How often has it happened to you that you send an email in anger and then immediately regret your action? And if not immediately then later after you realize that you were wrong to have sent that angry email for whatever reason.

I must confess that in my younger days, there were times that I did just that. A perceived offense or an injustice whether real or not would result in my fingers flying at the keyboard in a rush to defend myself and gain back some honor. I’d even go on the offensive and make some disparaging remarks about the recipient’s reputation. These angry emails were all in an effort to fill the void left by a loss of pride with some form of self-respect.

The results were never good. I would end up making an apology to someone and wishing there were some way I could take back those moments at the keyboard.

Several years ago there was a story that came out about a chief executive of an American health care company, Cerner Corporation, who wrote an email that turned out to be disastrous for the share price of company stock as well as the morale of company employees. In the email, employees were accused of being lazy and managers were also threatened with being fired. It seemed the employee parking lot was not full at 8am and was nearly empty by 5pm each day.

After the email showed up on a Yahoo financial message board investors began questioning the leadership of the company. The result was a plunge of 22% in the share price of the company’s stock on Wall Street based on concerns about company morale.

Here’s how you can avoid sending angry or regrettable emails.

If you find yourself writing an email while angry or highly emotional then save it as a draft. Do not hit the Send button. Save it and then go get a soda or water or do something that will occupy your time for a couple hours. Talk to a colleague or friend about your email. The point is that you want to cool off first before sending any email written in the heat of the moment. After you’ve cooled down then go back and read your draft, edit it and then send. Or maybe you just read your draft and decide not to edit it but instead send it to the bin basket and trash it forever.

If you must send your email to someone, anyone, then send it to yourself first. Ensure the To field contains your email address, send it and then reevaluate it. This personal habit has saved me more than a couple embarrassing moments over the years.

Lastly, place yourself in the position of the receiver of this email. Imagine that someone has sent this email to you, read it and then evaluate your own response to the email. You just might find yourself hitting the delete button instead of the send.