How to Stay Calm When Everything Goes Wrong

Here's how I stopped overreacting when life falls apart, and why learning to stay calm under stress isn't a personality trait you're either born with or not. 

I just spent three days trying to get home from Europe, and watching everyone melt down taught me a lot about how to stay calm when things go wrong. Flights got canceled, a plane got diverted, I caught food poisoning, and the whole time people were screaming at the staff.

I used to be one of these people yelling at everyone, and somewhere this changed.

If you know your reactions could be better, or you're walking on eggshells around someone who's always about to blow up, this one's for you.

Topics in this episode:

• How a brand new woman at the airport went from listening to the angry guy to sorting out her own flight 
• The metaphor I gave a client about what to do when it feels like it's raining shit on you 
• The $600 assessment that showed me my own victim energy and anger energy on paper in 2021 
• Why most people land in either victim energy or anger when things go wrong, and why anger feels like the better option 
• The one moment in three days of travel chaos that actually got me angry, and what set me off 
• Why you change how you feel by changing how you react, not the other way around 
• How to give your emotions enough room without wallowing in them 

Mentioned at the end: David Hawkins Map of Consciousness

Transcript

I just got back from three full days of trying to get home from Europe because things kept going wrong with our flights. And the whole time, I watched people lose their ever-loving minds. You know how some people just can’t handle things inconveniencing them and they start yelling at the service staff? Yeah, I saw plenty of that happening.
 
Now in the middle of all of this, the woman who was sitting next to me on the plane, her name is Mona, she kept remarking how calm I was. She said I was cool as a cucumber.
 
And this really made me laugh because if you’ve listened to my early episodes you already know that I used to be that toxic guy complaining to everybody and being really angry and screaming and cussing at people who didn’t deserve it. Somewhere I stopped being the asshole, but I didn’t really notice how much I changed until this trip happened.
 
So if you’re somebody who knows your reactions to difficult situations could be better, or if you know somebody where you feel like you’re walking on eggshells around them, because they’re about to blow up whenever things go wrong, then you’ll want to listen to this episode. I’ll talk about an assessment that helped me get a grip on this and construct a plan to make this a lot more tangible.
 
You’re listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I’m your host Jule Kim. Let’s dive in.
 
This past month I was in Europe because I was speaking at a conference in Croatia. And since my husband and I were already all the way over there, you know honestly it took us about 17 hours to get there, we figured we might as well visit Italy since it’s right across the water from Croatia.
 
We attended the conference, met some really good people, explored Italy, and then it was time to come home. We were supposed to arrive back home on Monday, but we got home on Wednesday.
 
Monday, our flight out from Italy got canceled, but after we already boarded. It was 352 of us sitting on the tarmac for over three hours. We then de-boarded, and spent another five hours in the airport just to get our hotel vouchers, for a place that was really more like a motel. But it gave us a place to sleep.

Tuesday, we fly out on a different route, this time to Frankfurt. I remember looking at my husband, saying, “this isn’t gonna happen again, right?” Well, our plane from Frankfurt to Houston gets diverted, because somebody on board isn’t feeling well, so we land in Boston instead. And we’re stuck there for over 2 hours and miss our connection to Seattle. So we end up in another hotel in Houston.
 
Wednesday, I wake up with food poisoning from the last meal they handed out on the plane on Tuesday night. It was this chicken pesto bread stick thing…yeah, thanks a lot, United. So Wednesday I should have had it easy for the final flight to Seattle, but instead I spend the day puking my guts out. I think I threw up like six or seven times. I couldn’t even keep any water down, but I still managed to get on the flight and make it all the way home courtesy of Pepto Bismol, Dramamine, and Imodium AD. Maybe I should get them to sponsor this episode.

Anyway, the newest cherry on top is now I’m sick, which you might be able to hear it in my voice, thanks to two other tourists in Italy who were also sick. 

So those 3 days have kinda been a shit show. And as you can guess, people were PISSED. There was a guy in line in front of me in Venice who was just ranting his feelings at everyone around him, until the people ahead of him turned around and told him to shut the hell up. He even tried to stop these attendants who came off another flight and one of the women legit said I’m sorry, and she just kept walking.

I also remember several people on the plane were screaming at the flight attendants, like literally cussing them out at the top of their lungs.
 
And I felt pretty bad for the attendants. Me, I just kept thinking, oh dear lord, please just let me get through this. I was a little annoyed at the hassle of going back through security over and over, and I’m not a fan of being trapped on a plane that long. But I never really got upset.
 
