Nothing is ours outright as a gift. All we are given is possibilities
... to make ourselves one thing or another.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Imagine what daily life is like for that Chief Executive Officer that you admire. How do they manage the many competing, and often conflicting, aspects of their work life with their personal needs and desires? That is their greatest challenge!

A plethora of information is available on how effective CEOs manage, lead, plan, and make decisions. while not so much on the personal side of how they pull it off. In fact, CEOs typically keep that aspect of themselves private.

Many years ago, when I became an entrepreneur, I was daunted by how to manage the same challenge. But once I started imagining how successful CEOs do it, I realized that there must be effective strategies. If not, the tenure of CEOs would be brief: shortcomings in managing their work demands and personal needs would erode their capacity; their work performance would diminish, and they would suffer personal losses, even burnout.

That gave me hope that I could develop such strategies. So, as a clinical and health psychologist, I set out to identify strategies that are psychologically sound, simple, actionable, powerful, and can be developed by anyone. Over time, my search expanded to executive coaching, and whatever was available in the public domain. It culminated in my own research, the CEO Stress Project, and the book, Mastering the CEOs Greatest Challenge: Strategies for Staying Cool in the Executive Hot Seat.

It is a DIY manual that you can use. Its focus is on actual CEOs, because their challenges epitomize the ones we all face in our ongoing efforts to develop and sustain "the good life." If you have this gnawing feeling that you are capable of more, that life should not be this stressful, then this practical and compelling guide will empower you to realize your full potential.

The introduction offers an overview of how to master the CEO’s challenge. Move on and read the section descriptions and the 1st page of each chapter to hone in on the issues that are most immediate now. Then consider the book as a resource, so you can focus on other helpful strategies when needed.