LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Maura Arons-Mili, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick

themselves up, and how they hope work will change in the future.

Before we start today's show and at the risk of being a little too achievement oriented, I have to tell you that this is the 100th episode of The Anxious Achiever.

To those of you who've been with us from the beginning, or if you've just picked up the show this week, thank you.

Thank you for helping the show grow, for doing your own part in destigmatizing the topic of mental

health at work, for sharing the show with your friends, and for downloading it millions of

times. Now, today's show, it's the first in a two-part series on perfectionism. Many of our

struggles, especially our mental ones, are hidden from the world. And those of you who think

of yourselves as anxious achievers probably work hard to control or to create an image of what the

world sees of you, the person who never has a typo in their emails, never forgets a birthday,

or whose body looks a certain way because they never miss a day in the gym.

We're driven to pursue perfectionism for all kinds of underlying reasons, and we'll

explore in the series the many myths behind perfectionism.

I was inspired to reach out to our guest today because I read an op-ed she wrote on

overexercise, a piece she wrote on over-exercise.

A piece she wrote called,

Exercise was the perfect coping mechanism until it wasn't.

She opened up in that piece and in her other writing about her journey from being a homeless teenager

to being accepted into Harvard University and working at Google.

But the big achievement that she had been chasing

...