How To Deal With the Unexpected

Life will always throw us curveballs, and every day we meet all kinds of surprises and unexpected events. Most of them are minor but some of them can be big - maybe even life changing. 

Even life’s smaller surprises can shake up our day and learning how to stay calm and not let the stress get the best of us can change our trajectory a great deal.

Below are 5 strategies that will help you stay calm and put your focus in the right place when the unexpected happens.

1. Remind yourself of what is most important 
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It easy to get frustrated or stressed when things in our life are thrown off course. By looking up and reminding ourselves of what matters most we can get a better perspective. This will allow us to calm down and stay connected to our purpose. 

In addition, we’ll be able to access better thinking and find a way forward - instead of getting stuck in frustration where we rarely will find our best solutions.

2. Reset

When the unexpected happens it is always good to reset. Accept that whatever the plan was - it is no longer. Don’t try to adjust it and think you can now get things done in half the time, instead - do a complete reset and start afresh. 

3. Make a new plan
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Before you make your new plan make sure you are clear on what is your one most important thing. When you have clarity on what this is, focus on making a plan where you get this one thing done! After that, you can look at what else needs to happen and give that the attention it deserves, no more no less. 

Do remember to prioritise what is important - the urgent and unimportant stuff should stay where it belongs - further down on your to-do list.

4. Let go of your standards 

Unexpected situations call for flexibility and creative solutions, with focus here on solutions. If you have something important that needs to get done and there is no one to look after your children - it is okay to use the tv as a babysitter. 

Another example is multitasking - something I normally encourage people to avoid as best they can - but when life goes off the ordinary we may need to let go our standards and simply do what we can. If that means you need to clear emails while the kids have their dinner, so be it. 

Your values or years of good parenting will not unravel just because you let go a bit. Instead, it’ll take heaps off your stress barometer och you can regain some sense of control.

If you like some help identifying your standards and strategies to figure out to ease some of them grab our free worksheet here.

5. Stay calm

When the unexpected happens we’re often left feeling angry, frustrated, disheartened or maybe anxious. The underlying feeling here is often stress or feeling out of control. 

The deeper we go into this state the less we can access the thinking part of our brain and hence we’ll be less able to come up with the best solution.

Therefore being able to stay calm in this moment is essential.

This does not have to be that difficult, as with most things all it takes is a bit of practice. There are three things you need to do. 

Firstly, generate awareness of how you typically react. Look back to a situation when something unexpected happened and take note of what happened, did you freeze? Go into overdrive? Felt angry or something else? Getting an understanding of how you react means you can make a plan to do things differently next time.

Secondly, write down how you would like to react. As basic as it sounds this is a key step where you help your brain to see ‘what can be’. When you are clear on how you would like to react you can then figure out what to do to get there.

Thirdly, identify a technique that will help you in the moment - and start practicing now. Don’t wait for the unexpected to happen, choose a strategy or technique that will help you stay calm and start doing it a few times a day. That means when the unexpected actually happens your brain already knows what to do and you can stay calm and focus on finding the right solution

Just to give you some ideas on techniques that can help you not get tangled up in stress...

• Breathing exercise, take two minutes to take deep breaths and give yourself the chance to access your best thinking again
  
• Counting backwards from 10, similar to above this will distract your thoughts from what is causing you stress and will allow you to reconnect with what is most important
  
• Remind yourself of what really matters in life. Before you do anything take a couple of minutes to think about the important stuff in life and also what is good. Connecting to your big picture will help you stay grounded and not rush in to panic.
  

There we go, five strategies to help you deal with the unexpected. Now in comments below, let us know which one you will try first.

Shine on!

Hanna x