Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Being a CEO

If you’ve ever gone from “We’re unstoppable!” to “We’re finished!” in the same 24 hours: congratulations, you’re a CEO. Every founder and CEO knows this feeling - You are not alone!

One moment, you’re flying high: a product launch lands, a new investor shows interest, you closed a monster deal. The next day, it’s chaos: you lose a key client, the investor ghosts you or a key member of your team resigns out of the blue. The emotional swings are intense and frequent.

I’ve seen this with nearly every CEO I’ve coached and I’ve experienced it personally too. You live at the edge of uncertainty, with constant pressure to project calm while chaos swirls beneath the surface. The highs can be intoxicating; the lows can feel terminal.

Why do you feel these emotional swings so strongly?

1. You’re deeply invested.

As CEOs, most of us don’t just run our business - we are the business. Your identity, your self-worth and your vision get tightly intertwined. So when something goes wrong, it doesn’t just hurt the company, it’s personal and it feels like it hurts you…. Deeply.

2. You live in a world of extremes.

Startups magnify everything. You’re chasing ambitious goals on limited resources, balancing investor expectations with team morale, and trying to outpace competitors. There’s no “steady state”,  it’s either winning or losing, sprinting or stumbling. Thats a hard place to live.

3. You feel responsible for everything.

You know rationally that not everything is in your control (That's why you hired a great team, right?) But emotionally, it still feels like you should be in control. That gap between what you can control and what you wish you could control is where much of the anguish lives.

Finding your “Calm in the storm”

My main advice to any CEO struggling with these exhausting fluctuations is to develop a small, trusted circle: one or two good people who help you stay grounded when everything around you is spinning. They don’t need to have all the answers, but they do need to have context. They need to understand the game you’re playing, the weight you're carrying, and the difference between a real crisis and just “A Monday morning” problem that needs fixing.

For most CEOs, this trusted circle might include:

• A peer founder or CEO who’s been in the trenches and gets it instantly - no explanations required.

• A coach or mentor who helps you zoom out, see the bigger picture, and find clarity amid the noise.

• Someone outside your work world, a partner, sibling, or friend who reminds you that your worth isn’t tied to your latest board update.

The key here is objectivity and honesty. These are the people who can rebalance you when you’re catastrophizing, celebrate the small wins you’d otherwise overlook and remind you that you’re not alone in the madness. Think of them as your personal stabilizers, people who bring perspective when you lose it and restore your energy balance when the tank is empty.

The goal isn’t to stop feeling, it’s to stop being ruled by your feelings. You have to learn to separate the day-to-day turbulence from the long-term trajectory. Give yourself 24 hours to lick your wounds and then come back fighting.

Here are a few other ways to find the calm in the storm:

• Zoom out, often. Ask yourself: “Will this matter in six months?” Usually? It won’t.

  
  

• Separate facts from feelings. Write both down. See them clearly. I find writing very cathartic, and it helps my problem solving superpower to flow.

  
  

• Remember the bigger mission. The struggle isn’t proof you’re failing, it’s the reality of building a company, and it’s proof you’re doing something that matters.

The Calm Within the Chaos

Being a CEO means living in contradiction: confident but uncertain, ambitious yet patient, optimistic yet realistic. The emotional swings will never go away, but how you manage them can change. You learn to spot them earlier, anticipate them, then reach out to your trusted circle and handle these situations with grace. 

Remember: great leadership isn’t about avoiding (inevitable) turbulence. It’s about learning how best to to fly through it and come out the other side stronger then before.

Photo Credit: Athena Sandrini