Transformational Change Institute

I have a friend who frequently yells at drivers in other cars, honks the horn and generally gets into a pretty stressful state when he drives. If you are like this, and think “it’s just the way I am”, I’m going to show you where you actually have choices in a stressful situation like this. 
A Tricycle we’re on all the time
There's a cycle that happens so often and so fast inside you that you might not realize it’s happening at all. The truth is, this tri-cycle is happening all the time, and it has three steps: Experience, State, and Action. Most of us aren't aware of it because it has been driven underground into our unconscious minds.
How does it happen that we aren’t aware of many choices we have? How can it be that we’re so unaware of things? Think of when you learned to drive a car, or ride a bicycle. When you were first learning to do these things, you were very aware of everything you did. Feet on the pedals in a certain order, steering, correcting the wheel or handlebars after a turn. An error could cause injury. Now think if someone had asked you to turn on the radio at the same time. What a ridiculous idea. Like most people you probably no longer give a great deal of conscious thought to driving or riding a bike. Some people even drive to work asleep. I knew a man who drove into the back of another car because it was parked in his space in the parking lot at work.

The experience
Imagine my friend (let’s call him Tom) on the highway, driving a car. What we call experience in this cycle is exactly what comes in through the senses and the meaning that is made of it. On the purely sensory level, Tom might see a driver speeding through traffic and changing lanes. He might hear the roar of the car’s engine in his ears. He might feel his heart beating faster if the roar of the engine was loud and sudden.
First Choice
Here’s where Tom’s first choice is. In order to decide correctly what his next action might be, Tom first has to make some meaning of this experience. He might decide that the driver is a jerk, and furthermore is probably on his way to some high-powered meeting and doesn’t care who he’s endangering. This allows Tom to be in a state of anger. But Tom can also decide that the driver is on his or her way to the hospital to see a loved one who’s been in an accident. That might allow him a state of empathy. There are dozens of other ways he can interpret his experience, including just noticing that a certain percentage of drivers push the limits of the law or break the law on the highway. So the state he is in after this experience can be one of anger, concern, fear, or detachment depending on the meaning he assigns to it. What was the driver’s real motivation? If I’m in Tom’s situation, I don’t care. I only care about my own state because I’m the one who is present, and that other driver is long gone.
Your Own Powerful State
The point is that whatever state Tom is after his experience, whether he realizes it or not, is a state that he has chosen. The moment I stop blaming another driver for my state of mind is the moment I step into my own power. From whatever state I choose to be in, I—like Tom, or like you—can decide what the next action might be.
It might be moving to a slower lane to let the driver pass, speeding up and honking his horn, or cutting off the driver who just cut him off, to teach him a lesson. Or Tom could just use it as a reminder to check his speed and his mirrors to make sure he’s driving as defensively as possible. Whatever Tom decides to do creates a new experience, and then he’s come back around the circle—able to choose the next state. What Tom chooses at each point empowers him to have even more flexible choices the next time around.
It’s entirely up to you to decide what your experience means, what state you are in, and what action you want to take once you decide what that experience means. No response by itself is better or worse than another. After all, every behavior is useful in some context. Yelling at a driver is a perfectly fine choice, but the point is it’s a choice, and there are many others available. It is useful to have more flexibility, more choices about how you respond at each point along the way.
“But,” I can hear you saying, “this all happens so fast, I can’t possibly tell when to change it.”
Don’t worry. I’ll tell you how you can change it shortly.
Process vs. object
Meanwhile, I want you to know one more thing. A response is not a thing. If I think of the word “response” which is a noun, it seems fixed and immovable. As Gertrude Stein said, A rose is a rose is a rose, meaning—among other things—that it can’t change it’s nature. But if I think of my actions in terms of “how I respond” or use a word like “responding” when I’m thinking of how I behave in traffic, then the word becomes a process description or verb. The word suddenly becomes active. Once I realize it’s a process instead of a thing it’s easier to move. I can flow with it to a new responding. Think of how wonderful that will be as you learn new “respondings” to stress. Thinking this way enables you to choose from a bigger menu of possible actions that can flow from and into each other. This is a new meaning for going with the flow.