A WAY TO CALM YOUR ROAD RAGE

Do you ever get annoyed by another drivers actions while you are in your car?
Does it ever make you mad to a point where you are physically shaking?
Are you still thinking about it when you get home?

Okay I realise this sounds like an infomercial now!

Once when someone was swerving behind me and trying to overtake me, I got angry thinking that they were just some idiot that was trying to trim one minute off of their commute.

But then I realised two things:

MOTIVATE YOURSELF TO EXERCISE

If I am looking for motivation in life, I always turn to books.

For me, a non-fiction book is an opportunity to learn from someone else's life without having to live that life yourself and make their mistakes.

There are hundreds of thousands of self help / motivational books out there and it's quite difficult to narrow your scope to the right one so in this post I'll just recommend the one book that got me off the sofa and onto the road.

That book was 'Who Dares, Runs' by Gerry Duffy. I am not affiliated with Gerry in any way, his book just inspired me.

It is the story of a man who went from being 50lbs overweight and smoking 40 cigarettes a day, to eventually running 32 marathons in 32 days.

While this is clearly a superhuman accomplishment, what I take most from the book are his experiences in beginning his journey.

THE FIRST STEP TO OVERCOMING SHYNESS

I know some people and I like some of them, when I'm around them I'm quite popular and funny and I get the impression that they like me.

But then there are the other people, the ones I don't know, they're everywhere....

Credit: Isle Valfre

I think I had a particular brand of shyness, to see it in action it did not appear as shyness, the impression I left with people was mainly that I was rude or ignorant towards them.

It was a personality trait of mine that I was not particularly fond of so I decided one day to take a small step and challenge myself.

This simple step was to embrace short human interactions that would end quickly. That was it, my challenge.

To give you an example, 

A SIMPLE TRICK TO REDUCE STRESS

When I have approaching work deadlines, a busy home life with my family and study commitments for upcoming exams. My stress levels start to rise and I can feel the anxiety approaching.

Before I let these emotions take control and consume me I like to think of, the pale blue dot.

What is the pale blue dot?

Credit: NASA

If you haven't heard of this description before, the pale blue dot is the Earth, the planet we all live on, for now! The dwelling of everyone we know and have ever known.

The phrase comes from a photo taken by the Voyager 1 space probe which is taken from such a distance that the Earth is only the size of one pixel.

As the scientist Carl Sagan liked to point out, "all of human history has happened on that tiny pixel".

The overwhelming feeling of insignificance that this gives me is empowering. What do these things causing me stress matter? I'll get through them and everything will be fine on the other side. 

To hear Carl Sagan speak about the pale blue dot (link here) will make the hairs on your neck stand up, so if you have a spare three and a half minutes, I highly recommend it.

This is a trick I like to use and it may not work for everyone, some people may not like the feeling of insignificance. But it's a subject you could spend hours contemplating, and I believe you would be cognitively better off for it.

Thanks for reading.