A Different Kind of 4x4

Most leaders, most of the time, are in some kind of activated mode. Some kind of crisis. We operate in a world of efficiency and productivity and caffeination and leaders can feel a lot of pressure to get as much done as fast as possible.

The brain can be very efficient when stimulated, whether through chemicals or stress.

But fight or flight brain can also bounce from one thing to another like a ball in a pachinko machine. Progress, if any, is random and lucky.

You Can’t Solve a Problem You Don’t Understand

A former client of mine owns an F350, and when we started working together he simply wanted to do the same things that he had been doing, only faster and more powerfully.

I used to tell him he wanted to F350 things. To use his power to run problems over. Easy, right?

Now that he is in a C-Suite job he sees that he needs to operate differently.

Not just power. You need traction before you can move. You need understanding before action.

The First Thing You Need

The first task that I have with a founder client is to get them to slow down. Not just because the speed of the founder life is unsustainable (and unhealthy). But because slowing down is more effective for what the founder actually needs.

The problems that get to the founder’s desk by definition have no easy solution.

They require a different part of the brain. The part that sees relationships. That sees unexpected connections. That has unexpected insights.

The part, unfortunately, that goes off line when someone is in crisis mode.

When you understand how your brain works, you can see that you need more holistic reasoning. The problems you face are not likely to be solved with a spreadsheet.

To get access to this more holistic reasoning you need to do the one thing you have been resisting doing.

You need to relax.

I’ve developed a quick way to do this that I share with my clients. And I call it, ironically, the 4x4.

Relax in One Minute: How to do the 4x4

Most people take shallow, fast breaths most of the time.

You know them. Those people who insist things are “Great!” in a rushed, high pitched voice, almost gasping as they say it.

Maybe you’ve done this. I know I have.

Even if you do this most of the time, I promise that if you learn and do the 4x4, you can become relaxed in less than a minute. And you’ll get better and better as you do it more.

Before we start, take a deep breath while you are watching yourself in the mirror.

Did your shoulders go up? Did you pull your stomach in?

Here’s the good news—you breathed exactly the opposite of how you should breathe if you want to relax. So just do the opposite of what you just did.

To create as much space as possible in your lungs, you need to move your diaphragm down and your belly out. Your shoulders will likely go down a bit as well.

Do this slowly—take about four seconds to fully fill your lungs. Your shoulders might go up just a bit at the end, after your ribs have expanded, when the air has nowhere else to go.

When your lungs are full, LET yourself exhale. Just let the air out. It might sound like a big sigh, or that the air is whooshing out of a balloon. That’s perfect.

As you let the air out, let all the tension out of your body, too. Your arms, your neck, your shoulders. Let them go limp.

Four inhales of four seconds each. Each followed by a sigh where you release more and more tension.

Most people feel significantly different after three or four breaths, but you can keep going if you want to, feeling more and more relaxed with each exhale.

And more and more likely to see things you didn’t see before. For example, the one thing you actually need to do next, rather than the twenty urgent fires you saw before.

Try it now.

How do you feel?

Why Does This Work So Well?

When you breathe in slowly and then exhale, you move your body from activation of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS, where the fight or flight response lives and where most of us spend most of each day) to the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

The SNS is great at helping you do one thing over and over again, really fast if necessary. Think serial processor in a computer. Most of the left hemisphere of the brain specializes in this kind of work. Think numbers, language, logic, analysis. Sounds useful, yes?

It is. To a point.

But the PNS enables a more powerful, parallel processor to come on line, generally through functions in the right hemisphere of the brain. These brain functions are holistic. They take everything in rather than breaking it into parts. They read body language and the energy in the room. They see connection. They take in way more than language can convey, so when you talk about your gut or a hunch, you’re usually talking about information you got from the right hemisphere of the brain.

This is us at our most powerful, and yet every message in our society tells us to speed up, to rely on logic, and data, and measurement.

If you had access to a supercomputer, would you use your calculator a little bit less?

Try This For Yourself

I don’t want you to believe me. I want you to try this yourself.

Next time you have too much to do, or a problem that feels too big to solve, see if you can get out for a walk, or if you can sleep on it. Giving yourself more time and space is usually better for activating the PNS and the right hemisphere.

But if you can’t, take a minute, and try the 4x4. And let me know how it goes.