project was 50 pounds. And the plan was really simple. You know, every two projects I got paid for a flying lesson. So I was kind of 13 ish at the time. Anyway, so this is where things got kind of mad. So fast forward to the time I was 16. You know, I now had employees in Manchester, London, New York and Sydney. And it was a very, very different career path had opened up to me.

7:49Dr. Vikas Shah: So it was never by design. It was it was a very happy accident that that's where my career ended up.

7:55Maurice Harris: But but you've also said that you were you were an anxious child. But you also feel like that innate anxiety made you curious, which I would imagine also drove some entrepreneurship.

8:08Dr. Vikas Shah: Yeah, it was strange because growing up, there was never really a the same language we have around mental health, right? So, you know, I felt anxious, as I would call it now. But at the time, it was just more the sense of discomfort, the sense of, you know, wanting to be busy, wanting to do things, just being a bit kind of edgy is the wrong word, but a bit, you know, you always want to be doing something or learning something or watching something or reading something. And there was that constant sense of needing to be doing something, which nowadays I can attribute to anxiety. But at the time, I just thought, oh, well, you know, that's who I am.

8:45Dr. Vikas Shah: So I'm going to crack on. And I'm really grateful for it. And it sounds really odd, but I'm tremendously grateful for it because that was the driver that, you know, made me learn to code. that made me, you know, pick up the phone book that made me so obsessive about, you know, doing things well, which kind of built that early business. I didn't realize the consequences later. But but that was in many ways, something I'm thankful for as a kind of spark for that fire.

9:15Maurice Harris: Yes, it's funny when I when I've heard you tell your story, I've felt so many similarities, although I'm not nearly as rich and important as you, because I too was that kid and was always anxious. But even today, you know, I sort of wake up in the morning and there's like not enough hours in the day for everything that I want to do.

9:36Dr. Vikas Shah: It's the same. That never goes. You know, and I love it.

9:39Maurice Harris: It never goes. You love it, but you also know that it's difficult and that the people around you can also really pay a price for it sometimes.

9:47Dr. Vikas Shah: They can because you end up so consumed in your world that you don't realize that there's another world outside which is far more interesting and far more important in many ways and you're right it takes a toll on relationships it takes a toll on friendships it takes a toll on yourself and I think this is where you know the journey that I've had with you know as we call it the black dog it's taught me a lot about how to harness it so it's kind of putting the dog back on a leash as opposed to letting it go.

10:19Maurice Harris: Well, why don't you I'd love you to tell listeners your mental health. Well, let's start with your diagnosis, shall we? And then maybe give us the encapsulated version of your mental health ups and downs, if you would.

10:31Dr. Vikas Shah: So I think when I when I was when the sensations of anxiety were always, you know, they were getting a bit much, you know, I'd been to the doctor a few times and and how old were you at this point? I was always in my early 20s at this point. And, you know, the business had been growing fast. And it was, you know, it was quite a, quite a busy time in many ways. And then the dotcom bubble burst. And it was it was just, you know, it was chaos. And the doctor was, you know, saying, you know, maybe try some medication, maybe try some therapy. And I was kind of reluctant to do either, to be honest. And things got worse and worse.

11:06Dr. Vikas Shah: And I ended up doing what a lot of people do, which is kind of self medicate by going out a lot and you know trying anything other than what I should have been doing and it kind of came to a head and there was there was a few what I can see them now is kind of almost cries for help but at the time I didn't realize there was a few kind of fairly subtle attempts at thinking about and then planning and then sometimes attempting to do something silly and you know what you could call a suicide attempt but then there was one which was you know I literally was on the car park and ready to go and that was the day where when I stepped off ended up calling a helpline ended up in you know floods of tears and that was a day where I said I just can't do it now I need to do something I need to to really really take control because at that point I was completely broken so so that was when I really got a diagnosis of anxiety and depression and and started to you know, actually get treatment.

12:07Maurice Harris: What happened after you called the helpline? Did you go to a doctor right away? Like, what was the next step? Well, I wish I could say yes.

12:16Dr. Vikas Shah: But I'd had a, you know, this, this was all happening early in the morning. And I ended up in the office. It was a normal day. Oh, my God. You know, I literally just, you know, went home to have a quick change and shower and then back in the office. And there was a sense of denial almost like oh that didn't happen oh that was just a blip and then you know gradually through the day it was like oh you know I've got to do something and our health system though wonderful at the time wasn't really geared up around supporting people with mental health challenges and so I remember phoning the doctor and they said well it's going to be about you know nine to twelve months before you could see a specialist and I was like oh okay and so I just you know I was lucky that I could go privately and see one literally 24 hours later and and that's where it began.