Well. That’s not totally true.
 
There WAS one moment that got me, about our seats. Because our tickets kept getting rebooked, and the system for some reason, kept throwing away the upgraded seats I had paid for and gave us the cheapest seats even though the upgraded seats were open and available. So I was on chat with a United customer service rep, her name is Norma on the chat. I told Norma I just wanted seats equivalent to the ones I already paid for. And Norma has the audacity to tell me this. I’m going to read it exactly. She said “the platform is for rebooking flights due to disruptions, and not making decisions to give what you feel is equivalent seating.”
 
And that wording is what got me. The “What I feel” part. I had this moment of rage, like this heifer - It’s not what I feel, it’s what I paid for. Give me what I paid for, or give me a refund. But I still didn’t cuss at her. Did I think she had no business being in customer service? Yeah. The way she kept telling me to submit feedback instead of addressing my requests about my situation right now, like she wasn’t even doing the bare minimum. So after she gives me this attitude, I finally realize, omg Norma isn’t going to give me what I need.
 
So I took myself out of that chat, and I called customer service on the phone. Instead of sitting there arguing with frickin Norma and marinating in this ridiculousness, I went through another channel and found someone that could actually help me. And this next guy did. He fixed our seats.
 
And this is really the whole episode. Because everything up until that point, the flight disruptions, the food poisoning, puking my guts up, I mostly felt detached. I definitely wanted to get home, but watching everyone else melt down, and then dealing with Norma being completely unhelpful, this reminded me of a metaphor I give my clients. 

And just a warning, like a lot of my metaphors, this one involves a bodily function. Don’t ask me why they all lean that way. I’m sorry. I guess I just like the visceral version of things.
 
A while back I was talking with one of my favorite clients, I’ll call her V. And V was telling me how her parents lash out at her whenever something goes wrong. And then she lashes back, or she gets really upset, and either way it’s just not good. Not for her, and not for the relationship.
 
So here’s the image I gave her. When something hard happens, some people feel like it’s raining shit on them. And their natural tendency is to bag some of that shit up and throw it at the people around them, because they’ve got this overwhelming urge to get it off themselves. And they figure scooping it up and throwing it at someone else will do that for them.
 
But then that bag lands on someone else, and now that person isn’t happy either. So they throw it back, or they go spreading it around to other people in their life. And the shit just keeps rolling forward.
 
So I asked V, what if you don’t have to do that? What if you don’t have to throw it back at then or at anybody? What if you just drop the bag and walk away? Or you take that shit and flush it down the toilet, and that’s it? 
 
V was for real shocked. Like honest-to-god surprised. She told me it had never crossed her mind. And I said, yeah, it usually doesn’t. Because when somebody offends us, or comes at us, we think we have to retaliate. Like someone hurts us, we have to hurt them back. But what if that’s just not true?
 
This is the same reasoning I give people when they ask how on earth I’m still on good terms with my parents, despite the abuse and everything they’ve done. I say, well when someone is less than their best self, you don’t have to retaliate or reciprocate. You can just walk away.
 
And note that I’m not telling you to be a doormat. I’m telling you to do whatever it takes to protect your mental peace. There are absolutely times to speak up, and we’ll get into those another day. But that’s a different conversation from what I’m talking about here.
 
What I’m talking about is the stuff that’s beyond your control. Like the cancelled flight. The diverted flight. Or bad weather, etc. When those things happen, what do you do?
 
For me, the most powerful thing I’ve learned is to put some distance between myself and whatever is happening. To understand that these things aren’t coming at me. They might feel like that rain cloud that follows me wherever I go, but it’s really not. 

And when it’s a person lashing out at you, that’s usually the same thing too, especially if they just came out of something stressful. They’re tossing out a proximity attack on you, because you’re the closest person near them, but it’s really just them trying to get the shit off themselves.
 
I’ve learned that how each of us reacts to unpleasant circumstances is really key in understanding ourselves. And this is where a tool I use with my clients comes in. It’s an assessment. If you want to take it, reach out to me and I’ll set it up. Unfortunately it’s not free, because I have to pay for it every time I run it, which makes it pricey at $600.
 
But this is why I love it. This assessment gives you two charts that show you how you react on a good day and how you react on a bad day when things aren’t going your way. It measures the time you spend in the energy or attitudes you tend to sit in. And I know that sounds extremely woo, but bear with me.
 
