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Anxiety for the Right Reasons

With Byron McCaughey · 17 April 2026

In this episode of In Session with Byron, psychologist Byron McCaughey offers a different way of looking at anxiety - one that starts with asking where it came from. Sometimes anxiety is the byproduct of good decisions: investing in product development, hiring new talent, taking a strategic bet on the business. Choices made for the right reasons - aligned with your values and the company you're trying to build. Learn why anxiety isn't always a signal something is wrong - sometimes it's evidence you made a values-aligned choice - how recognising the "right reasons" behind your anxiety takes the weight out of it, and a simple reframe: would you trade the anxiety away if it meant undoing the decision that caused it? Most founders wouldn't. And knowing that changes your relationship with the anxiety itself.

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Transcript

Hi everyone, Byron here, psychologist for entrepreneurs. Today is In Session with Byron. We're going to talk about being anxious for the right reasons.

Sometimes our anxiety is due to choices that we've made - and those choices are for the right reasons. They may be aligned with our values. They may be aligned with the strategy of the business. For example, we might decide to invest a whole bunch of the company's money into something like product development, or trying out a new strategy on LinkedIn, or hiring a new person.

We've made those decisions because of reasons that are right. They're for the business. They're for our values. They're for the type of company that we're trying to build. Now, the anxiety is a byproduct of those decisions - such as financial anxiety, feeling a bit like the money's tight right now.

When the anxiety is there for the right reasons - because we made the choices for reasons that are values-aligned and strategy-aligned - it actually takes a lot of the weight out of the anxiety. Because if we said to ourselves, "Well, I could get rid of the anxiety, but that means I'm not going to take a chance on hiring that new talent," we'd probably say, "Actually, I'm all right dealing with the anxiety, because I wouldn't want to take away that decision - it was for the right reasons."

So - a different way of looking at anxiety.

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