Secret #50: Happy High Achievers with Dr. Mary Anderson
Achieve more while living joyfully—it's possible! In this insightful episode, Dr. Mary Anderson, a clinical psychologist and author, discusses the transformative concept of being a "Happy High Achiever." Dr. Anderson explores how the relentless pursuit of excellence can often entangle individuals in anxiety and stress and offers cognitive-behavioral strategies to rewrite this paradigm.
Listeners will learn to redefine success by focusing on values-based goals rather than perfectionistic outcomes. Dr. Anderson introduces the SELF acronym—sleep, exercise, look forward, and fuel—as the foundation for essential self-care, aimed at maintaining energy and well-being alongside achievement.
This episode also highlights the power of positive self-talk, encouraging a shift in focus from cognitive distortions to constructive thoughts. Dr. Anderson's insights help listeners navigate societal pressures, promoting mental and emotional health without losing their competitive edge.
Tune in to explore a roadmap for sustainable success, equipping you with the tools to excel in professional and personal realms while prioritizing mental health and happiness.
Highlights:
Happy High Achievers: Eight Essentials to Manage Stress and Energize for Success
Overcoming Social Media Pressure in High Achievement
Implementing Self-Care in Daily Life
Shifting from Outcome Focus to Process Orientation
The SELF Care Fundamentals: Science-Backed Approaches for Sustained High Performance
Timestamps:
00:00 "Self-Care for High Achievers"
04:00 High Achievers: Rethinking Self Worth
07:49 Redefining Success: Celebrate the Process
11:47 Life's Unpredictable Journey
16:56 Planning Joyful Moments
18:21 Optimize Mind-Body with Nutrition
22:24 Begin Self-Care with Small Steps
24:43 Breaks and Snacks Boost Study Focus
28:35 "Self-Care Sharpens Achievement"
31:51 Social Media Comparison Struggles
36:56 "Exploring Conscious Thought Patterns"
39:24 Focus Determines Feelings
41:34 Shifting Focus on Thoughts
44:52 Confronting Public Speaking Anxiety
About Dr. Mary Anderson
Follow @dr_maryanderson on Instagram
Dr. Mary Anderson is a licensed psychologist, author, and sought-after speaker with over a decade of experience helping patients become happier, healthier, and sustainably high-achieving. Dr. Anderson earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, with a specialty in Health Psychology, from the University of Florida and completed her internship and post-doctoral fellowship at the VA Boston Healthcare System, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Boston University School of Medicine. Her book, The Happy High Achiever: 8 Essentials to Overcome Anxiety, Manage Stress, and Energize Yourself for Success––Without Losing Your Edge, was published by Hachette Book Group in September 2024.
The Happy High Achiever is a practical guide, detailing 8 essential principles, to help ambitious people reduce their stress and anxiety and enjoy both happiness and high achievement. It’s based on my work as a clinical psychologist for well over a decade, helping high-achieving patients, like: successful business professionals, doctors, lawyers, and grad students.
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Secret #50: Happy High Achievers with Dr. Mary Anderson- Put Commercial In
[00:00:00] We are all very human and fallible, and yet we live in a society that rewards pretending we're not fallible. Or the range of acceptable fallibility is narrow. We are constantly comparing our insides to other people's outsides, and feeling inadequate and guilty, even ashamed. Trying to blend in means parts of ourselves must disappear, and we must then live in fear that we will be found out.
Here, together, we will create a space where we can laugh. We cry and carry our suffering and hurts lightly in the service of being deeply human. This is Life's Dirty Little Secrets.
Introduction and Guest Welcome
Chris McCurry: Hello and welcome to life's dirty little secrets. I'm Chris McCurry.
Emma Waddington: And I'm Emma Waddington. And today we are delighted to have Mary Anderson with us to talk about happy high achievers. Mary Anderson is a clinical [00:01:00] psychologist and the author of a wonderful book called happy high achievers, eight essentials to help you manage stress and energize yourself for success. today she is here to talk to us about how to manage our high achievements so that we can continue to strive. And be well, welcome Mary Anderson.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Oh, thank you so much, Emma and Chris. And hello to all the listeners out there. I'm so excited and grateful to be here today.
Emma Waddington: Thank you so much. And it's such an important topic. We just had Ross White to talk about psychological flexibility. So that's the term in acceptance of commitment therapy, but this idea that we can strive and be well at the same time, and it does feel like a bit of a paradox, like our idea of. Being successful often comes with struggling, perfectionism, [00:02:00] anxiety. And I'm delighted to get to speak to you about the fact that we can be happy and do well. So maybe you could start. to talk to us a bit about that. How is it that, first of all, I'd love to sort of hear your thoughts on how is it that we've come to this place where being a high achiever is so important, this feeling of being never being enough and that we have to strive where why is it that we're here in this
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes.
Emma Waddington: our different communities?