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16:03Dr. Vikas Shah: And it kind of made me sad because I remember one occasion where, you know, after taking too many uh piracy somewhat i think it's advil in the u.s talenol talenol sorry yeah and and i went to an an emergency room and because i was like i've taken too many and they were like well you know you you seem fine and everything else checks out and you know were you suicidal when you took too many yeah and and and it was almost the absurdity of them just checking me over and letting me go Wow The absurdity of that situation almost shook me out of that state of mind And it's something which not many health systems are geared up to deal with But I'm just glad I was able to get diagnosed properly And get the right medications and therapy And start the recovery journey

16:55Maurice Harris: So you were anxious and you were depressed

16:58Dr. Vikas Shah: Well, yeah, it's odd Because I never really understood the link between the two and then it sort of made sense because i was so anxious about work about everything and there was so much stress and you know the burnout from anxiety you know depleted my emotional reserves

17:18Maurice Harris: so much that i ended up depressed as well yeah and and it's strange because i wish i'd have known

17:25Dr. Vikas Shah: all this at the beginning of the journey so you know now i kind of teach at business schools instead. And I always say to the students, listen, if there's one thing I would urge you to do is build resilience, the most important life skill you will ever have.

17:38Maurice Harris: How does building resilience factor into anxiety and depression and managing that?

17:44Dr. Vikas Shah: Because it's like with anything, you know, if you want to run a marathon, I mean, this is one of probably the most overused analogies you've probably heard around this. But if you want to run a marathon, you don't just go out and do it, you train, you make sure your body's strong, you're eating right, that you're, you know, in the right condition to run it. But we don't give ourselves the same, the same privilege with our minds, you know, we expect ourselves to be able to go into high performance careers into busy lives into, you know, short sleeping and all these things without actually training our minds without actually doing things like mindfulness without taking breaks with, you know, without understanding how nutrition plays a role in our mental health.

18:22Dr. Vikas Shah: So, so we unfortunately don't treat our minds with the same respect as our bodies. And I think often this is where many cases of anxiety and depression emerge.

18:33Maurice Harris: So from your perspective, and just again, knowing this is only your journey and everyone's different, do you feel that if you had had that early education and if you had the language around what you were feeling, that you would have managed your sort of anxious nature into your life the same way that someone might manage, you know, like I have tendinitis, but I still. I'm always curious because for me, I feel that I am an anxious person. I'm also a chronic depressive, but that's less of a factor in my day-to-day life. But like, I don't know that my anxiety is ever going to go anywhere. It travels with me.

19:08I've said this a million times, but I have language around it.

19:12Maurice Harris: I have methodology. I have medicine, you know, that's not how we usually talk about living with mental illness. Certainly being super successful and living with it.

19:23Dr. Vikas Shah: I found it, it was an odd thing to have to make peace with. Because, you know, when we talk about health, there's always this notion that, you know, you go to the doctor, they give you a pill or something, and you're cured, and then you carry on. And it took me a long time to make peace.

19:42Maurice Harris: Or that you have the kind of eat what I call the eat, pray, love experience. Yeah, exactly. Like I hit bottom, but I got cured. I found the way. I gave it all up. I moved to a farm, in my case in Vermont, and I, you know, make organic maple syrup and now I'm fine. Right? Oh, that sounds like bliss. It does actually sound great.

20:03Dr. Vikas Shah: I think this was the thing, like making peace with the fact that this is just who I am. And it's not a bad thing. And I have to live with that. it gives me some superpowers, which I'm very grateful for, but I have to just live with it. And that's fine. You know, that took a lot to make peace with, because in your mind, you're like, I want to be free of this. And you don't realize how important this is to who you are, and how important this is to what you do. So I'm really grateful that I was able to make peace with it. Because that's not a narrative that we're told enough, when we're talking about mental health.

20:36Dr. Vikas Shah: You know, there's always this sense of recovery being an endpoint, whereas recovery in many, many cases is just making peace with whatever it is that caused you to be in that situation, and making peace with perhaps just, you know, you have to just learn to live with it and manage it. I have medication, I have my routine, I have, you know, the various things I do just to protect my mental health. And that's fine. It works. And it keeps me functioning relatively normally.

