Do You Get Stressed Out in Traffic?

I was recently asked the question, "Traffic is the most stressful part of my day. Is there any way to make my daily commute less stressful?" I thought it might be useful to share a couple of the stress management tools I used with this client in today's post.

One way to make the daily commute a bit less stressful is to minimize your distractions while driving. Many people seem to be multi-tasking 24 hours a day, including on their daily drives. Your car is your escape from reality. It is your own personal time, but most us give that time away. We are busy texting, calling, and smoke signaling to our friends during our only "Me" time( well the last one might be an extreme example). So try stashing the cell phone in the trunk. It might be hard at first, but you will soon feel a sense of freedom that is very intoxicating.

Also to make it less stressful, put in some nice music to listen to, or some audio program you like. My wife loves to listen to books on CD during long drives. Now if you have to crank your music to level 30 on your car stereo system to it enjoy it, than it might be better to listen to a less stressful style of music on the drive. Now I love heavy metal, but the daily commutes in heavy traffic is not really the best time if your looking to be less stressful.

Another great stress management tool is to think of traffic as a movie. Think of yourself watching a movie and the people in the traffic with you as characters in that movie. So if someone cuts you off, think, "wow I wonder what is going on in their life right now?" Make up a little story line as to what is going in that person's life at that moment. Maybe they are late for a meeting or maybe they are just really excited to get home. You can get so caught up in the newly created storyline that you forget all about time and the traffic around you. You might notice that in no time you are out of the traffic and where you want to be.

Another reason the movie tool really helps in lessening stress is that by creating the movie you create some distance between you and what is happening. That little bit of space is enough to lessen your stress as well. So that you are no longer the target of other peoples bad driving skills( because its never us that are the bad drivers, right?). So we take something that might seem on the surface as something personal and make it impersonal and not about us.

Til next time,

Wishing you the best,

Dr. John Zipp