Last Tuesday, I had a situation that is probably most entrepreneur’s nightmare. Well, it could be anyone’s nightmare. The hard drive on my laptop, where I do all my work decided to stop working. I turned it on and nothing happened. It wouldn’t recognize the hard drive and was making a really funny noise.
Was I frustrated? Yes. Am I still frustrated? Well, yes, but less so today than a day ago. Was I upset? Only slightly (no, I’m not saying that sarcastically).
I say only slightly for two reasons: (1) most of my work files are backed up and (2) Nate, my husband, is quite handy with computers, so I figured he might be able to get it working or get the data off of it when he got home from work.
Well, the next day I posted this to my personal Facebook wall:
Bad news: the hard drive on my laptop crashed and does not seem to want to work again.
Good news: 95% of my work files were backed up (yay for dropbox)
Bad news: the 5% that weren’t backed up I use on a regular basis
Good news: with a bit of time I can create them again
Good news: I bought a new hard drive last night (didn’t need to buy a whole new laptop) and Nate stayed up late last night getting it all set up for me for today
Good news: Nate said to me last night “You know, you’re handling this really well, I don’t think you would have handled it this well two years ago.”
Nate was very correct with his statement about how I would have handled this situation two years ago. I probably would have reacted like it was the end of my world! Instead I stepped back and asked myself a couple of important questions: “What experience do I want to have with this situation?” and “What’s the next step here that will move me closer to my goals?”
Ok, honestly, I’m not sure I would have had thought to ask myself those questions even a year ago. And I kinda surprised myself (and Nate) with how I actually responded.
Did I mention that my files and notes for the teleclass last week were part of the 5% that I didn’t back up? I have some printed notes from a 30-minute presentation I did a couple a weeks ago, but all my original notes for the 60-minute teleclass are gone. I did seriously think about canceling it. However, one of my goals for June is to host a teleclass and it was just more convenient to do it last week as opposed to this week. So, why put it off?
Another important reason for the lack of freak out: I know what my goals and priorities are. It made it easy to look at what I wanted to accomplish this week and know what could be moved to next week.
Plus, what would I have gained by freaking out? Nothing but stress, and really, who needs that?
So, I have two (maybe three) questions for you:
- Have you recently backed up your business and important personal files?
- If something unexpected popped up that took several hours out of your week, how would you respond? How would you like to respond?