part0007

You arrive at the office and before you’ve even removed your coat, you’ve opened your email and hastily rattled off a reply. You manage to get your coat off before making a call and then rush to your first meeting of the day. On the way, you’re ambushed in the corridor by a colleague, a direct report or a boss who needs an immediate decision.

You buy some time, promising to come back to her later, and make a mental note to fit it in somewhere (meaning lunch will be a quick sandwich at your desk). Coming out of the meeting, you’re not sure what it accomplished. And so your day goes, juggling requests, making or delaying decisions, rushing to meetings, presenting, pitching, phone conferencing, firefighting, doing , doing , doing . Faster and faster you go, often feeling on the back foot or hanging on for dear life, in a state of distraction and partial – continual – attention, autopilot or worse: survival mode.

In all that you do, in all your environments, your ‘first environment’ is your body, the source of balance in all the flux and complexity. Connecting to yourself before stepping into action is key to your well-being and therefore key to your performance. You may play many different roles in your work, but you have only one body, and it’s the gateway to all your experience.

Your mindset, your power, your beliefs, your decision-making, your risk-taking, your acts of courage, your vision, your presence – this extraordinary palette of expression of you – is located in your body. In the words of Somatic Master Practitioner Jennifer Cohen, ‘We don’t have a body, we are a body.’ 2

The more you take the time to listen to your body, the more you can maintain your centre, feel present and be agile, moment to moment, in different scenarios. Ever notice what’s happening in your body when you feel under pressure? Perhaps your jaw clenches, your shoulders tense or your arms cross tightly when you feel defensive or resistant. Perhaps you slump or lean to one side when you feel defeated, bored or resigned. Whatever the challenge or pressure you’re feeling, your body itself takes on an attitude. It is speaking to you! When you notice it, you can shift it and feel the difference immediately. One small moment of physical awareness and response can shift you into a much more effective state.

Let’s pause and do a quick body audit. Notice how you are right now in reading or listening mode – how you are sitting or standing; how you are breathing. Notice any tension or holding. Take your time. Now press the refresh button by taking a breath and making a change in your posture.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say, ‘I never stop for me’ or ‘Stopping feels like an indulgence or guilty pleasure’ or ‘I need to be seen to be working’ or ‘I need to justify what they’re paying me’. Hmmm, very interesting. Can you imagine an athlete getting fired because she maintained her fitness?

You’re a performer, an athlete, too! As Jim Loehr said, you’re a corporate athlete and your fitness and well-being are critical to your performance. 3 So please connect to your body, listen to your body and take care of your body. You can do this the easy way or the hard way: you can choose, starting right now, to Stop! and breathe , to take a moment to get clear and connected, and to go towards your agendas with intention . Or you can continue to rush past, rush over or rush headlong through your days as one meeting leaks into another, draining your energy and back-footing your effectiveness. Enough said.

As she glanced through the headlines of my programme proposal, she took her first and only pause when she read the words ‘Breath Work’, to which she responded, without missing a beat or taking a breath, ‘I’ve done breathing!’ Onwards she raced. I referred her to another coach and can only hope they lived happily ever after and everyone stopped for breath from time to time!

Effective breathing is the holy grail of gravitas. Changing the way we breathe changes the way we feel, and therefore it has an impact on us and on all those around us. What does it mean to breathe? The breath is our beginning. Breath is our life story. We journey from our first breath to our last.

We often hold our breath in tension and we often breathe up high in the chest. By taking a deep breath, you create space inside yourself. In this fast world, a world that is always calling you outwards , stopping to breathe is your pathway inwards . The simple act of stopping and breathing gives you many gifts:

BREATHING EXERCISES

To make breathing your ally, try these simple exercises:

Sit or stand comfortably. Imagine you’re blowing up a balloon. Take a deep breath in and exhale in hard, short bursts to pump up that balloon. Give it one last burst of breath before ‘tying the knot’. Notice how warmed up you feel from the exertion of breathing.
Sit or stand comfortably. Hold one finger in front of your face, arm’s length away. Imagine your finger is a candle flickering on a dinner table (yes, think romantic dinner). Take a deep breath and exhale very slowly, controlling your airflow so that the candle flickers in the gentle breeze but never blows out. Notice how calm and relaxed you feel. 4
Sit or lie down. Just for one moment enjoy the quiet. Just for one moment let go and enjoy the stillness. Just for one moment marvel at the miracle of your breath, which fuels your life force. Imagine that you are breathing into a landscape that you love, such as the mountains or the ocean, a meadow or lush woods, a vast desert. Literally feel yourself expanding as your breath reaches into the landscape.

Remember to Stop! and breathe before you make that important call, log on to your emails, launch into your day or jump into that meeting. Stop! and breathe when speaking and presenting, and before answering questions. This practice literally puts air and space around your thoughts and words. It helps you to act with intention.

Creating your own ritual really helps. One client puts on headphones so that anyone passing by her office will assume she’s on a call and won’t interrupt her. The act of donning the headphones is also her reminder to herself to take that moment. Another client does a short visualisation of her favourite landscape, where she feels complete well-being, and another does a gratitude moment.

We’d done wild-card icebreakers to uproarious laughter, and high-energy warm-ups. We’d shared stories, challenges and action plans. To wrap up the day, we stood in a circle for what I call a ‘valuing ritual’. It consisted of taking some deep, slow breaths with our hands on our hearts and taking a moment to appreciate the day, one another and ourselves.