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes. That's a great question, and I think it's really what motivated me to write my book. My book, The Happy High Achiever, is a practical guide detailing eight essential principles to help ambitious people reduce their stress and anxiety and enjoy both happiness and high achievement. And it's based on my work as a clinical psychologist for well over a decade now, helping high achieving patients like successful business professionals, doctors, lawyers, and grad students.
And what I saw, Emma, was [00:03:00] I would have these amazing, talented, ambitious patients come in to see me and sit on my therapy couch and really candidly and courageously start describing struggling with chronic anxiety and stress and worry and self doubt, perfectionism, such rampant perfectionism that I'm seeing and burnout.
And I realized they were these amazing people who really were not enjoying their excellence. And so I kept teaching the same cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT strategies. That's the approach I use empirically supported for treatment of anxiety and depression and efficiency loving lady. I am, I thought there would be a book out there to help them.
There wasn't. So I decided to write one. And I think I really wanted to speak to the fact that we are in this place where people are feeling so much pressure, I think within themselves and to constantly. Be achieving these grandiose kind of [00:04:00] outcomes.
Challenges Faced by High Achievers
Dr. Mary Anderson: And so what I saw was that there was a relentless pace in terms of behaviors, just this relentless pace and high achievers weren't regularly implementing the necessary self care to take good care of themselves, to fuel themselves.
For high performance in the short term and to be their most excellent selves in the long term. So there really was an issue with self care. So behaviors and also what brought us to this point, I think, as well is the thoughts, right? So their self talk, telling themselves things like I should be able to handle all of this.
I should be further along in my career. This all or nothing, I must be perfect or I'm a failure and very much, I think the heart of it is. What I'm seeing is high achievers are striving to constantly achieve because they're tying their self worth to their achievements, appearance, and performance. And when they're tying their self worth to their achievements, appearance and performance, they [00:05:00] become terrified of making mistakes or looking less than the best, and they push themselves again at this relentless pace.
So I think that's what brought us here. So many people who are really high achieving but struggling with anxiety and stress and thinking they must or should constantly be high achieving. And so I work with them in terms of helping them. Optimize their self talk and their self care so that they can actually be sustainably happy and high achieving, which is possible.
Justin Case Sits with Anxiety
Hello listeners, I'm Emma. And I'm Chris. And we are so excited to share with you our latest workbook, Just In Case Sits With Anxiety, which was published by Jessica Kingsley. The workbook takes us on a journey with Justin, who's about to have his very first babysitting job. He's excited, but quickly gets hit with a wave of what ifs.
What if something goes wrong? Or what if he's not good enough? [00:06:00] In the workbook, Justin overcomes the inevitable challenges of babysitting two toddlers whilst learning ideas and tools to help him understand his feelings and face those fears whilst learning to do what's most important to him, being a kind and resourceful kid.
Based on acceptance and commitment therapy, it's packed with activities for kids plus helpful tips for parents. Order now on Amazon to find out how Justin learns to tackle his worries and move forward with courage. And so just thinking about how we got here to that overachievement kind of culture that we got stuck in, feels like it's everywhere. Like it's not just about our work, like we're high achieving when it comes to parenting, when it comes to sport, like everything, it's this. Relentless pursuit of success. And I love this idea that we can work on how we talk to ourselves to make it. So [00:07:00] does such that we are kinder and we relent more as Ross White said, you know, we take more self care. But in terms of just before we move into those techniques, which I think are really important, I'd love to just spend a moment just thinking.
Redefining Success
Emma Waddington: What is our definition of success? Do you think that sometimes is a problem, that we don't have clarity on what we mean by success? Like we don't know when we've reached success, we don't know when we've done enough. Do you think that's part of the equation when it comes to sort of this high achievement culture that we've got stuck into?
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes, absolutely. I do. I think that especially if people are striving for perfection, often their metric of success is very much just about people pleasing. Again, they're trying to prove their worth or prove they're lovable. And I often talk with my patients about. The fact that if you make, or if we make our [00:08:00] internal worth beholden to external validation, we will live with chronic anxiety and worry.
So again, if you make your internal worth beholden to external validation, you will live with chronic anxiety and worry. So basically people are constantly striving and. And thinking about success in a very externally validated way. So rather than asking themselves, what do I want? And rather than focusing on values based, you know, goals and really prioritizing process and outcomes.
So with perfection or success, sometimes as. Traditionally thought of being successful. It's very outcome focused. So winning the award, you know, publishing the book getting the promotion, but I often say those days where we're on the summit of the mountain are few and far between where are most of our days plodding up the mountain, right?
So my book, I'm so excited and grateful and proud. It's out in the [00:09:00] world, the happy high achiever. I thought of this book in 2012, so, and it was published in September, 2024. So a lot of persistence, a lot of patience and persistence. So it's, if I thought success was only publication day, you can see, I would have maybe felt discouraged or depleted the entire way I was 12 years, right?
And we deserve to feel happy and high achieving as we're living life, right? So having a mindset where we can shift our definition of success from solely outcome focused. To also allowing for the joy in the process or valuing the process. Is a huge part of the work that I do with so many of my patients where they're constantly just setting goals and then even if they achieve, they're just what I call moving the goalposts, they achieve something and they're right on to the next, they don't even really pause to celebrate.
