Eliminate Self-Doubt Using This Simple Breathing Exercise

Modern life is full of things that seem like they are specifically designed to stress you out. Things such as appointments to be kept, people to impress, and social norms to be met can all make you anxious and give you self-doubt. One of the simplest ways to overcome that anxiety is to use breathing exercises to slow yourself down and bring that stress reaction under control. So, here’s breathing technique that you can use to control your self-doubt and put the brakes on your anxiety.

The 4-7-8 Breathing Technique

The 4-7-8 method goes like this: Breath in through your nose with your breath intake stretched over four seconds. Do a slow count to four in your mind as you do this so that you can roughly track how long the action takes. Hold the breath for seven seconds by doing a slow count to seven. Then release the breath through your mouth very slowly over eight seconds while counting slowly to eight in your mind. When breathing out through your mouth purse your lips slightly so that the breath makes a slight whooshing sound as it comes out. This is also a great breathing exercise to use to help you get to sleep at night.

You can do this exercise almost anywhere but if you want the full effect you should find a quiet place where you can lie down comfortably. Ideally, you should be somewhere where you’ll have no distractions from family or co-workers. If it’s practical, you might want to turn off your phone and anything else that may interrupt you as just knowing that your phone could go off at any minute can be distracting.

Do this four times for each session. It’s best to avoid long sessions at first as you may feel light-headed if you overdo it. For best results do two or more sessions a day.

Breathing exercises are a great way to help you to calm down and control your self-doubt. Controlling your breathing reminds you that you are in control of other parts of your life that you may have convinced yourself are more of a problem than they actually are. This breathing technique should help you keep your anxiety in check and let you approach your problems more calmly and with more optimism that you are up to solving them.