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MidLifeReinvention StartingOverAnxietySelfWorth MorraAaronsMele: I had this revelation about six months ago that I was letting so much of my mood and self-worth ride on whether I got a certain kind of email every day. That if I hadn't gotten an email of someone rewarding me or offering me a gig or somehow moving my life forward, it was a lost day. Thank you for choosing this Well Chat. To support future episodes, consider purchasing a Freedom Art Mat or a Vegan Leather Journal at freedom at the Mat.com. We're a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of women globally through wellness education and appreciate your support. Now on to the conversation. Hi everybody, it's Olivia Scott with Freedom at the Mat. Thank you so much for joining us for another edition of Well Chat. I am blessed to be joined by a woman whose work deeply inspires me. And whose work also influences the greater mental health of society. Her name is Maura Erand Maley. Maura is the host of the Anxious Achiever podcast and the author of The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears into Your Leadership Superpower. So today we're bringing our worlds together, Freedom at the Mat and The Anxious Achiever to have a real middle-aged anxious achiever conversation. about authenticity, performance, and what it means to be both driven and human. This is for all of my middle agers like myself. I've finally come into realization that I'm a middle ager. I'm a midlifer. So Mora, welcome. What is the truest sentence that you say to yourself about your life right now that you rarely, if ever, say publicly? gosh, that I'm rebuilding. I I think that I would love your thoughts. I mean I think that Again, with the societal expectations that by the time you're fifty, you've figured it out, you're at a certain point in your career, blah, blah, blah. And for me, my fiftieth year is actually one of the most tumultuous years professionally that I've ever had in my life. You're kind of in this like very uncertain tumultuous space professionally that you didn't necessarily think you'd be in. I don't know if that resonates at all. No, it does. It's I'm absolutely rebuilding. We're all rebuilding. I'm definitely rebuilding as well. And there is joy in it, but there's also a lot of fear of the unknown. So you're like, Well, okay. But then, you know, at our age, you're like, Well, is it time for me to do something else? Because I feel like many of us have a few career paths in us. For sure. Totally. I think I think what's interesting is that, I'll just I'll just I'll just start with this since this is a show called Freedom at the Met. I literally just did Pilates and I made my 15-year-old son come with me. He and I have been doing Pilates together because he's recovering from a knee injury. And then his all his best friend, who's also a 15-year-old Yahoo, and we did Pilates and they were like dying. And these are like big athletic boys who can bench press and stuff. And I watch them dying in Pilates and I'm all like, and and the the the instructor is also a a woman of our age and I kind of turned to them after and I'm like, Huh. They're like, that was hella hard. And I was like, Yeah, Right. So there's this sense of I am so strong, you know, I am resilient. I I don't feel fifty. I feel I feel 35. And then sometimes I meet people and I think they don't perceive me that way. So it's been a real pivot. And I'm in this learning mode, but then I think sometimes I get on the phone with people about prospective work and they see me as this like, you know, older. expensive senior woman. Well, it's interesting you say that because I asked one of the ladies who used to work on my team previously and I was like, I need to get some new contracts. What would you recommend? I mean, how do I, you know, market myself? She said, could you look less big? Well what does that mean? Well what you said, what you just said around you look like a senior expensive woman, which you are, which I am Mm-hmm. Right. So we have to find the right rooms that can afford us, which means opening up our networks and expanding our territories. And right, I'm in the process of doing that, going into new rooms and all of that. 'cause potentially we've outgrown our existing networks or how we proceed within our networks isn't doesn't work for us financially anymore. But when she said that, I I was like, ooh. Right? And I'm always very humbled, I just do the work. I love my work. I've been writing since I was nine years old. I've been creating since I was, a little girl. So I've always been a creator, but we have had beautiful careers on the first round. And it wasn't until recently I went to a concert encountering Kristen McBride, who opened the door for my career, literally. But it was me talking in so much retrospect, like I was a has been. And he was just like, Think. You've only just begun. And that statement, his his confidence in me, so not the first time, but the second time, gave me this jolt. This renewed energy