Emma Tupper  

I run Moxie Media, a political consulting firm that creates direct mail for progressive campaigns and causes. Because our clients concentrate their spending near Election Day, I plan the business around two-year cycles while knowing that I cannot control how much candidates raise or whether they win.

For years, I responded to that uncertainty by using anxiety as motivation. Whenever I felt stressed, I acted quickly and tried to fix something, often without enough information. My therapist described my amygdala as an alarm system that I had trained, and I began to see how often I pushed myself into downward spirals. Once I recognized that I had restricted my creative thinking by relying on those patterns, I reconsidered what composure meant for me. That led me to practice what my therapist calls upward spirals. When I start worrying, I consider the possibility that things could go well, or that we could succeed. I also take stock of what is working. By doing this, I interrupt my habit of treating every unknown as a warning, even though uncertainty remains. With distance from the first anxious thought, I can choose how to respond.

As CEO, I need to be honest with the team while taking responsibility for my own anxiety. I tell people what we know and acknowledge what remains uncertain. From there, I bring our attention back to the decisions we can make with the information in front of us. We can then deal with the present situation instead of spending energy on outcomes we cannot predict.

During election years, I used to go hard through Election Day and assume I would recover afterward, but by November I wanted to disappear when I needed to plan for the next cycle. Now I preserve energy and delegate more, so I can think about the business and mentor our team. When I catch myself projecting too far ahead, I return to facts and the work in front of me. After 15 years in this field, I have more answers, but I am learning when “I don’t know yet” is the most useful one.