Monday Mindfulness Minute: Is life driving you crazy? Try Traffic meditation

Our daily opportunity/challenge on the inner path is to see that we are not our racing thoughts. Developing this space has been called many things such as mindfulness, witness consciousness, developing the witness, etc. While different in name, they all return to the same lesson; can we remember over and over that we are not the mind?

Developing this perspective is crucial because until we realize we are not the mind, our thoughts will completely determine the quality of our lives. Meditation is one such technique we can employ to develop space between our thoughts and how we respond to hopefully have more positive responses than negative reactions.

If you are new to meditation, don't think of it as some advanced skill reserved for only Buddhists or Zen masters. Meditation is simply us sitting down and watching our thoughts without getting involved. While meditation can be a powerful tool, one potential pitfall is that we only do it "on the cushion" (i.e. in a 10-minute window in a quiet room away from the noise of the world) and thus never integrate the practice into our daily lives.

That's where traffic meditation comes in.

How much time do we spend driving? A ton, right? And if you're anything like me, driving presents me with plenty of opportunities to be automatically upset. Half the time I feel like I need Formula 1 driving experience to even survive on the precarious Atlanta highways. Driving can either be a drain that sets us on the worst footing to start our day or the perfect place to see if our practice of mindfulness stands up to true tests.

Here are some ways to practice traffic meditation and a few examples of how to reframe negative thoughts this week:

• Don't turn on any music/podcasts during your drive and see what thoughts come up (this will be rough at first). You will quickly be reminded that you have the music on to try to drown out those thoughts. Just start with a 5-minute segment.

• As the cars pass by you, instead of thinking, "I would for sure get a ticket if I was going that fast," just let this remind you how thoughts whiz past us and don't get involved.

• When a car gets a little too close, aka tailgates you, be thankful for how much comfort and support they are providing. We want people to be close to us, right? Why is it different with cars? Be thankful!

• In bumper-to-bumper traffic and you're late for work, try to notice how all the brake lights look like faces smiling back at you. It works best if you imagine that Buddha/Jesus/whoever you look up to is smiling back at you and providing you a moment to come back home (home is a still place inside each of us).

We must practice with traffic and other "ordinary" daily situations because let's be honest, if we can't handle the traffic, we'll never be able to handle the bigger things that come up. Each time we watch the thoughts without getting involved we do an inner rep that will give us the strength later to pause and respond in more vital moments.