"Dear Diary,
This year has got off to a flying start and I am right on track with the deliberate creation of the lifestyle and wellbeing I really want. And then it happened…my most-of-the-time adorable 5 year old dropped a drink on my laptop. Firstly, anyone who knows me, also knows that my MacBook is one of my most treasured possessions but add to that a few weeks of non-backed up work and we are looking at a major trauma! My first reaction was blind panic….But in even the worst situations, there is always a learning opportunity… so apart from the obvious lesson (to back up my work more regularly!), how else can I learn to handle situations more effectively so if nothing else I can limit the emotional fall out?"
Even when we have made the decision to become the deliberate creators of our lives, there are going to be some unforeseen events, seemingly outside of our control, that knock us off balance and set us back. With hindsight, we may spot the clues or patterns of thinking that led up to the situation we face, but in immediately going into the analysis of what went wrong, we will tend to set ourselves up for guilt and regret, and this doesn’t serve us in getting back on track.
What we can do, even in the moment of experiencing a set back, is to make a conscious decision on how we are going to respond. This isn’t about taking action…instead its about making choices about the emotional journey that we want to take.
Taking action from any place of unresourcefulness is rarely going to give us the outcome we really want because we will miss so many of the options available to us. So, in the event that a situation triggers you into feeling anything less than good, the first step is always about emotional recovery. How can you soothe yourself into feeling better (internally) in this moment despite how the situation (externally) looks right now?
In my "laptop" situation, I started to put my focus of attention on to possible hidden benefits of what had happened. This was a challenge initially but, slowly, the process of telling myself a different and better feeling story began to work. The trauma of thinking about all the lost files became an opportunity to rework and redesign projects to make them even better. The effort of finding out how to get the laptop repaired became an opportunity to do a bit of retail therapy at the Trafford Centre (where the nearest Apple shop happens to be!). And the devastation of losing my treasured laptop became thoughts of somehow manifesting a brand new, shiny MacBook Air!
And telling myself a different story about the situation had a surprisingly different effect than I could have imagined…less than 24 hours later, I write this blog on my (now fixed and working) MacBook… Maybe in thinking differently about the situation, I released the resistance to something miraculous happening… and all it took was some self-soothing thought (and a bit of help from a friend)….And how much easier was that?!! (Right, I’m off to do a back up now!)
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