Blogging Nightmare From Hell … With The Way Out!

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Blogging Nightmare From Hell … With The Way Out!

There are times I’m sure when every blogger asks themselves why they take the time to write their blogs. Maintaining an active blog takes time, a lot of time, and effort. It’s not all about the research needed to write the post, or even working out the SEO, it’s also involves marketing, using social media and commenting on as many blogs possible. A lot of time and effort goes into blogging. It’s not as though most of us are actually making any money, let alone covering our costs or the time we’re putting into it.

What I’m about to write about happens to everyone, including us bloggers. You work hard, spend an age at your computer, filled with fervour, enthusiastic to continue each day. Then something happens.

There are days when blogging goes from being a fun activity to just a total nightmare from hell. Yep, it was one of those days for me yesterday. We all have these days in our lives and our work, where things just seem to go wrong. Things go from bad to worse, and then some.

“Every moment of your life that is not a complete nightmare is happiness”. ~ Merrill Markoe

Back in April I wrote an article titled Me and My Blog – It Must Be Love. In this article I discussed the problems I faced when my blog’s database was deleted. Well today’s nightmare which really is just the culmination of a problem I’ve been dealing with for the last 7 days made all that effort seem rather simple. This week’s nightmare really took me to the edge of the cliff, with regards to blogging. My blog was attacked by a virus. Twice in the week it crawled out of its hiding place, and attacked viciously. Thank god for my readers, and my friends. Both times they let me know almost instantaneously what was happening. So when it happened yesterday, I said ‘No more.’ I’m sure many of you have suffered with re occurring problems, and have got to the point where you’ve said, “right, I’m tackling this head on, I won’t take it anymore”.

I’d been having a great day. I’d been busy working on the gym floor, and in between personal training sessions sneaking back to my office to sit at the computer answering emails, writing articles, creating my new website, chatting in a facebook bloggers group and blogging.

Then I received the message, is your blog meant to have a bunch of letters going from side to side, in about 5 lines right across the top. Within 2 minutes I realized the virus had come back and was invading my front page.

I was angry and pissed off, frustrated and furious. Worse still I was really worried, I knew this could damage my blog beyond repair. I also had Articles to write. These required calm, collected thinking. Articles that require my technical expertise. Articles that required concentration. Articles I just couldn’t get in the mood to write, let alone edit and publish. My blog was in trouble …. Panic.

This obviously caused a hell of a problem to sort it out once and for all. A six hour stint to be precise. At least I wasn’t alone. I was straight on the phone to Neil, my SEO and now fellow blogging partner.

I will allow him to blog about the technical details of this whole episode. The happy conclusion is that Neil, my savior, rescued everything and totally removed the virus. So my blog is now healthy again, and totally protected from any future attacks. He upgraded my blog, WordPress Version, Theme, and Plugins so now that my readers and blog are safe again from harm.

It was strange after my initial reaction, everyone around just saw how calm I was. They know I love my blog and treat it like a baby. They know how important it is to me. Yet they couldn’t understand how I calmed myself down so quickly, and was so positive right the way through.

It is always like that with me. Within a short time, my anger dissipates and I’m back to my normal calm, relaxed self. Mind you, duck down before this when I have my 5 minutes explosion of fury. The life coach takes over and I wash away my troubles, regain focus and search for answers.

“Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.” ~ Byron Katie Quotes

How do I clear my head and keep calm when trouble hits? TodayI decided to let you in on the secret of how I stay calm through a crisis.

It’s remarkable how rapidly a person’s mood can go from positive to negative. You can wake one morning extremely positive happy with the perfect plan for your day ahead, but as soon as something doesn’t go the way you expect, you find your outlook radically changes. That is what happened yesterday.

This change of mood is inevitable right – after all, something did go wrong. It’s natural for anyone to react to a dire event in a negative way, right? Not so. By reacting like this you don’t create new possibilities instead you re-enforce your old disempowering habits which doesn’t benefit you in any way, it just creates more problems.

