Hello and welcome. My name is Neil Godin and I’m your host here at This Week – a free service that brings you leadership and communication tips, tricks and tutorials every Monday morning – along with a call to action – to put that week’s insight, idea or skill into practice.
This week I have a personal story to tell you – about road rage and how a sudden flash of insight helped me overcome my addiction to this self-destructive behavior many years ago. Fasten your seat belt, here we go…
The scene: I was driving on a nearby freeway when a car came roaring up behind me. I instantly went into fight or flight mode. I hit the brakes to warn him off – then, when he stayed dangerously close, I tensed up, ready to brake harder. But I was interrupted. My passenger pulled at my sleeve and said, quietly, “You’re going to get us killed.”
It was a life-changing ‘aha’ moment. It suddenly hit me that my mindless actions could literally have life or death consequences. I said, simply, “You’re right,” then moved over and let him pass.
That incident led to profound soul-searching and, ultimately, to the following 3-step road rage rehab plan that has stood the test of time…
- My first step was to develop a statement of purpose to guide my actions as a citizen of the road. For many years I’ve developed a statement of purpose as a reference and guide for each of the important roles I play, in both my personal life and my work. But I hadn’t done so with my role as a driver. (Stay tuned, I’ll talk more about purpose in another post). Here is the statement I settled on…
“My purpose is to do everything in my power to ensure that my passengers and I get to our destination safely – and to do what I can to ensure others travel safely as well.” (You’re right. This is just common sense, but – obviously – I needed to make it common practice, and I find that putting it in writing helps me do that.)
- The next step was to identify what was causing my angry reaction and deal with it. I had to find a way to defuse or avoid the anger that got me into trouble – not to stuff it because I knew that’s unhealthy – but to pre-empt it…to take anger out of the equation entirely.
I knew that fear played a role, but why did I respond to fear with anger and combat-readiness? Why didn’t I move to safety in another lane as a first response? Did I think that would look cowardly? Was it all about demonstrating my fearlessness to this complete stranger? (Really?) After considerable thought it occurred to me that the trigger for my anger was simply making a knee-jerk negative assumption about the other driver – assuming he was a bad guy, a bully, out to harass me and others. Someone who needed to be taught a lesson.
- I reversed my negative assumption. That led me to wonder what would happen if I reversed my negative assumption. What if I tricked myself into assuming that he was actually a good guy – a Dad whose son has been hurt at school, and is racing to the hospital, hoping to arrive before the ambulance?
I would never know the truth either way, of course, but if I chose to make a positive assumption I’d be off the anger hook. Instead of being out of control – like a puppet with no one working the strings – I could remain fully functional. And if I’m wrong – because he’s driving erratically, for example – perhaps impaired? – then I could call 911.
This Week’s call to action
This week I invite you to think about a role you play that’s very important to you, and to develop a brief statement of purpose to help guide you in performing that role. If road rage isn’t a problem for you (more power to you) simply choose another role – leader at work; parent, partner or teacher; coach, volunteer, friend, or? – and away you go.
The idea is to crystallize your intention – to identify what you most want to achieve, contribute or gain – in the way you conduct yourself in roles that matter most to you. This helps ensure that you’re doing things intentionally – on purpose instead of by accident – in the way you conduct yourself. For example, a CEO I worked with put her purpose as a parent this way…
“My purpose as a parent (of a twelve year old) is to do all I can to support my daughter in learning how to think critically and independently – and do all I can to maintain our close relationship as we go through the teen years together.”
She says that having this simple statement of purpose gives her a sense of mission. It reminds her to think carefully before approaching when there is a potential problem – and to consult and negotiate, instead of just dictating, whenever decisions have to be made and things have to be done. (Imagine going through life as a parent ‘without’ a crystallized sense of purpose. You’re right. Sadly, that’s reality for the vast majority of parents).
No matter what role we work on with this exercise, the goal is the same…to prevent us peaceable ordinary citizens from turning into Mad Max Road Warriors when we allow anger to take the wheel.
See you next week.