By: Ahmed Ali Mire

3rd April 2025

A few years ago, I was sent to a foreign country on official business on behalf of the organization I was working for at the time. It was an important trip. Our main meeting was scheduled, and delegates from various international offices had flown in to participate.

The country had a vast network of organizations, and they operated within a highly coordinated system where knowledge, expertise, and best practices were shared across borders. Each organization offered its strengths, whether in skills, innovation, or experience. Together, they learned from one another, strengthening their operations and implementing successful initiatives. But this, however, is not the core of my story.

What mattered to me was that my organization had become unofficially renowned for its effective management of work-related stress. We were widely known for our ability to help people stay balanced in the workplace, both within the country and globally. As a result, one organization in the country approached us, requesting a session on stress management as part of its learning-from-each-other approach.

The organization thought it was a good idea. With so many people from diverse backgrounds gathered for the meeting, they believed it would be the perfect opportunity for us to share our expertise. But the timing was tricky. Our meeting was scheduled for the whole day, from 9 AM to 5 PM, and our global director, who was leading the meeting, explained that there was simply no time available. However, the requesting organization was insistent. They seemed desperate, almost as though stress was something consuming them, and despite the director’s reluctance, they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

After some back-and-forth, the two agreed on an arrangement that was agreeable to both of them. Instead of a full session, we would give them a short talk, no more than an hour, followed by a brief Q&A. The following morning, our director relayed the news to us. He had already turned the request down, citing the tight schedule, but when the organization kept pressing, he agreed to the one-hour slot. He also requested a volunteer to represent our organization and give the talk.

“Someone who can uphold our reputation for being stress management experts,” he said, attempting to lighten the mood with a nervous laugh.

But the room was eerily quiet. No one stepped forward.

For a moment, I thought about how I had nothing remarkable to offer. There were colleagues in the room with far more experience. Surely, they would be more suitable than I was. But when the director’s gaze fell on me, I was caught off guard.

“You,” he said, pointing at me.

I froze, momentarily fumbling for words. “Me? What? How…?” I stammered, caught in a blur of disbelief.

The director assured me it would be fine and that I could handle it. “You’ve got this,” he said, giving me a pat on the shoulder. But my mind was racing. Why me? I had never attended any formal stress management training. The idea of speaking to an entire organization about a topic I had never even studied felt overwhelming.

The days and hours leading up to the talk were filled with anxiety. I sought advice from colleagues, but nothing seemed to calm my nerves. The director had told me it would only be a short talk, but what was I supposed to say? Stress management training materials seemed irrelevant for a single hour. My mind was a storm of confusion, and I hadn’t prepared a single note.

The morning of the talk, the organization sent a car to pick me up. The director of the organization personally came along, a gesture of respect, I assumed. “They must be expecting something great,” I thought, a knot tightening in my stomach.

When I arrived at their office, the meeting hall was already full, with everyone’s eyes fixed on me, waiting for the wisdom I was supposed to impart. I felt the weight of their expectations pressing down on me. As the director of their organization introduced me, I stood there, heart pounding, unsure where to begin up to that point.

I walked up to the podium, my mind a blank. I scanned the crowd, looking for something to hold onto, anything to spark the words that would provide relief, not just to them, but to myself. And then, without thinking, a thought broke through the fog.

“Stress is not bad,” I said.

My heart skipped. What was I talking about? My brain screamed in confusion, but I couldn’t take it back now. I quickly continued, “Stress is not inherently harmful. Let me explain,” I said.

I picked up a marker pen from the podium. “How heavy do you think this marker pen is?” I asked.

The audience seemed puzzled. They murmured guesses, some speculating about its weight, while others wondered if it was a trick question. But I pressed on, suddenly feeling a spark of clarity.

“The weight of this marker pen doesn’t really matter,” I said. “It’s about how long I hold it. If I hold it for a few seconds, it feels light. But if I hold it for a few minutes, I will begin to feel the strain. And if I hold it for hours, my arm will cramp, and I might even drop it. The weight hasn’t changed, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it feels.”

A wave of realization washed over the room.

“Your stresses are just like this marker pen,” I continued. “If you think about them for a short time, nothing happens. But if you let them linger, they start to weigh you down. If you hold onto them long enough, they can overwhelm you, rendering you unable to do anything else until you let them go.”

The room was silent for a moment as the metaphor sank in. My heart raced, but the tension had lifted. The words flowed without hesitation now, as if they were coming from somewhere deep inside me. I spoke with newfound confidence, guiding them to understand that stress, like the marker pen, could be managed, but only if they knew when to put it down.

When I finished, the room erupted in applause. I hadn’t expected that response. A few people asked questions, which I answered with surprising clarity. The director of the organization stood and thanked me graciously, complimenting me on how I had distilled a complex topic into something so simple yet profound.

The next day, our director received an email from the head of that organization, praising my talk. He spoke about how my approach had taught them what could have taken months of training in just one hour. “I envy you for having such a talented staff,” he wrote jokingly in his email.

The director called me during one of the breaks in our meeting and relayed the message. “What did you tell them?” he asked, clearly impressed.

“Nothing serious,” I replied with a shrug. “Just a life lesson.”

But deep down, I knew I had just shared something far more significant. Something I hadn’t even known I was capable of. And in that moment, I realized the real lesson is that sometimes, the answers we seek come when we least expect them, when we stop holding on to the stress and let go.

A few days ago, I came across a similar story in which a professor explained stress using a similar metaphor, but with a glass of water rather than the marker-pen metaphor I used. Honestly, I’m not sure if the story I shared during my talk was inspired by that, or if I had unknowingly read it or something similar somewhere before. It has left me somewhat baffled, as I can’t quite recall whether I’d encountered that exact story or something similar. That’s part of the reason I decided to write about it today.

Regardless of where it came from, that story saved me and served my audience well. The metaphor worked. It not only helped me in that moment, but it also resonated deeply with my audience. And in the end, that’s what truly matters.