Robin Meade admits that at one time in her TV career she did to be someone besides her self.

Meade says that she was consumed back then with getting viewers and bosses to like me. I was awash in trying to speak perfectly, sound credible and never make a mistake. I had what I call the "I-hope-you-like-me" disease.

I'd take my bosses’ suggestions and amplify them to hard-and-fast rules.

If they suggested I try to dress in a more sophisticated way, I'd ditch anything casual and lean more toward the "Church Lady" dress from SNL. If they said "that laugh," I'd squash my belly laugh that's so hardy, it regularly makes me go hoarse. If they said "we want more gravitas," I could furrow my brow like a Ron Burgundy wannabe.

Meade writes in a blog post on HLN, that trying to be the "perfect anchor" made her boring and made her question if she could still do the job?

She writes, "the moment I started filling someone else's prescription of the "perfect news anchor," I started to lose my authenticity. Your authentic self is the very essence of the real you that makes you fascinating, different, comfortable to be around and a live wire with spark.

It came to a point where I had become a cookie-cutter news anchor. I was so stressed about being likable, I became plain boring.

Then I started having panic attacks on the air. Then I started fearing the panic attacks, which made them come more often. As you might imagine, it's kind of hard to deliver the news when you can't breathe.

I started to think I had lost the ability to do my job.

Meade says that after months and months working with a doctor, she started to become herself again and quit trying to be what others wanted her to be. 

Her advice to other anchors and people in general? "What's most important here is that you value your own opinion about yourself more than you value someone else's opinion about you," she says.

Great advice from an Anchor that is anything but boring.