Big statement huh?
Hard to believe?
If you think about it, how many times can you recall an event or situation that appeared “bad” that at the time, but shortly after, became a massive positive? One that makes you say “I’m actually really glad that happened”.
It’s just like the saying “every cloud has a silver lining”. They really do!
For example, the beginning of last year I was battling with a fair amount of credit card debt (left over holiday payments and the need for a new car). I was paying it off little by little but I was only making small dents.
Around April there was the mother of all ‘bad’ scenarios that hit the business that I run. 123-reg (the company that host our website) had a major server failure where all their servers went down and all online backups were lost. Basically, our website was gone. Not only that but our website was a membership portal where paying members accessed exclusive content. No website, no product or service. You can just imagine the level of stress that I was under.
Cutting a long story short, I had luckily taken an offline backup of the site a few weeks before and was able to rebuild most of it within a few (very long) days. Our customers were amazing and very understanding.
As you can imagine this was an absolute disaster for 123-reg and many customers complained. With the help of my sister I was able to fight them for £2,500 compensation – a MASSIVE dent in my Credit Card debt. It also provided me with an incentive to move the site away from 123-reg and now we’re on a brand new, lightening fast system where our site can grow and scale more than ever.
At the time, did I think this was the worst thing to happen to me? Absolutely. A few months later did I think so? No chance. The situation happened in my favour, if only I understood that at the time I could have avoided the stress.
You see, that’s the thing about stress. It’s a response, a reaction. Which, as we know from my other blog post, a reaction is only re-acting out a set response you’ve learnt in the past. If you could change your perspective on ‘bad’ scenarios (like seeing them as happening in your favour rather than against it) then you could avoid negative emotions that bring you down.
Easier said than done, obviously! It takes time to un-learn emotional responses, but maybe having these words in your head for next time might set you down a different way of thinking.
Nothing Happens TO You, it Happens FOR You.
Thanks for reading.
x
Vegan Steven 