About 15 years ago, a friend who was into self-help bought me a book on breathing. I frankly was a bit amused. Breathing? Come on. Let’s be serious
Fast forward a bit. I am sitting with Sam, a new executive coaching client. A bright, ivy league introverted guy who is managing people for the first time. He shares some feedback about being seen as too intense and intimidating.
I asked him to breathe. Sam squirmed in his chair but consciously took in air and let it out. I asked him to do it more slowly, more deliberately. We even breathed a few breaths at the same time. I encouraged Sam to check in with himself. “How do you feel?”, I asked. “Calmer,” he replied.
That is usually what happens when we conciously take in a breath. Since I smirked about my breathing book gift, I have gotten into yoga. The practice of yoga is all about integrating breathing with movement and quieting the mind. It works. Breathing helps us to focus on the moment we are in – in my book I refer to Presence…being where your feet are. When you are aware of your breathing it is impossible to be nervous or to be revved up.
What else does breathing do? The effect rubs off on the people around you. You are seen as in control and not frantic (even though you might be feeling somewhat like that).
Sam left my office with a tool to try on at work. He is just tapping into a natural resource that is free and always readily available. Try it and see the results – a calmer, more focused you.
There is nothing quite as nerve-racking as walking up to the stage to expose your every weakness, physical and mental, before an audience who is all too familiar with the repertoire. You think you will make a mistake, then you do, and everybody knows when it happened. Continue reading the rest of this article...
“They (Introverts) just didn’t place a larger weight on social stimuli than they did on any other stimuli, of which flowers are one example,” said.
“[This] supports the claim that introverts, or their brains, might be indifferent to people — they can take them or leave them, so to speak. The introvert’s brain treats interactions with people the same way it treats encounters with other, non-human information, such as inanimate objects for example,” Inna Fishman said.
They concluded that, “The results strongly suggest that human faces, or people in general, hold more significance for extroverts, or are more meaningful for them.” Continue reading the rest of this article...
What’s mystifying to Stewart—and likely to anyone with either a shred of empathy or a tendency to clam up in public—is the looking- glass reality in which her manner, rather than eliciting sympathy or mere shrugs, has made her a figure of derision. “I think it’s funny that when I go onstage to accept an award, they think I’m nervous, uncomfortable, and awkward—and I am—but those are bad words for them,” Stewart says. Continue reading the rest of this article...
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