by Larae Quy | Jun 9, 2025 | Anxiety, Mental toughness, personal leadership, Psychology, self-awareness
At the FBI Academy, new agents like myself spent five months role-playing, alternating between being the bad guy who needed to be arrested and the good guy whose job it was to take scum off the streets. The role-playing was meant to instill confidence in ourselves...
by Larae Quy | May 19, 2025 | Mental toughness, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
This article was first published on Forbes Business Council. I remember my dad scolding me for climbing into a corral full of horses. He warned me, “You could get kicked. Use your brains!” Despite knowing the danger, I still step into corrals to pet...
by Larae Quy | Apr 21, 2025 | Mental toughness, personal leadership, Psychology, self-awareness
My first low point in life occurred after I graduated from college and found myself in a mindless job. I hated my life and wanted to change it, but how? At first, I thought it was depression, but what I was experiencing stirred something deep within my soul. It felt...
by Larae Quy | Mar 7, 2025 | Anxiety, Mental toughness, personal achievement, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
I’m not a natural athlete. This sad fact became evident at a very inconvenient time—my first day of new agent training at the FBI Academy. New agents are tested in physical fitness and required to accumulate certain points in different areas. I landed at the bottom in...
by Larae Quy | Jan 20, 2025 | Anxiety, Mental toughness, personal achievement, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
America’s infatuation with happiness goes back to our founding fathers and the U.S. Constitution, in which we are promised “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Somewhere in that fairy tale, reality stepped in and yanked off the bandaid that was supposed to...
by Larae Quy | Jan 8, 2025 | personal achievement, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
Resilience is frequently defined as our ability to bounce back from hardship like rubber bands that pop back to our original shape after being stretched. Likewise, most solutions imply that inspirational quotes, hand-holding, and large doses of sympathy will help us...
by Larae Quy | Dec 3, 2024 | Mental toughness, personal achievement, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
Trauma is experienced in many different ways. Soldiers can experience it on the battlefield, healthcare workers in hospitals and emergency rooms, and law enforcement officers when they pull out a gun. You and I can experience it when we lose a job, get a divorce, lose...
by Larae Quy | Oct 10, 2024 | Mental toughness, personal leadership, Psychology, self-awareness
One of my investigations in San Francisco targeted a foreign spy who hated the United States. I’ll call him Agent X. He worked for a hostile intelligence service headquartered in Asia. Silicon Valley was a hotbed of foreign spies trying to steal classified and...
by Larae Quy | Aug 20, 2024 | Mental toughness, personal achievement, personal leadership, Positive Mindset, Psychology, self-awareness
I worked as an FBI counterintelligence agent for twenty years and loved the challenge of being a spy catcher. However, when I was offered the position of spokesperson for the FBI in Northern California, I jumped at the chance. It felt like the next step in...
by Larae Quy | Aug 1, 2024 | Mental toughness, personal achievement, personal leadership, Psychology
Raise your hand if you’ve experienced burnout at some point. I spent the last four years of my career as the spokesperson for the FBI in Northern California. The news cycle doesn’t recognize weekends, vacations, or time at the beach. I was on-call 24/7 for the entire...
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