18 Feb How To Use Your Breath To Find Your Vision

Vision is a concept as old as time. Even before vision boards, board meetings, or organizational flow charts, there was the knowledge that having vision was important to success.

Proverbs. 29:18 states: Without a Vision, the people perish.

Even then, the idea was clear: without a vision, you are just running on a treadmill, making the donuts day after day. 

So how do you find your vision?

You need two things. 

You need creativity and you need perseverance.

One idea for tuning up that perseverance is a technique called Box Breathing. I realize it’s a stretch. We’ve gone from talking about vision to now talking about breath, but hear me out.

Box Breathing helps with concentration and performance, while also helping with relaxation. This happens by calming and regulating your Autonomic Nervous System. In other words, you can learn to soothe yourself even while you’re struggling. 

When we are stressed, we see things through a much more narrow aperture; there’s no space for creativity. If you are calm, you are going to be able to access your creativity much more easily. Box Breathing is one way that you can practice sitting with anxiety, staying the course, and opening your eyes to what comes next.

And that’s where vision comes into play. As you have a longer phase of not breathing, this becomes increasingly difficult; with Box Breathing, you’ll learn how to control your breathing even while you are uncomfortable. You need to persevere past the discomfort. You have to know where you are headed. You have to envision the ease after the discomfort.

Interested? Here’s step-by-step instruction:

Step1

Slowly inhale to the count of 4 (count silently in your head)

Step 2

Hold your breath to the same count of 4

Step 3

Slowly exhale to the count of 4

Step 4

Hold your breath to the same count of 4.

Step 5

Repeat, either continuing with the same count, or lengthening the count and the length of your breath to the count of 10.

As always, try this technique out, and let me know what you discover.