It's a while since my last post, and it's a slightly odd title. So let me explain... I've just come back from a week at Tai Chi summer training. There are many things I get from Tai Chi, but one of the things I want to pick out relates to how we react to people and situations. What most people associate with Tai Chi is the Tai Chi form - a set sequence of movements performed slowly and smoothly, practised alone or perhaps in a group. However we also practise more martial (2 person) work. In this, the idea is to engage with another person and mitigate any challenge they present without losing your balance (which almost always results in you being "pushed" over).
It's pretty easy to see how this might be a metaphor for interactions in business, and something you might want to be able to do. I'm not going to try to describe in detail how our practice works, but one "secret" of success in this 2 person practice is to avoid over-reacting. It turns out that it is not the other person who pushes you off balance, but your own over-reaction which takes you off balance. They then simply take advantage of that. Similarly, you do not push them off balance, you simply wait until they over-react and take themselves off balance, then use that to your advantage. Simple!
You don't have to take up Tai Chi to use this Tai Chi secret in your everyday life. Avoiding over-reaction is something you can do very quickly in many situations - just by breathing. I've written many times about how your limbic reacts instantly to people and situations, and it is the limbic that has the tendency to over-react. When it sees a situation or person as a threat, it doesn't hesitate, it stimulates your sypathetic nervous system into full scale physical response - often with unhelpful consequences. In particular it shuts off the PFC which means you lose the capacity to imagine positive outcomes or see new options for action. But slowly breathing out instantly switches on your para-sympathetic nervous system to calm the limbic, and re-enable your PFC - giving you back your ability to make better choices.
Clearly it helps if you practice paying attention to your breathing (eg via mindfulness type practices) and the more you put this into practice in stressful situations, the more automatic the response becomes (which is why we do the martial arts practice). But there's nothing to stop you using this reframing thought right now. You don't breathe to relax and stay calm, you breathe to give yourself the advantage and more choices of action. So first choose to breathe!
