Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.
Happy Tuesday, founders,
I wanted to pause and resurface a few essays you might’ve missed. Below are 5 editions from the past month - each one digging into the hidden emotional or behavioural patterns that shape how we lead, build, and show up in the trenches of founder life.
🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by HiBob
AI in the workplace isn’t just a tech shift—it’s a human one. This article explores how HR leaders can use empathy to ease fears, build trust, and guide their people through change. Learn practical ways to balance innovation with compassion so teams feel empowered, not replaced, by technology.
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In case you missed it:
AI is quietly woven into today’s mental health system, from diagnosis to chatbots to wearables, promising earlier detection and scalable support, especially for mild to moderate distress.
In this piece, we map the current landscape of AI mental health tools and startups, and look at what’s actually working versus what’s just a glossy pitch deck.
This piece takes you inside a live Lefkoe session, a belief-change method that works very differently from CBT, NLP, or classic psychoanalysis. It focuses on dissolving core beliefs at the root, quickly and with surprisingly little resistance.
If you’re a founder who quietly runs on “I’m not good enough,” this will feel uncomfortable and usefully relevant.
We unpack what’s actually happening in the brain when you visualise success, and why vague “good vibes” don’t move the needle, but specific mental rehearsal can.
We examine research on mental imagery, implementation intentions, and mental contrasting to distinguish useful practice from pure fantasy.
Death anxiety sits quietly beneath a lot of “move fast” culture - disguised as urgency, overwork, control, or the next milestone you have to hit.
This piece uses Terror Management Theory to show how awareness of death can push founders toward status, perfectionism, or service, and why meaning in life and trait mindfulness act as psychological armor.
Creative block isn’t a lack of ideas; it’s a clash between your executive control, default mode, and threat systems, especially for founders whose brains are trained for risk management, not blank pages.
This piece unpacks that tug-of-war, then layers in Self-Determination Theory to show how tiny fractures in autonomy, competence, or relatedness quietly drain your motivation.
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
Until next week,
Lavena
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