So, I talk about eight essentials in my book [00:10:00] and essential number seven is celebrate the victories, which you would think, why do we need to, you know, why do we need to say celebrate the victories because so many high achievers. Really struggle with pausing to just take in the good they thought of something they put in the work.
It came to fruition, take time to pause and recognize that, but they're so often just right onto the next because their definition of success is the next achievement, the next promotion. So I definitely think if we take a really strategic, intentional look at how are we defining success? And in the book, I talk about what I call the excellence equation, which is one way to look at how to strive for excellence, not perfection, is looking at how we can be happy, healthy and high achieving.
So I talk about that in the book, a new metric or new way to think about success that would allow for sustainable happiness and high achievement. I think that's a really important point. [00:11:00] Absolutely.
Chris McCurry: Like what you said about process and outcome because process is where we do have some control over what's going on and outcome We would like to believe that we can control the outcome. those of us who have gotten Carl on in our academic careers and we've applied to various, you know, programs like Ph.
D. programs or, you know, law school or whatever, getting into one of these programs is not entirely based on your merit. I mean, it could be you know, the professor that really wants you, he got his pick last year. Now some other professor gets his pick and you're out of luck because they're only going to take five people into this program. So, we would like to think that all of our work is leading to an inevitable outcome, but there are too many other factors involved. So, you know, what do we have control over? Where can we put our efforts and [00:12:00] our attention and focus on that. And hopefully the outcome will be as we liked it to be, but it may not be.
And that may not be a bad thing either.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes, definitely. I talked to my patients about control the controllables, right? To try to optimize what we can, which is things like self talk. How are you thinking about yourself and other people in this situation? And then also what behaviors are you doing? Right.
The SELF Care Fundamentals
Dr. Mary Anderson: And I talk about self care and I give this acronym SELF.
I talk about four science based self care fundamentals that we have control over. We can decide that we can implement them into our lives and that can help us feel and be our best so we can really invest in the process. And then know that the outcome is influenced by sometimes external factors we don't have control over.
And that life very often is their circuitous path. It's an interesting journey, right? It's not linear, like we would [00:13:00] like it to be at times. And I think high achievers, sometimes when they're sitting on the couch across from me, the thing they're struggling with is, but Dr. A, I did all the things I did it right, but why isn't it working out?
Right. And kind of struggling with thinking. That, I call it the conveyor belt, this kind of idea of like, well, if I stay on this conveyor belt, if I get all the A's, if I do all the right things. Then I won't have any hardship in life, but unfortunately we know, you know, from living life that's just not the way it works.
So I help a lot of people with how they're thinking about their situation and focusing on what they can control versus the things that. Really aren't in our control.
Chris McCurry: Can you speak more to the uh, the self acronym?
Dr. Mary Anderson: Absolutely. I love talking about self care, and I love to just first just set the tone that when I'm talking about self care, I don't mean like two hour long bubble baths and like, you know, week long retreats and, you know, shopping sprees for expensive things. I mean, those, you know, are [00:14:00] great if that's what works for you.
But what I'm talking about with self care is just making sure you're taking good care of yourself on a regular basis. And that it's not selfish or a luxury to make sure we're practicing self care. It really is a necessity and it's strategic. It's investing in the most important thing, which is your own energy.
If you want to be sustainably high achieving and happy, we have to really. Protect our energy and self care is what fuels us forward so that we have the energy to be high performing in the short term and then sustainably successful in the long term. So the SCLF self acronym. Okay, S is sleep and I think we all know what it feels like.
When we haven't gotten good sleep, especially for many nights in a row. So the aim here for adults, we want to aim for seven to nine hours of sleep a night. And why that's so important is because we know from research that chronic lack of sleep negatively [00:15:00] impacts things like memory, attention, concentration, decision making.
But conversely, good sleep can help improve our productivity, problem solving, and so much more. So I work a lot with patients on ensuring that they're prioritizing their sleep. It's so important for mood management, stress management. And just optimizing cognitive performance. Um, And for being a happy person, it really is helpful to be getting enough sleep.
It's hard to be chronically sleep deprived. So S is for sleep in the SELF and then E is for exercise. And again, I think we know the importance for physical health of exercise, but also for mood and stress management. Exercise is so important and we want to aim for 30 minutes or more of some type of physical activity on most days.
And what we know is that exercise Is a fantastic, really efficient, effective way of decreasing cortisol, right? Our stress hormone. So it's such great bang for your buck to [00:16:00] just go outside for a walk. We know from research, it increases creativity just going on like a 20 minute walk. They found there's some great research from Stanford.
I talk about my book about how walking improved creativity. So if I have patients saying, Dr. Ray, you know, I don't have time to exercise. I have this big presentation and it's got a. You know, blow everyone away. Or it's, you know, I really want it to be innovative. I'm like, if you really want an innovative, you know, project or presentation or from working with creatives who are, you know, stuck.
