There were six of us in the car driving through the rain of Abbotsford, Canada. I was in the back seat scrolling through my Instagram feed and fatigued from the long hours of work I had put in the day before. I wasn’t paying any attention to the conversation of my seatmates. My mind was elsewhere. Music was playing, conversation flowed and we were almost at our destination to begin our work day.
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted when I heard a gasp coming from Dan, the driver of our vehicle.
“She’s not stopping!” he remarked, “She’s not stopping,” he repeated with an increasing pitch and volume louder than before.
My head jerked from the view of my cell phone. In that moment, everything seemed to go into slow motion for me. I remember thinking, “what is going on?” I turned my head to the left just in time to see an old Isuzu Trooper turning perpendicular directly into our lane. The driver of this other vehicle seemed oblivious to the fact that if she didn’t stop, we would crash.
My mind began racing with random thoughts. “We’re about to get hit. Holy cow, we are about to get hit. Is she blind? How could she not see us? I can’t do a thing to stop it.”
The next thing I knew, I heard the bang and the crush of metal as the cars collided. The Isuzu Trooper crashed into the drivers side door forcing us to swerve slightly off the road. Dan did a masterful job keeping us away from the slight downhill slope on the right side of the road that could have caused the car to flip.
Being seated in the third row of the car, I watched everyone’s reaction unfold.
After impact, we all felt some anger and confusion. It was totally unconscionable that the other driver couldn’t have seen us. We took an immediate inventory of how everyone was doing. Thankfully everyone was okay. In that moment, there was an abundance of gratitude filling the car.
Minutes passed. Everyone was out of both cars eyeing the damage before them. Fortunately, the damage looked fixable. The drivers exchanged insurance information and fortunately the cars were capable of driving and no tow trucks were needed.
This was a scary moment for everyone involved. However, I can’t stop thinking about how quickly everyone’s emotional state went from slight anger, confusion, and uncertainty to deep gratitude in a split second. It was powerful. We turned our attention from our assumed stupidity of the other driver to the well being of others. In short, we moved our thoughts and words away from ourselves and onto others impacted in this incident.
This experience made me realize the power that gratitude can have in any situation. The more we practice gratitude in our lives, the better our lives become. Multiple studies on the link between gratitude and well being by leading Gratitude Researcher Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D, confirm that gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. When you are grateful, fear, anger, depression, and sadness disappear. If you don’t believe me, try being angry and grateful at the same time, it’s impossible.
Next time you move into an emotional state that may not be healthy for you, try practicing gratitude. It may have the power to switch your whole state and set you back on track. If it can work immediately following a car crash, I venture to guess this is a powerful tool that can work elsewhere in your life! Give it a try!