The next morning when alarm rings at 6:15, your inner brat says to you, "Just press snooze button. You didn't really intend to get up till 6:30 anyway." And 9 minutes later when alarm rings again, your inner brat says, "Just one more time. It's not 6:30 yet."

You might press snooze button 2 or 3 more times. By time you do roll out of bed you feel a little rushed, but you convince yourself that you can still make it out door by 7:30 . . . 7:40 at latest.

Oops -- what have you just done? You have inadvertently allowed your inner brat to negotiate. The 7:30 departure time is no longer firm. Now it's moved to 7:40. Plus, you have opened door to further delay as you get closer to 7:40.

As your morning routine progresses, you find several little things that didn't seem urgent last night or day before, but which need to be taken care of *right now*. Checking your watch (which you've set 10 minutes fast) you see that it's 7:35. "It's really only 7:25," you remind yourself. Your inner brat adds that you have at least 15 minutes, since you can still make it to work on time if you leave at 7:40, providing traffic is not too bad.

Next thing you know, it's 7:55, and you go flying around looking for your shoes, your keys or that recipe you promised to Gladys at work. Now there's no way you're going to be there by 8:00. But tomorrow for sure . . .

How did this happen? You can see that problem is not lack of time -- you have enough time to get ready.

The problem is what you do with time. Your inner brat distracts you, makes excuses about urgencies of nonessential tasks, or rationalizes that you don't have to conform to a rigid schedule.

And it's not just work or other obligations that your inner brat resists. It also balks at preparing for things that you're looking forward to. Just as with work, getting ready for positive events requires focus and blocking out distractions. Since these involve effort and concentration, your inner brat wants nothing to do with them.

As you can see, if you want to be successful at mastering your chronic lateness, it's not enough to merely rearrange your schedule. You must also understand how your inner brat sabotages your best efforts to be on time by distorting your priorities. Once you get to know your inner brat, you'll be on your way to breaking your lateness habit.

Pauline Wallin, Ph.D. is a psychologist in Camp Hill, PA, and author of "Taming Your Inner Brat: A Guide for Transforming Self-defeating Behavior" (Beyond Words Publishing, 2001)

One of less mentioned benefits of developing your emotional intelligence is that eventually you can modulate your emotions. They don’t “come in” as strongly. You don’t experience them as strongly. Therefore they’re easier to manage, like cub scouts no longer agitated by my loud tones who were therefore better behaved.

You can also benefit by learning to turn down, your negative self-talk. These are things you’re always telling yourself in your head that you may or may not be aware of, which actually make things worse. These are things that pop out of your mouth when you miss an appointment, for instance, like, “Why am I so stupid?” or “Can’t I ever get it right?” Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Make it positive and self-soothing. The other doesn’t work. Get off your back and on your side!

Slow it all down. When you immediately react to what someone says is when you are most likely to say something that will either agitate situation, harm you or other, or that you’ll regret having said later.

This is when we speak like knee jerk reaction when doctor taps our knee with that rubber thing – as if it were automatic, and we had no control over words that come out of our mouths, or gestures and expressions we use, which can be equally damaging. If someone has rolled their eyes at you in disgust when you’ve made a suggestion or asked a pertinent question, you know what I mean.

This is when we get that flash anger and say, “That’s it. I quit,” or “Pack your bags and get out.” The take-home point is to ‘get’ that you’ve been insulted or what not, but not to take it so “hard” that you can’t deal with it in a way that’s constructive and that won’t sabotage you.

Work with an emotional intelligence coach and learn how to slow down your reactions to things. It will give you time to think them through and this will almost always bring better results.

And try thing about whispering next time you’re with a young child. It works beautifully. In fact they’re kind of fascinated by whole thing. Which is to say, as we say in coaching, “try one thing different.”