The other day, I had a valuable lesson in time. As it is important to me to be punctual, I left home to allow plenty of time to make it to my 7:30 a.m. appointment...or so I thought! Unfortunately, there was a four-car pile-up on the bridge which resulted in a huge traffic jam.

Sitting in traffic as the the time was ticking by, I implemented one of the HeartMath techniques which allowed me to come up with a brilliant solution that I'm surprised I hadn't thought of before. My normal modus operandi would be to constantly glance at the clock and fret about how late I would be. I made a conscious decision to ignore the time...what could I do about the traffic anyway? Constantly looking at the time would not suddenly clear the roads, but what it would do is start that cascade of 1400 chemical changes that take place during a period of stress. This wasn't necessary as the traffic was not a real "threat."

The best part was that the traffic cleared and it became an easy drive. In fact, I arrived at my appointment fifteen minutes early and in a state of calm. What a huge difference that made to the rest of my day.

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