I'm Maura Aronsmeli and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who have dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges,

how they fell down, how they pick themselves up and how they hope workplaces can change in the future.

You know, I recently sold my small business and we are merging into a larger company.

As you can imagine, as with any significant change, there's been a lot of emotion involved in this merger. And I have to remind myself every day to check in with how I'm feeling

and how my team is feeling. Because we like to keep our emotions at work under the surface in the name of being

professional. But the truth is, emotion is always there. And if you understand the role that

emotion plays, and this includes the dark ones, you'll be a stronger leader. My guest today actually says that being

in therapy and understanding his emotions made him a better business person. And Queen Elizabeth

probably agrees. Joining me today is Vika's Shah. He's an entrepreneur and investor and someone who's been

outspoken about mental health after a long time not understanding what it was he faced.

Welcome, Vakas. How are you? I'm doing good. Thank you. And thank you for the invitation and

for having me on today. Well, I have to start for our American listeners. You are an MBE. What is that and

why? Why are you an MBE? So the so the peculiarity of our royal family means that we

still have this, this wonderful thing called the honours system. And so every year, the queen

gives MBEs, a member of the British Empire, CBEs, which is a commander and OBE, which is

order to people that they determine have been doing

some service. So it could be for anything. So it could be for charity work. It could be service in the

military. And mine was for, it sounds awfully grand, but for services to business and the economy.

And it's kind of fun because, you know, it's all a bit of a surprise. You get a letter in the post and then you get to go to Buckingham Palace and they pin your medal on and, you know, they make a real fuss over it. And so one of those things that you look back on and it's kind of, it kind of makes you proud. Well, I bet it makes your parents really proud.

It does.

It doesn't get much better.

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