Don’t let Road Rage Bring you down
All is well, it is a beautiful day outside and you are not even running late. Your mood is excellent as you listen to your favorite tune on the radio. Suddenly you find you have to swerve your vehicle in order to avoid hitting the jerk who just pulled out in front of you with no warning, no turn signal and not enough room to make it into the spot in traffic that they were aiming at. You barely missed hitting the car beside you and that car honks at you, no less, for nearly hitting them. The driver ahead of you who nearly caused your children to be without a parent or at the very least nearly caused you to be late for work and have to spend who knows how many hours dealing with the insurance company and possibly even a raise in your insurance rates every month, thinks that you were the one who honked and they proceed to give you the finger, while simultaneously driving slower than you and blocking you off in traffic. How do you respond?
Perhaps you remember that you have a gun permit and think that this might be the appropriate time to use that bad boy. Maybe you have no gun and would never even consider such an option, but still, you are fuming. You are red hot. Your beautiful day suddenly turned ugly and you are not pleased in any way with the driver of the vehicle in front of you. At this point there is a very good chance that you have what is commonly referred to as "Road Rage."
Let's assume for a moment that you are not going to pull out a gun and let them know how badly you feel that they just messed up your day. Maybe you are just going to lay on your horn. Maybe you are going to tail gate them now and show them that they have no right to drive like that. Maybe you are going to stick your head out the window and yell profanities at them. Or maybe you are going to tell yourself that every single one of those actions are pointless and you are just going to sit there steaming. The blue sky doesn't look so blue anymore. The breeze doesn't feel so great and you couldn't care less about your favorite song that just ended on the radio station you were tuned in to.
How are you going to cope with this without acting out in road rage symptoms or perhaps even without even letting it ruin your day?
Some tips for handling just such a situation as this, or any other more mild or extreme traffic experience that you would have just rather not happened this day, are as follows.
Breathe deeply. A good breathing exercise to do is called square breathing. In this method you inhale to a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale for a count of four. And then hold your breath again for, you guessed it, a count of four. This increases the oxygen intake to your brain. It helps you to cope. It distracts you from what just happened and provides you with a clearer head to think with. At this point you may just be able to say, "Oh Well," and return to your happy little existence. These things happen. Today, it happened to you. Move on.
Another method would be to immediately count down from 10 or 100, depending on how excited you feel. Again, this is also a distraction and focusing technique.
You might want to hit play on a CD that you know always calms you and brings you good memories and thoughts.
You might want to say a prayer if you are a spiritual individual to ask God for his help in forgiving and forgetting.
Whatever method you choose, and there are many, many more than listed here, it should be a method of distracting yourself from what just happened and starting your day over fresh, which you can do at any moment, to redirect your focus to that which is more important, your life. Whatever experience just occurred on the road is now over, or will be soon, and you have much bigger fish to fry.
Good Luck and happy driving!
