Intellectually, you know that keeping your calm and your balance during conflict will serve you and the others involved better. But it’s hard to pull off in the midst of tension. Here’s a one-minute breathing exercise that’ll help. Pause the conversation for a moment or step outside of the room and do a bit of four-corner breathing. Here’s how:

Four-corner breathing

This exercise comes from psychologist and attention expert Lucy Jo Palladino, author of Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload (amazon affiliate link).

1. Find an object nearby that has four corners – a box, your monitor, window, etc. In the unlikely event you don’t have something nearby, visualize a window frame in your mind.
2. Focus on the upper left-hand corner and inhale for a count of four.
3. Shift your gaze to the upper right-hand corner and hold your breath for a count of four.
4. Move your gaze to the lower right-hand corner and exhale for a count of four.
5. Finally, shift your attention to the lower left-hand corner. Tell yourself to relax, then smile.
6. Repeat 3 to 5 times to calm and focus yourself.

More exercises to help you keep your balance in conflict

For other focus, balancing and stress-reducing meditations and visualizations, try one of these before, during, or after difficult conversations:

• A simple meditation for tense and stressful moments
• Mind like water for everyday conflict resolution
• Get your balance back in the zen room
• A visualization for letting go of things you can’t change

Hat tip to Whole Living’s How to Get Focused for the four-corner breathing exercise.

Conflict Zen® by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.