How to Practice Square Breathing for Better Focus, Clarity and Energy

As you progress in your career, your responsibilities multiply, which can result in increased stress and anxiety levels. Stress and anxiety have their benefits. They help us identify risks, prioritize, and can provide energy and motivation to perform tasks. The problem with stress and anxiety is that too much can lead to a fight, flight, or freeze response. These responses are necessary if you are in life-or-death situations but tend not to be helpful when you are getting ready for an interview or preparing to review your financial performance with your boss. You want to be clear-headed, purposeful, and confident during those moments. As a manager, you have a lot of responsibilities and challenges to deal with every day. If your stress and anxiety are getting in the way of you being the best version of yourself, it will benefit you to develop some techniques to assist you in remaining calm, present, and positive during stressful situations.

One simple and effective technique is square breathing, also known as box breathing or four-square breathing. It is a type of deep breathing that involves inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding your breath for equal counts. It can help you calm your mind, relax your body and boost your energy levels.

Here are some benefits of square breathing for managers:

• Reduce stress and anxiety by activating your parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers your heart rate and blood pressure.

• Improve your focus and concentration by clearing your mind of distractions and enhancing your cognitive performance.

• Increase your clarity and creativity by stimulating your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher-order thinking and problem-solving.

• Enhance your energy and mood by releasing endorphins, which are natural painkillers and mood boosters.

How to practice square breathing:

• Find a comfortable and quiet place where you won't be disturbed.

• Sit or lie down with your back straight and your shoulders relaxed.

• Close your eyes or focus on a point in front of you.

• Breathe normally for a few seconds to settle in.

• Start by inhaling through your nose for a count of four, filling your lungs with air.

• Hold your breath for a count of four, keeping your chest still.

• Exhale through your mouth for a count of four, emptying your lungs completely.

• Hold your breath for a count of four, keeping your mouth closed.

• Repeat this cycle for four minutes or as long as you feel comfortable.

You can practice square breathing anytime you need a break or feel stressed. You can also use it before an important meeting, presentation, or decision to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally. You can adjust the counts according to your preference and capacity as long as they are equal.

Square breathing is a simple but powerful tool that can help you manage your emotions and improve your performance as a manager. You can reap the benefits of better focus, clarity, and energy by taking small breaks in the day to practice this breathwork. Like any practice, you will build your strength in effectiveness over time. The more you practice this habit, the better you will get at being able to calm and center yourself. This will allow you to be the best version of yourself as you go into stressful and challenging situations.

Key points:

• -Square breathing is a type of deep breathing that involves inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding your breath for equal counts.

• It can help you reduce stress, improve focus, increase clarity, and enhance energy as a manager.

• You can practice it anytime you need a break, feel stressed, or before an important task or event.

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Thank you for reading this blog

Dorian Cunion is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant with Your Path Coaching and Consulting. He is a former retail executive with over 20 years of experience in the retail industry. He is a Co-Active coach who focuses on helping professionals and small business owners overcome insecurities, knowledge gaps, and lack of direction. He does this by assisting clients to tap into their values, recognize their strengths, and develop actionable strategies for growth.

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4 Tips for Creating a Culture of Recognition

In 2021 the Pew Research Center surveyed over 6000 workers and identified low pay, lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected as the top 3 reasons for employee turnover. As a middle manager, you do not have autonomy to address the first two reasons for turnover in the short-term, but you do have the ability to have influence with the third. A desire for respect is a universal human need. Every day employees show up to work and do their jobs and as a leader you play a key role in showing your employees that you appreciate what they do.

Showing employees that you appreciate them is easy to do, but you must be purposeful. It is well documented that individuals are more likely to acquire new behaviors when they establish them as goals. If you want to show your employees you appreciate them, review the four actions below and set a goal for yourself to practice these over the next 21 days.

1. Write a note to your employee. Most communication is either verbal or digital. It is rare for us to receive or give positive written communication outside of performance review cycles. As a leader your words matter to you employees. By taking the time to write a thank you note to your employees, it shows them that you genuinely appreciate what they are doing. In addition, it gives them something that they can keep as a reminder of the excellent work they have completed. Make sure the note is specific, add the date and your signature. Pro Tip- develop branded thank you notes with your name on it. Just having these at your desk or in your work bag will encourage you to use them.

2. Praise your employee on social media. LinkedIn and other social media platforms are a great forum to show your employees appreciation. With more workers being remote, shifting to virtual recognition is a great way to provide public praise. By praising your employee in a social media post, you can recognize them in front of their peers, which makes a profound impact especially with extroverts. Pro Tip- connect with your employees and co-workers on social media platforms to maximize the reach of recognition post.

