LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Maura Aaron Smiley, and this is The Anxious Achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and work and how we can all do both better.

There are a lot of challenges in our lives that can help us achieve more,

and mental health challenges or neurodivergent tendencies can be our superpowers.

And then there's the reality that there are going to be times that are traumatic, tragic, sad. We face depression, death, and grief because we are human.

Today, we have two guests who face those things boldly.

At the end of the show, we'll hear from a listener who reached out to me to talk about the pain

she was experiencing as a full-time, unexpected caretaker for her partner as he fought cancer,

and what that meant for her career, her work, and her ambition.

But first, we have the wonderful Susan David, whose incredible TED Talk on emotional courage has been viewed over 10 million times.

Susan's best-selling book, Emotional Agility, is a classic.

She's a Harvard Medical School psychologist.

We start the conversation talking about grief and just how angry the tyranny of positivity can make us.

Music grief and just how angry the tyranny of positivity can make us. There is a narrative that talks to this about cancer, and I experienced this profoundly in my own life with my own parent who was diagnosed with terminal cancer

when I was 15.

And I recall going into his room one day after he had guests who had basically come to say

goodbye to him.

And my dad was sobbing. And I remember saying

to him like, Daddy, Daddy, you know, what's going on? What happened? And he said to me, they told me that the

reason I am dying is because I do not have enough faith.

And he had in his mind, and through the messaging that he had received conflated,

this idea that somehow if you don't think positively,

...