How Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Richard Branson Cope With Stress (Infographic)Pressure at the top is inevitable. Here's how the best-known business moguls rise above it.

ByKim Lachance Shandrow

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Richard Branson | Facebook

They say it'slonelyat the top. It's incredibly stressful, too. Sitting at the helm of a company, all eyes are on you. Grueling work, long hours and extreme responsibility weigh heavily. The pressure is on. How you cope with it can make or break you -- and your business.

杰夫·贝佐斯处理压力,采取行动ix what's triggering it fast. When something's stressing him out, hesayshe sees it it as a "warning flag" he can't ignore. Thehard-driving Amazon founder and CEOdoesn't waste time worrying about it. He tackles it head-on: "I find as soon as I identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first email message, or whatever it is that we're going to do to start to address the situation -- even if it's not solved -- the mere fact that we're addressing it dramatically reduces any stress that might come from it." And, when all else fails, he laughs...a lot and apparentlynot too quietly.

Related:How Successful People Beat Stress

Elon Musk, on the other hand, takes more of a suck-it-up-and-get-over-it attitude toward the intense pressures of running your own ship. "Creating a company is a very difficult thing," he toldTheNew York Times. "A friend of mine has a saying: "Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss.' You have to do lots of things you don't like." There's no time to wallow and lick your wounds. Don't let stress sideline you. Instead, use it as fuel to keep rocketing ahead, maybe even all the way to Mars.

For more on the stress-busting tactics of some of the world's most famous business leaders, check out the quote-packed infographic below. It comes to us by way of theMake It Cheaper, a London-based startup that aims to take the stress out of sourcing affordable utility and telecom services for SMBs.

Click to Enlarge

business-leaders-stress-management

Related:What Elite Athletes Can Teach You About Dealing With Pressure

Wavy Line
Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at Entrepreneur.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist atLos Angeles CityBeat,a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to theLos Angeles Times. She has also written forGovernment Technologymagazine,LA Yogamagazine, theLowell Sunnewspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at@Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebookhere.

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