Everything happens for a reason, what the f**k…

Everything happens for a reason, what the f**k…

I couldn’t resist posting this picture as it captions how life can throw us curve balls that we didn’t see coming and then we have to decide how we are going to deal with them.

Are we going to take a swing, duck or run for cover?

Sunday night I was at Stansted Airport due to catch a flight at 7 pm to Dundee for a talk I was to delivering Monday morning.

“Arrive the night before” is my mantra so that I can deal with any mishaps or curveballs along the way.

Well, Loganair decided to throw a curveball in two words “flight canceled”.

Oh my goodness, Sunday night.  How am I going to get to Dundee for a talk scheduled for 10.30 am the next morning?

See when the shit hits the fan, this is the time to dip into your tool belt and use disciplines or key principals you have learned in life that enables you to handle things and get the best result possible from challenges that happen.

We all run on auto-pilot.  Auto-pilot enables our brains to handle the copious amounts of information by storing it in our memory drive.  We literally would be overwhelmed all the time, if we didn’t have it.  I love how our bodies have been designed, pure genius.

What isn’t genius is that we, instead of giving ourselves time to use these disciplines stored in our memory drive, we react instead of respond.

When I saw flight canceled my first reaction was a big sigh! and that was it.  Nothing more, nothing less.

I calmly picked up my bag from my seat in Starbucks and headed for the information desk, where they informed me to leave the departure lounge and go to the Loganair check-in counter outside to see what could be done next.

Fact vs. Fiction

See, I used the disciple called Fact vs. Fiction.

This is a discipline that whenever curve balls or just straight out shots are fired, you can use this discipline to cut the bull from the crap.

So what is it?

Well, in life, things will happen.  You may have an argument with somebody, or you forget to do something or the train is late.  Facts are just that.  They are the type of facts, that a court of law would happily accept.  Aren’t disputed, as are based in reality.

Many years ago, a friend was late for lunch and hadn’t rung to let me know.  These are the facts as far as I knew them. 

I started to have a full-blown conversation inside my head, a committee meeting basically. “How rude, not ringing to say she is going to be late.  Doesn’t she appreciate my time?  This is so disrespectful.  What if she has had an accident.  Oh, how horrible am I thinking these things about her and so on and so forth.”  All the while getting myself more annoyed with every passing minute.

What started out as a small episode on Eastenders had turned into a feature-length film by the time my friend arrived and low and behold, when she saw me, right there was my energy field full of attitude, annoyance, and impatience.

Now, most of the time what has us upset is not the facts (she was late and I hadn’t heard from her).  It was the fiction side of things, the story I told myself about her not respecting my time, this is rude that had me upset.

Fiction is not real.  It is our interpretation, stories, assumptions or opinions.  They are based solely in our heads, inside our thoughts and don’t live in the world of reality.

Can you imagine a court of law, dealing with the fiction (the story) instead of the facts. Our courts would be in utter mayhem but we do that as human beings.

You see, if I had applied that discipline of fact vs. fiction to the situation, my internal conversation would have looked like this.  “Sabrina is late and I haven’t heard from her.”  That is it.  I could have kept it flat and waited or tried to phone her again. 

But we never seem to make life that easy.

Instead of everything happens for a reason.  The end.  We spend too much time inside the “what the f**k” side of things that builds and builds up inside our heads.  It is like we are addicted to the drama in our internal dialogue.

As it turned out, she had left her phone at home and her train was delayed.  No biggie.

Getting back to Loganair.  As I walked to the check-in desk to see what could be done about getting to Dundee, I was as flat as a pancake.  My internal dialogue was quiet.  I wasn’t getting myself all irate or upset, I was just dealing with the facts.

As it turned out, the next flight was in the morning and I wouldn’t get into Dundee until 11 am, with my talk due to be delivered at 10.30 am, this wouldn’t suffice.  The young lady said, “we are experiencing high winds and there is also a storm brewing.  Your aircraft is very small, trust me, you don’t want to be going through it with all that turbulence.  I did it once and never again.”  I was like “me neither.”

She mentioned that Easy-jet had a flight in an hour and I promptly bought a ticket to fly to Edinburgh and then got an Uber to Dundee.  Arriving at my hotel at midnight.  At least I was in Dundee.

No drama, no upset.  I was uber cool about it… get it!

So when something happens that has you upset:-

Step 1:  Stop, take a deep breath

Step 2:  Remember fact vs. fiction

Step 3: Deal with the facts only

Step 4:  We are never upset with the facts (what happened), we are usually upset inside the
  fiction (our story) about what happened

Step 4: Ask yourself, am I dealing with the facts or the fiction?

Step 5:  Remind yourself to deal with the facts only

The End.

And just be with your humanity.  We all get upset but you always have the ability to be self-aware and self-correct at any time and keep things flat, calm and cool.