We’ve all been there—that moment when frustration takes over behind the wheel and we react in ways that don’t align with who we want to be. For acupuncturist and former yoga instructor Connie Warden, that moment came on what should have been a perfect July day. She was heading to her favorite quarry for some paddleboard self-care, feeling happy and content, when a red light encounter changed everything about how she approaches driving—and life.
Warden’s story isn’t unique in its specifics, but it’s notable because of how she chose to respond. Rather than brushing off the incident as a bad moment, she used it as a launching point for developing mindful driving practices and deeper emotional regulation skills. Her journey from road rage to compassionate driving offers insights that extend far beyond the car, touching on how we handle frustration, practice self-compassion, and show up as our best selves in challenging moments.
The Universal Challenge of Driving Emotions
Driving presents a unique emotional laboratory where our patience, empathy, and self-control are constantly tested. We’re enclosed in metal boxes, moving at high speeds, making split-second decisions while dealing with fatigue, stress, and time pressure. It’s no wonder that even the most mindful among us can lose our cool behind the wheel.
“I have so much more compassion for people who do dumb stuff,” Warden reflects on her transformation. But she’s honest about the ongoing nature of this work: “I’m better at driving, but I have my moments. And it’s usually because I’m tired, I’m in a hurry, I’m stressed out, and it goes, it comes out that way.”
This honesty about imperfection is crucial. Developing compassionate driving isn’t about achieving some zen-like state where nothing bothers you. It’s about recognizing your triggers, understanding your patterns, and having tools to respond differently when those inevitable moments of frustration arise.
The challenge becomes even more complex when we consider the stories we automatically create about other drivers. “We’re making up stories all the time,” Warden explains. “That must be a really old person in that car because they can’t turn with any speed or whatever.” Learning to catch these stories and question their validity becomes a fundamental skill for maintaining emotional equilibrium on the road.
When Professional Identity Meets Personal Behavior
What made Warden’s red light incident particularly jarring was the disconnect between her professional identity and her behavior. As an acupuncturist who understood the physical effects of negative emotions and a former yoga instructor teaching meditation and mindfulness, her impatient outburst created what she calls “cognitive dissonance.”
“This cognitive dissonance of who I was trying to be, what I was teaching, you know, this whole mindful being, you know, in the body and relaxed, and it was total opposite. And I’m like, wow. So that was what really got me,” she explains.
This highlights an important truth about personal growth: knowledge doesn’t automatically translate to consistent behavior. We can understand intellectually that patience is better than anger, that outbursts harm us more than others, and that mindfulness improves our quality of life, yet still find ourselves reacting poorly in trigger moments.
The key insight here isn’t to beat ourselves up for these gaps between knowledge and action, but to use them as information. Warden’s professional background gave her the framework to understand what had happened physiologically and emotionally during her outburst, which helped her develop targeted strategies for change.
The Ripple Effects of Road Behavior
One of the most compelling aspects of Warden’s story is her focus on what she calls “the wake we leave” with our driving behavior. When Amy Stone asks whether there are ever justified moments for “jerky” behavior while driving, Warden introduces her “squeezing the cactus” metaphor: “Because you’re going to get hurt… You’re just sending a whole, your nervous system, you’re setting, you’re firing off the nervous system, you’re putting toxins in your body. So does it help the other person? Most likely not.”
This physiological perspective reframes road rage from a moral issue to a practical one. When we explode in anger, we’re not just being unkind—we’re literally poisoning our own systems with stress hormones while having minimal impact on the person who triggered us. The other driver might not even notice our reaction, but we carry the physical and emotional consequences.
Stone reinforces this point with her observation about angry sports fans: “Every once in a while I will say they can’t hear you on the other side of the television. Just so we’re all on the same page. I can hear you.” The parallel is striking—whether we’re yelling at the TV or honking aggressively at other drivers, we’re primarily impacting ourselves and those closest to us.
For new drivers especially, aggressive behavior from other motorists can have lasting effects. Warden still hopes to someday apologize to the young driver she startled, saying: “I hope I can say I’m sorry and give her a hug and say, you taught me something very well and it changed my life. I hope I didn’t ruin your life.”
Practical Tools for Emotional Regulation
Rather than simply deciding to be more patient, Warden developed specific techniques for managing driving-related emotions. Her three-pronged approach offers concrete tools that anyone can implement:
EFT Tapping: “I like to tap right by my collarbone. So very helpful,” she notes. This technique involves gently tapping acupressure points while acknowledging difficult emotions, helping to regulate the nervous system in real-time.
