Tag: habits

  • Why How You Breathe Matters More Than You Think: Lessons from James Nestor’s Book “Breath”

    Why How You Breathe Matters More Than You Think: Lessons from James Nestor’s Book “Breath”

    Most of us think breathing is just something that happens. You do it 25,000 times a day, so you must be an expert, right?

    by the time you finish reading this short article, you will have taken about 40 to 60 breaths without even realizing it. Like a computer program running in the background, your breathing stays on “autopilot” while you focus on your phone or your coffee.

    We rarely stop to check the quality of those breaths. But it turns out that how you breathe might be just as important as what you eat or how you lift.

    James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art is full of insights and if you like this article you should get the book. Here are the big ideas that stood out to me:

    1. The Belly Breath

    Most adults only use a tiny bit of their diaphragm (the muscle under your lungs). When you take shallow breaths, your heart has to work twice as hard. By taking deeper breaths, focusing on expanding into your belly, you let your diaphragm do the heavy lifting, which lowers your blood pressure and gives your heart a break.

    2. We Are “Over-Breathing”

    Just like you can over-eat, you can over-breathe. Taking too many quick, shallow breaths keeps your body in a “stress” mode. The goal is to breathe less but better.

    3. The 5.5 Second Rule

    If you want the “perfect breath,” here is the math:

    • Inhale for 5.5 seconds.
    • Exhale for 5.5 seconds.

    That’s about 5.5 breaths per minute. Nestor points out that this isn’t a new discovery; humans have been doing this for thousands of years through prayer and chanting.Whether it’s the Catholic Rosary, the Buddhist mantra “Om Mani Padme Hum,” or Native American and African spiritual chants, they all seem to land roughly on this 5.5-second rhythm.

    4. Breath Through Your Nose, Not Your Mouth

    Your nose is a filter and a heater; your mouth is just a backup. Breathing through your nose releases a gas called Nitric Oxide that helps your blood carry more oxygen, it also helps you sleep better. Excessive mouth breathing can lead to a lot of poor health outcomes.

    5. Why Our Jaws are Shrinking

    Modern food is too soft. Because we don’t chew “hard” things anymore, our jaws have become smaller over generations. This makes our airways narrower, leading to crooked teeth and snoring. Chewing—and breathing through your nose—helps keep your airway open.

    6. Exhaling is Half the Battle

    Many people focus on getting air in, but the real problem is often getting the “stale” air out. If you don’t exhale fully, you leave old air in your lungs, which makes it harder to get fresh oxygen on the next breath.

    If you want to live longer, don’t just worry about your step count and calories, start paying attention to your breath. Breathe slow, breathe deep, and keep your mouth shut.

  • 10 Ideas I Got from Atomic Habits 

    10 Ideas I Got from Atomic Habits 

    The following is a list of 10 ideas that deeply resonated with me while reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. These concepts have fundamentally changed how I look at my environment, my daily routine, and the way I “put points on the scoreboard.”

    If you find these ideas helpful, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the book or exploring James Clear’s other work for a deeper dive. Please note that I don’t have any affiliate links at the moment; I’m just sharing these because they’ve had a genuine impact on my life. If that ever changes, I’ll update this post accordingly.

    Here are my top 10 takeaways:

    1. The Power of Compounding

    Tiny, consistent improvements—getting just 1 percent better every day—compound into massive results over time. Success is not the product of a single, once-in-a-lifetime transformation, but of daily habits. I like to think about putting points on the scoreboard: Reading a chapter in a book instead of scrolling social media, that’s a point; going on a walk instead of having dessert that you don’t need, that’s a point; and so on.

    2. Focus on Systems That Point Towards Your Goals

    “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Goals are great, but they create an “either-or” scenario where you are either successful or you fail. Certain goals can be detrimental, especially if the goal isn’t 100% decided by your actions, like winning a game. Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are about building processes that make progress in that direction.

    3. Become the Type of Person Who Does the Thing

    The deepest and most effective form of behavior change is changing your identity—what you believe— the idea is not to perform a habit, but to become the type of person who performs that habit (e.g., “The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader”). Every action is a vote for the type of person you wish to become, and your identity emerges out of your habits.

    4. Lacking Motivation? Change Your Environment

    Motivation is a finite resource and changing your environment could be an easy fix. I used to work at a bar, taproom, and bottleshop for a while and it’s not surprising that I drank more than I should have. Not excessively but significantly more than the 0-2 per week that is recommended. When I left that job it was so much easier to drink less. It doesn’t have to be about avoiding bad habits either, you can prime your environment to help you read, workout, or drink more water. You want to read more, have your book out in the open, on your bed or where you sit when you watch tv. You want to work out more, have a home gym and put things in places you usually hang out around the house, a pair of dumbbells by the TV, a few exercise bands by your desk, and a pull up bar on a doorframe you walk by a few times a day and use these things when you walk by them. You can do the same thing with a few water bottles.

    5. The Four Laws of Behavior Change

    (1) Make it Obvious, (2) Make it Attractive, (3) Make it Easy, and (4) Make it Satisfying. If you’re having trouble with trying to answer the questions, how can I make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying? Think about answers to the inverse: how would I make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying?

    6. The Path of Least Resistance

    We naturally gravitate toward the option that requires the least amount of effort. Knowing this it is a good idea to design your life so the actions that matter most are also the easiest to do, making the good habit the path of least resistance.

    7. Habit Stacking

    Everyone has habits, if you want to add a new habit it is good to stack them with habits you already have, writing it down clearly and intentionally is good. The formula for this is: “After [CURRENT HABIT], I will [NEW HABIT].”

    8. Remove or Add Steps to Bad Habits

    A good way to eliminate bad habits is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it. It’s much easier to avoid temptation than resist it. This is the “secret to self-control”: spend less time in tempting situations, often by simply making the cues of bad habits invisible or adding steps to get to the bad habit. An example that I use is when I want to do something and I know I could get distracted by my phone. I have it in another room.

    9. Awareness Through the Habits Scorecard

    The process of behavior change always starts with awareness. A practical tool is the habits Scorecard, at the beginning of a given day write down all your actions throughout the day (you don’t have to do this daily, just every once in a while). At the end of the day ask yourself for each thing you wrote, does this get me closer to the person I want to become? And add a (+) next to it if it does, a (-) if it doesn’t and a (=) if it doesn’t have an impact, then look at all the (-) and ask yourself what can I do to make this activity more difficult to do in the future? Like if after you got up one of the first things you did was check your phone, maybe the answer would be charging my phone outside of my bedroom at night. Also don’t forget to congratulate yourself on the (+) and if you want you could ask yourself the question: what can I do to make this easier to do in the future?

    10. Stack Your Wants with Shoulds

    There’s a new show on Netflix that you really want to watch? Stack that with a productive should, like folding laundry or walking on a treadmill or pedaling a stationary bike (you can easily get these free on facebook marketplace or craigslist). Or you want to scroll Instagram for 5 minutes after doing 25 minutes of work on a project you know you should be working on. This is the pomodoro technique, make sure to set a timer for this one, you could easily scroll for an hour after 25 minutes of work if you’re not careful.