How to Let Things Go

October 1, 2024

For those feeling overwhelmed, internationally bestselling Buddhist monk Masuno (The Art of Simple Living) offers a guide for stepping away from the demands of everyday life and prioritizing what really matters. Already a bestseller in Japan, this book offers lessons and practical tips for creating a calmer, more fulfilling life. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from October 15, 2024
Trust a Zen Buddhist monk (and the author of The Art of Simple Living, 2009, and Don't Worry, 2022) to proffer advice simply and with impact. This worthy successor to Don Miguel Ruiz's self-help classic, The Four Agreements (1997), is a collection of smart, practical advice from Masuno, a chief priest and professor of environmental design, that will be treasured and referred to often. The 99 tips, usually no more than one page each, center on relinquishing control to free yourself up for what matters. Five categories gather the wisdom: don't get overly involved, don't worry about every little thing, be measured in your actions, don't waste your energy, and don't see everything as black or white. At the same time, while separate, each piece of Masuno's advice melds seamlessly with the others. The difference, for example, between blocking out the voices of others and being unswayed by trends is slight, but Masuno's explanation clarifies any perceived overlap. He writes unpretentiously and powerfully, with a bit of humor (for instance, dispose of what you don't need like it's ""excess saturated fats""). In summary, do your best and leave the rest. Most of us can't hear (or read) it enough.

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August 12, 2024
Zen priest Masuno (Don’t Worry) touts the merits of living a more unencumbered life in this wise and succinct guide. Contending that letting go is nothing less than a “survival skill” in an age of information overload, Masuno shares brief lessons on letting go at work (set aside one’s feelings in order to “get along with... adversaries”; accept personal weaknesses rather than working fruitlessly to overcome them); in personal relationships (observe rather than automatically intervening in others’ problems; accept that it’s impossible to fully know another person—“when you don’t understand, let it go” is the key to a happy marriage) and on social media (maintain “a certain distance” so as not to engage in “futile battles”). Masuno has a knack for turning a phrase to make familiar advice memorable—learning from one’s mistakes, he writes, is a way to “remake how we carry the past with us”—even if truisms like “worrying over little things... only makes your life more difficult” might elicit eye rolls. Still, the stressed will find much to appreciate.