This prayer made popular by Alcoholics Anonymous is exactly the approach I take to dealing with traffic:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
First, accept things I can’t change. I can’t change external factors. I can’t magically have a shorter drive. I can’t make the weather better. I can’t make it a government holiday and get like 1/3 of the traffic off the road. I can’t make people around me be less stupid or inattentive. All of these things are just reality. They’re really, super-duper frustrating reality. But getting angry about it just perpetuates the frustration.
When something happens that makes me angry, I just try my best to not be bothered. Learning to accept that other people are assholes is important. (fun fact: Blogger's spell check knows that asshole is a word, but doesn't know that Blogger's is a word. ) I just say to myself ‘people are assholes.’ and take a deep breath, and let it go.
Let it go.
Can’t hold it back anymore!
Just kidding, but for real trying to let go of the frustration helps.
The other half of the prayer is the courage to change the things I can. None of the changes I made require courage, but they do require will power and discipline. The biggest reason that I get angry is rooted in the fact that I’m cutting it close to running late. That usually happens because I want don’t want to spend any more time at work than I have to. However, this leaves no room for anything out of the ordinary. When I leave for work a half hour before I should need to, I don’t get stressed when traffic backs up. I also changed my behaviors mentioned in the next 4 clichés.
Next cliché.
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