Does your stress level bother you? Are you stressed to a point that it is hard to focus?

Small amount of stress is healthy — no stress to the system leads to fragility. But too much stress also leads to breakdown. Where is your stress level?

If it is more than the healthy amount, read on to find a small practice to reduce stress almost immediately.

Cause of the stress

Stress comes from repeated thought patterns (we are talking about the kind of stress we experience from our daily lives nowadays). We have a thought that simulates a bad outcome in our mind. And we keep simulating various possibilities in our head, leading to that bad outcome.

If I am stressed about a presentation, the thought pattern is that of not being able to finish the presentation in time, and making a fool of yourself. That leads to stress.

If I am stressed about someone finding out something I have not told them, the thought pattern simulates the embarrassment that would happen if they found out.

In short, repeated stressful thought patterns lead to chronic stress.

Now, how to break such a pattern?

What does not work to reduce stress?

One thing that does not work — stressing yourself out that you must stop thinking certain thoughts. This is true even if your goals is completely rational — that is it does not make sense at all to stress at a rational level. You cannot control your thoughts (in the short term). Brain’s job is to have thoughts and it will have whatever thoughts that it is primed to think. If you have been thinking about stressful thoughts, then you will continue to do so. That is one awareness that would help to deal with the reality.

How to be aware of our priming?

If we cannot control our thoughts, we can still become aware of our thoughts while we are having them (not in retrospect). We do this through a conscious breath.

5 second practice to reduce stress — on demand

In a conscious breath, we notice the sensation our breath causes in the nostril and lip area. When we breath in and out, the air flows over the lips and nose, and usually there is some sensation when that happens. It could be a sensation of warmth, coolness, tingling, air flowing and moving through hair, ticklish sensation, sensation of scratching, or any other variety of sensations. Just for one breath in, notice the sensation the in-breath causes in the nostril and upper lip area. And when you breath out, notice the sensation the out-breath causes in the same area. That finishes one conscious breath.

If you are not able to notice the sensation that the breath causes, try a few of these variations to prime yourself and help you get started.

1. Instead of a regular breath, take a heavy and deeper breath in and out. That usually intensifies the sensations and we are able to notice them more easily in the beginning.
2. Close your eyes when you breath in an out. Reducing visual distraction also helps to notice the sensations. When one sense is blocked out, other senses typically become more sensitive.
3. If none of these methods work, close your right fist, and put the back of your right palm underneath the nose. Instead of feeling the sensations in your nostril or upper lip, notice the sensation the breath causes on the back of the hand.

Do this just for one breath — which is about 5 seconds, give or take a second or two. And do this many times a day, whenever you realize stressful thoughts are taking over the mind.

In this practice, we are bringing attention away from the thoughts to the physical sensation that the body is feeling in the reality of the “present moment”. It can be done by many other means, but I like the breath sensation the most, as it is something you always have available (as long as your alive, that is).

Conscious breathing practice

Once you realize that doing one conscious breath seems to help reduce the stress (at least a little bit, and at least in the moment), it is important to make a habit from it. The difficult thing about doing conscious breathing only when you get stressed is that it is hard to remember to do so during those difficult times. A Olympic athlete cannot perform well only when stakes are high: they got to practice when stakes are low also. You got to fix the plumbing proactively, before the floor is flooded — otherwise, you will end up spending a lot of time just fixing broken pipes and flooded floors.

To this end, I invite you to have a twice a day conscious breathing practice, ideally at the fixed times each day. Do it twice a day: you can pick any time to do it and any duration. For example, do it 1m in the morning and one minute in the evening, at 7 AM and 6 PM each day. These are just suggested times and durations. You might also want to pick other events as triggers instead of clock times: e.g., after shower, or after dinner.

So, these are the three practices:

• Regular morning conscious breathing. Takes about 1 minute a day.
• Regular evening conscious breathing. Takes about 1 minute a day.
• On-demand conscious breathing: 5 seconds every time, do it about 5-15 times each day with approximate time investment of 1 minute (5 second each time x about 10 times = 1 minute).

In 3 minutes a day, you will have a significantly reduced stress level.

Other benefits of conscious breathing

Other than the reduced stress level, here are some other benefits of this practice.

