It’s very easy for any of us to get into road rage at different times in our lives. Sometimes we have really bad road rage. Sometimes, when we’re driving to work, we feel like we have nowhere to go and we’re just totally relaxed and flowing with traffic. We can go in and out of road rage. We can keep it for decades. It can get progressively worse, or we can never have it. And we can also all learn to get rid of it.

And the way we do that is to first understand the three root causes of road rage, because we have to go to the source. We can’t deal with the symptom. We can’t just deep breathe our way out of this. We don’t want to shove it down. We don’t want to have it in the first place, so we don’t have to constantly be putting effort into controlling our rage and our anger, and occasionally failing and having terrible outbursts where we embarrass ourselves. We put stress on everyone else in the car, and mostly we just put stress on our own heart, our cardiovascular system, our well-being.

And so we want to nip it in the bud, pull it out by the root, and make sure it never grows back.

The way we do that is we start to look at the cause, the source. And there are three main causes, and there are three solutions for dealing with each one. The three main causes are expectations, impatience, and ego.

1. First Cause of Road Rage & Its Solution

The first is expectations, and this is the big one, so it’s number one. It is the expectation, misguided and false, that we will have a smooth, perfect drive wherever we’re going. That no one will get in our way. That we will just have the wide-open road, all green lights. All the older and slower drivers will wait until we get to our destination before hitting the road.

And this is obviously completely false. Every time we get in the car, there could be traffic. There could be red lights. There could be grandmas and grandpas who are just able to look above the steering wheel and see what’s in front of them, who are driving, not even slow, let’s say extra cautiously. And thank goodness they are. Thank goodness any teen driver is driving slowly. Thank goodness that the road isn’t just wide open and people are flying at 100 miles an hour right by us.

So we can adjust these expectations. We can plan for them. We can leave a little sooner in advance. We can give ourselves more time. We don’t have to rush, rush, rush. We don’t have to always be running five minutes late. All of these things that create that expectation, that when we shove our schedule into the most condensed time period, everything will be smooth and work out, and there’ll be no speed bumps, no hiccups, and we’ll just be on time to everything, and we’ll get there right as the appointment, the meeting, work starts, whatever it is, and we’ll never be late again, and there’ll never be a car accident in front of us.

And we need to shift that expectation, because these things do happen. When they do, we can either lose our minds, or we can recognize we are in a beautiful car. Even a 20-year-old Honda Civic has cushy seats. It’s got a stereo. It’s got all those luxuries that we would have killed for 200 years ago. It’s got the air conditioning and the heater, and we’re protected from the elements in this super comfortable chair that reclines and is quiet inside and peaceful.

And we honestly couldn’t ask for a better place to get stuck. Really, it would be hard to find one.

The more we expect the hiccups, the delays, the traffic, the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the not getting where we were hoping to get to within exactly the time span we wanted, the less it disturbs us. 

So often, a 10-minute drive that becomes 15 minutes just feels like forever, mainly because of these expectations. If a 15-minute drive is 14 minutes, we’re mentally fine with it. But if a 10-minute drive is 14 minutes, we are losing our minds as we are stuck on the road, not getting anywhere. And this is the proof that, more than impatience, it is the expectation.

So, solution number one: double your expectation. And if you want to be really happy, triple your expectations. Give yourself the time to arrive early and meditate, if you’re so blessed, or simply just arrive a few minutes early, time to decompress, time to gather your thoughts, and enjoy a very relaxing drive instead of a high-stress, high-pressure, high-tense situation. That is not the best way to start or end our day.

And for the record, this used to be me to a tee. I used to always be five minutes late everywhere I went. I used to pride myself on getting to the airport at the absolute bare minimum before that gate door closed. I was always running late. I was always stressed. I was always impatient. I was always screaming at any person in front of me who was not getting out of the way to let me pass. And it was a nightmare to be, and to be with.

I thought I just believed in maximizing efficiency, just eliminating waste. This is all I care about. This is the most important thing. Why can’t everybody see this? Until I realized how much energy I was wasting, how much stress and high blood pressure I was creating for no reason.