Naming and Claiming: Instead of what she calls “spiritual bypassing”—pretending difficult emotions don’t exist—Warden advocates for honest recognition. “Recognizing and calling out and saying to myself, I’m angry. I’m frustrated” rather than trying to convince herself she’s calm when she’s clearly not.
Humor Injection: “Come up with a silly song about the jerky driver,” she suggests. This technique helps shift perspective and reduce the intensity of negative emotions while maintaining awareness of what’s happening.
These tools work because they address both the immediate physiological response to frustration and the longer-term patterns that fuel road rage. By acknowledging emotions honestly, we can work with them rather than against them.
The Broader Lessons of Mindful Driving
What makes Warden’s approach so compelling is how the principles of compassionate driving extend into other areas of life. The ability to catch ourselves making up stories about others, to recognize our emotional triggers, and to respond rather than react serves us well beyond the driver’s seat.
“It’s somehow gonna bleed into everything,” Warden observes about the changes that started with that single driving incident. When we practice patience with the confused tourist driving slowly through our neighborhood, we’re also practicing patience with the coworker who doesn’t understand our instructions. When we question the story we’re telling ourselves about the “aggressive” driver who cut us off, we’re also learning to question other assumptions we make about people’s motivations.
The skills that make us better drivers—emotional regulation, perspective-taking, story awareness, and self-compassion—are the same skills that make us better partners, parents, colleagues, and community members. This is why something as seemingly simple as changing how we respond to traffic frustrations can create ripple effects throughout our lives.
Stone’s question about how self-driving cars might change our relationship to driving frustration points to an interesting future consideration: “If you had pulled up next to the car, you were frustrated with the decision, you look over and there’s no driver. What do you do? There’s no way to be mad.”
As technology evolves, our emotional challenges evolve too. But the fundamental skills of emotional regulation, self-awareness, and choosing our responses rather than defaulting to reactions will remain valuable regardless of whether we’re driving ourselves or being driven.
The journey from road rage to compassionate driving isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. It’s about catching ourselves sooner when we’re heading toward an outburst, having tools to shift our state when we need them, and maintaining curiosity about the stories we tell ourselves about other people’s behavior. Most importantly, it’s about using our imperfect moments as teachers rather than sources of shame, turning our mistakes into opportunities for growth and greater connection with our fellow humans navigating the roads—and life—alongside us.
This article was inspired by an interview with Connie Warden and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Connie Warden with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | August 21, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
Warden. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m so happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat today?
Connie Warden [00:00:12]:
Thank you for having me.
Amy Stone [00:00:14]:
Yay. All right, I start all of my interviews by asking my guests what part of the world they call home. Where are you?
Connie Warden [00:00:21]:
I am in Littleton, Colorado, not too far from Denver.
Amy Stone [00:00:25]:
Very nice. I know where Littleton is. It’s. So that’s. That’s a wonderful place to be. And are you a lifelong Coloradan, or did you find your way there as an adult?
Connie Warden [00:00:37]:
I found my way very young. I’ve been here 38 years, but I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin.
Amy Stone [00:00:42]:
Oh, another fun town. Oh, my goodness. All right. That’s very cool. All right, very. In a second, we’re gonna start the official interview, which is not about cool towns in the United States, but there’s one more warmup question. We say laughter is the best medicine. Share with us something that you can rely on to bring a smile to your face or laughter to life.
Connie Warden [00:01:06]:
Wow. I. I am okay with making fun of myself.
Amy Stone [00:01:10]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:01:11]:
So I. I can. In fact, just the other day, I was getting ready for a graduation party at my house. I was hosting, my family helping me, and I was trying to rigamaro something, and somebody said, well, why don’t you just do this? And I’m like, I just had a laugh at how difficult I made that, and it was a real simple thing. And so, I don’t know. I like to laugh at myself.
Amy Stone [00:01:34]:
And so, yes, absolutely. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, the topic of the day is actually, we’re going to talk about a time where you admit that you were. I’m going to use the word jerk. You actually used a spicier sentence enhancer in your pitch, and spicy words are allowed on the show. But I did tone it down for this particular part. One of the reasons I happen to love this topic is because it’s not something that is, like, a big deal at first. Major transformation, huge thing. But I actually think that some of the things that make the biggest differences in our life are the small shifts we make on a daily basis, and we sort of take them for granted or we ignore them or we downplay them and so on and so forth. This is you having a moment where you were being a bit of a jerk to another driver in a car. Can you take us back to that moment and tell us what happened?
