One of the lies our mind tells us is that nobody can see our emotional avoidance. Ant Taylor’s team coined the term “Ant 1.0” for the version of him that was avoiding emotions and managing stress badly — a term he only discovered when someone accidentally let it slip in a meeting.
“Part of the lies our mind tells us is like nobody can see that I’m out here avoiding every emotion I have, and nobody can see that I’m managing myself and in my head, and nobody can see that this anxiety is eating me from the inside out. And of course everybody can see it, everybody can feel it — it’s like the most obvious thing in the world.”
This is particularly impactful for leaders. Ant believed he was successfully hiding his anxiety while sprinting across a metaphorical tightrope. But his whole team was exhausted, bleary-eyed, and burning out — a fractal reflection of his own avoided stress distributed throughout the organization.
The revelation: the energy spent hiding is wasted because it doesn’t work. Everyone already knows. The only question is whether you’ll name it and work with it, or continue pretending.
Related Concepts
- Hiding makes you feel more like an imposter
- Compartmentalization hides your full self
- Can’t be seen if not being yourself
- Truth lands as relief in the body, not as attack
- Watching a leader fail openly teaches more than their success
- A leader’s vulnerability cascades through the entire team