Breathing. The act of inhaling and exhaling hundreds of millions of times throughout our lives, seems like a usual function to keep us alive. Yet, it is more than just a function that keeps our hearts pumping and our lungs full. Our breathing can be altered based on emotions such as anxiety, stress, happiness, and anger. Our breathing is heavily affected by the way in which we feel. Many don't understand this link between breathing and emotion. We can control our breathing by having the ability to both turn it on and off. Our breathing interestingly enough can go on autopilot or manual. We can therefore control it when our emotions get the best of us.

It took me a long time to realize the importance of taking a deep breath. Like many, I have and continue to struggle with daily anxieties. There's usually a point where I know my worries are ridiculous, and or I continually overthink situations that are miniscule in the scope of life. It's normal to feel anxious, but I found that I kept allowing myself to get worked up over instances that shouldn't be causing me so much lost sleep, worry, and negative thoughts.

Instead, all I needed to do was take a step back, and inhale and exhale.

I've learned that throughout life there will be days that are tougher than others, yet, I found that my approach to those instances ultimately determined the outcome of those days as a whole. If I approached anything that caused me to get emotional, and allowed myself to dwell on that emotion, I let those negative thoughts control how the rest of my day went and ended. My boyfriend began calling me out on those days where I let my emotions get the best of me and said, "you will experience hardships both small and large, how you react to those experiences will depict their outcomes. Taking a step back, taking a deep breath, and finding that what you're experiencing in the moment is only temporary will help you to realize that what you're going through today won't last forever!" He was 100% right! I began to follow his advice, by finding times in my days to take a deep breath and find that there's more to life than what I had been allowing myself to get worked up over.

Ultimately life is precious, and allowing yourself to focus on the downsides of your day is doing yourself a disservice. So inhale, and exhale, and take a step back to reflect on all the good that surrounds you in this world and is present in your life!