I forget I can choose peace.

Peace is a choice. It really is.

But the tricky part is, sometimes your window to make that choice is infinitesimal. The split second between the sound of your toddler spilling milk for the third time in an hour and you yelling in reaction. The moment after your jerk co-worker says something rude and you choose (verbal) violence. The blink of an eye from when you get an upsetting text to when you start angrily typing out a response.

These decision points are fleeting, so fast you don’t always notice them. Have you ever yelled before you even realized you were raising your voice? Have you let mean words escape your lips before you thought it through? Did you ever send a text you wish you hadn’t?

I have. Too many times.

So how do you start to feel that moment where you can choose peace instead of aggression, anger, or escalation? The annoying answer is … yoga. Might not be the only way, but it's the only way that seems to work for me. Yoga helps me be kinder to those around me. So really it’s a public service.

This is what the practice is for: recognizing that moment where your choice lies. And it takes practice, maybe lots of it, before you start to wait a beat instead of sending the text or making the comment. Maybe you remember to take a breath, and within that breath, you decide to choose a more peaceful way.

Yoga can be irritating because it works right away but it also doesn’t work right away. You may feel positively blissful driving home from a sweaty yoga class, letting people cut in front of you without giving them feedback via your horn or middle finger. But two hours later, you might find yourself snapping at your partner. What gives?

That immediate wave of yoga’s aftereffects wears off, unfortunately. Your brain gets a huge dopamine hit after yoga, like any exercise, and it’s very temporary. What doesn’t start to click until you’re in a routine practice is the regular noticing of those little moments, those tiny choices. And once you start to see the moments of choice and take the more peaceful path, your glow of calm and patience burns brighter. You start to know your triggers, physical, emotional, mental, and so on. You start to create new habits. Peace gets easier to choose.

Don’t let some flippant little meme on social media tell you that all you have to do is choose peace and you’ll feel better. It’s so much harder than it sounds, at least for many of us. Build yourself a set of tools to help you first — not just the movement part of yoga, but the harder stuff like meditation and breathwork too — and then notice what’s possible.

If you’re interested in starting a personalized journey toward peaceful living, I’m here to support you. If that’s not for you right now, at least beat yourself up a little less next time you don’t choose peace. I can’t be the only one who’s flipped someone off on the way home from a yoga class. It happens.