It is far better to respond rather than react. By responding to an event means you take some time to think about the situation and then make an intelligent decision about what to do next.

In this instance today fixing a major computer security threat is not my strong side, so reasoned thinking made me decide to call Neil to ask for help whom I totally trust and had every faith that he would put it right. After all he wouldn’t want to deal with my wrath if he didn’t. Well he did, and today everything is running smoothly, in fact it’s better than it was before.

So just know that there is no negative without positive and it is so much more beneficial to focus on the positive rather than the negative side of experience, no matter how hard this may be.

I do have a secret weapon though. It is the one thing that I truly believe gives me my inner strength and physical power when things do get tough. It is called centreing. It’s an awesome technique and well worth you reading on, I promise.

‘To be “on edge,” you are literally not centered – not being in your spiritual center’. ~ Carrie Latet

Modern life struggles challenge our center everyday. Losing our center can create an inability to manage stress successfully.

This technique will enable you to tap into the power that’s inside of you. I refer to this as “the center”. This power within you can dramatically change anything in your life – literally in a moment. All you have to do is start to use it. Centering is a method of getting your body and mind into peak state and therefore generating peak performance in everything you do.

We all have the ability to get ourselves into peak state. It is the time when we perform at our very best. When we are in this peak state, in the zone, we feel brilliant; everything we do feels effortless; everything is perfect! Centering allows your mind and body to work together to let you get into the groove, to perform at peak state..

When you are centered you will experience:

  • An inner clarity
  • A feeling of being in the moment and focused on the present
  • A sense of serenity with no anxiety
  • No sense of effort – it just happened

The way you use your physiology – the way you breathe and hold your body, your posture, your facial expressions, the nature and quality of your movements – actually determines what state you’re in. The state you’re in then will determine the range and quality of the behaviours you’re able to produce.

When a stressful event arises in your life use centering to put your state of mind into a positive setting. By focusing on your body and getting it centered, creates the strength within you to deal with almost anything. It feels like you could run through a wall.

When you can live at center, or can turn it on when needed, you will generate a new impetus in your life, the ability to take immense, unswerving, and intelligent action to create the results you truly desire in your life.

Most people take very little conscious action to direct their states. They wake up depressed or they wake up energized. Good breaks lift them up, bad ones bring them down.

This method gives you a way to alter your state of mind by changing your body and its movement. When you get your whole body to say: ‘I’m at my best!’ by getting it strong and powerful, you feel as you do when everything seems to be working for you, the feeling that you can do no wrong. It is in this state that you can change and achieve excellence. It is surely the way you want to feel always, in a peak physical and mental state.

The Centreing Technique Method:

Choose a quiet place where you will have a minimum amount of disturbance.

