She Moved Her Face Like Jim Carrey

The easiest way to start feeling calmer in less than a minute

How to Breathe When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed at Work

Ever notice how any time you have more than 4 people eating together at a restaurant, the likelihood of shenanigans increases exponentially?

Like the time our server brought my friend a plate of spaghetti heaping with garlic cloves – after she specifically told him she’s deathly allergic to onions, shallots, garlic, and babies.

Her pasta was fragrant enough that any vampire within a 10-mile radius would have perished from radiation the moment the plate was set down. 

Crisis averted in advance.

But it’s far from the only time something like that has happened. When there’s a group of 5+, it seems like a lot of restaurants have an informal policy of hurrying to dump a round of drinks off quickly… and then letting the service go to hell in a handbasket after that.

So when I went out as part of a group of 8 recently, I had a bad feeling about dinner from the start.

Actually, not the very start. I was willing to shrug it off when they told us we were crowding the bar area.

But things took a slight turn for the weird when our server said “My name is Emma and I’ll be taking care of you tonight” with a grimace and wide eyes. 

I turned around to see what she was making the face at and… there was nothing there. I guess that expression was for me?

Emma’s introduction alone gave me the inkling that our meal might not be flawlessly executed…

What I hadn’t considered was that she would walk out mid-meal.

“I hate to tell you this,” she said, a good 20 minutes after we’d ordered our entrees. Our cocktails were memories stuck to damp napkins, the appetizer plates absolute carnage. 

She placed a few menus on the table and contorted her features like Jim Carrey in The Mask. “We ran out of sea bass an hour ago”.

As the 37.5% of us who’d ordered it started crying like we just found out there is no Santa and flipped open said menus to choose something else –

Emma took the opportunity to bolt. 

Instead of waiting to find out anyone’s Plan B, she was on the other side of the restaurant when I looked up. And she never came back. 

Thankfully someone else did… the bartender. 

Bridget apologized on Emma’s behalf and took over our table for the rest of the meal. She paid attention to us and stopped by periodically. She kept a neutral face. And best of all, Bridget handed out glasses of bubbly and treated us all to dessert. 

(Which is how I discovered that tiramisu tastes just as good even after it’s fallen in its takeaway box and has lost its shape.)

Fortunately, Emma didn’t ruin dinner. Hardly. 

But my experience with her did remind me of a few things:

1. Nonverbals are everything. Emma’s expressions and actions fully overshadowed what she said. This is always the case. Body language and non-verbal cues are far more telling than words, and if there’s an inconsistency there, people are gonna notice.

2. Control what you can. Running out of sea bass? Not Emma’s fault. Racing away from the table? COMPLETELY her fault. 

Could she have presented her news in a way that would have been less disappointing for our group? Absof*ckinglutely.

A quick apology, a light joke, and a recommendation for some other equally pretentious flaky white fish is all it would have taken. No getaway car required.

3. Anticipate friction. See: my first paragraph in this piece. And be prepared for things to go a little sideways sometimes, because life. 

4. Bartenders are heroes. They really are. You saw Roadhouse, didn’t you?

5. Slow down your breathing. Wound up tighter than a jaw with chronic TMJ? You can short-circuit your stress by bringing your attention to your breath and making your exhales longer than your inhales.

That’s all it takes to trigger your parasympathetic (rest and digest) nervous system. Your breath slowing down will make your heart rate start slowing down. As your body starts calming down, your mind will follow.

This ^^^ is one of the reasons breathwork is so powerful.

Next time you need a little calm, play with patterns where you’re exhaling twice as long as you inhale. So :02 in and :04 out, :03 in and :06 out, :04 in and :08 out. Find a rhythm that feels good to you and do it for at least a full minute.

Just :60 seconds can make a noticeable difference — and it feels good enough that by the time it’s gone by, you’ll probably want to do a little more.  

That’s my usual M.O…

I’ll run a timer for a minute here or there during the day and do 5 rounds of a :04 inhale and and :08 exhale. But more often than not, when I’m done with my little “breathwork snack”, I keep going after the clock runs.  

One minute. Life changing! Try it and see.

Now There’s a Thought…

"Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside." 

- Mark Twain

“The only thing I like better than talking about food is eating.”

- John Walters

Any thoughts of your own to share after reading this newsletter? Leave a comment below.