I want to introduce you to one of the very simplest yet most effective stress management techniques for tough times that I discovered some years ago, but first I want to tell you a story.

There is a story about a king who sought wisdom. He searched all over his kingdom for wisdom and did not find it. Eventually he heard of a man living in a remote part of the kingdom who had a reputation for great wisdom.

The king sent for this man and had him brought to court, whereupon the king offered the man a great reward if he would share the secret to his wisdom.

The man agreed and departed from the king’s presence.

He returned several weeks later and presented the king with a small box.

The king looked a little surprised and very disappointed as he opened the box and removed a ring. “Is this it?” he shouted at the wise man.

“Place the ring on your finger and read the inscription out loud,” replied the wise man.

The king read the inscription: “This too will pass”.

The wise man counselled the king: “Wear that ring at all times and look at it frequently, and regardless of whether you are experiencing good fortune or adversity remind yourself that this too will pass…”

The king was satisfied that he had at last found true wisdom and he duly rewarded the man with great wealth.

How I discovered the “This too will pass” rule

Approximately 12 years ago I was in a senior management position working on a large multi-million dollar IT programme in London. The various projects involved major change in the client organisation’s service delivery processes.

It was an extremely pressured role which was made far more difficult because of the adversarial relationship between my employers who were the prime contractor and our client’s IT department who were our direct interface on behalf of our client’s business users.

As these situations so often are, this was a highly political environment where emails were used by the client’s IT people and their subcontractors to make mischief and generally stir things up.

A typical strategy was for the client’s project manager or one of this team to fire off a critical – but inaccurate and misleading – email and to copy-in senior management and directors in the client organisation and with the prime contractor – and thus ensuring a continuous escalation of highly politicised issues.

This would happen several times a week.

My role in all this was to act as buffer and filter for my boss who was the programme director – to field these offensive emails – resolve the underlying issues and/or recommend a solution and to neutralise the politics.

You may find all this is a bit hard to believe unless you have worked on a large messy IT project (the large ones nearly always are messy!) – but I assure you it is true when I tell you that it was not uncommon for it to take me the best part of a day to deal with one of these emails.

Often my colleague – the programme manager and myself were unfairly and inaccurately personally criticised in these emails. It was wearing, draining and deeply unpleasant (and yes I only stuck it for the money – a lot of money at the time).

But here’s the thing, even though I did not know anything about mindfulness I did rapidly discover the truth of the “This too will pass” story.

I very soon realised that these angry and defensive states arose automatically but if I just sat with them and observed them, without engaging with them for about 24 hours, they passed.

I was then able to exercise clarity and to manage the tricky politics on behalf of my boss and to best effect.

This became known on our side of the programme as the “This too will pass” rule and my first lesson in the power of the practise of mindfulness.