Driving Emotional Intelligence with Kerry Osborne and Mandy Eastern

 Kerry and Mandy are both mothers with more than 25 years driving experience each. Their personal insights regarding their driving experience  highlights these questions:

How stressful are the school runs for you?

What subconscious thoughts and patterns are present with you in the driving seat?

What kind of conversations are you having  with passengers in your car?

What conversations would you like to have?

 

Kerry Osborne

 

 Driving as a mother

• As a mother, Kerry does a lot of fetching and carrying.
• She’s come to see the value in remaining calm and collected while transporting her children.
• Kerry has seen how quickly a bad or irritable mood can affect everyone in the small space of a car.
• Kerry has found the car to be a beautiful space to talk to her children; an opportunity to connect, when one is in the right frame of heart and mind.

 

Kerry’s biggest takeaways from the Driver Assess program

• It’s valuable to understand where you’re at on the scale of driver awareness and apply it to other areas of your life.
• This allows us to take an everyday situation and turn it into a learning experience.

 

Kerry’s Driver Assess profile experience

• Kerry doesn’t consider herself to be a violent or angry driver.
• Since taking the test Kerry assesses herself each time she sits behind the wheel.
• By practicing awareness in the car, Kerry has become more conscious of her behaviour in other areas of life as well as the behaviour of others.
• The angry driver stereotype highlights other stereotypical behaviour in various situations in life and she is now conscious of not wanting to perpetuate such behaviour herself.
• Kerry has also been able to shift her own perspective on perceived stereotypes by allowing for empathy. She has re-considered her assumptions around seemingly inconsiderate taxi drivers by trying to understand their behaviour on the roads.
• Taxis stopping in random places and speeding to get to places quickly is the nature of their business – they aren’t purposefully trying to harm anyone.

 

Mandy Eastham

 

Driving as a mother 

• As a mother fetching and carrying her children numerous times throughout the day, Mandy has experienced how easily her mood in the car affects those of her children.
• Children are exposed to angry behaviour and often swearing from parent drivers – we need to be conscious about and responsible for the type of behaviour patterns we pass on to our children.
• Mandy realised that she is ‘traffic’.
• When we speak about how bad the traffic is, we should all be conscious of the fact that each of us contribute to the traffic. We are part of the problem.
• It’s important to shift our perception from one of needing to drive defensively for personal agendas on the road, to one of inclusivity; we’re all here to share the same roads in life and there is enough space for all of us.

Mandy’s biggest takeaways from the Driver Assess program

• Mandy sees how easy it is for children to pick up poor driving habits from parents.
• She believes all grade 12 students or first time drivers should take the Driver Assess profile test to avoid developing poor driving and emotional response habits.

Mandy’s Driver Assess profile experience

• Prior to taking the Driver Assess test Mandy thought she was an aggressive driver. The test results suggested that she isn’t aggressive in general but rather reacts to specific triggers.
• Mandy is now aware of when her emotions have been triggered and she has been able to explore the underlying issues contributing to these triggers.
• Time keeping is one issue that Mandy has corrected in order to make her driving experience more calm and less rushed. Speeding and being impatient with other drivers while rushing to get to places on time is the perfect recipe for arriving at a destination in a stressed state.

 

Resources:

To take the Driver Assess profiler test and receive your personalised report, go to the website:www.driverassesslive.com