Last week, my phone started acting wonky. It was freezing up, I couldn’t access my contacts, texts weren’t going through, and I couldn’t make or receive calls. I tried everything. Hard restart. Turn it off. Turn it back on. Push every button and hope for a miracle. Nothing. I was stressed out and losing my marbles.
I finally got an appointment at the Genius Bar, where the very calm Genius told the not-so-calm me that my software was corrupted. The only solution was a complete factory reset. I couldn’t simply transfer everything back over because the glitch could come right back with it. So, we reset it and… POOF. My contacts were gone.
Years and years of contacts. Gone. I tried everything I could think of to get them back. I searched, Googled, logged into different accounts and tried every possible solution. Nothing. And I was completely worked up about it.
On my drive home, I had a little conversation with myself. Could I control what had happened? No. Was it incredibly inconvenient? Absolutely. Was getting stressed, angry and frustrated going to bring back one single contact? Nope.
We spend an incredible amount of energy stressing about things we have absolutely no control over. Technology breaks. Flights get cancelled. Deals fall apart. People disappoint us. Someone says something we don’t like. Plans change. Life throws things at us that we did not order.
Some things we can fix. Some things we can influence. And some things we simply have to accept and move forward.
I’m still rebuilding my contacts one text and phone call at a time, and maybe that’s the lesson. When something is outside of our control, we still get to choose what happens next. Stress about what you can change. Take action where you can make a difference. And when you truly cannot control something, give yourself permission to let it go.
Because losing my contacts was bad enough. Losing my mind over them wasn’t going to help.
And speaking of things I CAN control… I can rebuild my contacts! So, if you have my cell number in your phone, please text me your contact information. Otherwise, every time my phone rings it’s basically a game of Wheel of Fortune: Who the heck is calling me? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it spam? 😂