Caroline Cavanagh describes a car accident on the way to her daughter's graduation where three passengers reacted completely differently: one panicked, one managed logistics, one stayed focused on reaching the event. She argues that mindset shapes how we handle crisis, and that shifting from fear to a goal-oriented perspective improves both decisions and resilience.
Chapters
This week, I was involved in a car accident. It was a very narrow country road. There was a massive great lorry in front of me who came head-to-head with a learner driver. The lorry driver clearly discerned that this learner driver didn't have the capacity to reverse, so he put his lorry in reverse without checking his wing mirrors. And the front of my car has been redesigned now. But the thing I found really fascinating was how the 3 of us who were in that car responded. One person jumped out the car and was literally jumping up and down, saying things that I can't repeat on a public video, but getting very, very stressed and shouting at the lorry driver, saying, what have you done? But not in quite those words. Another person in the car called the lady we were going to see— it was actually my daughter's graduation— and said, we may just be a little bit late. And then started going around the car taking pictures, photographing the lorry, too. The other person in the car looked at the car and started thinking, well, if we rip off all of these bits that are hanging off, I reckon the car's still drivable. We'll get to the graduation anyway. So, exactly the same experience in a car, having our intention of getting to this amazing day where my daughter's graduating from her master's being potentially ruined, but 3 different responses. One, a stress-based response that made no difference to resolving the problem. The second, What's— what can I do immediately now to take back control? The third, I've got a goal, when am I gonna get there? And it's just evidence of how when we use our minds, we can change the experience that we have from stress to being back in control. The end result is the car's still damaged and it will be resolved, but how we experience those moments and how that experience is then internalized in that database that is part our mind will also influence future events. And this is part of the work that I do, helping people who have had very traumatic events in the past release some of the trauma around that event so they're less triggered in the future, but also learning how to use the power of the mind so that when bad things happen— because they do— rather than having an irrational fear-based response, you can take control of that energy and go, okay, how can I make this better? Because whilst there's always bad things that will happen, there's always a better outcome as well. And when you have that sense of control, you tend to make good decisions, and that also will start to influence future decisions as well. So whether you've had a trauma and it's still affecting you, or whether you just want to learn how you can too harness that power of the mind, so when that ball comes in from left field and puts you on your bottom, you can learn how to get up and start running again quickly too, give me a call. Let's have a chat, and I'd love to share with you some of the things that I know really work. Bye for now.