that huh, okay. There's more to come. I'm gonna have to craft it. I'm gonna have to believe in myself. That's an incredible reframe. I think I might steal that for myself because because I have been, I just I just had a not a job interview, but a Because not really looking for a full-time job. I was interviewing for a role as like a coach to be a coach on like a roster at a company. And I was writing up my bio for them. And it was, it was very retrospective, now that you put it that way. It was so like, you know, big bold names and like President, President Obama and blah, blah, blah. And and that's all true. But until this moment, sort of never occurred to me to be like, What am I really into now? what am I looking forward? What do I what do I want to dig my teeth into? Correct. And I I think I don't know, I'll just speak for myself because we're just being honest and just talking about our respective lives. I can speak for myself and say that I had a lot of I
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borrowed a lot of power, position power from the adjacency to those brands. Hundred percent. So now that those th that adjacency is no longer currently, I have to stand on my own two feet and be like, I'm Olivia Scott. That's who I am. I'm Olivia F. Scott. These are the things I've accomplished. This is my track record. These are the things I can do. And to your point, what do I want to do? Right? That's right. If you could drop the brand and the Mora Aaron Tmele brand, what's associated with that for one year, where in your life would you let yourself just be average instead of a striver or exceptional. What would you do with your time? And how do you imagine your nervous system would respond to that? My God, that is the best question I've ever been asked. No more. Seriously. I I mean, I'm kind of doing it this year in that I am not I had this revelation about six months ago that I was letting so much of my mood and self worth ride on whether I got a certain kind of email every day. That if I hadn't gotten an email of someone rewarding me or offering me a gig or somehow moving my life forward, it was a lost day or wasn't a good day, or I hadn't accomplished what I needed to that day. Like external validation in turn. Correct. Okay. Because because when when you do what I do. Yes. you're very if you don't watch yourself, you can v you can really be guided by I'm interested in booking more for this speaking engagement or you know, whatever. Like can I interview for this article or like a post gets a ton of likes. I you know, name the bullshit. Uh-huh. And and I I was sort of like God, I don't want to be this person anymore. this is insanity. This is the definition of insanity. And my email got real had gotten real quiet. I, you know, like I said, it's been kind of a rough year. and I stopped getting all of those. I felt like, you know, my phone stopped ringing, you know. Don't you want me anymore? Like sitting waiting by the phone, like you're a teenager waiting for some stupid boyfriend to call. And I was like, my God, just know this is no way to live. You have an incredible life. You are blessed beyond. You have love in your life. You have richness. What are you doing? And that was kind of it. Like that was a huge moment for me. Now I have to tell you that many months into this, it's still hard for me many days to feel like, you know. My phone's not ringing off the hook anymore. Yeah. But I am so happy. Girl, let me tell you something. Maura, I told one of my colleagues recently or friends, somebody has to I've said it couple times. I have never made as little money in my life and been as happy as I am right now. High five. It's like the checks, they're not they're not coming in the way they used to, right? Got a little dribble dravel, a little drizzle. Right? We're fine, thank God. There's no, there's no bills being unpaid. we're we're fine. We're eating. we still travel a little bit. The travel looks a little different, you know, a little different, but we still get to get around a little bit. But I've never been as happy to your point. Livia, I never had time to pee. I for fifteen years, I lived my life with such tight margins that I would be with my kids at a sporting event or doing s or volunteering at school, but my brain was always either in the last meeting I had or the meeting I had to rush to. I was not a present person anywhere. Did you know that were you aware? I mean, started to become aware in the past few years, to be honest. and I never ever had time to do anything. It was so rigidly scheduled. The anxiety that comes from being so rigidly scheduled. you know, my stepfather said to me a couple of years ago, he goes, You always have one foot out the door. Where I was always moving. I was always, you know, there was this cycle to me of energy in and out, never fully grounded, right? Now I'm fully grounded. I've done a little bit of psychoanal analysis on myself, analysis on myself. And I've been like, What was all of that around? What was all that achieving a r