Connie Warden [00:02:33]:
So it was a beautiful. I believe it was a July day, and it was sunny, and I was kind of Patting myself on the back because I was going to do self care time and I was going to take my paddle board and go to the quarry that I love to just hang out on. And it’s just such a wonderful time. So I was feeling so happy, my heart was full. I grabbed my. I’ve got everything in my car and I go up my driveway, take a left and I’m behind this person at a red light. Just, I just said to take and take a right and I’m on my way. So the red light turns green and the person doesn’t move, not an inch, doesn’t move at all. And I’m like, what? Come on. So I, I beep a little bit and I come around to the side and I want to look at what is going on. And then I’m hit with I know what I just did. And there is a mom in the passenger seat and a girl in the driver’s seat. Probably take driving for the very first time. I mean that was the hit I got and I’ve been there. I helped my kids drive and I just broke my heart that I was such. I, I felt like I made her freeze. You know how when you get scared, you flight fright freeze. And I paused that and I remember just shrinking and I took my right and as I drove I said I am never going to let that happen again. I just was, I felt so much shame. But I really worked at trying to stay neutral till I could get on my paddleboard and really think about what I needed to do to make a change. So that was my moment of no, this isn’t going to happen again.
Amy Stone [00:04:25]:
All right. I love this story. There’s many pieces of it I can identify with. We’ll touch on those throughout this conversation. I think that a lot of people listening have been in this position and have various stories where we look back and we can say that we didn’t behave perfectly as drivers or pedestrians or just human beings. Right. It’s very, very relatable. So my next question though is if you’re truthful and hon, about your life, had you ever done this before as a driver or was this the very, very first time in your entire life that you had ever been short tempered or annoyed with other drivers? I wish, yeah, I didn’t. That question could have gone either way. You could have been like, yeah, it was the very, very first time. But the thing is, I think that, you know, there’s a piece of this is that, yeah, this is a thing that we, you know, happens to all of Us, you know, we’re in, we’re, we’re in a mood, we’re in a hurry. We don’t know what other people are going through, and we can be short tempered.
Connie Warden [00:05:24]:
Yeah, yeah. And, and I think that’s, I write about that in the book because, you know, when I finish, it’s like, you know, I’m better at driving, but I have my moments. And it’s usually because I’m tired, I’m in a hurry, I’m stressed out, and it goes, it comes out that way, but it’s certainly not as dramatic as that day.
Amy Stone [00:05:47]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:05:48]:
I have so much more compassion for people who do dumb stuff.
Amy Stone [00:05:54]:
Sure, Absolutely. All right, so let’s back up to your experience because part of this is that you, the story that you have about this is you’re pretty sure that the person who is in the driver’s seat was somebody who might be new to driving. So let’s talk about you learning to drive when that happened. How old were you when you learned to drive? And was it in Wisconsin or Colorado? And do you remember who were the people in your life who taught you to drive?
Connie Warden [00:06:22]:
You know, I, I, I’m sure I learned around 15 years old.
Amy Stone [00:06:25]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:06:26]:
And, and I don’t remember a whole lot about it. And I know my oldest brother helped me drive. We’re taking a driver’s class. They actually used to have those in school.
Amy Stone [00:06:42]:
Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:06:43]:
And, and so, yeah, I, and you know what a story is coming up into my head because one time I’m in Wisconsin and my, my sister’s driving my, one of my sisters. So I’m a family. I have eight siblings. I’m one of eight. And one of my sisters was driving and she’s at a red light, it turns green. She’s, she’s not aware of it. So the person behind beeps the horn and she immediately gives him the finger.
Amy Stone [00:07:17]:
Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:07:18]:
So the police officer that honked the horn turned on its lights and pulled her over. And so, so I actually write that in my book because I’m thinking I would never do that. You know, I would never be such a jerk. And, and here I was, I, I know I got a little off topic, but.
