After you follow step one and stop, the first thing you must do is take a very deep breath. ... Have you done this? Good, now do it again. Breathe through your nose, filling your lungs with air, and then exhale through your mouth. Studies have shown that deep breathing improves your mental and physical health. I have also seen first hand how deep breathing can immediately reduce stress. Breathing deeply also buys you a little time to think of what you want to do next. Using this breathing technique will greater increase the chance that you will respond, and not react, in challenging situations. I’ve learned that taking a breath when I’m feeling any emotion that doesn’t serve me well makes the difference between me providing a healthy response and me reacting out of control, which I always regret doing. 

At this point you may be asking yourself, "How exactly should I 'deep breathe'?" When breathing, I suggest using the “3 x 3 method,” designed by marriage and family therapist Phil Boissiere. In his 2017 Ted Talk, Boissiere explains that the first step is to name a physical object around you. So, you may say, “That’s a lamp.” Then, take a deep breath by inhaling slowly and then exhaling slowly. After this, you repeat this process, but this time finding another object. Again, you name it, and take a deep breath, slowly in and slowly out. Simply repeating this process three times should change how you feel by helping you to become more mindful of your current situation.