Breathe In, Breathe Out

Summer is when we pause, give a moment to soak in and absorb. Why we travel on vacation or even indulge ourselves with a staycation. But even if that isn't accessible to you now (timing, affordability, etc.), we can still remind ourselves to breathe.

Eighty percent of people unconsciously hold their breath or drop to shallow breathing when doing email or texting. This is a real phenomenon coined by an Apple and Microsoft executive when she found herself so focused or stressed that she simply stopped doing one of our most basic human functions - breathing. And there's a name for it: email apnea.

As a child, we would hold our breaths in competition which left the victor with flushed skin gasping for air and maybe a smile? We made breathing a sport. Usually, the mere act of breathing is a given. But in those moments of competition or sport, the act of breathing or lack thereof, it no longer becomes simply an act of living but an intention to living.

Too little and we're gasping. Too much and we feel our lungs stretched. But maybe this stretch is what our body needs every once in a while since we take our breathing for granted so regularly. Breathing exercises help regulate and stimulate the efficiency in how we function. In business as in life, when we approach a task we consider on automation, we lose our focus and purpose. But what if we applied the same principle in regulating our breathing like we do in so many of our business decisions -- with purpose and intention? Maybe then one of those tasks can be moving out of email apnea and into email efficiency.

So what are you doing to ensure you are breathing intentionally? Breathe new life? Breathe new ideas? Breathe a greater purpose?

How about you start by first taking a breath?