Exercise: One Breath, One Thought

Start to reflect upon your thoughts in past presentations, situations where you were communicating important information to an audience, or when the stakes were high, like in an interview. How would you describe your Breath-Thought Connection as you verbalized? 

Do you recall when you were simply communicating the ideas or thoughts as you spoke, clearly without preoccupation, as opposed to when you had thoughts or competing ideas that interrupted the flow of communicating?

Rather than breathing with thoughts that are editorial, such as self self-commentary about what you are not communicating well, how you are feeling, or who is in the room, begin to adopt the practice of purposefully preparing a series of Directive Thoughts.

Make a list of the unwanted editorial thoughts that dominate your mind when you are faced with presenting or when you make a mistake during a presentation. Now, list Actionable Intentions that would better serve you during a presentation or pressure filled communication. Preparing clear Directive Thoughts allows you to replace unwanted patterns of thinking with Actionable Intentions that keep you on track.