21:00Maurice Harris: So this is my favorite topic. And I would like to take advantage of the fact that you are a professor in business schools to ask you to talk a little bit about the intersection between leadership and anxiety. Because, well, I'll just explain what I'm seeing and what I'm thinking about right now as we emerge from the pandemic here in the US where I am. I think that there's a tremendous amount, of course, of ambient anxiety. We've all been through trauma. And I think that a lot of people are acting out their anxiety almost unconsciously on each other as we figure out what work looks like now.

21:40Dr. Vikas Shah: Yeah.

21:41Maurice Harris: And I'm curious, A, what you're seeing and what you tell people. You know, I'll give you an example. Over micromanagement, over emailing. I think that a lot of bosses from what I'm hearing right now, a lot of teams are over in touch on Slack, on email, because they're nervous. Everything's out of control. And at least if I either get to inbox zero or I've told my subordinate 34 times that she has to have that report on my desk by Friday, I'm exerting some sort of control. I'm acting out anxiety.

22:16Dr. Vikas Shah: Exactly. Exactly. So in the new kind of hybrid world, particularly where, you know, people are either working from home or working remotely more, there's a tendency for us to mistake level of activity with level of productivity, right? So we can think, oh, I sent lots of emails, I sent lots of Slack messages, I, you know, I did all this, that means I'm productive. Well, it's not. It just means that you've been very active on email. And the other part of that is that in most cases, people don't consider the emotional consequences of the message they're sending. So for example, a manager will message a subordinate and say, oh, can you just do this?

22:59Dr. Vikas Shah: And to the manager, it's no big deal. They're like, if they do it tomorrow, it doesn't matter. But the culture of that organization might mean that that individual who's already under stress at home, working from home, suddenly thinks, oh, God, I've got to get this done now. So actions have emotional consequences. And this is where, you know, the right kind of leadership training, you know, giving people the tools to understand the impact of language, the impact of the cadence of how you speak, and the emotional impact of how you speak and what that does to the people on your team. You know, this is critical information, which leaders don't often learn.

23:33Dr. Vikas Shah: The second part of that is that when we consider the mental health of our teams in the context of a pandemic, you know, we have to realize that as businesses, the responsibility we have to our employees and our colleagues doesn't finish at the, let's use the phrase, the factory door. You know, people spend more time with us as employers than they do with their family. And it's incumbent on us to make sure that we put the processes in place to protect people. You know, so encouraging people not to just jump on slack when they wake up when they're still in their pajamas at home, encouraging people to not answer emails out of hours and not feel obliged to do so.

24:17Maurice Harris: I guess what I'm what I want to push on is like, what are the inputs? Because I think a lot of most most leaders at this point know to say these things, certainly now during the pandemic, and yet they're not changing. And so how are they unaware of their own personal mental health,

24:34Dr. Vikas Shah: their own personal anxiety? So I'll give you an example. So with my own team, I noticed that I was telling them to do something and I wasn't doing it myself. So I might send them an email. I might say to them at kind of all hands, right, I don't want you to be doing this. I don't want you to be responding then. And then guess what? Out of hours, I might send an email saying, oh, I'm thinking about doing this. No need to reply. But guess what? No need to reply. It's just an opportunity for people to reply. So you have to behave in such a way that your team will respond, which is, to be honest, far easier in a business which you own with private capital without the pressure of external shareholders.

25:15Dr. Vikas Shah: In larger businesses, in venture funded businesses, in public companies, it's very different because the pressure from your investors and stakeholders makes it close to impossible to build that kind of culture. And that's something which I think is going to be very difficult to break. And I really wish we could collectively find a way of doing so. And one of the only ways I can think of is the fact that more and more financial reporting standards are including criteria in ESG, in environmental and social governance, around this. So Harvard University and a few others are doing work around how do you quantify ESG?

25:54Dr. Vikas Shah: How do you include it in your financial reporting? And the minute that company starts to realize that there is a direct cost on their bottom line of not looking after people, culture will probably change rather more quickly. So I think it's going to take that...

26:09Maurice Harris: Well, you see that with women on board mandates, for example, and diversity mandates, where it's sort of become de rigueur, certainly among more forward looking companies, public companies.

26:21Dr. Vikas Shah: Yeah, and you see it with environmental action as well, where companies are now financially penalized for their carbon footprint and for how they interact with supply chain. So, you know, I've had a few students in various programs look at this. And as much as I know, it's a very dispassionate way of looking at it. You know, when we think about what drives companies right now, you know, quarterly earnings targets and so on, it may take it for it to become a reporting criteria before we start to get change. And I do hate that because that's not how I think about it. But, you know, with any kind of nudge, with any kind of culture change, we have to look for what is the hook that gets the majority of people to act, not what is the hook that me as a passionate person will take to act.