The part I really like is the second chart that shows you your energy when things are going wrong or when you’re stressed. And almost every single person I’ve ever run it for, when things get hard, we land in some version of victim energy, or anger and frustration energy. 

Take my ex, for example. The second things went wrong, he was always saying, “oh great, when it rains it pours,” or “FML,” like fuck my life. He always had a real woe-is-me attitude like Eeyore. I couldn’t stand it. But back then I didn’t understand that this is actually pretty common. A lot of people fall into victim energy when things get stressful.
 
And then you’ve got the other very common group. These people go to anger. So that’s the person you see at the airport yelling at everyone when a flight gets delayed or baggage claim breaks down. Many people grab on to anger because anger feels better than being a victim. Because with anger, you don’t feel so helpless.
 
The first time I took this assessment myself was back in 2021. And there was something about seeing it on paper, like these huge graph bars showing my own victim energy and my anger energy, it was a real wake-up call. I didn’t like what I saw about myself, so that’s when I started really working on how I react to things.
 
Now this is the part many people get backwards. We think we can’t change how we react until we feel a certain way first, but it’s the other way around. You change how you feel by changing how you react. That means the words you choose in the moment. The actions you take. The way you describe what’s happening to you.
 
So that’s what I meant earlier by putting distance between yourself and the situation. When something lands on me now, I literally picture it. “Okay, a bag of poop just landed on me. I definitely don’t like the stink, I don’t  like how this feels.”

I choose to drop it where it is and walk away. As long as my safety, or my self-respect isn’t on the line, that’s all I need about 95% of the time.
 
So let’s go back to the airport. By the time Mona told me I was cool as a cucumber, I had already rebooked the flight for me and my husband, and I was helping her rebook hers. Meanwhile the angry guy ahead of us was actually next to her and was telling her none of it will work, that they’re all out to screw her. I just ignored him. I wasn’t going to waste my time arguing. I told Mona, here’s how I rebooked mine, it’s up to you.
 
And it’s interesting because at first, she listened to the angry guy. But honestly I think she was just overwhelmed. She told me this had never happened to her before, and you know how it is in a brand new situation, you usually don’t know what to do. 

But later she found me again, and she had gone back and used the customer service chat I showed her, so she got her whole situation sorted. And she thanked me. She could have been like the angry guy, but she chose to do something about her flight.
 
Now, I want to be clear here: I’m not saying skip over your emotions. It’s a balance. You want to give the emotion enough room, and you also want to give yourself permission to move on and do something productive about it, instead of wallowing in it until you feel worse. 

There’s no real formula for how long that takes, it just depends on who you are. I might need 15 minutes, or an hour. My friend Chris needs two minutes. My parents need days. It just depends on the person.
 
But at the end of the day, for me, these things really just aren’t worth getting angry over. Anger takes energy, and as I get older with my health conditions, I don’t have a ton of extra energy just lying around. I guess it’s kind of like having a budget.

So if I’m going to get angry, it’s going to be over something that actually means something, like a principle. Like standing up for myself, or defending someone I love. I’m not gonna bitch at the poor airport staff who had nothing to do with the plane maintenance problem. 
 
I made a conscious decision that I’m the driver of my life, and I’m responsible for how I conduct myself. There are still going to be times I react in ways that aren’t great. That’s true for all of us. All I can do is learn, and try to make better choices the next time something similar comes around.
 
And side note here, when I see those people losing it, there’s a part of my heart that goes out to them. Because I remember being that person. When it comes to our emotions, a lot of us were just never potty trained right. 

So when something lands on someone like that, they spew it everywhere. I have compassion for that. But that doesn’t mean I have to let their crap land on me. And it doesn’t make it my job to fix. Unless they hire me to coach them.
 
But really, it was watching my parents, and how they’ve lived their lives, that pushed me to choose differently. I don’t want to live with all these negative narratives about life and other people. We get a finite amount of time on Earth. I believe we should spend as much of that time as possible being happy, living in our purpose, helping inspire and motivate other people, and ourselves. Because what else is life even for?

Alright, that’s it for this week.

If you want to take that assessment, or you’ve got questions about any of this, message me on LinkedIn. Or if you want to read up on some of these energy frequencies, Google David Hawkins Map of Consciousness. My assessment lines up pretty close to it.
 
As always, thank you so much for listening. And remember, I believe in you. See you next time.