In the rush, in the action-driven day-to-day of life, particularly corporate life, our breathing can become superficial and thin. This is what produces speech that is monotone and too fast. The deeper we breathe, the more we have to slow down. The more we slow down, the more present we are to sensation, to the moment and to feelings. Our broken hearts, elations, loves, losses, fears, dreams, courage, failures, triumphs – our very life stories – are written on the breath. When we breathe deeply, literally taking our breathing to heart, we honour ourselves.

So here’s to the welling up of eyes, the flow of tears, and nervous laughter. Fear not. Touching that core of vulnerability for a moment through the power of breathing doesn’t mean you’ll have a meltdown at the office or be too emotional in your next presentation (genuine fears often expressed). It just means that you have a powerful resource whenever you want it; a way to value yourself and give the gift of compassion to yourself and to others. To quote Walt Whitman, ‘I am larger, better than I thought… I did not know I held so much goodness.’ 5

When we are centred, we are aligned and in balance. We are connected to the ground, to our roots – metaphorically and practically. Centring means getting balanced and feeling our equilibrium. When we are centred, we are open, upright and strong. We feel connected to the space and those around us. We have an expansive radar. We are poised for action.

Right before leaping, dancers drop down deep into a position called plié . They get fuelled for takeoff by going to a place of deep self-centring. Think about what getting self-centred means to you. We often mistake ‘stepping back’ or going to ground as a retreat, a stepping away from something. But in fact, this moment of centring is a powerful gathering of inner resources and connection. Like taking a moment to Stop! and breathe , getting self-centred and finding your balance, your ballast , will give you more choices for impact and how you respond in the moment.

Eden, a young executive in a global management consultancy firm, described her recurring experiences of ‘difficult conversations’ with colleagues and stakeholders. As she talked about feeling overlooked, undervalued and undermined, her language was filled with phrases like ‘under attack’ and ‘feeling defeated’, terms of embattlement and defence. She regretted that she didn’t stand her ground or have the ‘right’ response in the moment. Furthermore, she shared her fears about not knowing all the answers in Q&A moments and of being found out (that old impostor syndrome tale).

I asked her about people she admired, who demonstrated the kind of behaviour she was striving for. She replied, ‘People who look relaxed and settled in their own skin, who have the sense that they are on their own ground.’ And the biggest revelation of all: she admired those who demonstrated that knowing all the answers isn’t as critical as engaging with the questions !

By focusing on her state and getting centred before important conversations, Eden was able to engage more effectively and feel more ‘at home’ in herself. The self-centre is that place from which, feeling aligned and in balance, settled and alert, open and strong, you can ‘go forth’.

Recently, during a women’s leadership programme, my colleagues and I wanted to revise one of the sessions we’d planned. As we gathered together over the coffee break, we felt stuck, time pressured and less than our creative best. Suddenly someone blurted out, ‘When in doubt, dance it out!’ We all laughed and then spontaneously started dancing. Crazy as it sounds, we got unstuck and came up with a great new idea for the next session to further enliven the learning.

Later that day, after our roomful of fabulous women leaders had worked on strategic career planning, delved into organisational politics and discussed unconscious bias, it was time for an energy booster and a recharge – so we danced! The room was charged with laughter, light and energy. It was breathtakingly beautiful to witness. The women behind the job titles were wholly in their bodies, untethered from self-limiting barriers. As they danced, they were at once grounded and liberated, joyful and commanding, connected and inclusive, playful and purposeful.

Moving opens us up and brings a more animated self forward; something more truthful is revealed. It releases us physically, vocally, emotionally and energetically. This means literally moving in the space, getting physically warmed up, stretching, gesturing, lifting our posture up, opening our mouths, voices, eyes, faces and hearts.

Your open, uplifted body shifts your feeling state and injects you with positive energy. You are in the act of warming up to yourself . It can take you instantly from a tentative, apologetic, defensive or anxious state to a confident, energised and optimistic state. As social scientist Amy Cuddy says, ‘Our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behaviour, and our behaviour can change our outcomes.’ 7

Claire, a director in the oil industry, told me about a meeting she had at regular intervals with her counterpart from another global hub. She described these meetings as ‘all agenda and no engagement’. Claire explained how disappointed and frustrated she felt coming away from these meetings for their lack of connection, thinking time and dialogue.

As she described it, they would barely get seated and settled before her counterpart would thrust out the agenda, summarise the objective of the meeting and proceed to race through the bullet points with barely a look up. There was no preliminary human moment, no literal or metaphorical meet-and-greet and no pause for reflection, second thoughts or questions. There was a hard stop and a rush out the door at the meeting’s end. Needless to say, Claire developed an aversion to these meetings. They left her feeling unseen and unheard.

This is an extreme example but similar ‘bottom-line-behaviour’, focused entirely on outcomes and very little on the process, frequently arises in numerous workplaces. Team leaders, bosses and colleagues rush past and over the human moments. They fail to make a connection and be present. People default to this pattern for many reasons, such as insecurity in their position, terror of not knowing the answers (so they avoid making space for questions), wanting to be seen as time efficient and so on. What’s clear is that there’s a complete neglect of the Stop! and breathe moment, which should be minimal preparation for entering into a meeting environment with others. There also isn’t any calibrating of energy, nor getting centred enough to be fully present.

Amy, from a global tech company, had a very different experience. Amy was asked by her boss to make a key presentation to the board, an indication of the investment in her future. On the big day, Amy rushed to the boardroom, hardly breathing, heart pounding, eyes fixed forward in tunnel-vision mode – a woman on a mission! Suddenly, her boss appeared in the corridor and stopped her in her tracks. Embarrassed and flustered, Amy heard her boss say, ‘Slow down, or you’ll take that nervous energy into the room with you.’ Amy said it was the best feedback she ever got.