We talk a lot about exit strategies.

In business, we plan them meticulously: Joint ventures, investments, products, even roles. In our personal lives, we think about exits from financial commitments or relationships that no longer serve us.

But how often do we think about our behavioural exit strategies?

Specifically, how do we exit moments where our behaviour risks spiraling into something ineffective, unconstructive, or damaging – to ourselves and to others?

If you think of daily life as a highway, most of the time, we’re moving along in a reasonably stable emotional state. But stress accumulates – triggers appear. And if we don’t take the available exits, speed increases, visibility drops, and the margin for error narrows.

On the road of daily life, there are at least three exits available to us.

Exit 1: Before the trigger.

This is the preventative exit. It’s less dramatic, but arguably the most important – precisely because it helps you avoid being triggered.

How well are you sleeping? Eating? How often are you taking breaks? Who are the people you lean on? What meaning are you finding in what you’re doing – at work and beyond?

When wellbeing is neglected, we enter the highway already over-speeding. Primed to react to the slightest trigger.

Exit 2: At the trigger.

Even with strong foundations, triggers happen.

A team member misses a crucial deadline. Someone sends you a curt email. Your boss has delayed your annual appraisal for a third time. At this point, the question becomes: Can you intervene and avoid reacting?

Research shows that emotions come and go within around six seconds – unless you fuel them. Taking a six-second pause to re-engage the rational brain is often enough to stop you reacting: Listing the states in India, recalling family birthdays, or any neutral cognitive task that occupies your rational brain sufficiently to reduce the emotional intensity.

Once emotional stability returns, how might you choose to respond differently?

What becomes possible when you move out of your emotions of annoyance, accusation or animosity and intentionally replace these with curiosity, courage and clarity?

Exit 3: After the reaction.

Sometimes we miss the exit – and we react. But the opportunity isn’t lost.

You can still choose the exit strategy of de-escalation. The exit that returns you to emotional stability. When you take a break and go for a walk. Or you switch off for an hour or two and recharge your batteries. De-escalation prevents your stress level from escalating and stops you seeing more and more situations as threats.

Without it, stress compounds – and suddenly something as trivial as the presentation clicker not working becomes the final straw that causes you to snap.

You’ve seen it – someone reacts disproportionately to a tiny issue – they lose the capacity to handle the situation calmly and constructively. Perhaps you remember the last time you allowed your state to escalate out of control.

What could you do to consciously slow down after a misstep?

Which Exit?

You’re probably highly skilled at steering yourself in the right direction on the highway – and taking the right exits.

When it comes to your own behaviour, which exit do you tend to miss – and how could you set yourself up to take it more often?