HBR Presents

There was once a time when work went something like this.

Get up in the morning, put on a suit, get to the office, keep your head down for eight hours, return home with a paycheck.

Work isn't like that anymore.

People are stressed, mentally and emotionally drained, confused about the boundaries between our

work time and our personal time and our work life and our personal life. And while there's

increasing openness in a lot of areas, we're having conversations around race,

gender, sexuality, and parenthood, we're talking about bringing our whole selves to work.

There's still a big elephant in the room.

I did used to sometimes take that swig of vodka before a high stakes meeting or a public speaking event.

If we're at work and wondering, really, should we have gotten this job?

All these questions go through our heads.

And there's so many experiences that we have that make us question ourselves.

And that second guessing and the negative thoughts can create this anxiety.

I had no problem going out there and speaking in front of a conference.

But if it was going to a perception of people I didn't know after one of those conferences,

that's the situation that I would freeze up in.

People think anxiety is crazy.

And when I speak and go out, I always say anxiety is just anxiety.

Am I anxious? Of course I'm anxious. I'm human.

Despite all the changes in the workplace, we ignore mental health issues from anxiety, depression, and everything in between.

We want to pretend that these issues just don't exist.

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