I was at the Westfield carpark the other day when I saw this guy. 👇
Mid-40s.
Nicely dressed.
Shiny European car.
Standing next to what appeared like a flat tire. 🛞
No big deal, right?
A minor inconvenience that happens to everyone.
But apparently… not to him.
Within seconds he loses it.
🤬
Arms flailing.
Feet stomping.
Shouting words that’d make even a sailor blush.
And then, as if the situation couldn’t get more entertaining…
It does.
He starts kicking the car.
Not the tire.
The car.
As if it personally betrayed him or something.
So there I was. Frozen in the car park.
Watching this full-grown man have a toddler-level meltdown.
Yes, I probably should have turned to look away…
But I couldn’t help myself! 🤣
My brain immediately went into diagnosis mode:
| “Ah… a classic case of nervous-system dysregulation. In the wild. Fascinating.”
Now, I’m not judging or anything.
I just found it interesting.
I guess we’ve all had moments like these. Where the world shrinks to the size of the one tiny thing that isn’t working.
But as I stood there watching this unfold,
I couldn’t help but think…
| “How did we get here?”
How did we (the species that split the atom) become so damn fragile that something as small as:
A flat tire
Slow Wi-Fi
Or a misplaced phone
…can send us into full Godzilla mode on an inanimate object?
(Food for thought, right?)
Now, while many people may think complaining, venting, or “blowing off steam” is a harmless practice…
They’re mistaken.
Every sigh.
Every eye roll.
Every “why is this traffic so bad?”
You’re literally carving grooves in your brain — like dragging a knife through plasticine.
Do it once? No big deal.
But do it every day?
And that groove becomes the Grand Canyon of grumpiness.
And just like water flows down a groove…
So too do your thoughts.
Not metaphorically.
L I T E R A L L Y
And what’s worse is…
You can’t “positive-think” your way out of these grooves.
That would be like telling someone with a broken leg to, “Just walk it off.”
Uh, no.
The bone’s STILL broken.
So the solution isn’t as simple as “just stop complaining”, {Name}.
It takes serious re-patterning…
Rewiring of the systems beneath the thoughts…
And repetition to stop yourself from sliding back into old reactive habits.
At least, that’s what the high performers I coach are doing instead of trying to “positive think” their way out of decades of bad wiring!
If you want specifics on how they’re doing it…
Here’s exactly what they’re using to reprogram their brains from meltdown moments to default chill mode.
In Love and Wisdom,
Pauline
P.S. I like to imagine the man in Westfield car park eventually calmed down, changed his tire, and drove away. But the neural groove he carved that day? Definitely still there.
