Welcome back Viphilus*
I hope you enjoyed my reminiscences
of Mom and the things I learned from her. For the final 3 months of 2015 I am
going to introduce to you a new way of looking at character building … and how
to actually build character. I will share a lot of information … most of which
is available elsewhere … but you won’t have seen it put together quite this way
before. This is the foundational way that I think about personal growth and
what I use when I serve as a coach, regardless of whether it is performance
coaching or simply coaching to inform or inspire.
What does “character
building” mean to you? I think I’ve already mentioned in this blog that when I
told my son one day that I was trying to help him build character, his response
was that he was already a “character.” While I may smile at his retort I
understand that it is far more complex and comprehensive than most people
think. Going a bit further, I think it is why many (most?) people live
unnecessarily shallow, unfulfiling lives … because they have no idea what or
how things could be different. People feel powerless to effect change in their
life; change that makes them stronger, in a predefined way.
I am going to ask you to
have some patience as I do a very slow “reveal” of my overall training
framework. If you look at the upper right portion of the blog, in the right
margin, you’ll see that I have shown the theme and topics for all of October
and November because they are linked. Then in the first Monday in December I’ll
reveal the full picture of how it all fits together (if you haven’t already
figured it out by then).
Let’s begin with breathing.
Breathing is pretty darned important. Without oxygen you’re dead. Just like a
fire needs oxygen to burn the fuel, so our bodies need oxygen for metabolism to
burn the fuel (food) we eat. And from a physical perspective, the higher the
metabolism “fire,” the healthier we are and the better we feel. It’s all about
energy … and oxygen is a big part of that equation.
So, how do we obtain oxygen?
Well, you don’t actually need to know any of this to actually do it because our
autonomic nervous system takes care of operating our lungs unconsciously. Our
lungs inhale air … our bodies do some neat biochemistry to extract the oxygen
from whatever we breathe in … and then our lungs exhale the useless stuff that
the body is finished with after capturing the oxygen. Chemically, we know this
to be inhaling O2 and then
exhaling CO2 to make room for more O2.
You’re going, “OK, I’m not
an idiot … can we move on to something that I DON’T know please?” But hang on …. Do you really know how to
breathe “properly?”
The first time I was
confronted with that question I recoiled in disbelief and responded sarcastically,
“well, I am still alive at age 50, so … yah … I think I know how to breathe
properly,” making a sweeping air-quotes gesture to show my derision. My
arrogance turned quickly to humility as I learned in the following hour or so
that I, like most people, don’t actually breathe very well. Turned out, many of
my higher anxiety moments, like most people, were accompanied by shallow (no
diaphragm) mouth breathing … a classic, but ineffective response by the body to
consciously obtain more oxygen. I learned that people around the world … FOR
MILLENIA … have tinkered with learning to be better breathers. Who knew? I
learned that high-performance types like world-class athletes, musicians,
special-forces types, all had advanced training in stress-management, which
included learning how to control breathing in order to manage stress … in the
moment. Who knew? I learned that exhaling through the mouth while inhaling
through the nose (with the exhale being twice as long as the inhale) brings a
rapid heart rate down incredibly quickly because, amongst other things, the inhaling
air triggers receptors in the nasal passage that are responsible for releasing
stress-reducing hormones. Who knew?
In a very short period of
time I learned how to intentionally avert an oncoming stress response of rapid
heart rate and cognitive confusion by simply doing some “proper breathing” for
30 seconds. This was a game-changer on countless occasions before going into
stressful situations like media-scrums or live TV interviews (part of my life
for more than a decade when I was a national spokesperson for the Canadian
Hurricane Centre). I learned how to shut down the chatter in my head at night
so that I could fall asleep more easily … which essentially ended a decade-long
fight with insomnia. I learned how to create in me a recovering sense of
peacefulness simply by controlling my breathing.
Wow … who knew? Why isn’t
this stuff taught in school?
With my newfound fascination
in “breathing” I did more investigation and discovered that it was ancient
knowledge (I should say wisdom) to apply a metaphor of breathing to the other
parts of what makes us humans. So, beyond the physical, I learned the
importance of mental breathing, emotional
breathing, and spiritual breathing.
Let me touch briefly on each one just to help get you into the metaphor. I
hope you see the value.
Mental breathing is about inhaling optimism, a clear vision of a
good outcome, while exhaling pessimism, a clouded view of a good outcome (or a
clear view of a bad outcome). I believe that mental breathing is essential for
good mental health. I have already written quite a bit about optimism and
pessimism (June 15, 2015) so I just wanted to connect that here to the breathing
metaphor.
Emotional breathing is about inhaling success and exhaling failure,
while recognizing that just as physical metabolism includes the natural process
of expelling negative impurities from the body, so exhaling failure is a
natural part of the emotional-metabolism process. Too often people assume that
failure is a bad thing or a sign of weakness or something to be avoided.
Failure is a key ingredient in emotional health … as long as it is dealt with properly
… expelled properly, without judgment. This is essential for good emotional
health.
Spiritual breathing is about inhaling (engaging in) the things of
the heavenly realm while exhaling (distancing ourselves from) the ways in which
the worldliness in us tries holding us hostage to the mundane. As a Christian I
see this as essential for good spiritual health.
With each type of breathing,
there is a need to learn why we do it … to learn that while we may do it automatically
at times, we can learn to do it intentionally better all the time … and to
learn that there are different types of training depending on what you wish to
accomplish with your breathing. For example, the training required for learning
to breathe to relax you is VERY different from the training required to learn
how to hold your breath longer because you plan on doing some assist-free diving.
For today, let’s keep the
take-aways simple and focused through these 4 questions:
- Do you know how to physically breathe in a way that will relax you instantly, in order to energize you in a sustainable way?
- Do you know how to mentally breathe in a way that will
relax you instantly, in order to energize you in a sustainable way?
- Do you know how to emotionally breathe in a way that
will relax you instantly, in order to energize you in a sustainable way?
- Do you know how to spiritually breathe in a way that
will relax you instantly, in order to energize you in a sustainable way?
As you can see, this is ALL
ABOUT ENERGY which should be no surprise because LIFE IS ALL ABOUT ENERGY.
Do you have enough energy? If
not …. BREATHE! But learn to do it
properly … find a coach to show you. You’ll be shocked at what a difference it
will make.
I hope to see you back next
Monday.
Blessings Viphilus,
Your friend, Omega Man
* Viphilus means, "lover of life"
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