With their writing or, you know, whatever creative arts they're in. I'm like, go outside for a walk. It's amazing what clarity and creativity can really be boosted with a nice walk outside. So, or even inside if the weather doesn't allow, which I'm in Boston and sometimes the weather does not allow in the winter for the walks outside.
So, that is E is exercise. So, S is sleep, E is exercise. L is look forward. So, look forward to pleasant activities. And the aim [00:17:00] here is to plan and do at least one pleasant activity per week. And why that's so important is having something positive that you're looking forward to. Just the anticipation of something positive is so powerful for a mood boost.
And most of my clients coming in, guess how many pleasant activities they regularly schedule into their weeks?
Emma Waddington: No
Dr. Mary Anderson: You got it. Zero, right? They're not planning anything in. And so their weeks really can feel like a slog or kind of drudgery after a while because They're working these long hours, they're going home, eating, kind of rinse and repeat, but they're not putting anything in their days and weeks that they're really enjoying.
And so with this one, I really encourage people keep it doable, right? We want to keep self care doable so we can keep doing it. So just at least once a week, I always tell people you can always do more, but at least once a week, have something planned in, you know, a meetup with a friend on a Saturday, or if I [00:18:00] know, you know, I'm going to talk to my friend Julie on Friday night.
Maybe, you know, on a Tuesday, if it's feeling like a long day, I can remind myself, Oh, but I'm talking to Jules on Friday, right? And so if you can have something concrete that feels really doable, like, you know, planning in a massage or planning in a meetup with a friend, or even just planning to watch your favorite Netflix or get your favorite takeout and then remind yourself during the week.
That you have that pleasant thing coming up that will provide a mood boost. And then when you actually do the pleasant activity, then that will be enjoyable as well. So you get really double bang for your buck. And that's really important if we want to be happy high achievers to ensure that we're kind of Making moments really intentionally for these little pockets of joy in our week.
That's really important. And again, keep it doable. Make sure it's something you want to do that you're looking forward to. Not something that would be like productive. Like sometimes I have clients who are like, yeah, I should vacuum Dr. A. And I'm like, well, that's a helpful activity. [00:19:00] But I'm like, do you, you like vacuuming for me?
Not so much. So I, you know, I want to always check in with people down there like, well, no, but I know I need to. So again, I validate that's a really helpful activity. But I wonder, can we plan something you would actually look forward to? And sometimes it takes a little bit of time to, you know, to be able to generate an idea that would be enjoyable.
So that's the L, look forward. And then F is fuel. And here we really are talking about fueling our mind and body with good hydration and nutrition. So lots of water, fruits and veggies, lean protein. We know how important that is for physical health and also for cognitive performance. So dehydration is going to negatively impact.
Our cognitive performance making sure that we're eating foods that are energy boosting, that fuel us so often I have clients who. are just back to back meetings. They're just jam packed schedule, back to back meetings. And the doctor, I don't even have time for lunch, so we do some problem solving to figure it out because our brains need that fuel so we can really optimally perform and also fuel [00:20:00] your mind with some quiet, just a few minutes a day, whether that be like, you know, in the morning I use the calm app and I do some meditation in the morning or doing some journaling or get out into nature or even just three deep breaths we know can help calm the nervous systems.
So. Sometimes patients are like, is that enough? And I'm like, It's better than doing nothing. So yes, definitely, you know, to give yourself credit if you're taking those three deep breaths between your meetings, that's fantastic. Just building in a little bit of time for your brain and body to have the fuel of quiet rather than the constant kind of barrage of information that we often have coming at us and.
You know, inundated with problems to solve and things so so S. C. L. F. Sleep exercise. Look forward to at least one pleasant activity and fuel. That is the those are the four science based self care fundamentals that I really work with my patients on making sure they're prioritizing within their daily and weekly [00:21:00] routines to keep them feeling and being their best.
Implementing Self Care in Daily Life
Emma Waddington: And how do you convince people to do that? Because when I think of some of my clients and even sort of the organizations that I work with, and we'll talk about organizations as well in a minute, because
Clients that continuing to, you know, be so relentless in their pursuit for achievement. not going to be good for them because they know a lot of our clients that are sort of high achievers know that they need to take more breaks that, but they'll say, but I can't. So what are some of the things that you say to them to help to motivate them sort of what's the sales pitch? Because I can just see some of the resistance.
Like it's easy for you to say, you don't know what it's like. It's like with parents who are. You know, high achievers in their parenting journey. I think, you know, when we think of high achievers, it's not just in the work environment, we can be high achievers in sports and many others. And often the narrative I hear is, but I don't have time, but, [00:22:00] you know, I just can't stop, but I need to keep going.
what what do you say to that?
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes. A couple things. First, I really try to always keep a doable. So I know that if we are going to ask someone who's already feeling overwhelmed, overextended schedule, I know that it would, right? It just wouldn't be helpful for me to say now we're gonna have you add in lengthy, complicated self care behaviors.
