Ben Horowitz, the former CEO of Opsware and now world-renowned Venture Capitalist, once said: “By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology . . . very few people talk about it . . . In the end, this is the most personal and important battle that any CEO will face.”

I suspect that almost all entrepreneurs and CEOs know exactly what he meant when he said this. My own experience taught me that unless you are deliberate about managing your own psychology as a leader, you risk becoming a sort of “victim” to the circumstances that happen to present themselves in your life at any given time.

Against this backdrop, in this audio blog I share the five most meaningful lessons that I’ve learned over the years related to better managing my own psychology as a leader. Though many of these lessons are easier said than done, I suspect that any degree of time and effort that you dedicate towards them will likely yield meaningful results. They include 1) The perils of comparing ourselves to others, 2) Focusing only on what you can control, 3) The value of better understanding yourself, 4) The price of untethered levels of ambition, and 5) How to deal with "first world" problems.

Though mastery of these subjects is something that will likely elude all of us, improvement is probably much easier to attain than you may think.

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The Five Race Wars Pt. 1