Anxiety is worrying about worry.

As an air talent, I worked for a newly-hired radio program director in Philadelphia who would fire a personality every Friday until he removed every performer he didn’t like – approximately six.

The firing schedule was by design – never more than one person a week.  Always Friday.

So, you can imagine how paranoid we all became.

One day as I reached for the front door of the station, I asked one of my fellow air talents exiting “who got fired today?”  Me, he answered.  It was that surreal.

To survive in such a toxic workplace, we needed to focus on doing our best rather than trying not to get fired.

The station failed.  Our competition adopted a more person friendly approach and they won the ratings war.

It took this toxic workplace to teach a tough lesson:  stop worrying about worry because it wouldn’t save our jobs and made us even more anxious.