That's just not gonna work. So I always try to keep things very realistic, very doable, even if it feels like such a small win, that's huge, right? I try to really validate small wins are what lead us to the bigger wins. Small progress wins count. They matter so much. So even if that's, you know, can you add one glass of water into your daily routine, right?
So if they're doing no water, can they add one water in right? So keeping it like micro goals that feel like, okay, I can do that. And that's one of my little pro tips I talk about in the book is, if you hear [00:23:00] yourself saying, I can do that's a great goal. If you hear, well, I'll sometimes hear from patients like, well, I can try to do that.
I guess I could, I'm like, okay that, that means that's our kind of our red flag or our signal. That's not as much a doable goal. We have to break it down even further into a smaller piece. And they're like, But how is going for one walk outside really going to make a difference? I should be.
They'll say, Dr. A, I should be going to the gym five times a week and running. Well, currently. They're not going to the gym and they're not going for walks outside. So let's start with one walk outside and we'll, and so I really try to encourage, we will get you to that goal. If you want to be going to the gym five days a week, we can do that, but we got to start where you're at, right?
So I really try to start where people are at. That's one secret to getting them to buy in, so to speak, to self care. The other thing I do
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Dr. Mary Anderson: with something that
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Dr. Mary Anderson: typically of the SCLF, I start with the L and they come in, they have nothing they're looking forward [00:24:00] to. And so one of the first things I talk to them about is the importance of having something to look forward to.
And I even use that as kind of a model for teaching them about CBT. So CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, teaches. Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all directly related, right? So I'll talk to them about like, what if you put in, like, say it's a meet up with a friend for Saturday. Think about what you can now tell yourself.
Well, yeah, I would look forward to that if I tell myself, wow, I get to see my friend on Saturday. So they're going to think something. And how's it going to make you feel? Oh, I'll feel good. I'll feel excited to see my friend. And then they go and they do that and they see their friend and they're like, Dr.
A, they come back to the next session. What was so good? It worked. Shocking. They're like, this actually worked. So the buy in is experiential. I usually find, right? So if I just help them do the thing, there's nothing better than experience, right? That's really the teacher. [00:25:00] If they feel the benefit of adding this thing in and they were like, yes.
And I reminded myself and like Wednesday was a super long day at work. But I was like, but I get to see my friend on Saturday and they're like, it did help me get through the day. So really I try as best I can to have the strategy sell itself cause it works.
Behavioral Strategies for Success
Dr. Mary Anderson: We know it works and it feels really good.
So I helped them start there and then they kind of buy in. They're like, okay. The CBT thing you're teaching me, this seems to work. Let's talk more. I'm like, okay, I lead with the behavioral strategy that feels really concrete, really tangible, accessible and beneficial right off the bat. And then we talk more about cognitive distortions and maybe why they're telling themselves I should be working every minute, which a lot of my law school students are like, Dr.
A, I should be studying every single second. And then I'll ask them. And how do you do with your studying after you've been in the library for five hours? They don't bring snacks usually until we talk about it, so [00:26:00] they're like working on fumes. They have no snacks with them. They're just studying for five hours.
I'm like, have you noticed what happens to your concentration and attention? You know, your ability to focus after hours and hours in the library without eating or getting outside. And they're like, yeah, it's not as good.
The Importance of Self-Care
Dr. Mary Anderson: So I try to use what they organically are bringing in to underscore. The importance of self care so that they buy in even more, right?
So because that again feels more accessible to them. So that's how I usually try to do it. I keep it doable. I set them up for success by planning and something pleasant and I use what they organically bring in to help highlight the concepts that we're talking about to keep them motivated. And I try to key into what is most important for them that they want to work on.
I always tell people, I don't tell people what to do. I wouldn't want to be told what to do. I don't tell people what to do. So I help people work on what they want to work on. They're the expert on them in that way.
Chris McCurry: There's that [00:27:00] metaphor of taking time to sharpen the saw.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes.
Chris McCurry: going to go in and go in and the saw is getting dull, you're working harder than you need to. And you really need to take the time, stop, sharpen the saw, whatever that means in terms of the self acronym so that you can get back to it.
And it's time well spent, but it is a hard sell. And uh, I here in Seattle as a child and adolescent psychologist, I. Worked with a number of students from the same high school Bill Gates graduated from and very high powered place, lots of stress, lots of anxiety you know, got to get into those you know, top tier schools. And yeah, people are just grinding themselves down to a nub and, you know, and again, you know, before we started recording, we were saying that the dirty little secret here is it doesn't have to be a grind. You know, you can be [00:28:00] healthy in mind, body and soul and even joyful as a high achiever, but it does take that stepping back that self care. But unfortunately that, that competitive comparison thing starts so early in life.
Dr. Mary Anderson: I love that metaphor of sharpening the saw though. That's something where I'll talk to patients about, let's help you work smarter, not harder. And sometimes they're like, okay. I like the sound of that. So if we can kind of sell it in that way, if we can kind of frame it as you're really trying to work the most strategically possible, which is sometimes it means taking a five, 10 minute break, drinking some water, eating a snack, and then getting back to the studying.
