Are you a maniac driver too?

When I visited Colorado a few weeks ago, as I was driving to Boulder to meet a friend, I felt so peaceful, driving slowly on the back roads, enjoying watching the bikers in the bike lanes and giving them extra space as I passed. It was lovely.

When I’m in Houston, on the other hand, I’m a little bit of a maniac driver (not as crazy as some, but definitely not a picture of easeful driving 🤣). I’m on the defensive and offensive, not letting people in in traffic, getting so frustrated with slow drivers and fast drivers and anyone who stops me from getting where I’m going as quickly as possible (please don’t judge me…I’m being vulnerable here!).

But in Colorado, I adapted to the environment and circumstances. Colorado drivers are way more chill, and there’s a different energy on the roads.

It doesn’t hurt that this is what you get to stare at as you’re driving in Colorado.I definitely prefer to feel how I felt driving in Colorado than how I feel driving in Houston.

And yet, as soon as I got back to Houston, I turned back into a maniac driver.

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There’s something to the concept of stepping away from your life for a moment to reflect and regroup. And you might be thinking, “but wait, Elaine, didn’t you just tell me last week that retreats don’t improve my well-being?” Yes and no.

Sometimes, you have to climb out of the bottle of your life to be able to read the label. You can’t read the label from inside. There are things in your life that may be driving you crazy or causing pain and suffering that you don’t recognize until you’ve removed yourself from the situation.

But then, eventually, you have to get back in the bottle, back into your life. And if you haven’t done anything to solidify what you learned outside of the bottle and implement those new practices into your real life, nothing is going to change. It was just a nice respite for a moment in time.

If you jump back into the same conditions that made you ill, frustrated, burnt out, or crazy without a plan for change, the peace and calm you experienced while away will disappear so fast, and you’ll be right back where you started.

You can’t heal in the same environment that created the illness. Something has to change, and if you can’t change your environment, you have to change something in or about yourself.

For me, I’m grateful to have had a health coaching session while I was away to help me reprioritize what is important in my life right now. I planned out (and have since implemented) a morning routine that sets me up for a focused and productive day. It includes some practices for me (meditation, gratitude, alignment practices) and some stuff for my business (health news and research, business development, and writing). And by making time for the things that nourish my body, mind, and soul, I get in the car every day less stressed and more patient and gracious.

​Whether you’ve been able to step away from real life recently or it’s been a while, reflect on what it felt like and how you can bring more of that energy (patient, calm, inspired, content, joyfully expectant) into your daily life. Because your health and well-being aren’t about the big fancy things you do for yourself once in a blue moon; it’s about how you take care of yourself every single day.