As usual, you wake up early in the morning to drive to work before the rush hour. You take a shower, get dressed, and eat your breakfast. Then, you leave home and go to your car to find a flat tyre!
It takes time to replace the tyre, you drive in the rush hour, you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you arrive late to work, and you miss an important client meeting.
Here’s Another Thing…
How many times have you been working for hours on an important project and suddenly your PC crashes and you lose all the data?
It is so common in life that the unexpected occurs no matter how well you plan in advance.
Dealing with the unexpected in a simple and smart way is an important skill to learn.
When you face the unexpected, you’ve two common choices:
- Panic
- Let go
“Panicking, after all, is just a strange way to regain order in an otherwise disorderly situation.”
- Joshua Fields Millburn
Panicking is useless because it doesn’t solve anything. In addition, it is not good for your health.
The other choice is to let go. Just accept what happened as being something outside of your control, forget about the whole thing and give up on what you were trying to do.
Personally, I believe giving up is not nice!
So, I think you need to consider this third choice …
The Midway Choice
It’s “the way forward” choice. When you face the unexpected, focus on the moment and ask yourself, “What is the way forward NOW?”
Act as if the unexpected situation is square one where you should initially start. Don’t complain, blame or moan & groan. Just let go of your initial plans, think of the way forward and act as if you’re beginning from scratch.
Take it easy and keep it simple. Feel free to panic a little bit. We’re humans in the end of the day. Embrace the bad emotions, then quickly think of the way forward. But, never push for it.
If you can’t find a way forward now, just relax, let go and give your mind some time to pass the panic phase, stabilize and regain clarity about the situation.
Life Never Stops
Let go of what happened and move on quickly to what’s next.
In our examples, think of:
- How you will explain missing the meeting to the client without looking bad
- How you will take rest now, leave your crashed PC and do the unsaved work again the following day.
When I face an unexpected situation, I know that I should cheer up because I smell the scent of a good story that I can share on the stage. Being a motivational speaker, I always look for good stories that illustrate important lessons. Usually, unexpected situations make a story that’s worth telling.
“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
- Oprah Winfrey
What do you do when you face the unexpected?
Please share your comments below.
I “keep calm and carry on”. If Plan A doesn’t work, there are 25 other letters in the alphabet. Plan A is always the optimum choice, but there is nothing earth shattering about having to go to Plan B, Plan C etc. Always remembering that others have been in the same boat at times, puts it all in perspective. 99% of the things we worry about never happen anyway. I also ask myself this question, “What is the worse thing that can happen”?
I like what you said about the language having 25 other letters
As you mentioned in a previous comments, if we don’t expect anything, we will never get disappointed.
Great article! I so agree. There are things in life that are out of our control. All we can do is deal with and try to learn from all of unexpected things that are thrown our way.