They're like, okay. Cause I really try to help them know we're not talking about stopping. Or, you know, sometimes they'll almost conflate pausing with paralysis. And I'm like, we're just pausing. We're not saying you're going to stop completely. And so if they say, okay, you just want [00:29:00] me to pause to refuel like you would a car.
Exactly. Right. You can't win the Grand Prix on fumes. Like you got to fuel up the tank to be able to keep going. And usually people then understand, but that is kind of the initial Bach that I get from high achievers is like, wait. You're telling me to do a little less but I should be able to do more.
And that's actually why in my subtitle for the happy high achiever, I say eight essentials to overcome anxiety, manage stress, and energize yourself for success without losing your edge. And I put that in very intentionally because I have so many Bostonians who are high achieving here and they'll say, but doctor, I can't lose my edge.
And so it's really helping them really shift their understanding of actually self care and talking to yourself in a way like you would a friend. So more helpful, balanced, encouraging self talk. Is actually going to sharpen your edge. I talk about that in the book that idea you will sharpen your edge by taking better care of yourself because [00:30:00] then you will be more efficient, effective and being sustainably high achieving and happy, which people deserve to be as well.
Emma Waddington: And I think there's data to support that, right? There's data to support that, you know, we don't have to sacrifice our well being in order to be successful. And in fact, you know, when we look at organizations. Who work at supporting their individuals, they actually can promote. better performance.
The Comparison Trap and Social Media
Emma Waddington: So there's data out there to show that we can do well and be well, we don't have to sacrifice our wellbeing, but I do like Chris was saying, you know, we have a very competitive community and environment that tells us that you need to keep fighting and you need to keep ahead of the person next to you.
And unfortunately, social media, you know, gives us access to not just the person next to you, but the person, you know, 13, 000 kilometers away from you. That is pursuing similar goals and the recipe is often [00:31:00] work harder, you know, be hard, grind more as the only way, like there's a rigidity around that
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yeah.
Emma Waddington: really dysfunctional and reinforced.
And I think we have to be quite bold and quite brave to step out of that.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Mm hmm. Absolutely.
Emma Waddington: sort of stuck in, I do find that when we start talking to our clients, when you start talking to our friends and we start to admit that it's hard and that I'm tired and I want to take a break, it's quite refreshing and people often agree that they'd like to take a break and they'd like to take it more easily and that they don't want to have to be relentless in their pursuit all the time.
I think there is more company than we think we have. when it comes to this,
Dr. Mary Anderson: Absolutely. We're all human, right? That's what connects us. And so even though there's kind of erroneous perception, I think social media can be great, but social media unfortunately can [00:32:00] perpetuate. It's really unrealistic expectation. And I call it the comparison trap. So many of my clients, again, these are brilliant, high achieving patients.
They can articulate like intellectually, they can say, Dr. A, I know social media is a curated space with a highlight reel of people's. You know, best moments. And yet, even though they see that they do still compare themselves, they do feel less than or inadequate because, well, I should be, you know, performing at that level, like I should be getting promotions.
Look at that person just won an award. And also in the personal realm too. Well, Dr. Ray, you know, they're buying houses or, you know, if I'm working with, you know, clients in their twenties, early thirties, Dr. Ray, all my friends, you know, they're on social media, posting these like amazing engagement photos and, you know, these amazing vacations with their partners.
And so they really start getting down on themselves. And I think when I encourage them, talk to, I said, talk candidly to people, you will see. [00:33:00] That those are again, just the highlight reel when we are vulnerable and able to say like, wow, yes, I'm so grateful for the good things, but yeah, there are challenges as well.
And when people can have. Really those courageous conversations of with their, you know, with trusted friends or a therapist, someone who they can speak with in an authentic way, they learn very quickly that humanity means that we're going to have challenges, you know, and that that's normal. It's just not normalized on social media and everything looks very immediate as well on social media.
Like this instant kind of. Success. And that's why when I talk about my book, I'll often talk about the happy high achiever. I thought of this in 2012 and it took many years to fruition because I want to shine a light on the fact that things, especially this was a major life goal of mine to get a book out into the world.
It took years. It really did. It took years of hard work to get that out there. And I want to again, highlight that so [00:34:00] people don't think like, Oh, she thought of a book idea. She came up with it. A year later, it's on the shelves. That's really not, to get a book traditionally published I actually didn't even know all the process involved.
It was like, peering behind the curtain of a whole publishing world that, you know, as a clinical psychologist, I never knew existed. But I'm so grateful, and I'm truly appreciative of all the wonderful people I've met. I feel like Dorothy on this yellow brick road. I often tell people just the amazing people who have kind of come and I've met and accompanied me on this journey to shepherd a book into the world and spread the word about it.
