LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, 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.

Today's guest is a former executive, entrepreneur, and investor.

He also invests his time in the world's future business leaders as a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School.

But Martin Sinozic is also more open and honest with his students than a lot of B-School

professors might be. He talks about his own experiences with fear, imposter syndrome. He's ignited

by the mission to improve mental health at work. My personal experience and my experience with

my, especially my MBA students, more so than my exec ed students, is that we are all

navigating the sense of needing to do more, of being enough, of living up to the challenge,

of living up to the brand, of all of these external pressures

we have on ourselves that are outside of us, but that push us along, often in good ways,

but often in some really bad ways.

A lot of us struggle with depression or anxiety as a result of those kinds of external

pressures.

The idea is that we have to be good enough, especially as we get into schools and

jobs that are, quote, impressive. Many turn to keeping up the facade at all costs. And they do that

not just in their professional lives, but in their personal lives. In fact, there's a lot of

parallels between the external pressure we feel to perform and achieve at work

and the pressure we put on ourselves in our personal lives, to have this seemingly perfect

relationship, home life, family. Like getting fired, divorce or separation can often shake people

to their core, not knowing how to change that definition of a key

piece of themselves. And of course, it's hard to balance while managing a high-powered career.

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