Bad things happen. And earlier this year, they KEPT happening.

It was as if I jumped out of an airplane with two parachutes and both of them failed.

Yet, as I plummeted towards the ground I was calm. One friend even said, “I’m surprised how zen you are about this.”

Why? HOW?!

We all know sometimes bad things just happen. Maybe a deadline comes up and your computer crashes. Maybe your biggest client cancels his contract. Maybe you stubbed your toe ($%#$ MY TOE!)

In situations like this, we’re tempted to curse, fight, point fingers, and worse, completely lose it. We know its counterproductive but we can’t control ourselves.

And that’s why I’m going to share 3 things to remember when everything goes wrong plus the one technique I use to right the ship.

How to Deal With Situations Out Of Your Control

What To Do When Everything Goes WRONG

How do you deal with bad situations out of your control… without cursing?

I’ll tell you how.

Symbols. Symbols. And more symbols.

Seriously though, how do you handle situations out of your control the RIGHT way?

I’m Derek Halpern, the founder of Social Triggers. And in this video, I’m going to show you how you can tame the situation and take back control.

You ever have one of those weeks? Those weeks where EVERYTHING goes wrong? I had one. It was horrible.

I was an affiliate for a product I believed in. And for the first two days of my promotion, I had the WRONG affiliate link. This means that I wasn’t getting credit for sales I was making.

That’s what you call Bad Affiliate Marketing 101.

I fixed the link, sent out a new email, but it got WORSE

A few days later, my email service provider was under attack from hackers. This took down their site for the better part of the week.

That means, when I sent a new email out with the RIGHT link, all of the links WERE BROKEN.

Between the WRONG links, and then the BROKEN links, I probably lost enough money to cover 2 years salary for one of my employees in just a few days.

What a bad week.

So, what happened exactly? And how did I deal with it?

First, let’s focus on the WHAT.

The whole thing was out of my control.

The error with the affiliate link was the direct fault of my webhost. They even admitted their mistake.

And my email service provider getting hacked… Well, I blame the hackers. But I won’t blame them too loudly. I don’t want them hacking my Youtube channel.

But was it REALLY out of my control?

The answer is no. And I learned my lesson.

You see, my webhost has a history of making small annoying mistakes like this, but I always overlooked them.

I thought, “it’s not a big deal. No harm, no foul.”

But this time they made the same silly mistake, and it cost me a lot of money.

And while I’d love to BLAME them, deep down, in my gut, I knew they were capable of messing little things up. I should have put a process in place to prevent it.

The funny part is:

As soon as I thought about it like that, as soon as I shifted the blame from someone else on to myself, I went from feeling enraged to feeling empowered. Because the bottom line is that I should have known better, and next time, I WILL know better.

And that’s the FIRST tip to dealing with situations that are out of your control.

I call it the “Blame It All On Me” Technique

And it’s simple:

When you’re dealing with a problem that’s screwing you up, instead of pushing the blame elsewhere, use the benefit of hindsight to find a way to put the blame on yourself.

You’ll go from feeling helpless to feeling empowered.

But what if the situation REALLY IS out of your control?

When my email service provider got hacked, I can honestly say that was 100% out of my control.

I wasn’t hacking them. They weren’t hacking themselves.

But here’s the thing:

There’s something known as the Black Swan Event.

Have you heard of it?

If yes, bear with me for a sec. If no, it’s quite simple. It was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling author, and it’s, “an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict.”

My email service provider getting hacked was definitely a Black Swan Event in my business.

Maybe not the world, but definitely in my business.

Now, I could fret about this. Except, Taleb goes on to explain that events like these are inevitable. Something like this will ALWAYS happen. Trying to predict or prevent them is impossible.

So, what can you do when YOU are faced with a Black Swan Event in your business or life?

Two things:

#1. Take solace in knowing it’s a rare event and it probably won’t happen that often (or again).

That’s how I took it.

A friend of mine actually said, “you’re pretty calm about this.”

And I said, “yea, nothing I can do.”

And he went on, “that’s pretty zen of you.”

What’s funny is, I’m the least zen person I know. I’m high strung, a perfectionist, and always WIRED.

But, things happen, and we move on.

#2. Find your SPOF and eliminate it.

There’s something known as a Single Point of Failure.

In my business, my email service provider is my Single Point of Failure. If it goes down, I’m screwed.

So, what I do now is this:

I now keep my list in two locations. One with one company, and the same list with another company (one that allowed me to import it).

Now if something like this happens, I won’t email two times in the same week and send broken links twice.

If it happens once, I can switch to the other provider. No harm. No foul.

Just because I do this doesn’t mean you need to do this. You might have more pressing problems than this.

I’m doing it because my email list is literally EVERYTHING.

You need to find YOUR single point of failure for your business.

For example, you might find that most of your revenue comes from one single client or job. Maybe it’s time to find new clients or get a second stream of income.

So, to recap:

When you encounter a situation that’s out of your control…

First, find a way to blame yourself. It hurts at first, but it’s also empowering.

And second, if it really is out of your control, know that it’s a rare event. And take steps to prevent that SPOF in the future.

Now, let me ask you this:

Have you ever had to deal with a situation that was completely out of your control? How did you handle it? What steps did you take to prevent this type of situation from happening again?

Let me know in the comments. I’ll read every one.

Also, if you know someone who can benefit from this video, be sure to send them a link.

If you liked this video and want to get more videos just like this, make sure you subscribe to my channel and hop on the Social Triggers newsletter.

Until next time!