Tags
committments, inegative, outcomes, positive, reflection, thoughts, time
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Do you ever have those days where you start out with the best intention, and it all goes wrong- not quite to plan or how you thought it should happen! You know those kinds of situations or times that simply occur! Like your mug full of hot, delicious coffee spilled all over your clean outfit just as you were getting ready to leave the house. Or as you were grabbing your mobile phone, it fell out of your hand and crashed onto the floor. Maybe you missed your bus or train by one minute and now have to wait 15 minutes for the next one, to make you late for work or school. I could go on and on with these examples, but I think you get the picture. Annoying and sometimes expensive accidents hamper your ability to focus on getting stuff done that needs to get done. And they are such a challenge!
Well guess what – I had one of those days!
Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have been so busy with weekly work commitments, with every weekend being committed in some form or another and we were both exhausted. So apart from Marc being on call, we decided that this weekend was going to be ours. No outside commitments. No time frames. Nothing to deter from just taking a break from life as we knew it, to ensure things for us that needed to be done…were tackled both physically and emotionally…or not!
Actually, my weekend commenced quite well. I needed to get on top of those home aspects of life. You know, those things that you throw into the back of the cupboard for ‘later’, so I managed to do a great spring clean throwing things out, sorting through cupboards and drawers, cleaning my way through the day which was such a wonderful productive day! In hindsight, I probably should have stopped at that high point- feeling so good, but I did not. Instead, I ventured onto other aspects of improvements and that was where it all went wrong! A simple comment like “let’s look at the business website, it needs a spring-clean too” – ended my calm content satisfied positive day! From the moment I turned on the computer to revamp our website, it all “changed”. It all disappeared! Not just my good mood, but my whole website!
Thinking positively, I tried to reactivate the old site, but the old workable site of many, many years had simply disappeared and was technically “no longer available”. Yes, I still had a website, but so mixed up. Everything was out of order, no orientation, no menus, information all convoluted, nothing looking like it was, and not anything was in the correct place! And it was going to be available to the viewer- exactly like that! It sounds like a small issue but for a business like ours, that was disastrous!
How do you typically react when you face this kind of frustration? Do the swear words come flying out of your mouth? Do you blame yourself for your clumsiness or stupidity? Perhaps you blame the broken or damaged object itself (“that stupid coffee mug”). You might even magically wish you could turn the clock back a minute or an hour and somehow miraculously prevent the misfortune from occurring. But no, they certainly won’t reduce your stress levels.
What did I do? How did I react?
Of course, I panicked. After all I am only human. To be honest I was shaking so much and crying huge tears. Every time I tried something in my attempt to fix it, I could not find a way out. I made it worse! I am not a techy, but I generally know my way around the computer and in designing the original website we had been using, I thought I could find a solution. But no- I could not find the solution. I snapped at my husband who was calmly trying to help, being rationale and cool, but all I could see was this messed up, mixed up dialogue on a computer screen that was supposed to be our knowledge and help base that was needed for our business! Yes, I was so wishing that I had not touched the site and left things alone…. ah Hindsight is always a great thing!
What a mess!
And the worst part of it -I had made that mess!
Life is a journey riddled with a myriad of challenges that test our resilience and character and adaptability. These challenges come in various forms, from personal struggles like health issues, financial setbacks, relationships, and simple things like IT issues. Philosophically speaking, challenges are an integral part of the human experience, that do assist in shaping perspectives and contributing from that ‘mess” in one form or another. To say we’re living through challenging times sounds like both a cliché and an understatement. But when you look back on these aspects, it is usually the most difficult challenges that gave them a new perspective or caused them to grow the most. Of course, in the midst of a crisis, big or small, it doesn’t feel that way. All you want to do is crawl under a rock!
But I couldn’t crawl under a rock. Even though I did try! And after many, many, many hours of working on the computer – on the day that was supposed to be relaxing, calming, and soothing, into the night, ironically, on my day off – I finally worked out how to put some errors right. But even though that statement sounded calm and rationale, I was not. I had to first of all, readjust my thinking. I had to stop panicking, stop dramatizing, stop sensationalising the outcomes and what I could not fix. I had to prevent all of that. So, after raised voices, frustrated tears, I had to take a huge breath and step back. I had to walk away from the issue. I had to think about the problem and try to create a solution, even albeit a simple one. And I did!
So why am I writing this blog about my website that went wrong?
Because out of it has come something good.
We always want to have control over ourselves and our lives. We want to be in control of us- our health, our work, our relationships and even our emotions. And when a situation slips out of our control, we feel like we have failed. I so did. I felt such a failure particularly when I could not work out how to put it right. But I had to put it into perspective. You often can’t prepare for a bad situation. It comes around the corner without warning and turns the familiar structure of what you are doing, totally upside down. But is the situation really that bad? To me at the start I thought what I had done was disastrous and no going back. But I was so wrong. Re vamping the website, the way, I did (unintentionally) it showed me that there was quite a lot of data out of date, that pages did not look right (even when I fixed it up) and information needed to be added or changed. I realised that if I had not done this ‘error”, then I would not have noticed how out of date some things were. I gained Positive out of negative!
Yes I so stressed and yes I was not a happy person but my advice to you, when you have something unexpected happen and everything goes to ###, look for the positives…make something out of bad. “Making good out of bad” emphasizes the ability to find positive outcomes or opportunities in difficult or adverse situations. It’s about your resilience, your adaptability, and your positive mindset.
Go on try it!
I dare you!
Ill see you at the next catastrophe!!