How to bounce back
The other day, I got robbed, and my laptop was stolen. Naturally, I thought I’d make a blog about it.
What do you do when you get knocked back by misfortune? When the deal you have been working on for months falls through. When you get unceremoniously laid off. When your space is violated, and things are taken from you. When priceless data, months, years of work is gone in an unfair instant.
How do you react?
First you react by being a bit numb. I mean that is the first thing you feel. The shock that this thing has just happened. The realization of what was taken and just how inconvenient it all is, the time, money and effort it would take to recover and get back to some semblance of normalcy.
Then you get pissed, for a few minutes, and on a lower simmering level, for the next couple of days.
But you also remember what stoicism teaches (it is practically second nature now) — not to really give a shit or take anything too serious.
Most people would ask ‘ why me?’ You remember to ask ‘ why not me? ‘. It has been a relatively good year, all things being equal. You were probably due for something like this to happen.
At least you are safe, at least you are not hurt. At least you are not in an ambulance screaming down to the hospital with bleeding out of bullet wounds.
So that’s what you do, focus on the good and try to put things in perspective.
You can’t change what happened, you can’t rewind time and do things differently. All you can do is move forward. By focusing on what you can control, by honing down on what needs to be done.
So you call the cops of course, report the incident, then you send a flurry of messages, letting close friends and family know what happened, letting clients know that work will be somewhat delayed.
Hours later, after all of the excitement, you finally get some sleep.
Over the next few days you wallow. Lightly. There isn’t much you can do but wait. Wait for expected funds to come in, and try to make a plan. A plan to replace what was lost, and a plan to get back to work. Apart from that, nothing much to do, but drink and game. At least they did not take the PS4.
How do you reframe it?
48 hours later it starts to hit you. The gift, the good in this situation. And it comes wrapped in anger, in annoyance, in irritation. Oh they think they could take my shit. I’ll just replace everything bigger and better.
Perhaps that is what I could do, use this experience as fuel. I had been a bit relaxed as of late. I could use this to kick my ass back into high gear. The desire to to do and gain more as a personal fuck you to the person who did this to me.
So that is what it would be, at least for now. Fuel to get me back into action.
How do you act?
Diagnose the problem. What went wrong and why did this happen?
The gate was unlocked because it had been malfunctioning and a pain to lock. My data is lost because I wasn’t as diligent with backing up as I should. I almost never lose things and I keep things very well. I had gotten relaxed, lulled into the false sense that nothing would happen. Until the worst thing happened in the most surreal way.
There’s an idea I learned from Tai Lopez years ago about extreme preparedness. He said if you got beaten up as a 30 year old, it was your fault. You should have been learning self defense since you were 3. And if you couldn’t do it then for whatever reason, today is as good a day to start.
If you know something can happen and you are not prepared for that eventuality and it does happen, it is your fault. Always be prepared.
That was the biggest lesson for me out of this ordeal, to be prepared, overly prepared, to never let my guard down.
This means a replaced and better gate. This means a replaced laptop with up to the minute backups going straight to the cloud. This means a revamping of my workflow to not be too dependent on any one machine at one time.
How do you bounce back?
There is the story of Thomas Edison reacting to his factory burning down in 1914. A massive explosion turned half of his plant into balls of fire, ten buildings alight in chemical flames. Despite the efforts of between six to eight fire departments, there was nothing they could do.
Edison calmly walked to his son Charles Edison, and told him, “Go get your mother and all her friends. They’ll never see a fire like this again”. When his son objected, Edison replied, “It’s all right. We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish.”
He went home that night after the chaos had subsided and the very next day was back to rebuilding. The fire had claimed just under a million dollars of priceless records, inventions and prototypes.
But after just three weeks, Edison got part of the plant up and running again. Working double shifts and setting record breaking productivity, Edison and his team went on to make almost $10 million in revenue the next year.
That’s how you do it, that’s how you bounce back. By reacting rationally, by feeling the sting and letting it go, by responding to the situation, by hitting back harder than ever, becoming more resilient, more efficient, allowing the loss to burn away the impurities and make you stronger for it.
That’s how you bounce back.
That’s how you win.
Originally published at https://otoabasibassey.com on October 12, 2020.
I am an brand strategist, designer writer and entrepreneur using my skills to help people and businesses live up to their potential.
If there was an overarching theme to what I do, it would be “The art of being + the act of creating + the space in-between“. I am interested in how we live, how we create and how the two interact and inform each other
My obsession with personal development and constant growth sparked in my early teens remains unabated and now I share what I learn as I build a life by design.
