One of the many lessons I’ve been learning lately is how to breathe. I know this sounds obvious, but our society tells us to go go go all the time. It can be difficult to train our brains to slow down and help us breathe.
Breathing is self-care, plain and simple.
I’ve been consciously taking time, several times a day, to just breathe. Sometimes I breathe through just my nose, and other times I breathe out my mouth, whatever feels right at the time. Honestly, it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you do it mindfully.
I often get caught up in whatever’s going on in my life, and sometimes I can over-hype something and build it up so much in my head that I start to freak out. Oftentimes, that buildup isn’t necessary and I end up worrying myself so no reason, but it’s hard to talk yourself down after that.
Sound familiar to anyone else?
It’s so, so important to take at least a few deep breaths per day to help remind ourselves to slow down and think more objectively about something, even if it’s ourselves. In fact, being objective about ourselves can be one of the most difficult things for us to do, but we have to at least try.
We need to be able to view our own worries and troubles more objectively so we don’t make them worse for basically no reason. Bad things can be bad enough on their own without us amplifying them, and why would we want to make things worse so our stress increases? I know sometimes our worries have a basis in truth, but not all of them do and certainly not every time.
So, my friends, learn to breathe. Before you over-react to something or someone in your life, breathe. Before you start worrying about something, breathe. Before you make a drastic decision, breathe.
I feel like sometimes we over-complicate our lives and think we need to do complex things to be happy and feel accomplished, but that’s just not true. And even if you did accomplish those things, would you really feel happy or just more stressed out?
We need to break the cycle of worrying and getting stressed out all the time. Aren’t you tired of that?
Photo by Fabian Møller on Unsplash
