Anxiety has become the quiet companion of modern leadership. Behind polished speeches, decisive signatures, and public confidence, many leaders live with fear, emotional exhaustion, and relentless overwork. Success today is often measured by visibility and productivity, not inner stability. Yet history and psychology warn that leadership achieved at the cost of mental health is not strength but delayed collapse. As Abraham Lincoln once admitted during the American Civil War, “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth.” Even at the height of power, emotional turmoil was already at work.
This reality is no longer hidden. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who leads the world’s most valuable company, now valued at about $5 trillion, recently admitted that anxiety, fear, and overwork consume him. His confession cuts through the myth that success automatically delivers peace. If the man at the helm of a technological empire shaping the future of artificial intelligence still wrestles with emotional overload, then leadership itself, not personal inadequacy, may be the problem. Power amplifies pressure, and scale multiplies responsibility, but neither guarantees emotional safety.
The pressure to perform without pause has turned leadership into an endurance contest. In politics, business, religion, and activism, leaders are expected to be tireless, decisive, and emotionally invulnerable. But overwork does not sharpen judgment; it erodes it. Psychologist Carl Jung warned, “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents,” a truth that applies equally to leaders who suppress their inner lives until those suppressed emotions surface as anger, poor judgment, or moral blindness. Burnout is not a personal failure; it is often the predictable outcome of unhealthy systems.
Fear is the most dangerous emotion leaders carry, because it quietly reshapes how power is used. Fear of failure produces control. Fear of criticism produces isolation. Fear of irrelevance produces endless work. Nelson Mandela captured this internal struggle when he wrote, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” Many leaders are not collapsing because they lack competence or vision; they are collapsing because fear drives them faster than wisdom can guide them.
There is also a moral and spiritual dimension to this crisis. Leadership was never designed to be sustained by ego or adrenaline alone. Theologian Henri Nouwen observed, “The most painful question for a leader is not ‘How many people take me seriously?’ but ‘Am I living what I am saying?’” When leaders lose the space to be human; to rest, to reflect, to seek counsel, they slowly turn into machines managing people, rather than people leading with conscience. Emotional suppression may preserve authority for a season, but it corrodes integrity over time.
The solution is not the absence of ambition, but the presence of boundaries, shared leadership, and emotional honesty. Sustainable success requires leaders to normalize rest, delegate power, and build cultures where vulnerability is not punished. As African wisdom reminds us, the person who carries a heavy load alone will curse the road instead of the burden. Leaders like Jensen Huang; and indeed anyone entrusted with influence, do not need less responsibility; they need healthier ways to carry it. In an age drowning in anxiety, the most powerful leadership may be the courage to remain whole while still standing at the top.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
08152094428 (SMS Only)
