Dealing with life’s curveballs

Life throws curveballs at everyone. We sometimes have the tendency to drop a plan if the challenges become too great. In the army when a plan doesn’t go as expected then you “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome”. This is often preceded by the misuse of shooting practice expression of “Stop, Make Safe”. This term in its literal meaning is to fully unload and reload. I will use these as reference for how at least one of our plans/dreams (our move to the Bahamas) have gone through this process.

Stop

We wanted to move to Exuma as it would have been ideal for children. Obviously, the situation changed due to not being able to have children. This major curve ball caused the stop as that vision no longer existed.

Make Safe

Making Safe, well we didn’t sell the land because of the crash in 2008, making it worth considerably less than we paid for it. Selfishly we thought we’d leave the sale to people after we’d died. Not our problem. Instead we looked at other options.

Improvise

So, we reassessed our requirements. Getting older we would need access to medical facilities etc… During this time we spent quite a bit of time in Jerez de la Frontera, in Southern Spain. We liked it a lot. Indeed, if Nicci had gone there before she bought the house in France, we’d probably have bought there instead. Loving the food, the culture and climate of Andalusia this then became our end game.

Adapt

However, we relatively quickly realised we didn’t want Spain to the FINAL end game. We simply loved the Bahamas too much. As such we decided to make Spain  a temporary (for a few years) move until we could make it to the Bahamas.

Overcome

The situation on Exuma has changed because they now have a little hospital. We have worked out how to make the Bahamas work without children. We can back to Creating A New, Beautiful And Courageous Existence in a very beautiful part of the world. Although the dream has changed it is different from living in France and wanting to raising in this house. Because we’ve not actually lived in The Bahamas.

No more curveballs please

I have had a number of curveballs thrown at me over the years and had to stop, make safe, improvise, adapt and overcome.

I wish that life would stop throwing them, but life is a curveball so have a strategy to deal with them. Otherwise you are always a victim of life.

In the case of the Bahamas the question is are we now at plan B or is it just plan AA due to the Improvising, Adapting and Overcoming the curveballs thrown at us for that particular dream.

If you want some ideas about how to deal with life’s curveballs, I found this article by Jack Canfield, founder of “Chicken Soup for the Soul ®”. It does contain some harsh “tough love” suggestion which may not be appropriate to everyone: however, it is a starting point. You can read the article here.

Practice makes perfect

It’s all well and good writing about things in theory: however, we need to start applying what we learn. Have a look at the curveballs you have had and think about how you dealt with them. Did you just grin and bear it or do something different? Which had the better outcome?

To help you keep track of all your work for the daily activities mentioned we have created a monthly diary for you to record your progress. To download your copy of “My January Canbace Diary” please click here.

Be kind to yourself …

In CANBACE friendship!

If anything I have written resonates I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I appreciate that this can be a difficult subject to speak openly about. If you don’t want me to publish your comment on the website, please let me know. I will keep your words private.