27:06Maurice Harris: I want a world. I want a world where the CEO says, you know what? I had a really crummy childhood. And because my parents always fought about money, I get really hyped up around the time of quarterly earnings. And I make my team miserable because of it. But if I know that maybe I could stop.

27:27Dr. Vikas Shah: But think about where we grow our CEOs, right? A lot of our CEOs come from elite global business schools, jump straight into... They still have crummy childhoods. They do. But the problem is that that level of emotional honesty, I've seen this myself in business schools all over the world, the emotional honesty piece that defines who you are as an individual, which you often see from first generation entrepreneurs, it's almost erased from you in business school where you're taught to become the template of a high performance leader. And, and I think that's a real shame because culture change comes from the top, because that's where it's set.

28:06Dr. Vikas Shah: And I really wish, you know, more of the training grounds and proving grounds for our CEOs allowed people to, you know, live their story and put their story in the context of their leadership style, which is hard. It's hard work, but it's necessary work.

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29:45Dr. Vikas Shah: You know,

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31:16Maurice Harris: So you're saying what is the template of the high performance leader that's taught in business school?

31:22Dr. Vikas Shah: The template that I tend to see over and over again is almost, you know, you could almost call it the how do you build a management consultant template, where it's extraordinarily rigorous, it's about working hours, it's about approaches to network, it's, you know, it is the kind of typical set of behaviors that you experience if you chat to anybody in a wall street bar or in the city of london and it is incredible that when you do talk to people in those environments how homogenous they are in terms of their outlook on life and what's important whereas you know when i've had the pleasure of meeting lots of different entrepreneurs who didn't go through that journey oftentimes they are far more open about the fact that you know i went through this crummy childhood i went through this horrible experience.

32:03Dr. Vikas Shah: I was a refugee. And this is why that has now become this company, or this is why I am like this. And that's important because, you know, I know myself, when I was depressed and anxious, and nobody else knew I was because we become very good actors when we're depressed and anxious. My behaviors were inexplicable to a lot of people. They were like, why are you doing that? Why are you like what kind? Give me an example, putting people under pressure, working too much, expecting other people to behave the way I did. This was my problem. It was because I was unhealthy. And oddly enough, you know, now sometimes if I've got new starters in the business who are working with me, I'll tell them, look, you know, I can get anxious, I can get a bit down sometimes.

32:50Dr. Vikas Shah: And so sometimes if I'm not behaving the way you would normally expect. That's why. And it helps them manage their relationship with me and me, my relationship with them. And it's one of the most honest and important things I say to people that work around me. You've said that therapy has made you a better business person. You know, it's amazing how therapy with a good therapist, with a therapist that you trust, with a therapist that you don't have to act with can unlock the reasons why you are the way you are you know I my parents um you know like I said before you know we didn't you know we were doing okay you know I'm not I don't want to create some fictional poverty story we're doing okay but they they sent me to a school that they could you know literally barely afford it was quite an elite school when I was growing up and there was this notion of me always kind of you know being the poor kid at school and it was therapy that unlocked the fact that part of the reason I work at the rate I do is because I was bullied for our social status and it's almost a fight back against that so so when you understand why you are the way you are you can turn it from being a race into into something more positive like I get that that's why I feel like that sometimes but I need to find a different reason now.

34:18Maurice Harris: So, okay, so you're teaching business school students and there's a student who has all the pain and the sturm und drang and the anxiety and the depression, but they don't want to be an entrepreneur. They want a great job at Deloitte, at McKinsey. How do you help them become a mentally aware leader?

34:38Dr. Vikas Shah: I think the first step is to really get them to clarify why they want what they want. There's plenty of business school students that I meet who at the beginning of the course, they want to go and work for McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. And they're like, well, why? And they're like, well, it's because of the money, to be honest. All right, okay, that's great. But then why don't we sit down and think about all the other opportunities for you to make a similar amount of wealth in a timeframe that you want, which might be more compatible with your personality type. Because what you don't want to do is embark on a journey and start your first week at Goldman Sachs, do 100-hour weeks and burn out because you've just realized that your entire life choice was a lie.

35:24Dr. Vikas Shah: And there are plenty of ways to get to the target as long as you know why you want to get there.

35:31Maurice Harris: And does that include, hold on, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but say you're like, yeah, I want to work at Goldman. I want to work 100-hour weeks.