Amy Stone [00:07:38]:
No, that is, that, I think that is the topic. I will share a story that came to mind when I, the questions together for this interview, which is very similar. So I learned how to drive in New York City, which is probably the opposite of learning to drive in Wisconsin. But I was with my dad in a car. It was on an incline. I was exiting off of a causeway, and there was an incline, so I had to shift to move up. I stopped at a light, and I had to shift in traffic. I was very, very nervous that I would roll back and bump the cars behind, which is the thing. I think everybody who’s driven a manual transmission has moment of. I don’t want to do that. So somehow I got my dad to get out of the car, and he went to the cars behind us and told them I was a new driver, and they gave me some extra space and they. I don’t remember them being aggressive or assertive in this. I do remember my father got back in the car and he was like, I’m only ever going to do that one time. I’m never doing this again. You have to figure this out and be able to do this. And we went on our way. But I do still remember that. I think that the process of learning to drive can feel. I mean, it is. It’s an experience. It’s definitely, definitely an experience, for sure. So, yes. So then what. What about this do you think really caused you when you got on the paddle board? What about this do you think really hit you and caused you to this experience to make a difference than maybe any other time when somebody wasn’t paying attention?
Connie Warden [00:09:15]:
Yes. The reason why this hit me so hard was because I’m an acupuncturist. I know what. What our emotions can do to our bodies. I was a yoga instructor teaching meditation and mindfulness. So this cognitive dissonance of who I was trying to be, what I was teaching, you know, this whole mindful being, you know, in the body and relaxed, and it was total opposite. And I’m like, wow. So that was what really got me.
Amy Stone [00:09:50]:
Was like, yeah, this is not who I want to be. I think that’s the way in something you submitted. You said, this is not the way I want to show up. This is how I’m going to change. All right, so we’re going to go more in depth on this topic in just a second. Driving behavior, driving experiences, learning to drive. But I want to take a second and talk directly to the audience who’s listening, all the people who are hearing these stories and thinking about their moments in their own lives, because I think a lot of people have them. I want to invite you to join the conversation, because when this episode goes live on social media, there will be discussion questions. You’ll find them on Instagram and on YouTube, and you can interact with me, with Connie, with other people in the audience, all of those things. If you’re not already following the show on social media, the links for that are in the show notes. All right, and now let’s talk more about this story. Right. If the person who had been in the driver’s seat in this time, if it hadn’t been a young person, if it had been somebody your own age, somebody on their phone, whatever, do you think you would have had the same reaction? Would it have touched you, or is something about it very connected to the fact that it was a new person and. Or a younger person?
Connie Warden [00:11:03]:
I agree with what you say. I think it would have been a different reaction that, that it was this young person. Like if someone’s on their phone, that, that, you know, hey, right.
Amy Stone [00:11:14]:
You shouldn’t do that. But we all do it.
Connie Warden [00:11:18]:
I agree. Right. This is where I’m gonna say, you know, but no, I think it was because it was this young gal. And, and again, you know, I, I taught my daughter and son how to. How to drive. I. We’ve been in that boat. And so I think it was because of this young person, and I still live in this area, and it somehow that ever comes out, I hope I can say I’m sorry and, and give her a hug and say, you taught me something very well and it changed my life. I hope I didn’t ruin your life.
Amy Stone [00:12:00]:
Yeah, no, I mean, and it is so teaching other people to drive, you mentioned that was def. That was exactly where I was going to go with the conversation. Because teaching other people to drive, that’s a whole other experience. One of the things is there’s such a big gap between when we learn to drive and then when we teach somebody else how to drive, and you Forget all the 5 million, 227 steps for every single thing. And so it’s a big gap, and it is such a big. There’s real risk. There’s real risk in driving a car. It’s a very expensive piece of equipment. I remember telling the kids that went through our house. I was like, so goal number one is the car and other things can never occupy the same space. This is what we’re trying to avoid where the car is. You don’t want to touch it with anything else. But, you know, there’s all that stuff that goes into it, and, and we forget. We forget all the steps and all the navigation, like, all the thinking that goes through it. And it is a process. It definitely is a process.
Connie Warden [00:13:12]:
Yeah. And this is such a universal experience. And I think that was the only way I could actually publish the book. Because I know that other people would get this, you know, because it is embarrassing.
Amy Stone [00:13:29]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And one of the things that I really like about this story, now that I’ve heard it, is that there wasn’t. You were on your way to do self care, you were setting your own timetable. Right. You weren’t on your way to fight a fire or you know, on the way to meet somebody at the hospital with a sense of urgency or any of those things. And I think that, that, that makes this even more humane and relatable. Yeah. So do you think I’m setting this up? Do you think that there’s ever a chance and a situation where the outburst and the reaction and the jerky behavior gets a pass?
