When things go sideways
caution
You’re living your life intentionally. You know where you’re headed and what really matters to you. You’re actively cultivating what you’re best at. You’re developing a strong personal foundation to support you in work and life.
Even when life is rocking along, that doesn’t mean you won’t encounter bumps in the road. It doesn’t mean that we are immune to or separate from the world around us.
We are certainly not immune, and we’re reminded of that now.
It can sometimes seem that every day is filled with uncertainties, political bickering and catastrophe. It’s times like this when meaningful self-care feels important. When we need those inner foundations we’ve built to keep us strong. When we hug the people close to us and also, virtually, the ones we have never even met.
When we need to see— and be— the good.
I remember wanting to write about this more than once before, after a terrorist attack, after losing my home to a fire. I wanted to write then about how we respond in our individual lives when it all seems so crazy out there. The first time, my computer’s hard drive crashed. Followed by a malfunction of my apparently-not-so-trusty backup drive. Which meant I lost stuff. Stuff I needed for my work. Stuff that was meaningful to me, personally. My schedule was thrown off yet again.
I had a fairly sleepless night cursing technology and my increasing dependence on it. Then I remembered something important.
When things go wrong, don’t go with them.
Having a life and work you love, or working towards that, doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen in your world. It doesn’t mean you won’t be disrupted. It doesn’t mean that you won’t lose a loved one or be injured or heartbroken. It doesn’t mean you’re immune to the sudden disappearance of your job, precious family photo memories, or six months worth of work or a client database that you thought was backed up.
You will.
But having been through more than this also means that you will have what you need to handle all of that. Having built those foundations means there will be things that you can control and internal resources to draw on, instead of mindlessly reacting to everything that’s coming at you and losing your well being in the process.
Your sky will not be falling, though it may well feel that way.
It means you’ll have what you need to live on purpose. To choose how you will respond, what you might contribute, how you will hear the small voice inside that tells you what you really need right now. And actually let yourself have those things.
For me, when things go sideways, as they did then and as they are now in the world, I need to reality check myself and the facts of the situation: if I’m not in danger and I am relatively unscathed, healthy and well, then everything else is manageable.
What we need next is highly individual.
I may need to reach out and talk to people I trust, to meditate, to go for a hike and collect my thoughts. I may need to take some downtime or to go about my plans: attending a workshop, seeing a client, cleaning my house, connecting with friends. I may need to laugh. I may need to find an honest balance between staying informed but not overdoing the media consumption and outreach. (And when tech snafus happen, I need to go about the business of restoring working technology into my office instead of cursing it.)
Sometimes it seems unfair. Unfair that it’s happening to us, unfair that it’s happening to someone else. Or unfair of us to feel happy and grounded and moving forward on our projects and priorities when others are in pain.
And yet. That is what we have. To connect to where we are in the moment. To invest in what we need to manage our stress, connect to our values and meet our emotional and tangible needs honestly. To continue to show up for ourselves and for others, to find our joy and share all of that outward, with the world. To use what we have, where we are.
This too will pass, and things will be different. When we can step back enough to reflect and act from a new place, it also changes us a little for the better.
