I choose to react in a positive way in all situations

The gap is tiny but it is real, and it can be widened. Between the thing happening and your response there's about a second and a half, and most of what a person later regrets lives inside it.

The trick isn't feeling differently during that second and a half. It's putting something in the way. The reply written and left in drafts overnight. The hand that doesn't pick the phone up. A walk to the end of the road before answering.

Not every situation hands you the pause. A burning building doesn't. But the ordinary ones — the short email, the remark at dinner — are made almost entirely of it.