Imagine you are on the highway, driving to an important meeting.
You left early, without breakfast in order to be more than on time.
And then this happens;
- traffic turns to a complete standstill,
- you realize you forgot your mobile phone at home and feel pushed back in the mid-90s
- it's 30+ degree Celsius outside
- google maps shows over 2hours delay!
Your head turns to an emotional explosion and your sympathetic nervous system is fully turned on; fear, anxiety, fogginess, impatience, frustration, aggression, anger, lots of anger!! And then, desillusion and boredom suddenly take over.
What to do in such a situation?
I'd like to share what I did, after exactly this happened to me today.
Luckily I always carry a book with me and I had one of my favorite ones in my bag ('Brand Sense' from M. Lindstrom). But after reading one hour in the heat, I started to doze off so I stopped. I got hungry and started looking for food in my car. I only found chewing gums, which was not really helpful. But next to the gums, I saw a red foam nose! And my bored brain immediately said "Hey, let's have fun and get out of this dozy-desillusioned-status! Disrupt the senses! Do something others don't expect you to do."
So, I put the red nose on and started looking at the people in their cars around me. And this is what happened;
- some people fully ignored me as they were still caught in their frustration and anger
- some had that "what-the-heck-is-that?" type of look
- kids were waving and smiling
- some started to laugh and gave me an honest smile.
This was so rewarding! I felt like Santa Claus spreading happiness around him!
I forgot anger, hunger or boredom. My parasymathetic nervous system turned on, I felt fully relaxed and positively excited at the same.
In the end everything turned out all right. Luckily I was not the only one caught in this traffic jam, so the meeting had been pushed back to the afternoon.
So, the next time you are caught in a similar situation, think about disrupting the senses to free your emotions and get rewarding results!
MULTISENSING+, Agnès Wiegand
By the way. On my way back, guess what happened? I got stuck again for 1,5 hours! This time I immediately put the nose on and bypassed the negative emotions :)
