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Areas › Anger › Cool the body first
Cues like this earn their keep by being reachable when you are too hot to reason anything out. Tie it to something physical, so the hand position brings the word and the word brings the idea. Say it under your breath if that helps. Nobody else has to hear it.
You, soul at peace (Quran 89:27). The settled state is given a name, and having a word for where you are heading makes it easier to steer there.
الفجر
يَٰٓأَيَّتُهَا ٱلنَّفۡسُ ٱلۡمُطۡمَئِنَّةُ
‘[But] you, soul at peace
Qur’an 89:27read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Nobody has tested a word cue like this, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. The nearest evidence is on meditative practice in general, where a meta-analysis found small to medium improvements in emotional and relational outcomes in non clinical adults, while noting that three quarters of the studies it identified had to be excluded for methodological weakness. So: plausible, cheap, thinly evidenced.
Sedlmeier P, Eberth J, Schwarz M, Zimmermann D, Haarig F, Jaeger S, Kunze S. (2012). The psychological effects of meditation: a meta-analysis.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A short phrase attached to a physical action is easier to reach for under pressure than a chain of reasoning.
If the irritability came in alongside a low patch, or a spell of racing thoughts and hardly any sleep, have the mood looked at rather than treating the temper on its own.
In a hostile exchange, try a slow hmm instead of a reply. It sounds like someone thinking, and it puts a long out breath in the way of whatever you were about to say.
Say out breath, not breath. Told to take a signal breath, most people pull air in hard, which stirs them up rather than settling them.