  • Stand up straight positioning your feet about shoulder width apart, with your arms hanging lose by your side keeping your back straight and upright.
  • Shake down your body from your shoulders down to your toes. Your body should be comfortable and relaxed.
  • Partially close your eyes, leaving them only slightly open to allow enough light in to keep your brain alert in order to avoid sleep mode to set in.
  • Turn your entire attention and focus to your breathing. Allow yourself to breathe naturally. Don’t try to adjust your breathing. Don’t consciously try to make any changes. Just let yourself breath. Keep observing your breath.
  • Notice your breath coming in and out of your body. Does it come in your mouth and out your nose? Notice your chest and tummy rising as you breathe. Just sit still and pay attention to your breathing. If your thoughts turn away from your breath, simply bring them back.
  • Now breathe in deeply through your nose, deep down within you from your abdomen, notice your stomach expand. Concentrate on the movement of your breath. Follow it from entering your body through your nose, its path through your body, then its exit out through your mouth. Do this for one minute.
  • Pay attention to your body now. Notice any tension you feel in your body, your head, face, neck, chest, shoulders, legs, arms, back. Now return your awareness back to your breathing, continue following its path, and now envision that each breath is magically dissolving any tension or knotted places within your body. Every breath you exhale, imagine all that tightness you revealed being expelled from your body. Do this for two minutes.
  • Return your attention to the movement of your breath. Simply focus on your breathing and note its spontaneous nature, how it takes place naturally and unconsciousley. Inhale naturally through your nose; exhale through your mouth. Keep following its path throughout your body. . Notice how each breath in expands your tummy out and each breath out makes your tummy recede Now start to notice where the breath path stops. This point at which you feel your breath stops, where it has reached the end of its path, is your point of centre (normally just between your chest and below your neck). Do this for one minute.
  • Now go back to just giving your centred attention to your breathing. Maintain your attention on your point of Centre. No need to do anything else—just pay attention to your breath. Let your breathing be natural, deep, quiet, and regular. Do this for one minute.
  • Now breathe in deeply through your nose, deep down within you from your abdomen, notice your stomach expand. Breathe out through your mouth, while putting your tongue between your teeth so that the tip of your tongue is touching the tips of your top teeth, then making a hissing sound, while squeezing your abdominal muscles tightly, and contracting your buttock muscles. Repeat this for 2 minutes.
  • Stop using the abdomen to breathe and start to breathe in slowly using your chest and the expansion of your rib cage. This is Thoracic breathing achieved by the movement of the rib cage as a whole. Thoracic breathing uses the middle lobes of your lungs through the expansion and contraction of the rib cage. Feel your ribs moving outward and upward, while they draw air into your lungs. Push your chest out as much as you can.
  • Breathe in slowly and deeply through your chest. Do not use the diaphragm. Breathe out by relaxing your chest muscles, and feel your rib cage contracting, forcing the air out of your lungs. Continue thoracic breathing for one minute.
  • Breathe powerfully in through your nose. Feel the air moving up from your waist filling your lungs reaching and ending at a point just between your chest and below your neck, your point of Centre.
  • Straighten your head. Lift your shoulders. Make your body powerful. Charge yourself. Feel the strength rippling through it, so much so that you could walk through a wall. Think of a time when you excelled, when you were at your very best.
  • Bring your fingers of both hands into your palms, and just exert a little pressure, squeeze your clenched hands, by your side.
  • Return to inhaling deeply from your abdomen and continue to breathe calmly and deeply maintaining your focus on your body.
  • Bring your body upright, become more aligned, feet flat on the floor, your upper body upright; imagine you are being suspended from a thick cord attached to the top of your head, pulling you up. See in your mind’s eye that gravity is flowing through you, where you are weightless, yet grounded.
  • With eyes closed, gently rock from side to side, from one foot to the other. Use this pendulum motion to help find just the right point of balance for your body. Allow the head to rock until it finds a balance, too. Gradually slow the motion until the body is still, feeling the balance of the head on top of your spine. Concentrate on the pelvis acting as an anchor for the body, with the legs grounding the body to the earth, and the spine resting on top of the pelvis. Feel the spine in alignment, and the head resting on top of the spine. Focus on the shoulder blades and feel them like a crossbar, balanced off the spine. There is no need to hold the shoulders; they are balanced from the spine, and the arms fall in relaxation from the shoulders. How does it feel to find your Centre this way?
  • After a few minutes, you can consciously allow your breathing to slow down and deepen, and become more quiet and more regular. To support this, you can use an image of an ocean gently flowing onto a sandy beach (inhalation) and gently receding back to itself (exhalation). Let the breath, like an ocean, take its time, and notice the easy, slow transition between exhaling and inhaling.
  • Now concentrate on your body. Feel how strong and powerful it feels. You feel fully charged, totally energised, and ready for a fantastic day ahead.

So, at about 10.30pm last night we threw open the doors to my blog once again and laughed about the fact we could now both go off and blog about it.

One thing I did learn was we need to be conscious of the dangers that are associated with blogging to enable us to protect ourselves against them and not unsuspectingly walk into traps.

