A Breakthrough

When I was driving home from work yesterday I was stopped for speeding. It could have been worse than a simple speeding ticket since my insurance pink slip was expired. I have valid insurance but I forgot to replace the pink slip. Thankfully the cop was a nice guy and he let me off with a ticket for not having the proper paperwork and he also reduced my speeding ticket. I learn pretty much everything the hard way.

Fast forward to today at work; I was talking about martial arts movies with a co-worker and we got to talking about Ip Man. I started to think that if Ip Man drove a car, he probably wouldn't speed. In my mind I imagined that he would drive calmly and courteously. On the way home today I was determined to be calm on the drive home, just like Ip Man, and it was actually quite easy. I found that by staying calm, I was able to drive at a reasonable speed without getting upset and, by driving at a reasonable speed, I was able to stay calm. I also found that when my mind wasn't occupied with anger and frustration, I was able to think about other things and so I'm going to try out some audiobooks again and see if I have better results. 

The cool thing is that I did it when I had a slow driver in front of me and traffic was reasonably heavy. I'm not so naive to think that it's going to be easy every time but I did it once so I can do it again.