There are many ways for us to develop patience, but one of my personal favourites is breathing.

Obviously we do this on instinct, but I’m talking about deep breathing and actually noticing it.

Whenever I’m in a tough situation or I have to think critically, I remind myself to pause and breathe. This has allowed me to look at a situation in a calm manner and look at other possibilities.

Not only does breathing help in that, it also helps in developing patience and it has taught me many things.

Breathing Taught Me To Control Emotions

It’s not out of the ordinary for us to get angry, frustrated or anxious about certain things.

Recently I faced a situation with my current employer that would certainly get people angry.

However through breathing, it allowed me to pause and sift through my initial emotions.

Indeed getting angry, outraged, or irritated can be addictive. We feel compelled to burst out that way rather than look at a situation in a calm manner. One way of working out impatience is letting that sink in and understand why we do that.

One of those ways to understand those emotions is by breathing and checking ourselves. When we do that, we begin to learn how we feel and are able to calm ourselves.

This calming nature can help in a variety of ways in our lives.

First thing would be to keep our emotions in check.

The second is allowing ourselves to look at the bigger picture.

Breathing Taught Me To Look At The Larger Picture

Through breathing, I was able to see a larger picture of the situation.

There is always other things going on behind the scenes and by breathing, you are leaving yourself open to that.

Going back to what I mentioned above, anger is addictive and moves us forward. Although action is good, action also needs to be thought out.

With anger you are acting irrationally. Some times anger does work in some situations, but that’s not always the case.

It can cause rifts when you’re not careful.

By breathing, not only are you calming yourself, but you are adding clarity to your life.

It’s through this clarity that you can bring understanding as well.

Lastly, through understanding you are leaving yourself open to other possibilities. This is where this clarity and being able to see the larger picture stems from.

Breathing Shows Both Stories

As I’ve said in the past, there are two sides to every story.

If you only look at your own, you’ll never be able to look past it and see what the other thinks.

Sure you may not care at all about the person on the other — especially if they wronged you. However, your actions and what you wished you did will come back to haunt you.

I know this because my past is riddled with things I should’ve done or said but I made things worse or said or did nothing about it.

The trauma was something I had to overcome through meditating and of course breathing.

Even if you never get the full story, it’s still better to fill in the gaps yourself.

When you pause and breathe you can allow yourself to see things from their perspective.

After all, every person’s word choice means something. Use that to understand and fill in the gaps.

That is the power of breathing, the ability to understand and to wait for that understanding.

To your growth!

Eric S Burdon

This post is part of an 3 month writing challenge that I’m committing myself to. Every day for 3 months, I’ll be writing articles with specific criteria in mind. You can learn all about my reasoning as well as what that criteria is right here. This is 67 of 91 of this series.

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