This might be a familiar scenario at work: You have a big pitch to a potential client or your board that you’ve been working on for weeks. An hour before the pitch, your star closer—the key to ending the presentation strong—can no longer make the meeting.

Your body begins to heat up and your pulse quickens. You wonder how anything can be more important than the presentation. You want to lash out but if you do, you’ll likely regret it later. Losing your temper might seem like an outlet for your stress but ultimately creates a more stressful and tense situation. And it clearly does not solve the immediate problem.

Alternatively, you can choose to ignite your awareness, acknowledge what you are experiencing and choose how you want to behave and respond.

Why does this matter?

Because awareness allows you to control your responses and behavior. It takes you out of the chaos of being ruled by emotions such as anger, frustration, fear or worry so you can operate intentionally and on purpose, instead of impulsively or chaotically.

Research shows that executive functions cannot be readily accessed in a frenzied or chaotic state, and such functions—which include business skills such as decision-making, strategic thinking, creativity and planning—are essential at work.

Think of awareness as data. You want data to make informed business decisions, why would you want less for yourself?

Clearly, awareness is arguably the most important business tool. In addition to being more conducive to accessing executive functions, benefits include:

• Improved productivity
• Greater connectivity and trust with colleagues and clients
• Stronger ability to read a room
• Ability to communicate clearly
• Deeper active listening
• Decreased stress
• Ability to tap into empathy

So how do you become more aware?

There’s an acronym I made to help you easily and quickly access awareness: PEP, for Pause, Explore and Proceed.

PEP is easy in any scenario, whether in a group, one-on-one or in a solo situation. And you can do this very quickly when needed, even in the middle of a heated conversation.

How does it work?

Pause

It’s just as it sounds—take a pause to disrupt the emotion and bring you back to awareness. As soon as you notice yourself getting annoyed, take a breath and quietly acknowledge that you are feeling frustrated. Simply recognizing it begins to diffuse it.

If you need another way to bring yourself out of the emotion and back into awareness, turn your focus to tapping each finger one at a time to your thumb, or think of a counterstatement such as “this too shall pass” or “there’s a solution to everything” or “I am calm during stress.” Like a breath, any of these can also be done discreetly.

Explore

Explore why you might be reacting with frustration, anger or other emotions. This is helpful data. It can be a quick observation if you only have a few seconds during a meeting. Ask yourself what is behind the feeling.

For example, do you feel undermined? Does it feel like injustice from being perceived differently than you know yourself to be? Is it worry about uncertainty?

If you have a longer time, explore if this is a recurring feeling or isolated in this instance. The idea is to become clearer about what is driving the feeling. If others are in the room, become aware of the tone of the room and how they are reacting or behaving. This information will help inform the next step, “proceed.”

Proceed

Congrats on mitigating the frenzy and establishing a more settled mindset. You lessened the intensity of the moment and became more aware so you can more calmly choose how to move forward. You can intentionally decide on the best next step instead of regretting a reaction.

Ultimately, if there is awareness about nothing, you miss everything. Leadership, productivity, collaboration, decisions, creativity and so much more in your workday require executive function, and awareness is key to accessing it. Work has its highs and lows every day, but awareness can smooth out stressful situations.