• Increased trust in yourself to follow things through. This is an amazing benefit. You can do a lot with this inner trust. Just investing 3 minutes a day in conscious breathing is a good way to bootstrap the trust. You exactly know what needs to be done, so no brain cycles needed to figure that out and potentially procrastinate. Once you have this self-trust, you can use it to commit to next level things, and develop even bigger trust in yourself (that you will follow through, that you will not quit until you achieve what you set out to do). The sky is the limit when you have trust in yourself.
• Catching yourself in “lower states of mind” (System 1 arena, in Kahneman and Tversky terminology). When we are stressed out, our responses are not rational — this is true for all humans. In the case of stress, we are evolved to respond to the stress quickly instead of thinking things through. But our environments have changed since our brains evolved, and stresses are rarely a life and death issues nowadays. So, catching yourself potentially responding in a way that you will regret later — that is a skill that is useful for improved effectiveness.

Roadblocks in developing conscious breathing practices

Although conscious breathing does not take much time, and you can benefit immensely from investing just 3 minutes a day, it is not an easy habit to develop (unless you commit to it). We have a tendency towards shiny and splash worthy solution to our problems, not some consistency based boring solutions. Although consistency trumps intensity in the long term, it is hard to see the long-term when you are stressed out.

It is therefore helpful to commit to spending a fixed amount of time each day for a fixed period of time.

The 3 minutes above was just an example. If you think you can only spend 1 minute on this (but will actually spend 1 minute no matter what), then scale each of the three practice to 20 seconds each from 1 minute each.

For the fixed amount of time, it is best to commit to 90 days of practice. But if you want to commit only for 30 days, do that. 30 days of following through on your commitment is better than 90 days of making it and not following through. Similarly, 1 minute of doing conscious breathing is better than 3 minutes of planning and not doing it.

That said, here are a few pitfalls I have noticed when working with people, and in developing this habit myself over the last 14-15 years.

• During a difficult day, you start to feel why do you have to do the conscious breathing. You might say to yourself: I am free to do whatever I want to do. Why do I have to do this one minute of bullshit? It will invariably happen, where you are having a difficult day, and when you want small freedom (short-term pleasure). They end up costing big freedoms in the long run, but the System 1 brain (emotional brain) does not care about long-term benefits, only short term pleasures. That is why we start with such a small time period that it is hard to back out of that 1 minute commitment. Commit small so you can do it even if you are having a difficult day, and don’t want to do it. But then follow through. Realize that you yourself decided to do it. Nobody is forcing you to do it.
• You might think: I am not getting any benefit for the last x days of doing. Why bother? The more you expect to benefit from it quickly, longer it takes (typically). It is hard to be present (to conscious breath) when your mind is looking for a future reward. If you can just let go of benefit for a few weeks, that is the best mindset to approach this with. Commit to a few weeks (ideally 3 months) to do this without any expectation of results (and then evaluate based on results you have seen). You will be surprised by what you see.
• You might think: I see the benefits. Why continue now? Let me stop. This practice is a golden goose that keeps giving eggs. We usually give up a practice quickly after we are out of the difficult time. But the benefits are even bigger when you are out of the red zone. The sky is the limit when it comes to how good things can become. We all can improve in terms of stress management, and increasing self-trust. If this practice has benefited you, it is likely to benefit you even more. If you do want to stop (because maybe the habit has run its course), then decided to stop in 7 days. Write on a piece of paper that you will stop on the date 7 days in the future. Do it for 7 more days, and then if you have a piece of paper that permits you to stop, stop at that pre-determined time. (Another article coming up for explaining this idea.) Don’t stop in the moment. You are just having a difficult day.

Just do it

If you commit to doing conscious breathing 3 minutes a day for 90 days, you are spending about 5 hours of time over a period of quarter of a year. You will be amazed at the results of doing this, especially if you have not had such a practice before.

For reduced commitment, even if you do 1 minutes each day for a month, you are likely to see good results. That is 30 minutes of investment for fundamental shift in your behavior and mindset.

Are you willing to plunge in? What is stopping you?

Comment if you have any questions. And if you are willing to commit, make it public. Let us know in the comments.