Are you one of those fearful drivers that’s constantly checking their mirrors, wondering if the car or truck next to them will run into them, or drives dangerously slow because you feel like if you go too fast you can’t react fast enough?

As much as I appreciate you being such a careful driver and keeping the rest of us knuckleheads safe, here’s what I want you to do…

Quit being so safe.

Yep. Loosen up and quit trying so hard.

I can hear you already. “What? Don’t drive safely? Get into a wreck?”

Well….not really.

See, you’re a lot like people who get anxious and get all wrapped up in their body symptoms. They constantly check to see if their heart is beating ok, if they can take a deep breath, and they worry that AT ANY MOMENT, if they just stop focusing on it, everything will go haywire and they’ll die, go crazy, drive off the bridge (insert scary thought here)…

But constantly monitoring yourself or your environment is incredibly stressful. Not to mention, if your heart is going to stop beating, you’re not going to be able to “will” it to start again. If you’re going to be unable to breathe for no reason whatsoever, paying attention to it won’t help one little bit.

Now when you’re on the road, it’s a little different because being aware of your surroundings and other motorists CAN keep you safe, to a point. But when you’re so anxious about it, and doing it obsessively, you’re actually at MORE risk. See, you’re not designed to operate like that. You’re not supposed to consciously try to process all that information and do it on purpose; your brain is smarter than that.

Your brain processes MASSIVE amounts of information every second and brings to your conscious what it thinks is important, or what needs a decision. You don’t THINK about every slight adjustment to the steering wheel or every car on the highway, you’d never be able to process all that. Instead, your brain looks for important changes and brings those to you to see what to do with.

For instance, were you ever driving and noticed the odometer change from 19,999 miles to 20,000 or something like that? Why did you notice that and not the countless other miles click by? Because it was a change in your environment. So your brain took notice. Smarty pants.

Ever almost get into an accident? The other day a toddler down the street from my house ran out in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes and everything was fine fortunately, but I was driving, saw the child, hit the brakes, turned the wheel, and avoided him, all in about half a second. I didn’t THINK about it at all. I didn’t even SEE it. My brain took over and took appropriate action.

There’s a certain amount of trust you need to give yourself that you’ll react the right way should you need to. And if you need to, you don’t even want to be the one making the decision; you’re too slow compared to your primitive instinctual mind. You WANT it done without thought.

Some of you are still saying, “Great advice, Rich, drive around not caring at all, creating hazards wherever we go, no thanks buddy.”

See, I can hear you. Eerie isn’t it?

I’m not saying not to pay attention. I’m not saying not to be safe and drive defensively and all that good stuff. I’m just saying to back off a bit. You don’t need to do all that, even if you think you do.

It’s like the story of two guys in Chicago walking down the street and one guy keeps clapping his hands every 5 or 10 seconds. The other guy asks him why he keeps doing that and he says because it keeps the elephants away. The other guy tells him that there’s no elephants anywhere near Chicago. The other guy says, “See, it works”.

What you’re doing really isn’t helping, even if you think it has been.

There’s a middle ground, like everything else. Don’t stop paying attention while driving, just don’t be obsessive about it.

It’s as if you had a temperate of 107 degrees and I told you that we needed to bring your temperature down. You wouldn’t say, “but we NEED heat, we’re warm blooded, I can’t NOT have a temperature…”

It’s like that, we need a temperature, but not one that high, we need to bring it down so we’re healthy.

We need to pay attention on the road, but not that much.

So let’s bring it down a little and be healthy.

Rich