If you love what you blog about, if the subject truly stimulates your brain and is your passion then no matter what problems are thrown at you and your blog just keep going.

You really don’t have to be a reactive to anything that happens to you. Most people react to negative events in the same ways and therefore create more problems in their lives. Choose to respond to negative events in more constructive ways.

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About the author: Larry Lewis
My name is Larry Lewis, Health & Wellness Life Coach, Founder of Healthy Lifestyles Living, contributor to the Huffington Post, recently featured in the Sunday Mail Newspaper and somebody who went from being an owner of a chain of gyms and fitness fanatic, to a visually impaired overweight and incredibly sick person. Read about my illness to wellness story.
10 Comments
  1. baldychaz says:

    I have to centre myself after drinking large amounts of alcohol mate 😉 Would your friend like to fix my blog?

    • LarryLewis says:

      Baldy – centreing alas can do nothing for you when under the influence! It could get you to say, no, i think i’ll have a glass of water. Tell me the problem, i can always ask

  2. Hi Larry –

    People’s inability to mitigate stress in their lives, suffer in all areas of life. They tend to have relationship struggles, elevated health issues, and make poor judgment when the situation really counts for a good call. You touched a key word in your post. So many people employ this word in their daily living and it doesn’t work well for us. We all know about it too. You call it “react”!

    There is a night-and-day difference between reacting and acting, or acting upon. Not all reactions are negative. We react when we touch a hot stove and pull our fingers quickly away from the heat. This is a positive reaction. BUT, why didn’t a person act (think), considering that the stove is a heating unit…is it on or is it off? That process is acting. Thinking is an active intuitive engagement of the mind, processing the facts presented before us.

    Touching the stove without thought is actually a reaction in regards to touching it. It is a perception that we give little thought too. The hand feeling the hotness is a secondary reaction to the stimuli rocketed through our neural system (nerve endings, nerve canal, spinal cord, brain, and back down again instantly, screaming to our muscles “pull away now”!

    Have you ever seen poor business managers whom react to situations, rather than act upon them accordingly? It’s a mess, buddy. LOL, a mess! Thank you for a great post. 🙂

    • LarryLewis says:

      Charlie – i’m pondering my response, and calculating my reaction … those 10 seconds of contemplation make an amazing difference to the way you handle everything. As you point out, eliminate thought, and you remove all our in built processing methods

  3. Alejandro says:

    It doesn’t matter how focused or prepared a person is or feels they are because at the end of the day we are all human and have flaws in regards to centering our emotions. Sometimes it is good to vent. Release it from your system. As long as it is not hurtful to others. Or just grab a wine.

    A

  4. SJ says:

    Oh Larry Larry Larry, hangs head in shame. If you wanted one of Lady’s E’s STD’s you only had to ask you didn’t need to go create your own one deadly version – are you trying to be a super villian?

    On a serious note, I’m glad you got it sorted and it’s kind of refreshing to know that the man of cool, calm and collect gets affected from time to time too, you know we love you and now I know you’re not a robot it makes it all the better. (Sorry serious only lasts 2.4 seconds)

    • LarryLewis says:

      Sarah it was a temporary moment of insanity. The robot blew a fuse, but everythings back in working order now. I’ve paid the penalty for losing my calm exterior by making myself do press ups. Have no fear metal man is back, but carrying a rubber thingy in my pocket to protect myself from your deadly virus.

  5. Darren Rhodes says:

    Larry,

    I fully appreciate your centreing technique, and my life experiences have shaped my mind to automatically default to this setting.

    I may be turning into a cynic, optimist whatever, but the sooner I clear the ‘red mist’ for me the quicker I recover.

    Darren

    • LarryLewis says:

      Darren, i bet you have to stay centred when you try so hard to speak to me, and i’m never available. See i’m just making sure you hone your skills. I feel so guilty i’m going to text you right now

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