STOP GIVING YOUR POWER AWAY — AND TAKE A BREATH
Response-Ability Series #2
How to Stop Living in Reaction and Take Back Your Power to Choose Your Response
Your heart pounds. Your jaw locks. Your breath disappears.
The car cuts you off and suddenly you’re gripping the wheel with white knuckles.
You walk through a dark alley, hear a noise behind you, and your chest tightens.
The plane jolts in turbulence — you gasp, lungs seize, breath gone.
A colleague takes a cheap shot in front of the team — heat floods your face, your body clamps down, your breathing clipped to nothing.
Different circumstances. Same reaction. Autopilot. Unconscious. Survival mode. The ancient wiring that once kept us alive from saber-toothed tigers now hijacks us when all that’s really happening is traffic, turbulence, or someone’s careless words.
But here’s the truth: reaction isn’t choice. Survival isn’t freedom. Autopilot isn’t power. And every time you give away your breath, you give away the little power you actually have.
We spend so much of our lives trying to control what we can’t. The weather. The markets. Our bosses. Our kids. Traffic. Airplanes. It’s all bullshit. You can’t control it. You never could. You never will. But there is something you can control. Something embarrassingly simple. Your breath. And yet it’s the first thing we abandon. Which means if you want to live a life of true response-ability, it’s also the first thing you have to reclaim.
Viktor Frankl captured it perfectly: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
That space is where life is decided. Reaction collapses it. Response expands it. And what determines the size of that space is your breath. Shallow, frantic breathing pulls it tight until all you can do is react. Deep, steady breathing opens it wide, giving you the clarity and strength to respond.
I see this all the time in coaching. Men want more tools. New books. Deeper teachings. Another framework. Another shortcut. But none of it matters until you master this. If you can’t control the one thing you always carry with you, you’ll never control anything else. It’s not glamorous. It’s not shiny. It won’t impress anyone on Instagram. But it’s yours. And it’s the only doorway into real power: your breath, your attitude, your response. That’s the short list. Guard it like your life depends on it. Because it does.
And if you still think breathing is too simple, too boring, too beneath you, then hear this old story.
A young student once came to a master, eager to learn the secrets of wisdom, strength, and freedom. The master gave him one simple practice: breathe. Day after day, the student was told, “Return to your breath. Inhale. Exhale.” Finally, the student grew frustrated. “I didn’t come here just to breathe,” he snapped. “I want something deeper. Something profound.”
The master said nothing. He took the student down to the river. Without warning, he shoved his head under the water and held it there. The student thrashed, panicked, lungs burning, body screaming. All that mattered was one thing — breath. At the last possible moment, the master yanked him up. The student exploded out of the water, gasping, desperate for air.
The master looked him in the eye and said, “When you want to breathe as badly as you just did, then you’ll understand why I keep telling you to practice it. That’s power. That’s life. Nothing comes before it.”
That’s the lesson. Breath is not just oxygen. It’s not just biology. It’s the beginning of power, the key to expanding the space between stimulus and response. Every conscious breath is a choice. Every deep breath is an act of freedom. Every time you return to your breath, you step out of reaction and into response-ability.
Expand the space through your breath. That’s where your power begins. That’s how freedom is lived.
And that’s true power – the power to expand your space through choosing your next breath.