Connie Warden [00:14:18]:
Wow. Well, again, I, what I call in the book, I talk about squeezing the cactus.
Amy Stone [00:14:27]:
Squeezing the cactus. Why would anybody do that?
Connie Warden [00:14:31]:
Exactly. Because you’re going to get hurt.
Amy Stone [00:14:33]:
Oh, okay.
Connie Warden [00:14:33]:
Right, right. You would hurt yourself. And so an outburst is really only hurting you. Right. You’re just sending a whole, your nervous system, you’re setting, you’re firing off the nervous system, you’re putting toxins in your body. So does it help the other person? Most likely not. Right. The only person is hurting is yourself. And that’s the whole thing.
Amy Stone [00:14:59]:
You know what’s interesting is that that’s actually a very advanced concept. Right. The first time somebody tells you that when you are angry and when you are exploding, it’s hurting you, not the other. Or at least the first time somebody taught me that, I was like, no, no, no, I’m angry at them. My anger is directed at them. And so it takes a little while to understand that. Well, not really. You’re the one who’s experiencing it. Like they’re having their own experience. Maybe, maybe they’re receiving the anger, but the other person can just be like, I don’t know what’s going on over there, lady? You know, have a nice day. You know, it’s, it is really all self enclosed.
Connie Warden [00:15:40]:
Yeah. And, and again, I talk a lot about, in the book is about the wake we leave and you know, what we leave behind with an, with a negative outburst. Now I think there’s a safety thing sometimes.
Amy Stone [00:15:52]:
Yes. Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:15:54]:
And I think maybe if there was any reason to have it, it would be out of helping someone not get hurt. You know, I, and I liken this. I, I think everyone’s seen people yelling at the TV because the ref did a bad call right now it’s never going to change the call. And the only person you’re hurting by Getting upset and yelling is yourself.
Amy Stone [00:16:18]:
Yes. No. Every once in a while. I have some very passionate sports fans in my family. And so it’s not usually every once in a while I will say they can’t hear you on the other side of the television. Just so we’re all on the same page. I can hear you. And I, you know, you know, because there’s a line. There’s definitely a line. The, and the safety element of it is, is absolutely true. This was a thing that I try and channel it for myself and teach my kids and so on and so forth that sometimes, sometimes people will honk at me and I’m like, oh, thank you. You know, like, I appreciate that. Like, I, you know, was at the light, not paying attention or I don’t want to swerve or hit you or something like that. So it’s, you know, it’s meant as an alert. And so thank you for alerting me to that. Like, I wasn’t paying attention. But in the moment it has a jarring reaction. It can scare you. And people do react in different ways. Many members of my family react like your sister. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s absolutely their fault. Like, doesn’t matter. Absolutely. They’re going to flip you off, call you names, even if they’re 100% in the wrong before they’ve even processed what’s going on, they’ve extended the, the magic fingers. So I think that that’s so, so let’s talk about so. And let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about safety. As a driver or as a passenger. Have you ever been in a traffic accident?
Connie Warden [00:17:55]:
Oh, yes.
Amy Stone [00:17:56]:
Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:17:56]:
Yes. I’ve been in a few traffic accidents and the last one I was in, it was my fault. I was taking a left and. And so I had to wait for cars to, to pass me. And I thought. And I, But I didn’t know where I was. I wanted to kind of. I looked around, which street am I in? You know, because I was lost. And, and then this kid, he was traveling too fast and he would come up the hill, so he didn’t have enough time to stop because I was turning and so he hit me. And the interesting thing is, so I was actually fine. I knew it was my fault because I was taking the left and. And I actually, two years later was still saying some things in my head like, oh, you know, because it was my fault. And so I had so much self doubt when I was driving and I would take a look like, five times to make sure I could turn. And so I was. I was working in an office with the psychotherapist, and she was being certified in emdr.
Amy Stone [00:19:05]:
Oh, right, the eye movement. Yeah. Yep.
