Advice: Don't Forget to Breathe

met a client for coffee this morning in rosslyn, va to deliver his debut cd in person – “dropping product” as i call it. i could tell that he was stressing an upcoming performance from the standpoint of “wanting it to be just right.” here’s my advice: don’t forget to breathe. fear momentarily slows or stops your breathing as it speeds up the perception of events around you, which causes a panic, which limits oxygen to your brain, which makes you function less than properly. breathing reverses the process of fear (and negative impacts like panic) and allows you to regain control of a situation. in baseball, you hear about the game slowing down for the best hitters – so much so that some claim to recognize and track the rotation of a thrown ball that’s traveling 80+ mph. here, past experiences and sound mechanics work hand in hand to simplify an event – which then make a complicated task easier to execute.