To become more successful in a high-conflict divorce, you need to learn quickly what I like to call “short-term amnesia.” In other words - not forgetting the facts or your mission in the divorce, but temporarily forgetting your interpretation of events that set you off and trigger reactions, you’ll regret in the future.

If you obsess over past events and interpret them negatively, it’s natural to start getting emotional and become more reactive about future decisions. In other words, you’re more likely to allow what just happened to affect what is going to happen in the future. But if you learn the trick of short-term amnesia or being a “little deaf” as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg advises, you can upgrade the quality of your thinking, and interpret facts more constructively.

I know you don’t have time to read through a whole new operating manual to learn this skill, so here is your quick start guide.

The first step: pausing. Let’s say that Laura is in the middle of a high-conflict divorce with Sal. If she's at work on her parenting day, Laura regularly sends the children’s nanny (for whom she pays 100% of the cost) to pick up the kids and take them to an after-school activity. Now she receives a call from the nanny that the children aren’t there because Sal has already picked them up, even though he is supposed to be looking for a job.

Laura could go ballistic and react in the heat of the moment. But I’d recommend that she put her phone face down and take a couple of deep breaths. In the space of those breaths, she can imagine the whole scene—Sal and whatever he’s up to, the kids, the nanny—like a scene in a snow globe, or encased in a soap bubble, where she can let them sit with the sound off. The kids are okay; Sal is what he is. This can sit, floating outside her.

Here’s what’s NOT happening as Laura lets the episode rest. She’s not firing off a text to Sal to “stop interfering with her parenting time.” That’s the kind of typical reaction that’s driven purely by impulses as she interprets an event in a negative way (“my husband interferes with my parenting time”) and never thinks beyond her anger. She’s also not calling her divorce lawyer to unload her frustrations at a pricey hourly fee.

She’s paused the situation and given herself a chance to think instead of reacting. It’s “boring” to do this instead of getting an emotional high from firing back. But remember: If you go up and down you are wasting energy. If you “flatline,” you are using your energy most productively.

The second step: Learn about mental time travel. When you are in pause mode, it’s possible to look at the situation from a completely different vantage point: the future or the past. If you can take a trip into the future or the past to tap into a better version of yourself at the time you’re stressed, you’re much more likely to make higher quality decisions now.

Remember that the other side wants to keep you from doing that. It wants to keep you so wrapped up in the impulses of the moment that you can’t ever focus on what you want. In your divorce, you have a mission that may include getting meaningful parenting time or equal division of marital assets, and the other side will do everything in their power to make you feel stressed so you will make bad decisions by acting out. You will, of course, regret these decisions years later and wonder why you did such things, but in the heat of the moment, it can feel like exactly the right thing to do.

But if you’ve given yourself even the smallest bit of distance, and taken your finger off the reactive trigger, you can “give yourself amnesia” about the situation long enough to summon the best version of yourself to your decision-making—by bringing the perspective of your future or past self into the present. In doing that, you can get a clear picture of the ripples that will flow from the action you want to take now, whether it’s a nasty remark, livid email, a threatening text or a call to your divorce lawyer.

Why inject time travel? Because your future and past self knows how that impulse plays out. To access that clarity, you can ask yourself some questions that quickly engage your best thinking. I’ve borrowed them from Suzy Welch, who calls them the 10-10-10 rule.

Questions to visualize the future consequences of your decision:

- How will this decision impact my divorce in 10 minutes?

- How will this decision impact my divorce in 10 weeks?

- How will this decision impact my divorce in 10 months?

- How will this decision impact my post-divorce life in 10 years?

Questions to visualize the past consequences of your decision in the present:

- What impact would be playing out in my divorce if I’d taken this action 10 minutes ago?

- What impact would be playing out in my divorce if I’d taken this action 10 weeks ago?

- What impact would be playing out in my divorce if I ‘d taken this action 10 months ago?

- What would be playing out my post-divorce life if I’d taken this action 10 years ago?

If you don’t like what you see as you visualize the consequences, you have a personal “delete” or “undo” button —you don’t have to take action all.

To save you the cost and aggravation of having other people’s behavior dictates your impulses, why not “put the situation in a bubble” and wait 24 hours before you do anything? This gives you time to sleep on the events to ensure you will take more thoughtful actions.

If you cannot wait 24 hours or if you still want to take that impulsive action, at least pause in the heat of the moment and ask yourself those questions from the future or the past.

As you practice with giving yourself this new kind of “operational information,” you can upgrade your thinking in stressful situations, which will lead you to engage your best self and make smarter decisions.

Doing this will sharply increase the chances of you not losing your mind in your divorce.

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