Count to ten

I heard this a lot from adults when I was a kid.

“Count to ten!”

But I never understood why they said this, until I became an adult myself.

The idea is to create a buffer between your emotions and subsequent action.

The split second between feeling an emotion about someone or something, and actually acting on it is vital.

And this buffer that I trained myself to have opened the world of mindfulness for me. It showed me that I could be in control of my emotions.

Without buffer, the world would be a chaotic place.

Imagine a teacher throwing a book at a kid every time she felt angry, not ideal.

To feel an emotion and not instantly act on it is, in my opinion, a superpower. And it's something most people (and myself) have a long way to go until mastery.