Many times, employees find themselves in routines that become so mundane that their brain becomes muddled with static noise and tension where everyone’s voice sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher saying “wa wa wa wa.” In other words, your brain is saturated with boredom, stress, tension, and a significant lack of stimulation resulting in your brain going foggy and you feel like you are losing your mind. But what happens to us? Why does this happen?
A lack of creativity, reward, or feelings of accomplishment makes the prefrontal cortex stagnate as a lack of blood flow to the brain. Parents and pediatricians have resorted to giving stimulant medications like Ritalin or Adderall to children in schools in the United States. High school students may skip classes that are perceived as not motivational, inspirational, and ultimately dull. However, as adults, we find ourselves downing ourselves with energy drinks, coffee and other stimulants, trying to achieve the same.
As adults, we find ourselves eating carbs and drinking unhealthy energy drinks and coffee to manipulate our frontal lobes without even realizing what we are doing and why we are doing it.
To combat this experience and learn to cope responsibly, I recommend that employees take short walks to focus on their breathing. The best breathing exercise is breathing through your nose for 3 seconds and out your mouth for no less than three seconds.
Halfway through your walk, the goal would be to get you to breathing three seconds in through your nose and breathing out your nose for 3 seconds as well. Over time, I recommend you attempt to achieve 3 seconds in through your nose and out your nose for 6 seconds. By extending your “exhale” at a time twice as long as you take air in, it allows your cortisol (stress hormone) to reduce and enable healthy stimulation through increased blood flow to travel back into your frontal lobes, where you will benefit from increased attention span, creativity, excitability, and sustained motivation.
Yes, something as simple as a good breathing exercise can do so much to help employees fight stress on the job.
If you or your organization are ready to commit to a life-altering change, schedule a FREE consultation call with Dr. Buzz to discuss how to get started.
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