Jedi Mindsets for the Anxious Achiever with Shirzad Chamine

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 3 March 2026

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the biggest obstacle to your performance isn’t your workload or your leadership challenges, but your own mind? In this episode, I sit down with Shirzad Chamine, founder and CEO of Positive Intelligence, to talk about the habits many anxious achievers rely on to succeed (i.e. hypervigilance, perfectionism, control, and constant striving), but that can drain energy, clarity, and confidence over time. Shirzad breaks down how overused strengths turn into self-sabotage, and the 10-second practice that helps you shift from stress and reactivity into calm, focused leadership. Get ready to learn how to work with your mind instead of against it. Check out our sponsors: Northwest Registered Agent - Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes! Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/achieverfree Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial, just go to http://shopify.com/anxiousachiever Talkiatry - Head to http://talkiaitry.com/achiever and complete the short assessment to get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. Working Genius - Take the working genius assessment today and get 20% off with code ACHIEVER at working http://genius.com Brevo - Meet brevo, the all in one marketing and CRM platform built to help you connect with customers, boost engagement and grow your business smarter. Go to brevo.com/achiever and use code ACHIEVER50 for 50% off. In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 Why your mind can feel like your greatest ally and your biggest obstacle. 06:15 The 3 ways you judge yourself, others, and circumstances. 12:00 What's the difference between helpful emotions and self-sabotage? 14:15 Can anger and stress ever be productive? 18:00 The biological reason stress creates tunnel vision in high-stakes decisions. 20:00 What’s the real cost of overusing your strengths as a leader? 26:15 The shift that turns a leader’s vigilance from a strength into a liability. 31:15 The 5 Sage powers that improve wellbeing and results. 38:30 A 10-second PQ rep to calm anxiety fast. 41:00 Active grounding practices for restless or anxious minds. 48:00 How the Sage perspective turns any circumstance into a gift or opportunity. 56:45 Why hyper-achievement disconnects self-worth from success. 1:00:30 The shift from conditional to unconditional self-acceptance. Resources + Links Take the FREE Positive Intelligence assessment HERE Get your copy of Shirzad Chamine’s book Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours HERE Learn more about Positive Intelligence programs HERE Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow Shirzad on LinkedIn @shirzadchamine

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is your mind your best friend or your worst enemy?
0:07.0	I'm Maura Aaron Smiley and this is the anxious achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and work and asks, how can we do it all better?
0:19.0	One of my favorite exercises to do with people,
0:23.7	especially people who are wriggly and have a hard time paying attention
0:27.6	when they want to get grounded and downregulate
0:31.6	and get out of their anxious monkey mind
0:35.7	is to do something very simple and tactile, like feeling their
0:42.0	fingertips together and feeling the ridges of their fingerprints, or rubbing their hands together
0:49.9	and really feeling that sensation, or sometimes I might ask them to listen for the nearest sound to them,
1:00.0	and then the farthest, only for a short while.
1:06.8	And these are called PQ reps, and they are based on positive intelligence.
1:15.5	And my guest is the inventor of positive intelligence, Shiazad Chamin.
1:22.3	Now, we're going to talk about saboteurs.
1:26.4	We anxious achievers, we have a lot of them. Hypervigilance,
1:30.5	hyperachieving, restlessness, controlling. They're parts of ourselves that we actually probably
1:36.8	love and cherish and rely on. And they are the part of our mind that is also our worst enemy.
1:45.1	I don't know that I agree with all of Chamin's philosophy, although he has robust research
1:52.6	on the need to sort of move through quickly and get rid of negative emotions.
1:58.2	I think a lot of us who've done a lot of work on ourselves, we understand
2:00.8	the insight of negative emotions. But I want you to listen to this episode thinking about who are my
2:07.7	saboteurs? And could I just downplay my mind being an enemy for a while? You can take a free
2:14.2	assessment and learn your saboteurs.
	...

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