In this trilogy series of podcasts, you will hear 4 drivers’ stories of the awareness and impact the Driver Assess Profile has facilitated for them. In this first podcast we discuss the emotions in driving behaviourDriving EQ – Underlying Emotions PDF with Keith Cunningham who is the founder of Driver Assess and a partner in EQuip.

His philosphy for life is: Life is a journey, enjoy the drive.

My Purpose is to ‘Journey Consciously’, my Noble Goal is to ‘Enable Conscious Life Journey’s in Others’; Driver Assess enables me to do both, while at the same time making our roads safer for everyone who uses them.

• How do emotions impact on our driving behaviour ?
• Why is the time that we spend driving, a perfect space to exercise awareness, choice and personal growth?
• What insights about life can we get from being aware of how we drive our car?

Driving EQ with Keith Cunningham

In this podcast Liz chats to Keith about how Driver Assess (an online behaviour profiler) links to EQ as well as understanding our patterns of thinking, feeling and doing in specific contexts.

Keith applied the Driver Assess profiler to his own driving so he speaks from personal experience when he mentions the following lessons that can be learned from it:

• Even as someone who considers himself more aware than the average person (as a student and teacher of emotional intelligence), Keith realised how unaware he was when driving.
• He gained greater awareness around the reactions and emotional state of his passengers through their response to his driving behaviour patterns.
• He started to see himself through the eyes of his passengers as bitter, hostile and controlling.
• One angry driver has the potential to aggravate 10 other drivers in a negative way.
• In the privacy of our cars we allow ourselves a certain license to react and express ourselves in an uncensored way – a ‘driver’s license’.
• It’s these reactions that Driver Assess calls our awareness to and asks us to question.
• When anger is sudden and reactive, it is a sign that one has defaulted to subconscious behaviour.
• When one questions one’s ‘driver mentality’ it always points to contexts outside of the car that fuel the anger, frustration or stress.
• The lens through which one sees the world when driving is a reflection of our feeling state in other areas of our lives where we are forced to retain composure.
• Self awareness while driving leads to better self awareness in all contexts of life, which allows for power or control over one’s emotions and behaviours.
• Self awareness through EQ leaves one feeling motivated.

Takeaways

We all have a sub-conscious driving story that deserves to be consciously examined and the parts which do not serve us, changed. We can practice awareness, paying attention and applying the changes we choose to make, every time we drive.

• Being behind the wheel is a type of moving mindfullness.
• EQ is the gateway to conscious living.
• Consider the way you want to feel as a basis for your actions.
• Emotions drive people and people drive cars, so in order to become responsible drivers, we need to take responsibility for our emotions.

Resources:

PDF download – Emotions underlying Aggressive Driving  Behaviour (right click and choose download)

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

To participate in the Profiler norming project for your country, click here or go to: www.driverassesslive.com and select the ‘Countries’ tab

Download this podcast to listen on the go (right click and choose download)