You cannot let a negative interaction with one person affect your next interaction with another person. You cannot let the execution of one task drain you, and decrease your ability to perform another important, unrelated task. You cannot let the anxiety produced by one problem decrease your effectiveness, enthusiasm and self-image and affect other disciplines.

When you notice your stress level is rising, and you start to go beyond your comfort zone, you need to perform a self-reset. A lot of people use smoking or alcohol to accomplish this, but I believe that the substance itself is not what's doing the job - it's the intent, and the ritual. So breathing works just as well and is far healthier.

When the mind's pond becomes turbulent and can no longer reflect clearly, when you feel 'I cannot take any more work' or 'if one more thing goes wrong I will snap' or 'this is all the aggravation I can take for one day', you must intervene. Ten minutes is an eternity if you simply focus your awareness on breathing and visualizing a state of readiness and determination. Often, 20 seconds are plenty. Lifting weights teaches you this well, because extreme effort throws you in a state of near-panic, which you must manage in order to do the next set.

Having the ability to create multiple 'fresh starts' throughout the day is an antidote to many forms of weakness.

EDIT:

A number of posters have latched onto the meditation/breathing part of this chapter.

I have two simple breathing exercises that might be of interest.

The first is from Vipassana Buddhist meditation. They run strictly non-profit courses all over the world, see http://www.dhamma.org

  • Find a dark quiet space
  • sit down, back straight, either in lotus position, kneeling japanese style, or on a chair (if on a chair, don't use the backrest)
  • close your eyes, and breathe in and out through your nose
  • observe the feeling of the air as it moves through your nose and over your upper lip
  • with your mind's eye, examine that feeling in minute detail
  • with practise, you can feel the individual hairs in your nose, and as you relax, the hairs might feel like seaweed swaying in the ocean as waves come in and out
  • while meditating, if you start thinking about something, that's fine, let it go, and go back to breathing and observing

The second technique is from the Russian martial art Systema

  • take a walk
  • while walking, breathe in through your nose, and out through your mouth
  • while breathing out, purse your lips to constrict the air a little, so that a small sound of rushing air is made
  • as you walk, slow the speed of breathing, so that you take one breath on one step, then one breath on two steps, then three steps, then four, then five
  • you can do this breathing exercise while working out as well

This was written by my friend, Arthur Arcturus, originally as a series of facebook posts. I have his permission to repost here, and there are more chapters which I will post 1 a day.

Foundations of Strength 1 - Index