When you think about things that could get you so mad that you want to strangle someone, what comes to mind? Could it be if someone tried to kill you or severely hurt you? If someone tried to take your livelihood away from you? If someone tried to put your loved one’s in a dangerous situation?
Well, these are the thoughts that usually cross one’s mind in a fit of road rage. Road rage as defined by the English dictionary is a fit of violent anger by the driver of an automobile, especially one directed toward and endangering other motorists and pedestrians.
Research also says that this violent behavior exhibited by drivers in traffic is a manifestation of stress. In neither case, the person driving – which may very well be you – is sent into a mental state of aggression as a result of an undesired situation which manifested during driving.
Some people don’t realize just how serious road rage is. The repercussions that accompany it are quite large. You can wind up hurting yourself or someone else and even in jail.
When it comes to road rage, you have two kinds of people: those who recognize their problem and those who don’t. The sad part is that those who recognize it don’t always take action and those who don’t recognize it, usually do only after a traumatic, life changing event results because of it.
In scenario number one you have Jim. Jim gets in his car every morning and drives to work. And every morning, the traffic to the bridge is backed up about for about 20 minutes. Now even though Jim calculates this delay into his morning commute, he still throws a fit the minute he sees the traffic. And if that traffic is delayed any longer than the expected 20 minutes, he really begins to lose it.
Luckily for Jim, the traffic eventually breaks up and he gets to work. But because he fails to accept his behavior as a problem, he does the same thing every day. And guess what, everyday, he starts his day off full of negative energy. And you know what they say about negative energy; it attracts more negative energy. Jim’s stress level and rage in the car is setting the tone for his whole day. It’s no wonder why he’s always in a bad mood and bad things always seem to happen to him.
Well, here’s one more thing that Jim can add to the list. Jim’s driving home one day, someone cuts him off and he loses it. He speeds up to try to catch the other driver, that driver slams on his brakes and Jim crashes into him. Had he recognized his problem and took action on it, he would have never had that accident, plus he’d probably have better days at work since his day wouldn’t always start off on the wrong foot.
Then you have Marie, who simply cannot accept sitting in traffic. Anytime there is a hold up, she’s honking her horn like crazy and even getting out seeing what the problem is. What she fails to realize is that the real problem lies within her.
Every time she allows traffic to send her into a state of road rage, she brings about an enormous amount of unnecessary stress that is ultimately taking a toll on her health. She goes to the doctor and finds out she has hypertension.
Marie always looked at traffic as something that should never occur and wouldn’t know how to handle it when it did. She knew she had a problem with road rage but decided to do nothing about it because she felt it was justified. Now, she finds out how that road rage is having a direct impact on her health.
Don’t be like Jim or Marie. If you exhibit the characteristics associated with road rage, realize now that this is a problem that could cost you in more ways than one, if you do nothing about it.
Instead, do something about it. My downloadable mp3 on overcoming road rage can help you overcome road rage. You won’t be disappointed:
This is the first step in overcoming something can rob you of more than just your sanity..