Why Stress Isn’t the Enemy, but Holding On Might Be

By the time today ended, I felt mentally drained.

I had used up about 80 percent of my normal mental space. By evening, there was hardly any room left to think clearly about anything else.

At first, I thought this meant I had failed. As a leader, aren’t we supposed to stay strong? Aren’t we supposed to manage our energy so we do not run so low? But a conversation over lunch gave me a new perspective.

Ryan said something that stayed with me. Maturity is not about avoiding downtimes. Maturity is about learning how to bounce back faster when those downtimes come.

This is the paradox of stress. It is not something we should try to eliminate. It is something we must learn to carry and release wisely. The danger is not the presence of stress. The danger is how long we choose to hold it.

This is true in leadership. It is true in parenting. It is true in life.

A Day of Stress: Parenting, Leadership, and the Fear of Letting Go

The day started as it often does. I got the children up in the morning. In that moment, I felt grateful. My second son had recovered from being sick just a few days earlier.

Yet alongside gratitude was sadness. My eldest son had promised to behave better in school. Almost every day now, there are new reports of him struggling to do so. As a father, this weighs on my heart.

He often says he does not want to be a big brother. He says he does not want the responsibility. This is a reflection of a deeper problem I see everywhere. When people seek freedom without embracing responsibility, they fall into entitlement. And entitlement weakens them.

As a father, I cannot give up on him. I keep reminding myself that leadership, both at home and at work, is a long game. It is about sowing seeds patiently, even when results take time.

As the day moved forward, leadership challenges added to the emotional load. I spent part of the day discussing a new initiative with the team. One of our long-serving leaders, someone I have invested much time and effort into building, struggled to adapt to this new direction.

She asked me a fair and honest question. What exactly am I expected to do?

That question is difficult for me. I am a visionary. I think strategically. But I am not a natural tactical leader. I tend to seize opportunities when they appear and align them with purpose and values. I do not always build detailed, step-by-step paths.

This is a weakness I am still learning to manage. I also know it creates tension. People need clarity when facing unknown situations. It is my job to provide enough clarity so they can move forward with courage, even when I do not yet have all the answers.

Today, that tension showed itself clearly.

I also reflected on something Steve Jobs once said. Building Apple was extremely hard. There was no stable ground. There was constant juggling. Marketing, operations, recruitment, innovation, all had to be handled at once.

This is leadership. And this is also parenthood.

As the hours passed, I saw the truth more clearly. The stress was not coming from the tasks themselves. It was not coming from my son’s struggles or my leadership weaknesses. The stress was coming from something deeper.

Swimming, Surrender, and the Truth About Control

The real source of stress is trying to control outcomes that are not ours to control.

The tighter we hold on to these outcomes, the heavier life feels. This is a leadership trap. It is also a parenting trap. You want to guide others toward growth. You want to ensure success. You want to shape what is not fully shapeable.

But many of these outcomes lie beyond us.

A simple image helped me see this again. Every day, I swim. And swimming has become a teacher.

When you walk, you control each step. The ground is under your feet. You can feel it.

When you swim, the ground disappears. You cannot hold the water. If you fight the water, you sink. You must surrender to its flow. You must trust it to carry you while you direct your movements within it.

Leadership and parenting often call us to swim.

There are seasons when we are walking. There is clarity. The ground feels solid. Progress is visible.

There are seasons when we are swimming. We face uncertainty, complexity, and emotional waves. In these moments, trying to apply walking instincts only drains us faster.

Knowing when to walk and when to swim is one of the most important forms of maturity we can build.

Surrendering does not mean giving up. It means releasing the illusion of total control while acting purposefully in the areas where we can truly lead.

Reflection question for you:

Where in your leadership or parenting are you trying to walk, when you should be swimming?

Mastering the Bounce-Back: Surrender as a Leadership Practice

Ryan’s insight remained with me all day. Maturity is about shortening the bounce-back cycle. It is about learning when to surrender and when to rise again.

This is not about pretending to be invulnerable. It is about staying grounded enough to release what we cannot control.

In leadership, this means knowing where to focus. In parenting, it means knowing what to model for our children. In both, it means holding a posture of humility.

There is one area where I try to live this out every day.

I make it a habit to walk and to swim. I remind my team and my friends often that staying healthy is not about chasing a perfect body. It is about being responsible. I want to be a father who can explore the world with my children, not someone they have to take care of when I grow old.

This is not about vanity. It is about purpose. That purpose is what gives me the discipline to work out, to walk, to move. And this is also an act of surrender. I cannot control how long I will live. But I can choose how I live today, and how I steward my body so that I can serve my family and my team well.

Today, I carried stress because I held too tightly to outcomes I could not guarantee. I wanted my eldest son’s behavior to shift. I wanted to offer tactical clarity where I felt weak. I wanted to control more than I could.

And that is when the drag of stress becomes most dangerous.

As I came home, though, perspective returned. My wife was well and preparing for the birth of our next child. My children were loud and playful, full of life. The house was not perfect, but it was good.

There is always imperfection. There is always uncertainty. There is also goodness to be found if we do not let stress blind us to it.

Leadership and parenting do not require perfect plans. They require resilience. They require presence. And they require surrender.

The Unseen Principle

Here is what surfaced through reflection today.

The more we try to control what cannot be controlled, the more stress we invite. The more we surrender wisely, the more quickly we can bounce back. That bounce-back ability defines leadership maturity.

Mature leaders do not eliminate stress. They transform their relationship with it.

Stress will come. Complexity will come. Emotional weight will come. The leader who learns to surrender at the right moments and to rise again with clarity will grow stronger each time.

Leadership is not always walking with confidence. It is often swimming through deep waters with trust.

This is not a weakness. It is a discipline we must learn. And it is one our teams and families need to see.

Final Reflection Question

As I closed this day, one question remained in my heart.

What do my children, and what do my leaders, need to see from me when I am struggling?

The answer is not perfection. It is surrender. It is bounce-back. It is the courage to swim when the ground beneath us is no longer visible.

Perhaps this is how leadership legacies are truly built.

Not through our perfect days. Through how we rise and lead through the imperfect ones.