Photo Source: Brittany Bush

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

Only thing predictable about life that it is unpredictable

We can plan for our lives, when to get married, when to have kids and when to retire. Planning is great and having back up planning is better, as life always does not go according to our plans. I am sure mine does not and I am sure it is true for all of you as well.

Last Friday (Jan 21st), something happened and my whole Heart and Mind content from hosting site and everything got deleted and I could not see anything when viewing my site. I still am not sure what caused the whole database for heart and mind to be deleted but we called Bluehost, my hosting company and they have complimentary data back up and my content and site were back up in about 2 hours.

I lost some of my comments, my replies and any changes and updates I made in last 5 days though. So, if you made any comments in last few days before Jan 22nd, it might be lost with my own replies and changes. I suppose at least most of the content is back up.

It is scary to lose everything you have written in 18 months, all of your hard work going nowhere. While I hope none of you have to go through thing like that but if you face life’s set back, here are a few lessons I learned might help you through it.

Tips to handle Life’s Setbacks

1. Have a realistic plan for life. That means setting goals that are reasonable and achievable. Small goals and short terms goals are as important as long term and bigger goals. Bigger goals can be broken down in chunks for easier plan.

2. It is good idea to have back up plan to fall back on. Let’s face it, life does not happen always as we plan and as we like. Having a realistic plan sure helps but having a back up plan is sure way to keep sanity and something to fall back on when need arises.

3. Take a break when something drastic happens, do not make a decision when your mind is in tension. When we are panicking, we are not going to make best decisions in life so wait until our mind is clear and we are thinking logically to make life changing decisions as we will bound to make choices out of emotions and not logic. Mind is like a parachute, it only works when it is open.

4. Take care of your self when things are down. Taking care of ourselves is last thing in our mind, when we are looking for solution quickly but unless we are well, we will not be able to help ourselves or anyone else in that matter. Like in plane emergency situation they say to put a oxygen mask on yourself before putting on your children, you can not save anyone unless you save your self first.

5. Have support of people and other hired expert when we do not know the answer. I am not tech savvy, so I had to ask Bluehost people to suggest what to do. You can do that with any situation when we are not sure about what to do. In other situation, such as plumbing or electric sparks in house is not the time to save money and fix it yourself (unless you already know how to do it).

6. When life give you a problem, think of what is the worse that can happen because of it? Then try to improve upon the situation. It is not all bad. In my case, I would have lost everything as I had not done back up, but I could always start again from zero again and thinking of that and improving the situation from it made it much easier for me.

7. There are always worse situation and people are in worst situation then you are, now that may not change the situation at the hand but it sure puts things in perspective. There are a few things that can happen to any of us, regardless of age, gender, nationality, race or how much or how little money or things you have, all of us are equal when disaster strikes. We all go through same things, it is how we perceive and act during the time that makes difference.

We all wish life can be rosy and peachy always for everyone, including ourselves. When things are going great enjoy it and when things are down, improve upon the situation slowly. Life is all about learning new things.

I hope using this 7 tips, your life during stressful event can be stress free as much as possible. Until we know and learn how to stop disasters in our life, next best thing we can do is to minimize the damage and still live the life we meant to live.

Zengirl

Note: I have lost all contents including readers comments in my database meltdown between Jan 17-Jan 21. I apologize for comments and content being lost, if you like you can please leave comments again. And be safe and please back up your data always.