What if I stopped to think before reacting?

What if I stopped to think before reacting? That’s another tough one for me. I can blame it on my DNA and say I’ve come from a long line of reactors (LOL – if you’ve ever been to an Italian family Sunday dinner, you’ll know what I mean). Or, I could slam the brakes and stop before I react. We each receive thousands of stimuli each day. We react to the stimuli. Most of our reactions go unnoticed. There are times when our reactions are strong and out of proportion to the stimuli. When we slow the process down, we can hit the pause button on our reaction, let our emotions even out, and then make an appropriate response. How long should we pause? As long as it takes to return to a sense of peace and determine an appropriate response.