LinkedIn Presents

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

First, I want to say I'm so excited because a new season of the show,

season seven, if you can believe it, is right around the corner.

Starting September, we'll be dropping a new episode every week,

looking at everything from neurodiversity and leadership to changing management styles, to grief, to negotiating.

But before the season starts, I wanted a quick refresher for you all, and for me.

One of the core tenets of the show is about examining our motivations to achieve,

and even to overachieve.

As the school year starts and work pressure ramps up, I thought it was a great time to revisit

this inspiring conversation I had with Julie Lithcott Hames.

Julie is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, How to Raise an Adult, Your Turn, How to Be an

Adult, and her memoir, Real American, in which she shares her personal battle with the low

self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. Julie also served as

Dean of Freshman and undergraduate advising at Stanford University for more than a decade.

But Julie didn't set out on that path.

Instead, she began her work as a corporate lawyer before realizing her true passion lay

in helping students, young adults, make decisions that would affect them for some time to come.

Julie focuses on how we separate all that we've accomplished from who we are at our

core. We start our conversation with how and why Julie became such an achiever.

So, Julie, were you raised in a household that prized academic and professional achievement?

Boy, was I. Let me put it this way. My father had helped eradicate smallpox from West Africa,

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