So it takes time to do great things. And I think that's not always discussed or seen on social media. So people can fall into this unfortunate kind of erroneous thinking or faulty beliefs around what they should be doing or striving for.
Chris McCurry: Well, it's an expectation that at some point during an episode, I'm going to quote Mark Twain.
Dr. Mary Anderson: I love it.
Emma Waddington: it
Dr. Mary Anderson: I love it.
Emma Waddington: brilliant. Chris is brilliant with his quotes.[00:35:00]
Chris McCurry: Well, Mark Twain was brilliant. Now, Mark Twain said, comparison is the death of joy.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yes.
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Chris McCurry: And we have so, so much of that in our world. And again, it starts very young. Kindergarten,
preschool. And yeah,
Emma Waddington: and it's such a natural human behavior. And one of our sort of podcast sort of, what would we say? Themes quotes is that we're constantly comparing people's outsides to our insides. And that's just so unhelpful and natural. Both are true. we just have to keep an eye on that and how that can really be harmful.
It's about that, you know, usefulness, that pragmatic lens that we want adopting more like the
Dr. Mary Anderson: yeah.
Emma Waddington: Getting a job or getting married. That's fine. But we need to think about, you know, the journey and how I start going out more. And I connect with humans that I like, or, you know, I think about what I want to do.
And I connect with, you know, activities that I enjoy in that it's [00:36:00] that journey, but often we lose sight of the journey because we're so fixated on making sure we get there. And then when we get there, like you said, it's not enough. It's not. You know, I do couples therapy, people get married all the time, and then they turn around and go, actually, are you really the best person for me?
Maybe I should be looking elsewhere. You know, it's relentless. This pursuit of. Needing to be more, and I think something that you said, that's so important and just to
Remember it is that our achievements or our mistake don't define our worth
Dr. Mary Anderson: Absolutely.
Emma Waddington: And that is so important because we can feel incredibly vulnerable and fragile. When they do, and that's the kind of the storyline is that you're as good as dot, but really that's not what we're here for. We're here. We're inherently worthy no matter what.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Yeah. Absolutely.
Chris McCurry: I think for a lot of people, this stuff is very [00:37:00] semi conscious. And you were talking earlier, Mary, about, you know, getting people to articulate, you know, the, their thoughts, their rules, because I think people are just driven. And when you slow down and say, what is it, what is it exactly that you're trying to achieve?
Or. What are the thoughts that show up when or what are the rules that you're operating under?
Sometimes, you know, people are saying it for the first time and then they can really look at it and go, huh, do I really want to believe that? Do I really want to live my life based on that idea? And then you can start playing with it and you know, making some exceptions to the rule or whatever it may be.
Choosing Your Thoughts: The Flashlight Metaphor
Chris McCurry: But you talked once in an interview about. Where are you signing your flashlight?
And I really lacked that idea because William James, the father of American psychology, you know, last century said my experience is what I agree to attend [00:38:00] to. And
so if I'm attending to my anxious thoughts and feelings, that's going to be my experience of that.
And people would say, well, I'm not agreeing to attend to my anxiety. I'm compelled to. Yeah, but Once we recognize that, oh, that's where my flashlight is shining, then I have the capacity, maybe, somewhat challenging, but I can shift that flashlight view to something else, and without, you know, an act, we would do that without necessarily having to do anything with that thought or feeling.
It doesn't have to be disputed or restructured or anything like that. We just. Shift the focus of attention. Can you say more about that in terms of your
work with the folks that
you see
Dr. Mary Anderson: Oh, so many things. This is fantastic. So, it's so powerful when we start raising our awareness of what thoughts we're focusing on, right? So people will come in sometimes and they'll feel anxious and overwhelmed and they're not exactly sure why. And so I help them [00:39:00] ask themselves, what am I telling myself?
What am I, where am I shining my flashlight means? Our flashlight is like our attention, so just like you can shine a flashlight to the right or the left, up or down, and that's what you'll see, and the rest stays kind of in the background and dark. Similarly, where we focus our attention is what will directly impact how we feel and our behaviors.
So, which thought we choose to focus our attention on is so important. And so helping, again, patients raise their awareness of what thought they're telling themselves and believing is so important. And so often if they come in feeling overwhelmed, I'll say, where are you shining your flashlight? And they'll say things like, you know, I need to get, or I should be able to get everything done today.
So they're doing a should. So I should be able to get everything. So some all or nothing thinking. I should be able to get everything done or Dr. A, you know, I misspoke in a meeting and now, you know, all my colleagues are going to think I'm incompetent. [00:40:00] So they'll be telling themselves these really unhelpful thoughts that we call cognitive distortions.
And once we can help raise their awareness of these thoughts and connect the dots for them that those thoughts are directly impacting how they're feeling and needlessly ratcheting up their stress and anxiety, then I do work with them on how do we poke holes in these thoughts to show you that those thoughts are not necessarily true, right?
So, well, you said you think all your colleagues think that you're incompetent now that you misspoke. Have any of your colleagues ever misspoke in a meeting? Well, and they'll say usually, yes. Well, did you immediately think they're incompetent?
