We human sapiens have incredible psyche power over our minds that dominate our physical reactions and social behaviors. Many of us just only scratch the surface of this deep power we possess, and totally unaware of the potentials of leveraging this power for our own growth.
Here I want to share a story of how I let go of my fear of losing control of driving, two phases in my driving life.
I learned driving soon after I came to Canada with zero previous experience of touching the wheel and less than ten hours of experience of riding in a car.
I was still in graduate school. My husband bought a second-hand Japanese car, and almost self-learned the drive. Right after he passed the driving exam and got his license, he immediately drove 400 miles to drop the car to me and rode the train back to work in the other city.
My roommate’s boyfriend had a side job teaching in driving school. He was very patient and a good teacher. He trained me with some very crucial good driving habits from day one, such as habitually taking a round of surrounding car status checking every 5 seconds starting from the right mirror, back mirror, and left one, always looking over shoulder checking and then signaling before you change lanes.
I was actually one of the very few female drivers among my first-generation immigrant Chinese friends that really enjoy driving almost starting day one.
I recall I loved to sneak out the graduate students’ residence area during midnight, while my daughter, my roommate, and most of the rest people fast asleep, got into the car, started my practice driving around the campus, and later ventured into the city’s almost dead but very safe and lovely streets. I recalled how much I enjoyed the thrill of fast-moving in a big machine box, fast passing the street lamposts that glowed with yellow warm lights.
It’s an equivalent of sci-fi futuristic feelings that I never experienced before.
However, it still took me almost three years to feel comfortable to drive on a highway, because I could not handle the fear of cutting in the fast-moving highway lanes.
I let the fear amplified and always drove local routes as alternatives in the small city of Ottawa where there was only one major highway cross the city from left to right while my daily work routine was between the bottom to the top on the map. It was not until one big team building event to be held on the Quebec side of the Ottawa metro area, I had to confess to my teammates that I need to carpool with one of them to get there.
I still remember the words that my Iranian colleague Naeem, a very parental and protective figure, telling me while we were driving through the Gatineau then messy-looking (in my eyes) highways about my fear of getting onto a highway.
“You need to trust the drivers around you, on the highway, that they are very responsible people and they will not do anything abnormal. All you need to do is to focus on your own good behavior to go with the flow. Then you will be fine.”
That’s an aha moment for me to realize that I was actually trapped in a blind mindset of fear.
Soon after that, I started to practice and learn how to deliberately press the gas paddle quickly and hard on the various super short ramp of highway entry points and cut into the fast-moving traffic flows.
In the end, I realized it was a practice of how to let go of that fear of the unknown and distrust of other drivers’ capability to handle a slower than usual new arrival car to get into their flow.
I became a fairly good driver after I overcame the fear to get onto highways and that capability liberated me so much for the years to come.
Time fast-forwarded to 2018 April when we got our first Tesla Model 3 after a few years on the waiting list.
Almost immediately I realized driving Tesla is something profoundly different from my last quarter-century driving experience.
After 25 years of eyes, hands, legs, and feet’ seamless coordination upon every slight commotion you observed on the road and reacted accordingly to avoid an accident and go with traffic flow, can you feel comfortable to let all that rest in the backseat and let the Tesla drive on its own?
I am definitely the “backseat driver” type, and once again I was having a hard time engaging the auto-piloting of Tesla.
The fear felt very similar to my previous fear to cut into the highway fast-moving lanes.
It’s a new round of fear and distrust of that machine and the software’s capability to handle the driving.
But this time, I knew how to train my conscious to let go of that fear.
I started when I was in the carpool line, stuck in traffic jams and the overall traffic was moving at the snail speed of 10 to 20 miles. I turned on the “auto-navigation” mode, let the car to drive on its own. My hands started sweating, my forehead started to feel hot, and I started to clench my teeth. But I let them be. Let that fear’s physical reactions danced their own swan dances and I knew they would be gone.
Then I moved that training to the normal traffic flow mode scenarios like 50 -70 miles/hours. The same sweating occurred in the early stage and then passed.
Then one day I test drove to visit my friend who lives 120 miles away and tried out the switch on and off the auto-navigation mode in the fast and slow traffic flow. I stayed overnight and came back the next day with the same practice.
It took me almost a year’s on and off self-training on my mind to get out of the initial sweating mode whenever I turned on the “auto-navigation” mode. And with the help of this function, it makes my drive around so much less stressful, more enjoyable, and effortless.
It is a surprising revelation how powerful our minds are capable of, as long as we can find a way to defuse the negatives and release the potentials.
