Agreed. I know I have a temper; both of my parents do, so whether it's a predisposition or a learned behavior it's with me. I know emotions aren't completely rational, but what you do with them is. Whether or not I have complete control, I have some, and the more I exercise that control, the stronger I get at controlling it in the future. Most of the time I calm down the moment I realize being angry won't accomplish anything, and that if people stay angry they have abandoned actually working towards a solution. The worst I get is a bit grumpy or irritable from time to time, and even that is getting better.

In college I managed the camera crew for a student show. Once, we needed more equipment than we had, so we reached out to another show in the student television network. The guy I spoke to was uncomfortable with it, since he lent out equipment to other student groups and it returned damaged (a problem I had myself in the past).

I was furious. How dare he think I would break the equipment? He knew me but didn't trust me. He even CCed the other managers on our email!

So... I took a walk. Calmed down. Then wrote back an exceptionally polite email, explaining that I understood his concerns, as I ran a camera department too and had the same trouble in the past. I said that I was careful with my own equipment and especially anything loaned to me, but that if he was still uncomfortable, he would be free to oversee everything to make sure it went well.

In the end, he was convinced to trust me. He was even friendly and invited me to a party of his. The managers that got CCed even complimented how civil and convincing I was.

So, not only did I strengthen my relationship with a few people by keeping my cool, I actually got everything that I was asking for. Can you imagine the fallout if I just flew off the handle and wrote back something nasty?