Learn how to breathe well to find emotional balance

Every air traveler has heard the flight attendant’s instruction: “Put your oxygen mask on first before helping others.” It’s a survival principle, yet leaders often do the opposite – they sacrifice their well-being in the pursuit of results. What if prioritizing self-awareness, breath control, and resilience wasn’t a luxury but a competitive advantage?

In the past, leadership was about command and control, but the role has shifted from providing answers to enabling others to find them: asking the right questions, empowering teams, and fostering a culture of collective intelligence. It’s no longer about accumulating knowledge but expanding self-awareness and nurturing adaptability and innovation. This calls for a new set of leadership muscles: emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and intuition, in addition to strategic thinking.

It’s not easy to be emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and intuitive. The constant bombardment of emails, back-to-back meetings, and relentless pressure to deliver erode the mental clarity leaders need most. Neuroscientific research confirms that chronic stress impairs the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for strategic thinking, decision-making, and emotional regulation. Leaders are expected to be more aware and intuitive than ever, yet they exist in an environment that actively depletes these abilities.

In our work supporting nearly half a million leaders in more than 50 countries over 25 years, I have witnessed what research on the world’s most successful people confirms: sustainably successful leaders have rituals that enhance focus, manage stress, and optimize energy. Warren Buffett spends 80% of his time reading and thinking. Bill Gates isolates himself for “think weeks”. However, just having time to think is not enough. We need to be in the right mental state with the right energy levels to access our full creative potential.

A tool that is always available, free, and yet vastly underutilized is conscious breathing. Breath is more than a physiological function; it is a gateway to resilience, self-regulation, and enhanced decision-making.

The power of breath

Our breath follows our emotions. It is long and deep when we feel good and relaxed and sharp and shallow when we feel nervous. Our breath is a reflection of our inner world. And yet, most of the time, we do not even use 50% of our lung capacity. We commonly ask colleagues, “How did you eat?” or “How did you sleep?” But have you ever asked a colleague, “How is your breath today?” or “Have you breathed well today?” Most people underutilize their breath, failing to tap into its full potential. Similarly, many leaders overlook that they can influence their nervous system, balance emotional states, and enhance decision-making by consciously regulating breath patterns.

Through our breath, we can directly access our autonomic nervous system (ANS) – the part of our nervous system that functions autonomously without our conscious control or the ability to give direct commands. The ANS controls all life-supporting functions, such as the heartbeat, blood pressure, release of hormones, and digestion. It is responsible for our “fight or flight” response to stress. If out of balance, it may keep us in “fight mode”, not allowing us to wind down at night and get a good night’s rest. It can lead to a constant state of tension, racing thoughts, and restlessness, robbing us of our self-awareness, intuition, and emotional intelligence.

When we take long, deep breaths, we bring back balance to the ANS by activating the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the ANS responsible for resting, digesting, and regeneration. Dynamic, fast breathing helps activate the sympathetic nervous system – that’s the part that helps us to be fully focused, alert, and able to achieve high performance.

Widening ‘the gap’ through the breath

The breath allows us to increase our self-awareness and widen “the gap” in our thinking. Between stimulus and response is – if we are self-aware – a gap that allows us to not merely react to a situation in the way we have always done but to act creatively, in a way that we consciously choose. Imagine you are in a meeting and a conflict among your team members arises (stimulus). You would usually try to downplay the issue and avoid the topic (response) as you may fear it could open a Pandora’s box. This process mostly happens automatically when you are on autopilot.

Through breath-based mindfulness, leaders can increase self-awareness and widen the gap between stimulus and response. A quote ascribed to Viktor Frankl describes it aptly: “Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” In the example above, the gap allows you to become aware within a split second of your tendency to avoid the situation out of fear, even while the meeting is ongoing. You might realize that avoiding the problem is not the optimal way to handle the situation. You might choose to give it your full attention: asking probing questions to get to the problem’s root cause. By widening the gap through regularly practicing breathing techniques and meditation, we allow ourselves to grow and implement changes in our actions and lives that we want. We are able to switch off the autopilot when conscious steering can be more effective than an energy-saving automatic reaction.