How Do YOU Rise Again After Crash & Burn?

Our intent in creating this was to normalize the process we all go through in this walk we are on as solopreneurs. (That’s an entrepreneur who is working alone.) As solopreneurs, we have some pretty unique experiences. There’s the delicious joy of experiences gone right, and then there’s the exasperating frustration when they don’t … and there’s the feeling of overwhelm that occurs frequently.

So, we set the date, created the page of information on the BTR site, and then began to announce it on Twitter and Facebook. Only we didn’t practice. You see, BTR will only allow you to schedule one thing per day, and by the time we realized this, well, we were at the day of the show.

Uh-oh.

Mande’s intuition was warning her. In my usual optimistic way, I said “Look, even if we mess up, it’s our first time, and we’ll learn, right? It’ll be fine. We’ll do great.” Of course, I was thinking she was worrying about us not having enough to say or nobody showing up, or something like that.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to use the switch board (or that there even was one!) and that I wouldn’t be able to even get Mande on the call! Yep. That’s what happened. We spent half the time trying to figure out how to both be on the call. Live. With listeners. Actual listeners.

We laughed about it later, but oooohhh, boy, did I ever feel foolish when the laughter was over.

Crash and burn.

So, how do we recover from crash and burn? How do we rise like a phoenix after humiliation, hurt, frustration, and all those other “lovely” experiences?

Well, here was my process:

1) Share your pain: I immediately called my husband and my mother – the two people who love me most in the world, and wanted to share with them. Unfortunately, they weren’t available when I needed them. I then called a friend. That helped, a little.

2) Do something you love to do: I next saw that my ducks were all waiting for me to come feed them and that the bird feeder was empty, so I went outside to feed them all. (We live on a lake and the ducks – and the turtles – have become dear little friends of mine.)

3) Get quiet and listen: After feeding the ducks, turtles and birds, I sat at the edge of the lake for about an hour. Just being. I felt the earth beneath me, the breeze around me, saw the life in the lake around me, and heard the quacking of the ducks, and the call of the Blue Jay telling his friends that food was there. I absorbed the energy of Mother Earth, and allowed my disappointment and frustration to flow out of me as I received the message that all is well.

4) Tap: When I realized that what I needed someone to say to me was that everything was fine, and that I’d do better next time, that this is a learning process and I’m learning – and that I wasn’t hearing it from anyone outside of me – I knew I had to say it to myself.

So, as I tapped, I told myself these kind things (all true, by the way), and I began to integrate their truth into my being. This is a really important step, because we often will not hear what we need to hear from others. Once we become aware of what it is we need to hear, we must give it to ourselves (and most of us have never learned how to do this).

5) Take care of yourself: When my husband came home, I told him, “I don’t want to do anything tonight. I just want to relax and watch TV.” Later, I took a bath with candles and soft music, listened to my Unlimited Wealth CD, and went to sleep early.

6) Turn lemons into lemonade: By writing this article, I am turning my lessons into an opportunity to share, to grow, and to help others.

We all have experiences of crash and burn. It’s what we do with those experiences – how we handle them – that matters.

Which of these steps do you use? Which work for you? Do you have others that I didn’t include here? What are they? Care to share?

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” The Dalai Lama