How To Reset Your Mindset When The #$@!%. Hits The Fan

So you have your day planned or your week planned, whether it’s for work or recreation the evening, or what you’re doing for the weekend. And then boom, the crap hits the fan and you have an emergency that happens and it changes your whole day or your week. Well, that happened to me last night and today, and I’m going to discuss how it helped me reset my mindset.

As humans, when things go wrong and your day doesn’t go how you think it’s going to go and you have an emergency.

There’s a tendency for us to catastrophize and for us to focus on the problem and all the things that could go wrong.

So let me tell you about what happened to me last night and today that helped me focus on my mindset.

So my son, who is 17 years old, bought his first used car with his own money. I’m so proud him; I couldn’t be more proud of him.

So we pick it up last night and we’re excited because it’s his first used car, so it’s an older car. So we went to pick up the car and we drove it home about 30 minutes from where we had picked it up. And then when we got home after dark, we also took it for a ride around town.

And then we were going to do it one more time. So as my son pulled out of the driveway to take a second ride around town, We see a big puddle in the driveway, of what, I am not sure.  I touch it. I think it’s oil but could be transmission fluid. Not sure.  Did I say it’s the first night; the first two hours with his new used car.

And of course we think the worst; that we must’ve cracked the engine block or It could be the transmission. We’re not sure.

So I text my brother-in-law who helped us find the car.  He is amazing with cars and Tom, this is a shout out to you. We could not have gotten through this without you.

So we checked with him and he says, okay, let’s look at it in the morning.  Now in the morning; This morning, I had my plan for my day.

I have my day scheduled out on how I focus on my physical therapy patients, how I also focus on my motivational content as well. And I also plan out my videos for this week, and the different content that I’m going to train my clients on. So my schedule all went out the window. And I had to change and canceled the first part of my day.

And my brother-in-law, Tom, came over and we figured out what was going on with the car.

Now there’s a tendency for us, as humans, to catastrophize about what the possibilities could be and what the problem could be. And believe me, we were upset.

It’s easy to get angry when something like this happens and it’s easy to get upset. So as we go through and the expert mechanic and I’m his assistant, we find out that it’s not quite as bad as we thought, but there’s a significant leak in one of the hoses.   While we proceeded to find out what we needed to do, went to the auto parts store and picked up all the auto parts and proceeded to work on it for the next four hours to correct the problem.

And we were able to do it. And this was all while my son was at school and we were able to fix the car without bringing it to mechanics. And now the car is back to where it was before and drivable and working well.

That’s when I sat back down at my desk and I got back into the video content that I was working on for this week’s video.  I was having trouble deciding on what I was going to talk about. And then I realized I had the answer in just what I went through in the last day and a half.

You see many of us have things like this happen when we have our day planned or our week planned, or we don’t have a plan. And we’re overwhelmed with all the things that we have to do, and we’re not focused particularly on anything I’m reacting to the world around us.

And then all of a sudden, boom, an emergency hits and our plans go out the window and we have to react to the emergency. And so again, what I said before is when there’s an emergency or something that happens, we have a tendency as human beings to catastrophize. We have a tendency to focus on the problem and all of the things that can go wrong.

Now it’s easy to get angry and mad, and it’s normal. And I think it’s okay to get angry and upset, but what’s not okay is to stay angry and mad. So after you get mad and angry, which is understandable in an emergency situation, then it’s time to take a deep breath, possibly step away, possibly count to 10, and do what you need to do.

Then you need to recognize the challenge that’s in front of you.

Then you reframe your thoughts to focus on the solutions to the challenge that is at hand. And this is going to help you reset your mindset So you can focus intently on the solutions to the challenge that’s coming in front of you.

Otherwise, if you focus solely on the problem, what happens, is focusing on the problems and catastrophizing about all the things that could happen, it blinds you to the solutions that may be right in front of you.

And when you focus on the solutions to the challenge at hand, it allows you to see what’s important and what to focus on for me today, it was focusing on doing what I needed to do to get the job done; to fix the car so that we could get my son back on track with his car. That was important to me. 

And then I can reset and get myself back on track with anything that I missed or what I need to do further from there.

So when these challenges come, cause guess what, inevitably, we all have emergencies. We all have times when,  “the crap” hits the fan. We all have times when everything that we have planned goes out the window. 

But rather than, catastrophizing, this is when we have to say, okay, what do I need to focus on?  What do I need to get done to solve this challenge? And by taking that deep breath and saying, okay, let’s work the problem.  let’s work the challenge. So that allows you to reframe your thoughts, to focus on the solutions to the challenge. And once you do that, it reset your mindset.

And then you will start to see the solutions and work the challenges. And no matter what happens, you will see the next solution to the challenge or the next solution to the next challenge.

So whether it’s a family emergency, work emergency, a relationship emergency, I want you to focus on what’s important. So after you’re done getting angry or getting upset, that’s when you need to reset, take a deep breath and focus on what’s important, focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want.  Be aware and recognize the challenge that’s in front of you. 

Reframe your thoughts to focus on solutions to the challenge that’s at hand and reset your mindset. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes in getting through that emergency, and that will help you get the job done.

And if you can’t get the job done yourself, then you figure out who can help you get the job done.

And in my situation, it was Tom, my awesome brother-in-law who was the ACE mechanic with cars and allowed me to be the good mechanics assistant and help him out. And we got the job done for my son’s car.

Be Positive, Be Motivated, Be Focused and Be Well,

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