The difference between getting in your body and a soothing routine is this. The latter is something you can do in the moment, under pressure. It's about being stoic.

The gut punch - or any other negative response for that matter - is really about one thing. A feeling of unpleasantness if not outright pain. Whether mild or severe, it is an experience we don't want to repeat. So when it occurs, it's really important we know how to turn an emotional reaction into a logical response. The answer lies in a variation of something you've probably heard about; mindfulness.

Mindful milliseconds is about perfecting a soothing routine under optimal circumstances and associating it with a mnemonic device. To understand what that means, we're going to tell you a story about dogs. Pavlov's dogs in particular.

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who studied classical conditioning. As part of that, he would ring a bell when he fed some dogs. He found that, after adequate repetition, he could ring a bell and cause the dogs to salivate because they were expecting food. Humans work the same way and we can use this to our advantage.

Mindful milliseconds is about setting aside a quiet time each day for several weeks where we practice slowing down. Finding a quiet spot and getting comfortable like we did in the "get in your body" exercise, but, now, associating that time with a thing. It can be anything from the thought of a song to the scent of a candle, the memory of a person or some adventure you went on. Regardless, it is that particular thing that becomes your bell. Do it enough and it becomes your mnemonic device. Here's how that would happen.

You're in some heated moment. Maybe you're in traffic, having a heated discussion with your partner, a bad day at work, whatever. It is in that moment that you think of your bell. If you have done the mindful milliseconds enough, you will instantly feel some relief. Do it often enough, and you'll have the composure to deal with the matter at hand.