Today, maybe every drive takes a few extra minutes, because I am not constantly weaving in and out of traffic trying to get there as fast as possible. But oh my God, how much better life is without those one minute, two minutes here and there.

Which brings us to problem number two: impatience.

2. Second Cause of Road Rage & Its Solution

Impatience has many causes. At the root is the lack of peace and contentment from stillness. We are addicted to go, go, go. And as soon as we get stopped in traffic, all of those negative emotions that are buried within us, that we’ve stuffed down and avoided, come bubbling to the surface, and we lose it.

Because we avoid that, we overschedule our lives. We always try to shove it down and not notice it. We create a habit of always being busy and always looking to what’s next, and making a habit of this moment not being good enough, that we always need to be somewhere else, that we always need to be mentally, physically, and emotionally stimulated. Our attention must always be captivated so that we never notice what’s under the surface, so that we’re always distracted.

So we create this frame of mind: that any obstacle to getting to that place that will actually stimulate our attention, that will distract us in a pleasurable way, is our arch nemesis, an unbearable obstacle that we cannot tolerate.

No wonder normally wonderful people—loving, happy people—if they are stuck in too many red lights, if they are stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, a totally different person comes out of them, because they are forced to slow down, and what they’ve been running away from is now able to come forth.

The solution for this impatience is twofold. 

We have to slow down on the road. 

We have to slow down in life, because how we are on the road is a metaphor for how we are in our lives. And we are used to flying down the street to get where we’re going.

I don’t think anyone who drives slowly and totally patiently has road rage.

It’s only the people who are going the maximum speed to avoid getting a ticket, hopefully, and not always successfully. It’s only the people who are, trying to get to their destination as fast as humanly possible. I don’t think the people who just take their time mind too much when traffic and red lights start to come their way.

So, we have to slow down. We have to practice slowing down. I know, to the people out there who are hearing this, who have the road rage, you’re thinking to yourself, “No, I can deal with the road rage. I can calm it down, but I’m still going to try to get to where I’m going as fast as humanly possible.” And I really do understand, because I used to have road rage, and if someone told me that, I would have said, “No, you’re crazy. I can also manage the anger and still get where I’m going as fast as humanly possible.”

But it is very difficult to fly down the road, have that be your obstacle, and then have some slow person in front of you not drive you crazy. And more importantly, we can notice how the mindset of flying by creates the road rage itself.

Yes, some days maybe we can really control our anger. Maybe we can, when there’s no traffic, be calm and peaceful. But as soon as we hit that really bad traffic jam, all that negativity is going to come to the surface, because we haven’t confronted the cause of impatience.

We think getting to our destination, because we can get to the more important, fun, distracting things sooner, will make us happy. But we will actually find that when we can find the happiness in the driving, in the going, when we can find happiness in slowness and stillness, we are going to be much happier. We are going to enjoy where we’re going even more, and we’re going to enjoy the reality of life, which is sometimes traffic jams, sometimes trains, and red lights.

The more we extend this into our daily life, our personal life, and we can enjoy a cup of tea with a family member without phones, when we can create some time for stillness that we don’t just fill mindlessly with tasks and whatever we think of, because the mind is constantly telling us things we should be doing when we’re trying to enjoy some alone time for stillness, then not only does our road rage, our impatience, disappear, but we can learn to love the peace of stillness and quiet.

And we no longer need to fill that space and time with unhealthy substances or harmful activities that diminish our quality of life and our levels of peace.

It’s really quite an experience to be in your room, to be in your house, wherever it is, and to say, “I’m going to do nothing for an hour,” and notice how your mind tries to talk you out of it. Notice how the mind says, “Let’s clean. Let’s cook. Let’s eat. Let’s drink. Let’s smoke. Let’s do something.” And you’re like, “No, I set aside an hour.” And you come back to the moment.

And a few moments pass, and your mind is already gone away, and it’s trying to say, “Let’s do this. Let’s do that. This is pointless. Let’s call it quits. That was a dumb idea.” And we just come back to this moment again. And that can happen every couple of minutes, every five minutes, every ten minutes. And eventually we learn that the mind is this constantly grasping, constantly motivating us to do something machine, not always in our best interest.