Connie Warden [00:19:08]:
I need some people to work on. And. And she says, do you have something that I guess. Oh, you know what? It’s this driving that and the self doubt. And I thought it was a very light topic, but it pulled up a lot of self doubt from maybe from childhood. But I did two treatments, and I remember one point going, yeah, that was just. That was just good thinking, Connie. And so within two treatments, I got rid of this loop that I had because of his accident, which is.
Amy Stone [00:19:41]:
That’s a really great story about emdr. So to loop the people who are listening in, who may not know what that is, EMDR is eye movement desensitization. Eye movement desensitization. It’s predominantly used for PTSD and traumatic incidents. And what it’s doing is it’s using the movements of our eyes, which we think are created, related to dreams and memory and all of those things, and desensitizing our reaction. So like you were saying, recalling that moment where you were pausing and kept replaying it and putting yourself in doubt and sort of dampening that down. So the same situation can happen, but you can have a calmer, more present reaction moving forward. And so what a great. What a great use of that. Good job, you guys. Good job. That is. That is fantastic. And I think that that is one of the reasons that, you know, we can explode when we don’t think that the people around us are driving the right way. I live in Miami, Florida, where we are famous, deservedly so, for our terrible drivers. It is a crazy place to drive. And one of the things is we have an enormous number of tourists in town, and so you’ll be behind somebody who’s not going anywhere. They’re not doing what you want to do. They’re not following the instructions, they’re turning the wrong way, all of the things. And, you know, when you’re in the right frame of mind, you can be like, they don’t know. You know, they don’t know. But other times you’re like, I really just want you out of the way. So I go to the grocery store. Like, I know where I’m going. What are you doing? And so I’ve been on both sides of that for sure. Now let’s talk about how this has changed for you. Like, what changed in your life? You had this experience. You took the chance that Took the moment to do some self exploration. You decided to be more kind and compassionate. How does that show up now in your life?
Connie Warden [00:21:45]:
Oh, it’s somehow gonna bleed into everything.
Amy Stone [00:21:49]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:21:49]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:21:49]:
Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:21:50]:
And so one of the strategies that I put in the book is about the stories we make up. Right? We’re making up stories all the time. And so I think one of the biggest things was that I learned to catch my stories and that there were stories. We don’t. We don’t know if it’s true or not. You know, like, that must be a really old person in that car because they can’t turn with any speed or whatever. Right. And so making up this, changing the stories, it was. Is very transformational in my life. And the other thing that really was impactful was my spiritual bypassing.
Amy Stone [00:22:32]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:22:32]:
Remember? Right. Or emotional bypassing. Say, I don’t feel that. And. And I tell a story in the book, and this was really impactful and impactful in my life right now about how I still can feel rage. I still can feel that stuff. I don’t have to react. But to say I’m not feeling it is just stuffing it, and at some point it’ll come out somewhere.
Amy Stone [00:22:57]:
Right?
Connie Warden [00:22:58]:
And so recognizing and calling out and saying to myself, I’m angry. I’m frustrated. So instead of. I’m saying, okay, I can deal with this traffic. All right. Okay. Nice person. All right. I’m a good person. I can be. I can be relaxed when I’m driving here and. And having something small happen later. And I. I’m just. I burst out. And. And I think that was the hardest thing about writing this book or feeling I could write about it because I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to drive and not bypass the emotions. And so I came up with three different things that were very helpful for me. One is eft tapping. And I like to tap right in the right by my collarbone. So very helpful. And just the second one would be naming it, saying, naming, frustration, anger, and then sometimes. And the other thing to do is come up with a silly song about the jerky driver and just whatever. And again, it puts some humor on it.
Amy Stone [00:24:12]:
Yeah. So you mentioned the eft tapping and then the naming and claiming. Those two things go very well together. Because one of the tools we use with tapping is starting with the. Even though. So, like, instead of saying to yourself, I’m calm right now. When you’re really not. When you’re really boiling with rage, you might say, all right, I feel rage. And Anger. But I’m going to work on staying calm or I deeply love and accept myself and I think that’s a really, really powerful tool. I love it. I use it all the time for myself. I think that’s really, really, really, really good. So here’s a question that came up with out of thin air, right. This is a very 2025 question. How do you think that self driving cars, like the cars that have all the automation and they’re making the decisions for us, how do you think that that might affect drivers attitudes towards each other when mistakes are made and people don’t do the right things?
Connie Warden [00:25:17]:
Oh my goodness. That. Yeah. Out of thin air. Because this is a 2025 question. I. When I think if I thought of going into a car that had no driver, that’s anxiety feeling for me.
