Our brains create emotions as immediate reactions to environmental stimuli.

Emotions are based on sensory input and memories, and only last 90 seconds – anything longer than that is not the emotion anymore but the story we are making up about it; dwelling in our feeling about the trigger, like when we stew in self-righteous anger.

Emotions are neither positive nor negative, and we can’t control how our brains produce these reactions – but we can control how we respond to them.

We can get curious, label the emotion, notice how it feels in our body, and choose what to do next.

This prevents us from getting hijacked and falling into habitual patterns, and gives us the agency to make productive choices that create new neural pathways in the brain.

When we pause, we harness our power.