How Do We Manage Stress by Learning to Let Go?

How do you manage stress?

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Stress rarely makes a dramatic entrance. It arrives quietly: a message that wants an answer by evening, a plan that slips by a day, a small uncertainty carried from one room of the mind into the next.

For years I treated stress as an enemy to be reduced, controlled or defeated. I now think that aims at the wrong target. Stress usually does an honest job. What wears me down is the habit of carrying it long after it has delivered its message. That is what I have learned to manage.

1. Stress Is the Messenger

Stress tells me that something matters. A deadline is real, a relationship needs attention, a responsibility is mine. If that alarm were silenced altogether, I would stop noticing what deserves my care.

The trouble begins when the messenger refuses to leave. I rehearse a conversation that has not happened and replay a decision that cannot be undone. Worrying about a problem and solving it feel alike from the inside, but only one of them gets anything done. At that point, stress becomes entangled with worry. I am no longer simply responding to a problem; I am repeatedly carrying it in my thoughts.

2. Are You Still Carrying Her?

A Zen story tells of two Japanese monks, Tanzan and Ekido, walking down a muddy road in heavy rain.¹ A young woman in a silk kimono cannot cross, so Tanzan carries her over the mud. Ekido says nothing until they reach their lodging that night, then objects that monks must not go near women. Tanzan replies that he left the girl back on the road, and asks whether Ekido is still carrying her.

Most of my stress is not the muddy road. It is the carrying afterwards.

Jesus named the opposite habit in the Sermon on the Mount: borrowing trouble from tomorrow. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, he taught, for each day has trouble enough of its own (Matthew 6:34). The Zen story warns against carrying yesterday; the Gospel warns against carrying tomorrow. Between them lies the only load I am actually asked to bear, which is today’s.

3. Be Still, Without Words

The fifteenth-century Tamil poet Arunagirinathar describes Murugan giving him a single instruction: summa iru, sol ara—be still and cease from words.² The verse recounts the poet’s response to this instruction and his sense of wonder at the experience.

I take that line as practical counsel. When something troubles me, I pause before I react and ask three plain questions. What has actually happened, as distinct from what I fear might happen? Is there one thing I can do about it today? If not, can I set it down until there is? Often the pause becomes a short prayer. The form matters less than the stopping.

4. I Walk It Down to Size

My routine is modest and does not change: fifteen minutes on the bicycle, a fifteen-minute walk after lunch and another before bed. None of it is athletic. Its value is interruption. A worry that felt enormous at the desk looks smaller after a quarter of an hour on my feet, and the evening walk is a threshold that keeps the day’s unfinished business from following me into sleep.

5. I Write the Fog Into Sentences

Worry thrives on vagueness. “Everything is piling up” cannot be solved. Written down, it becomes three specific items, two of which can wait. A worry put into words either becomes a task or reveals itself as nothing at all.

6. Sometimes the Stress Is Right

Here I must argue against my own thesis. Not every burden can simply be set down. Sometimes the alarm keeps ringing because the fire is real: too many commitments, a role that no longer fits, a yes given out of habit rather than conviction. Calming my thoughts would then only help me tolerate what I ought to change. The braver response is subtraction: declining, stepping back, closing a chapter.

And when stress persists despite all this, turning to someone you trust or to a qualified professional is not a failure of character. It is good judgement.

A Thought to Carry With You

No routine, prayer or philosophy will stop difficulties from arriving. Delays, hard conversations and ill-timed responsibilities are the ordinary terms of being alive. But the muddy road has to be crossed only once. Whether I carry it for miles afterwards is, more often than I like to admit, my own choice.

So my honest answer is this. I do not manage stress so much as listen to it, act on what it asks, and then set it down by the roadside.

Your Turn to Reflect

What helps you let go of a worry once you have done what you can? Do you turn to prayer, walking, writing, quiet reflection, or a change in circumstances?

Share your experience in the comments. Your insight may help another reader find a little more peace.

Notes

1. The story “Muddy Road” appears as story 14 in 101 Zen Stories, transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps and published in English by David McKay Company in 1940. It was later included in Paul Reps’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957). In the story, Tanzan carries a young woman across a muddy road, while Ekido continues to dwell on the incident long afterwards. The story illustrates the difference between responding to a situation and continuing to carry it in one’s thoughts. Read the story, “Muddy Road”.

2. Arunagirinathar was a Tamil devotional poet whose Kandar Anubhuti contains, in verse 12, the expression “சும்மா இரு, சொல் அற” (summa iru, sollara), commonly rendered as “be still, without words.” In the verse, the poet describes Lord Murugan’s silent instruction and the resulting experience in which he says he knew nothing. The passage is traditionally interpreted in a devotional and spiritual context. Here, I draw on its invitation to stillness as a practical reflection on responding to stress. Read verse 12, with its Tamil text and English translation.

John Britto Kurusumuthu

Rise & Inspire · riseandinspire.co.in

In response to the WordPress Daily Writing Prompt, 19 October 2026: How do you manage stress?

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