Business owners have feelings just like everyone around them. We are expected to lead the business and not let our emotions affect us. This is fairly easy a lot of the time… Then there are those ‘special times’!
I had a couple of those ‘special times’ this week.
Independent of problems with my Blackberry, I also lost my main email service on Monday. On Wednesday, the problem was fixed but I was told some emails sent to me were lost before I had a chance to read them.
Then the system went down again.
At this point I could have lost it – but I didn’t.
Beyond your control
Let’s look at the situation: The actual event was out of my control which is separate from the feeling I was experiencing as a result of the event – in this case a feeling of frustration.
If you try and suppress the feeling it creates stress.
The process to let go
1) Recognize the feeling exists and allow it to be present – feel the feeling – however painful
2) Then let it go
This is what I have learned and practiced to do when I have an emotional response to a situation beyond my control. The process is called the Sedona Method. Hours and hours of learning and practice can be simplified into those two lines.
The result of removing the feelings allows you to deal with the situation so much better. The resolution to the situation is always better too. Having a better resolution makes sense because you have eliminated the responses to what might have been less than ideal emotionally charged actions on your part.
Soon after I released the feeling of frustration and continued on without email, I got a call from John, one of my IT guys, who told me everything is fixed and all my lost emails have been found and sent!
The moral of this post is that feelings are separate from the actual events. Letting go of the feeling doesn’t have any effect on the event – It only helps you deal with the event in a reasonable, rational, civilized, and business-like way. When you do this, the resolution is always better.
