Making the Best of a Bad Situation
I had just finished unpacking my suitcase at the Renaissance hotel in Plano, TX, and was about to grab some lunch when I got a text on my WhatsApp that read “Did you guys see that Brooke cancelled the Business Workshop 10 minutes ago?”
I had been looking forward to this workshop for months. I was finally going to meet Brooke Castillo in flesh and blood, the Master Coach I had studied and certified with last year. This couldn’t be happening!
My heart sank. My knee jerk reaction was to shoot back a text in disbelief “No way!!! Stop it. I’m here. No F_ _ing way!!! She should have done it earlier. We all asked a million times!!! This is so not cool….I’m going for a run.”
As I ran around the hotel area in the heat of the day (which I don’t recommend BTW, it is mostly highways), I thought about all the money, time, and family logistics invested in getting here. It irritated me to think that had I stayed home with my kids I could have kept them home from school and reduced their (and other’s) potential exposure to COVID-19. I started getting frustrated with myself and my priorities. My temperament started to spiral downward and I struggled to run. My goal was to run six miles but I could barely finish two. All I wanted to do was go back to my hotel room and withdraw in annoyance, resulting in further wasting my time and money. Whether these thoughts were legitimate or not was beside the point, I could see they weren’t serving me.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I had a choice to make. I could continue to wallow in my frustrations and self-pity or I could choose to think new thoughts. Brooke canceling the conference was an external circumstance (fact) in my life that I had no control over. It was neutral until I gave it meaning with my thoughts. How I felt about it the rest of the day, week or year was up to me. I was free to choose how I felt about it - I was the one experiencing those emotions in my body not anyone else. What did I want to experience? My initial reaction wasn’t pretty and didn’t feel good. I certainly didn’t want to stay in that space of negativity.
I decided to give myself some compassion. I was honestly blindsided by the turn of the events despite the numerous cancellations of other conferences across the U.S. and world due to COVID-19. I, like many others at the conference, had agonized over whether to attend the event. We had gone out of our way to make this trip happen and minimize risk of exposure to ourselves and others. My trust in Brooke holding the conference at this stage had been absolute with all the reassurances. It was okay to feel sad for a while. I let myself process my emotions and resulting vibrations in my body. But then I decided to choose new thoughts that took me down a different trajectory.
I decided I wanted to make the best of the situation. I was amongst a group of 100+ amazing life coaches and I wanted to meet as many as I could. What an opportunity to learn and engage with so many interesting people in my field. These thoughts generated feelings of excitement and curiosity. So I went back to my room, meditated and took a shower. I spent the next 24 hours meeting dozens of fabulous women, coaching and engaging in impromptu workshops that some life coaches held in lieu of the cancelled business workshop. The end result was I learned a ton and made lots of friends.
It was a wonderful opportunity to see how a community rallies and comes together when circumstances are out of our control. Everyone was disappointed but we all came together and made lemonade out of lemons. I flew back to NYC the next day with new friendships and a new understanding of how our thoughts can really make or break an experience. We could have all stayed in a negative space and legitimized our emotions with each other’s thoughts. But instead we chose to think thoughts that served us and our community, and put our heads together to create an amazing experience.
Main takeaway: Our circumstances are neutral until we give them meaning with our thoughts. Our thoughts generate our feelings, which in turn fuel our actions or inactions (our behavior), which lead to the results we create in our life.
This has so much application to what is going on this week with COVID-19 and the school closures across the country. At first glance it feels like all the unexpected external events are causing our negative emotions such as anxiety, panic and overwhelm, but in reality it is how we are choosing to consciously or unconsciously to think about them that is creating these feelings. I encourage each of us to take some time to notice our thoughts. Write them down on paper. Don’t judge them. There is no right or wrong. Bring a sense of compassion and fascination to the process. It is human to have a negativity bias. Hold space for yourself to feel your emotions. Don’t resist them, it only compounds the suffering. Recognize that you DO HAVE A CHOICE. Emotions aren’t contagious. They come from your own thoughts. Own them! If you don’t like them, try to make a conscious choice to think different thoughts. It takes practice. It is a skill you develop over time. It starts with bringing awareness to what you’re thinking daily. There is no better time to start than today.
If you’d like to dive deeper on this topic set up a free consult with me or reach out to me here.