3. Give them a small token of appreciation. Little things matter especially when they are a surprise. Something as simple as a recognition pin, a gift card for coffee, or a candy bar can go a long way in showing someone that you appreciate what they do. The key here is to give the employee something they will appreciate. Take some time over the next week to poll your team on what types of recognition they feel would be impactful. Pro Tip- if the individual you are showing appreciation to has a family, the gift could be for them. Families of employees make sacrifices to support their career, showing them appreciation goes a long way to make the entire family feel valued and respected.

4. Surprise thank you call. Making an unexpected call to an employee to thank them for the work they are doing can go a long way to showing appreciation. An unprompted recognition call gives you an opportunity outside of one on ones, and performance reviews to energize an employee and let them know that their work matters. Pro Tip- if you are a manager of managers, ask your direct reports to provide you with the name, phone number, and reason for recognition of their direct reports. Skip level recognition can be impactful because the employee does not interact with you frequently, and likely see you as a powerful and influential person.

Leaders have a direct influence over the culture of their team. By role modeling recognition, you help to develop a culture that shows respect and appreciations. All businesses have limits on employee compensation, and advancement opportunities but there are fewer constraints on the amount of recognition you can give employees. By providing your employees with better and more frequent recognition, you demonstrated that you appreciate and respect the contribution they provide to the organization.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

For tips on leadership and professional development follow me:

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• Phone: 804-220-5771

What is Co-Active Coaching?

The Co-Active Training Institute has been around for 30 years and has trained over 65,000 coaches worldwide. The program has been certified by the International Coaching Federation which is the largest coaching accreditation organizations in the world. The Co-action training model is powerful because it challenges clients to declare their values, self-reflect, develop actions items, and commit to change. The model’s foundation is based on 4 guiding principles.

People are naturally creative, resourceful, and whole

The first principle is that people are naturally creative resourceful and whole. In the Co-active model, it is not the job of the coach to fix the client. The client does not need fixing. What the client needs is assistance defining who they want to be, support in identifying negative thoughts, strategies for tapping into internal motivation, assistance in identifying options for improving their current situations, and encouragement to hold themselves accountable for their goals.

Dance in the moment

The second principle is dance in this moment. This principle is rooted in the fact that coaching is not therapy. During coaching sessions, we will only lightly touch on the client’s past. The past is fixed and cannot be changed. Our focus and attention are on the future. During coaching sessions, coaches will talk about what is happening now, and coming up with strategies to help the client move from their current state to their desired goal.

Focus on the whole person

The third principle is focus on the whole person. In the co-active model, coaches examine a client’s life from nine different segments. Career, Family and Friends, Significant other/Romance, Fun & Recreation, Health, Money, Personal Growth and Physical Environment. The reason coaches focus on all these segments is that they are all interconnected. As a client works on one segment of their life, it is important to understand the impact that it is having on other areas.

Evoke Transformation

The final principle is evoke transformation. People work with coaches because they want to experience a change in their life that they have not been able to achieve on their own. Coaches are taught to hold space for clients, so that they can self-reflect, gain emotional intelligence, define their goals, establish and renew motivation and develop actions plans to improve their lives.

Within my coaching practice, my primary focus is helping leaders define what they want from their careers and developing strategies to help them grow. As a former corporate executive and small business owner I know the importance of surrounding yourself by people that push you to be the best version of yourself. I help clients transform by deeply listening to them, asking thought-provoking questions, and reflecting back to them the things I have heard. With the information, I affirm the client's identity, challenge thinking that does not serve them, encourage action, requesting commitments and act as an accountability partner.

In summary, the Co-active coaching model can be summarized as a coaching approach where a coach, helps clients to define who they want to be, and what actions they will take to transform from who they are today, to who they want to be. Part of the magic of the coaching process is clients having the ability to get personalized unbiased help. If you have never experience executive coaching, I encourage you to give it a try. It will likely be one of the first times in your life that you speak to someone for 45 minutes, have their undivided attention, and know that they are exclusively listening to you with the unbiased goal of helping you self-reflect and develop plans to improve your career or business.

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Dorian Cunion is an Executive Business Coach with your Path Coaching and Consulting. He specializes in coaching service for managers, executives and small business owner.

For tips on leadership and professional development follow me:

• LinkedIn

• Facebook

If you are interested in working with me as a coach, contact me at

• Email: dcunion@yourpathexecutivesolutions.com

• Phone: 804-220-5771