Into every life some rain must fall.
We all have them – those challenging times, the things that don’t go the way you wanted them to, the curve ball that came from nowhere – like getting my Instagram hacked and Meta account closed down as a result, and no way of contacting Meta to explain what happened because I can’t log into an account that no longer exists.
Yes, challenges.
But hold on a minute..
Ah yes, of course – this is what it means to be human– to experience the sways and the tides, and the ups and downs of life.
I don’t know about you but I’m really grateful to be human and as such to have this experience of life with all its ups and downs.
Yes the ‘ups’ are far more fun, but we must accept that nobody has a life of ease and only-ups allthe time.
And that’s ok.
It’s meant to be like that.
Without challenges there is no growth, no learning, no progress beyond what we’ve already learned.
And achieving aspirational goals is all about growth, not about ‘getting’ something like more money or a car or whatever – those things are just the side effect of the growth in you as a person. The new version of you is the one that achieves those things with more ease.
All the stress we feel when something doesn’t go our way is caused by the fact that we fight the reality of whatever it is that just happened. We want it to have nothappened. We want it erased and reset. We want immediate reality to be different.
But that’s not going to happen.
In fact it couldn’t have happened any other way, because it didn’t. And now it’s in the past and can’t un-happen.
This is where personal growth comes into its own – how quickly you bounce back when you get hit by something like your Meta accounts being hacked after you’ve spent thousands of pounds on agencies and video editing and team members’ pay and photo shoots and years and years building it up and attracting thousands of followers.
I have no idea what’s happened, who hacked into it, how they did that, what they did on my account that caused it to be ‘not follow community standards’ that resulted in ‘No one can see or find your account and you can’t use it. All your information will be permanently deleted. You cannot request another review of this decision’.
However much I argue in my head with the reality of what faces me when I try to log in to my instagram – it isn’t going to change anything.
Things like this could cause all kinds of emotions: anger, despair, sadness – the list goes on.
And yes, I cried.
But that’s ok too.
Because when you’ve spent longer on personal growth than you have on building up your Meta account, it doesn’t keep you down for long. Within a few hours of trying to unravel and find a way to contact Meta (in vain so far), you’re back up, focused, happy, trusting ‘That’s Good’ – that for some reason that you can’t yet see, this will turn out to be a good thing. I’ll start a new account, adapt my messaging, start learning it myself instead of outsourcing it.
Whatever it is.
This isn’t about suppressing the frustration, putting your head in the sand and living life like ‘Polyanna’.
No.
Let the tears and the frustration flow – let it all out.
Then let it go.
My ability to do this is not because I’m ‘naturally’ more positive than the next person – I’m able to do this because I have trained my mind for years.
I’ve trained it to the point that it’s habitual style is now – feel the emotion of what’s happened, let it out, then bounce back, adapt, change perspective, see the positive, back to what I want, back to where I’m going, back to gratitude and feeling blessed by everything I’ve created in my life thus far.
I know some subscribers here used to know me over 15 or so years ago, back in my corporate days and will probably remember how things would ‘get’ to me. Back then I found it easy to have a great attitude when things were going well, but found it much harder to maintain a positive and happy attitude when things went wrong. On the contrary to being a ‘naturally’ positive person, I was actually a ‘habitually’ unhappy person.
I barely recognise her now.
Because it’s easy to be positive when everything is going right – everyonecan have a good attitude when things are going well.
The work we do in personal growth isn’t just about the phenomenal businesses we build and the extraordinary results we achieve – it’s about attitude.
Attitude therefore is one of the magic ingredients that causes all your successes.
Attitude is the culmination and alignment of your thoughts, feelings and actions. So when you train your mind to have a default state of being positive, expectant, things-always-ultimately-work-out-for-me attitude, life is just easier to navigate.
Like I always say – my brand effortless isn’t about everything being an easy walk in the park, it’s about life becoming less effort, less stressful, less struggle.
So check in with your attitude and ask yourself – do I maintain a happy expectant attitude when things are notgoing my way? Or do I wallow and feel that ‘woe is me’?
If this hits a nerve, I would recommend that you seriously consider doing the inner work necessary to build your attitude towards life in general, with all its ups and downs. Build a bulletproof attitude, harvest the best, forget the rest.
It takes practice, but it is possible.
And that good attitude is probably what will cause Meta to review their decision and reactivate my account.
And if not?
Well – I don’t know why yet, but I choose to believe ‘That’s good!’
Positively,
Guinevere