about? Right? Now, I think I'm gonna say, because I love my work, I won't continue to say that I really do love everything that I've been afforded to do in this lifetime has come from me being a writer and a creator at a young age. So I've always loved my work and I've been driven since a very young girl. So I wanna say that about 70% of my achieving was definitely connected to me. Having a zest and a zeal, if you will, for my work and for excellence in my work. But I think 30% of it was striving for self-approval, look what I can do, and to get others to believe that to prove to others as well. So I think that because about 30% of it was trying to overcome whatever imposter syndrome I had about not really having the goods to be in the places, to be. the vice president of sponsorship marketing at live nature, or to be the associate publisher at Vive magazine, or be a CMO, right? So I was trying to prove to others and myself along the way. But the other 70%, I worked hard in weekends and nights and all that because I really loved the work and I had a pursuit of excellence that was unyielding. It's interesting how you you have a 70 30 calculus in your head. I think that it's different for everybody. I don't judge it. Like I don't I don't say like, well, you have to be, you know, I I'm not one of these people who says that you can only should only be intrinsically motivated. I think that's bull. Michael Gervais, who's my favorite performance psychologist, he finds that the highest performers are intrinsically motivated. So yeah, I love my work. I love doing this. This is where I wanna be. I love to work hard. And they don't mind the money in the accolades. Like that's real. Yeah. I think that for those of us for whom anxiety is a key piece though, it's always worth looking at and saying, is this still serving me? Just because I got here by operating on this model, does that mean I want to keep doing it? a lot of my
beloved anxious achievers unfortunately have an arc which will be familiar to your listeners, which is like, boy, I got really far playing by this book. Punishing myself, always pushing, never stopping, right? Just go, go, go, driven by some hunger, some need. And then I just burnt out. I got depressed. I had to leave everything. I had a big fracture. I think understanding the drivers is so important. Agreed. Agreed. That way you can kind of keep them in check and they don't have control over your life. That's right. It's a choice because what you said a little bit ago was your stepfather was like you're always you got one in, one out, and you're always all over. I was all over. I wasn't present. I don't think I was even connected to how I was feeling. And that is why I left New York. I left New York for a year break. I tell everybody who knows my story, and I won't go into it long here. But I was taking a one year break from New York City because I was operated Very high level. I was was doing a lot. And I was like, I just I'm burnt out of this city. Nineteen years. I need a one year break. And I chose New Orleans and COVID started six weeks after I got here. It was truly like, I gotta get out of here. I gotta the noise is just too much. So you know, it's a cacophony in my head. I gotta get out of here. And it was like this this overwhelming and so when I got here, I gotta tell ya. It's like there's so much happened when I got to New Orleans spiritually. My spirit had this urgency for rest. That's all. It had a urgency for rest. And it would not rest any longer in New York City at that time, at the place that I was operating at. That's right. Right? The incoming in New York, like you just said, the stimulation is just I grew so I I f I'm from a family of New Yorkers and grew up mostly in New Jersey, right outside the city. When I come into New York, I do feel like I have to put some kind of like armor on me because the sheer incoming of everything is just so intense. And if you leave it for a long time, you come back to it and you're like, my God, how did you know? It's it's it's an I have so much respect for New Yorkers. Yeah. So we've talked about being middle agers, middle lifers for the other middle lifers that are listening right now. What is one truth about being a middle-aged, high achieving woman that you wish younger women knew? Not the polished version, but the truth you actually usually only share with your closest friends. I mean, I think the truth is that it gets better. And you know, I can look at myself in my thirties and say, my god, you were so beautiful. Yep. If you only had been able To see that. Yeah. Instead of hating yourself. All those wasted years. I I I don't have the time or the patience for all the crap anyway. If you could move past the ego death and just be no expectations from anybody, family, friends, your audience, children, no algorithm, no brand, what would your most honest, middle-aged, anxious achiever self want to say right now? Two yourself. I'm scared. You asked the best questions. Well thank you, Mora. Thank you. Healing journey with each day of the rising.