I've struggled to get very much out of mindfulness (primarily via Sam Harris) but this 'half-life of an emotion' thing is one of the bits that has worked. The

I've struggled to get very much out of mindfulness (primarily via Sam Harris) but this 'half-life of an emotion' thing is one of the bits that has worked. The best example I've experienced was being in an argument with my wife about something or other that had gotten heated to the point I was getting angry. But then I got a phone call from someone at one of my clients - I immediately had to be a different person for that call. Once it had finished I came back to my wife and felt like I entirely had the _choice_ as to whether I would be angry again. I was, in fact, almost certainly treading an automatic path down which I _would have_ made myself angry to continue from where we were. Instead, the obviousness of this was so apparent that I didn't - because it suddenly felt artificial.