Emma Waddington: Oh,
Dr. Mary Anderson: just working with it, like you said, kind of playing with the thought.
So once we raise awareness, we can take action. And the greatest thing to remember is that we are the ones holding the flashlight. So we can choose to acknowledge, again, raise our awareness, this thought that I'm focusing my flashlight on, this thought that I'm focusing my attention on [00:41:00] is not helping me.
What is a more helpful thought that I can focus my Flashlight on and I think you mentioned William James. I actually have on here. There's one of my I love quotes as well So the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another and this is one I use a lot just with that flashlight example I love a good quote as well.
So to help people remember that we have the power to choose which thought, and I try to normalize from the get go. We're gonna have thousands of thoughts. You can't stop a thought from happening. Totally normal. Our goal is not to stop the thoughts, but to recognize how our thoughts, just to notice how our thoughts are impacting us.
And to say, okay, if this thought isn't helping me, how do I shift my focus? And sometimes that is helping them for the work I do. It's poking holes. I call it to help them recognize and that their thought is not [00:42:00] necessarily true and there's actually more helpful, accurate thought that can move them forward where, you know, that person who maybe misspeaks in a meeting.
They can say, you know, I wish I didn't misspeak in the meeting. Who knows if people even noticed it. I don't always notice if people misspeak. So they can do that. And even kind of just accepting that, well, they might feel a little stress that they said something in a meeting. But that's what happens.
And you go back to the next meeting and just making sure that they still stay engaged in participating because the issue is if they're feeling stressed out and they're thinking, well, I'm feeling anxious about speaking in the meeting. So now I'm not going to speak. That's not gonna be helpful. So, helping them choose where they focus their flashlight, where they're shining their flashlight is such a powerful concept for a lot of my patients.
And they'll say, I know I'm focusing my flashlight. On not a helpful thought, Dr. A, I need to figure out, you know, where to shift it to and sometimes they have a hard time with that, so we work [00:43:00] on, you know, what they can shift it to, but just raising their awareness that, wow, I'm thinking something that's not helping me, that's a huge game changer, and I teach them the signal because sometimes they'll say, well, how do I know if I'm doing a cognitive distortion?
What I often encourage is your feelings are, I call them like our inner GPS. Your feelings are like an inner GPS. They're helping us know that we're likely having a thought that's contributing to that. So if we're feeling stressed out and overwhelmed in an everyday situation, there likely is a cognitive distortion that's needlessly amplifying that distress.
So our feelings, I think Ross White, I feel like I listened to the podcast with you all. I don't know if he said that emotions bring us messages or something like that. I loved what he talked about it. And I was
Chris McCurry: now
Dr. Mary Anderson: I call it the inner GPS, like the inner guidance system. Our emotions are anthropologically, you know, advantageous or adaptive.
They help us have information. So if people come in and they're feeling angry often, cause there was an injustice, or [00:44:00] if they are feeling sad, there's a sense of loss or anxious. There's a sense of. Maybe there's an impending kind of challenge upcoming and so to not ever shame themselves for feeling an emotion.
I really encourage them. Let's sit with, you know, I wonder what's informing that emotion and then help ourselves be able to focus in a way to help move through the emotion so they're not staying stuck. If they're like, I'm feeling, you know, anxious and I don't want to feel this anxious. You know, I'm real with people, you're probably going to feel stressed if you're, you know, if you're going and speaking in front of hundreds of people that to normalize, it's okay to feel stressful, you're going to feel stressful and do it anyway, but if you're saying something to yourself about it, like, you know, I'm going to sound so stupid, they're going to see how nervous I am.
I'm going to stumble over my words. If you're saying cognitive distortions or saying unhelpful things where you're shining your flashlight on really unhelpful. You know, self talk, we can help them generate more helpful self talk to focus on, especially before they step onto that [00:45:00] stage. I work with a lot of people around public speaking anxiety, job interview anxiety.
So absolutely. I love the idea of the flashlight. That's one that I work on with a lot of my clients.
Chris McCurry: this has been very helpful. And all these anxious thoughts and feelings are directly to what we value and what's important to us. So there's
that side of things.
Chris McCurry: Thank you, Dr. Mary Anderson, and congratulations on your book. And I know it's gonna help a lot of people, and we will have a link to the book in our show notes.
Emma Waddington: This has been brilliant. Thank
Chris McCurry: Yes.
Emma Waddington: I've learned so much and I feel that thanks to your work, we're going to be able to support myself, become a happy high achiever too. And a lot of my community that we work with here in Singapore that are, you know, struggling with their striving and you've given us lots of really good tools and your book gives even more. So thank you for the work that you do.
Dr. Mary Anderson: Oh, thank you so much to both of you. This was so much fun and it was so wonderful. And I do, [00:46:00] I just hope that it helps people out there. You all deserve to be happy high achievers out there. So I'm rooting everyone on, and I'm just so grateful that I was able to be here today with all of you. Thank you so much.
