Let It Go—Breathe and Blow Strategy

When doing this strategy you must remember the importance of never ever allowing any of this verbal venom to fester inside of you and poison your psyche. Venomous words are like glue— they stick. They will always stick to you unless you are able to release them mentally and physically.
Therefore, the next strategy is designed to give you complete control over your emotions. This strategy underlies all of the other strategies presented in this chapter.
When someone aggravates, your adrenaline begins to flow. Your heart beats faster, your head begins to throb, your face reddens, and your eyes bulge out as you hold your breath. Because you are so shocked, you in essence forget to breathe. In this case, I’m not talking about strategies where you consciously hold your breath in order to achieve a specified effect. I’m talking about uncontrolled cessation of breathing. Here is how you can effectively use the Breathe and Blow strategy to oxygenate yourself.

1. Take a small breath—a two-second sip of air into your mouth.
2. Next, think of your verbal adversary. Recall all the awful things he said to you. Hear his voice spewing forth poisons. Do your recalling in the three-second period where you will be consciously holding on to your breath. In this case, you are in complete control of your breathing because you are fully conscious of what you are doing.
3. As you keep this “verbal violator” in your mind, blow him out through your mouth, exhaling with all your strength.
4. Keep blowing out this breath until you have completely run out of air.
5. Now stop for two seconds and do not breathe.
6. Repeat this exercise a second time. As you literally blow what he said out of your mind, you are ejecting this person from your system.
7. Repeat this procedure once more as you continue to blow out all of the toxic negativity and ill feelings the person’s words have brought you.
8. Now stop and take a big breath in through your mouth, filling up your lungs and exhaling normally. While using this strategy, you may feel a bit light-headed. Not to worry—this is quite normal.

The Look of Disgust Strategy

The Look of Disgust Strategy is very much like the Silent, Expressionless, Blank Stare Strategy. Instead of having no expression on your face, however, you have an expression of disgust. This technique is especially disconcerting to your opponent because he was not expecting this—someone scowling at him in disgust, staring at him, and saying nothing.
Now he is really thrown off balance. He might start to furrow his forehead and knit his brows together, tightening up his jaw as he says, in a defensive tone, “What’s the matter?” or “Why are you looking at me like that?” If he is really uncomfortable, you might hear those infamous four words, “I was only kidding.” There is no way he was “just kidding.” You know it and he knows it. And now he knows that he can’t speak to you the way he did. Your facial expression speaks volumes.
To make the Look of Disgust:
1. Raise your upper lip.
2. Wrinkle your nose.
3. Open your mouth.
4. Raise your chin.
5. Squint your eyes.

This is a universal expression. People from every culture use this facial expression to reflect the emotion of