This U.S. Congressman Gives His Anxiety A Job To Do with Adam Smith

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (0:02)
Sellers can build real thriving businesses, and you can download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search Whatnot, that's W-H-A-T-N-O-T in the App Store, and start scoring amazing deals.
Chime is changing the way people bank. You get savings that grow faster with a 3.75 APY. Head to chime.com/achiever, that's chime.com/achiever.
Use code Achiever at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code Achiever.
The simplest thing you can do for better gut health, one capsule a day. Just go to Amazon or physicianschoice.com and use code PCPodcast10 and get 10% off your whole order. You can also find Physician's Choice at all your favorite retailers.
Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com/anxiousachiever. That's shopify.com/anxiousachiever.
I remember at one point when I owned my business, which was a political consulting and issue advocacy strategy business, I was paying taxes in six states at one point. It was a lot of paperwork. But you want the best talent and in the modern workforce, talent is everywhere. If you've ever hit that moment where growing globally felt exciting, but hiring international talent gets complicated, you know, it's not just knowing where and who you want to hire. It's about keeping everything in the country and in your paperwork and in your management, running smoothly as you scale. And that's where Pebl comes in. Pebl makes global hiring simple. Through embedded compliance and AI driven workflows, the Pebl platform takes the delays and guesswork out of going global. So, founders and HR leaders can move fast without adding risk and complexity. Here's the bottom line. Anywhere to hire is possible with Pebl. With global hiring simplified, founders and HR leaders can spend their time focusing on what and where comes next for their business. And I have a special offer for my listeners. Pebl is normally $399 a month per employee, which is a no brainer for what you get when you're hiring with all that complexity. But right now, there's a limited time offer on their site that makes it even easier to get started. Go to hipebl.ai before it's gone. That's hipebl.ai. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, I'm Morra Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever. Today, I'm going to bring you one of our most downloaded and one of my most favorite episodes from our archives. It's a classic. The Anxious Achiever has been at it for a long time. We have over 300 episodes, and honestly, they're all still more relevant than ever. You may hear details in this episode that reminds you it's from another time, but I guarantee that the advice you get will be as crisp and meaningful and the stories as resonant as before. If you have a favorite episode of the show, let me know. I'd love to air it again, or even re-record it for you fresh. Enjoy this classic Anxious Achiever episode.

**Adam Smith** (4:01)
The biggest thing that I'm trying to put out in my message, in addition to just telling the story of what I went through and trying to reduce the stigma a little bit, let people know that this is something that happens to a lot, literally millions, tens of millions of people.
But also really talk about the resiliency piece of it, not just to stare at it like it's a car accident, but to understand it and say, how do you make your mind work better? How do you learn to better deal with the stresses and strains, ups and downs of life? Or alternatively, things that are deeper and more problematic than that. What I learned, slowly and painfully, as I like to say, is there's a path. You can, in fact, make your mind work better for you in the same way that you can make your body work better for you.

**Morra Aarons-Mele** (4:46)
The voice you just heard at the start of the show is that of United States Congressman Adam Smith. He has served in the US. House of Representatives since he was elected in 1996, and he is a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. For many years, Smith's anxiety drove a lot of his accomplishing.
And in our conversation, he shares how he's grown and changed, and how now his commitment to the work and the accomplishments continue, but without the attendant anxiety and self-loathing.
Smith did struggle with anxiety attacks for years, and he hid them. But he recently went public with the struggle, writing a book and speaking more openly about mental health. It's something that might have seemed impossible for a high-profile politician to do just a few years ago. And politics is such a high-stakes, high-pressure job. Smith has to run for re-election every two years. But Smith felt that being more open about his mental health could make a difference, and it has. His book is called Lost and Broken, My Journey Back from Chronic Pain and Crippling Anxiety, and he joined me to speak about both his physical and mental health, his role as a leader in America, and his role in improving mental health for workers across the country. How do you think anxiety has made you a better congressperson?