I drove up to the following scene in front of my house one evening.  I must admit that the temptation to react from the gut is strong!


There you are, sitting at a stop light, minding your own business, eager to get to a meeting, when out of nowhere you feel a sharp jerk to your neck and you realize that the car behind you just plowed into you.  He hardly even slowed down!

"What an idiot!" you mumble under your breath.  Or maybe you don't quite mumble.  Just the same.  That is the moment you gave up your power.

"Don't I have a right to be angry?" you ask.  "Certainly the guy was not paying attention.  He just made me late for my appointment and now I will probably have neck problems for the rest of my life.  Idiot!"

You are angry.  But in the split second before you got angry, you felt threatened and unstable and confused.  You felt out of control.  Those are not comfortable emotions.  No one likes to be out of control.  SO, the first instinct is a knee jerk reaction to gain control.  But, along with the knee jerk reaction to gain control you decided to get angry, call the guy names and started thinking how your entire day was now going to be ruined.  Idiot! 

What also happened was that your IQ went down.  Studies show that when intense emotions take over, like anger, your intelligence level drops.  So then you start taking action.  And you are taking action from a position of weakness (low IQ).  So you are probably acting and speaking from your anger and losing good time that could be spent figuring how you could still get to your meeting on time; seeing if the guy behind you was in fact daydreaming or in some sort of distress; figuring out what to do with your car; calling the police or a taxi or whatever you need to do.  You have just wasted precious moments because you gave into the gut reaction, learned from childhood, to get angry when something screws up your plans. 

By calling him and idiot, you have already decided that he is your enemy; that he did this on purpose.  You have blamed him instead of taking responsibility for your own situation.  And you have prophesied to the universe that you are, from now on, going to have neck problems.  SO:  now you are dealing from a decidedly adversarial position, which includes accusations, anger, blaming, and expecting someone else to take responsibility for your day and your health.  At the same time,  you must elicit his cooperation in the solution.  When you jump out of your car and begin to verbally attack, all possibility of an amicable efficient solution is over.  The guy automatically kicks into defense mode and puts up the automatic armor that HE has learned to do, from childhood, when someone attacks.  OR, if one or the other of you is seriously hurt, you have wasted precious moments that could have been used to seek help.  Now, of course you will miss your meeting.  You are tense and angry and have moved probably too quickly if you have a neck injury, and stressed to the hilt, which is not a healing environment for any physical problem.  So, maybe you are indeed correct and now, because of added stress,  the neck injury might linger.  You have probably invited a court case and certainly ruled out any possibility of a quiet peaceful resolution.  Receiving a bump to your car might have been resolved in short order, but now you have birthed a circus that may take months to resolve.  "Well, it's his fault!" you say.

Wrong.  It's your fault.

Instead, you could have stayed with the uncomfortable feeling of being out of control for a few moments, long enough to take a few deep breaths and restore your equilibrium and CHOOSE how you will act just like a person in control would do.  You would have taken the time to make a quick assessment of what happened and started to decide what had to be done. 

Stuff happens.  If we could exist in a magical bubble where nothing inconvenient ever happened, you would probably, at the very least, be bored out of your mind.  So what do you do if  "stuff happens"?  You make the best of the situation.  The moment the car hit you, you have a split second to make a decision.  Are you going to let that guy continue to determine the course of events or are you going to take a deep breath and take control.  If you stay calm, and not let the stress overtake you, and not lower yourself to a childish reaction, and keep your mind sharp, you can quickly assess the situation.  You can stay focused on your goal of getting to your meeting on time, or as close as possible, make sure the other guy is OK.  As soon as you approach him with an air of genuine concern, and express that you understand things happen and that you must get on your way, you disarm him.  Chances are he was steeled for battle because he was sure you were going to be ticked.  As soon as you approach him with grace and compassion, he is way more likely to be cooperative, so you can exchange information and both be on your way.  Let the insurance companies hash it out and don't make it personal.  He did not wake up this morning plotting how to absolutely destroy your day and his own along with it. 

In following the first scenario, you, by your reaction, turn an inconvenient moment into a bogged down disaster.  Alternatively, by pursuing the second path, you feel better, cut the red tape short and minimize the aggravation, bringing compassion and healing to an already uncomfortable situation.  Your choice.  Blaming someone else doesn't change that.

Why would anyone ever allow someone else to ruin his day?  Who, then, would be the idiot?

Breathe.

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