35:38Dr. Vikas Shah: if that's the case it's great i i mean i've had students like that i've had students that say you know what i've i've i did an internship there and it was the work pace was horrible but i loved it and i'm like fine if that's what you want to do more power to you but but use this time at business school to build resilience start doing mindfulness every day start training start eating right because if that's what you really want to do then you need to be the fastest strongest smartest most focused shark in the pool when you get there if you want to win because you are rarely going to encounter you know a more primal more brutal environment in which to try and succeed so if that's what you want to do great more power to you but make sure that you're trained and ready for the day you step in that room and that's what I work on with them and what if they have an

36:28Maurice Harris: anxiety disorder because because here's why I want to interrupt the narrative okay I feel like I feel like at least in my world, the narrative is I'm going to be a shark. I'm going to build resilience. I'm going to train. We all get that. But okay, what they don't tell you is I've had an anxiety disorder since I'm 13. I'm on medication. I have panic attacks, but I still want to be this shark at Goldman.

36:51Dr. Vikas Shah: I don't think that the two are mutually exclusive. I think. No, me neither. If you can understand, you know, we as human beings, any situation we're in, we have to adapt. So the person that you're at, the person you are rather, when you go to a networking event, or whether you're with your family or in another situation will be subtly different. And the workplace is no different. So, you know, for me, as somebody with an anxiety disorder, when I step into a high performance environment like that, I know what's expected of me. I know what success means in that environment. I know what I have to do to achieve success in that environment.

37:27Dr. Vikas Shah: And I know that, okay, that's what I'm going to get done. But then, on but then at the end of the week i know that if i if i'm spending a week in that world fine on saturday i'm going to do something really chilled really lovely you know very soft and something to recharge so it's almost making a bargain with my brain saying look i'm going to make you do something which is pretty uncomfortable for the week but then we're going to have this bonding time at the end of the week so it's building a routine that allows you to cope with that and you know, whilst I'm not on a trading floor, you know, back in the before times, you know, I was sometimes doing two international flights a week and speaking at conferences and doing this.

38:05Dr. Vikas Shah: And I had to make the same bargain, which is, this is going to be intense, you're going to have, you know, 10 days of intense flights and negotiations and meetings and all this. But after that, you're going to have two days of escaping the world to recharge, to make sure that you maintain your balance.

38:21Maurice Harris: a hundred percent and and i think that's what i mean you know my hobby isn't i interview successful people who are introverted and of course that's what that's what they have to do because if all that taps your energy tremendously and right you've got to recharge it just makes sense i just want to be very clear because i think that sometimes people who are struggling especially if you're in the middle of depression you're in the middle of a bad anxiety pattern And it looks so hard to be able to compete.

38:48Dr. Vikas Shah: Do you know what? I look back and if I look back on my own journey, there's a lot of luck and timing associated with getting anywhere in life, along with hard work and all that good stuff. But if I went back to that person stood on top of a car park, I wouldn't think I'd be able to do the stuff that I do now. if I went back to that you know spotty overweight bullied teen and who who wasn't very academic who who who didn't have the life options that most of his peers did I didn't think I'd be where I am now I didn't think I'd be you know hitting the closing bell at Nasdaq or going to Buckingham Palace to get an award it's none of that would have been obvious or even felt probable because it wasn't but what you can do and this is going to sound very cliche but it's really important is you can do

39:44Maurice Harris: the next thing you can do and you've got to realize that that is what builds momentum

39:50Dr. Vikas Shah: is just the next thing the next thing the next thing that that's almost more important sometimes than thinking about the big grand plan in a level of granular detail that sometimes we're encouraged to.

40:05Maurice Harris: Cognitive behavioral therapy, baby.

40:08Dr. Vikas Shah: Amen to that.

40:08Maurice Harris: Put the next foot forward. But it's so important because, you know, I'll give you an example, right?

40:14Dr. Vikas Shah: So I'm sat there with my MBA students and a lot of them, you know, come and see me and they're like, you know, we're just really stressed. We've got this massive MBA to do. And I'm like, well, what's the next class you got to go to? What's the next deliverable? Because you know, that's all you can focus on. Because to be honest, if you start a business, you start in a new corporate job, you're doing an MBA, whatever it is, if you think about the big thing you've got to do, anybody's going to get anxious. And particularly if you know you have an anxiety disorder like I know I have, I have to just almost park that, which is where meditation has been really useful, and just focus on the next thing I've got to do on that journey.

40:55Maurice Harris: That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, Follow us and tell your friends. And please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Maura Aarons-Mele. Lots more to come in the next episode.

41:28Thank you.