But we start to get in tune with that higher self within us, that peace within us, that conscious, choosing higher self with greater wisdom that knows what we really want in the long term. And then we practice listening to that voice. We practice putting that voice in charge. And not only does road rage get solved, but every aspect of our life improves.

3. Third Cause of Road Rage & Its Solution

Which brings me to the third cause, and that is the ego. That lower self, that thinking self that we tend to listen to, that we tend to believe is the boss in charge, and whose desires and impulses and cravings we’re always listening to and giving into, whose fragile sense of self and confidence we’re always trying to protect by always being on guard to any offense, to any slight, to any insult.

This ego tends to run the show. And when we are driving, when we are interacting with thousands of people whose faces we don’t even see, whose names we’ll never get, who we kind of have this mask of anonymity through the car window glare and through our own protective little shield of the car, it does not bring out the best in our egos.

And especially on the road, where we bump into the wrong ego, someone gets in our way, someone cuts us off, someone swerves too close, and our ego has about a thousand opportunities just on the way to work or home from work to create these conflicts, to find that offense, to find that threat someone is creating for us, to perceive danger, and to fall into its instinct of fighting back, what it was designed to do, but goes totally haywire in a motor vehicle, because it was not designed for that. It was not designed for the LA freeway.

And so, as we’re driving, the ego is seeing any slow person as someone who personally hates you, as someone who is just trying to frustrate you. We see every single person on the road who gets in our way as doing this intentionally to upset us, to infuriate us, to just ruin our day, for no other reason than this is just the speed they drive. This is just how they drive. This is them doing their best at driving.

Maybe they are mad. Maybe you cut them off. Maybe they cut you off. Maybe a conflict really has emerged. But conflict cannot exist without the ego joining in. One person can be angry at us, and we are not in conflict with them. We are only in conflict when we get angry and hateful back.

It takes two to be involved in a conflict, but it takes one to end that conflict.

We all have the power to end every conflict. And the way we do this is by watching the ego, by noticing the conflict it is creating, by stepping back and just watching two people go at it, and then realizing, “I’m not in the conflict. My ego is in conflict. Their ego is in conflict. I’m not getting in the middle.”

And then, like a child, when the ego sees the higher self—the parent—not feeling threatened, not worried, not getting upset, not reacting in any way to the conflict, the kid realizes its own safety. The kid feels loving support and peaceful energy from the parent, and the kid realizes it’s safe. The kid calms down because it feels that loving, peaceful energy, and the conflict is over.

It is as simple as spending time, energy, focus, and attention on watching our own ego. That’s it.

The simplest thing that we never do is to just watch, not engage, not hate, not desire for it to be different, not wish it away, not respond or react. Just watch. Allow. Accept. Stay at peace.

Because all reaction is the ego reaction. And as soon as we react, we are not watching. We are engaged. We are in it. We are fighting with a toddler.

It is the ego that says, “I wish the ego would be quiet. I wish the ego would drop this. I wish the ego was more positive. I wish the ego would shut up.”

Just by watching, we become the higher self, pure consciousness, the witness, our true self.

The ego diminishes in power, in size, because we’re not right in the middle of it. We’re watching it from the outside. And suddenly, people can cut us off. They can give us the finger. They can scream out their window and look like fools. And we don’t have to respond. We don’t have to look like fools back, because we are not the ego. We don’t have to defend the ego. We just are the loving, peaceful presence that lets the ego know it’s okay. Everything’s fine. You are safe.

So meditate on those three causes of road rage: the expectations, the impatience, and the ego.

Practice reframing the expectations, slowing down life, and witnessing the ego so that you drill down into your subconscious the truth that you are not the ego. If you witness something, you are not it, and you are the witness.

And if you’d like to explore deeper topics about ego, expectations, anger, temper, rage, and all the things we go through as a human being, then you can check out my new book, just out on Amazon: The Guidebook to Being Human: An Instruction Manual for Life.