Amy Stone [00:25:32]:
Okay. Yeah. Or if you, yeah. If you had pulled up next to the car, you were frustrated with the decision, you look over and there’s no driver. What do you do? There’s no way to be madness. Yeah.
Connie Warden [00:25:47]:
I have another coming out.
Amy Stone [00:25:50]:
I was thinking about that. I was just absolutely. I was thinking about that. I was like, I think, I mean, because it might be that then we as the passengers would unite against and we. Our anger, our frustration at the machine. Like if you’re on a train or an airplane and it breaks down, it’s like everybody’s together like, well, this sucks. You know, like this shouldn’t be like that. So I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a thing I haven’t experienced yet either. All right, so in a second we’re going to do the final fun questions. But let’s talk about the book and let’s talk about what you do now and how you want people to follow up with you in the future after the. After they listen to this episode.
Connie Warden [00:26:27]:
Sure. You can go on my website, which is conniewarden.com and there’s an email connieniewarden.com so that’s pretty easy. I would love to hear people’s stories. And I think one of the reasons why I was that it helped me to. That got me to write this book and publish it was because my editors would say stuff all night. Oh my God, Connie, thank you. Because I was on my way to my baseball game and I was hitting all these red lights and I thought about what you said and, and it really helped me. And so I had such good feedback and I would just a review on Amazon and so we can get people to pick up the book and you’ll get something out of it, everyone that has read it. And that just warms my heart.
Amy Stone [00:27:22]:
So very good. I love that. I think. Yeah, I think it is a very universal experience and one that can be fun to talk about. The book is called Speeding to Compassion, Life Lessons and Humor to the High Road. And we’ll have information about where you can find it in the show notes and if you. The easiest way to get the links about the things that we talk about in the show is to be a subscriber to the Imperfect Adulting email list, because then it comes into your email box and you can click on it. You don’t have to hunt it up, you don’t have to type it. You don’t have to copy and paste it. You just click. All right, Connie, are you ready for the final three questions?
Connie Warden [00:27:57]:
Listen to your podcast. I think I’m ready.
Amy Stone [00:28:00]:
All right, Very good. Do you consider yourself a morning person, a night owl, or something else in between?
Connie Warden [00:28:06]:
Queen Only a morning person.
Amy Stone [00:28:09]:
Morning person.
Connie Warden [00:28:10]:
We’re doing this at eight in the morning and I’ve already been walking meditated journal, so yes.
Amy Stone [00:28:17]:
Beautiful. All right, so who’s a person in your life that you go to when you have a question? Who’s the person that you’ll call or text when something comes up in mind that you want to know?
Connie Warden [00:28:29]:
Most likely my husband.
Amy Stone [00:28:31]:
Okay.
Connie Warden [00:28:31]:
We’ve been married for 37 years. He knows me.
Amy Stone [00:28:36]:
Very good. Very good. Love that. All right, so now what’s a favorite tradition or a custom in your family? Like, it can be a. It can be a holiday thing. It could be something from your childhood, something you remember, something you do. It can be big or little. But what’s something in your family that you love that’s a tradition or a custom.
Connie Warden [00:28:56]:
Together on July 4th, week, weekend, we did the. And by the way, July 4th is my birthday, so.
Amy Stone [00:29:03]:
Oh, very good.
Connie Warden [00:29:07]:
And so we would get together often. And now we get together in Wisconsin at my brother’s cabin, removed the boat and it’s just so nice.
Amy Stone [00:29:16]:
That is beautiful. That is beautiful. I love also that because there’s two. When you have a birthday that falls on a holiday, there’s two ways to look at it. One is that we’re all celebrating you and that the world comes out and shows up for you, which I think that’s, that’s the more fun way to do it, and I’m thrilled that you have it. But the other way is there are people who just hate it. People just hate it. And they’re like, nobody is celebrating my birthday and I never get to have a party on my birthday and it’s like, nah. Yes, that is. And I’m not gonna say that that’s not hard. There are people in my family who have winter holiday related birthdays and, you know, it’s not the easiest, but on the other hand, it’s like, look, everybody, the world dressed up for you and everybody put lights on for you. There we go. That’s it. Connie Warden, thank you so much for being an amazing guest today on the show.
Connie Warden [00:30:00]:
Go. Thank you for having me, Amy. Have a great week.