Thursday, May 12, 2016

Lessons I learned While My Computer Was at the Spa (Again)

Photo by Rick Hustead





On Tuesday night, the cursor on my laptop froze. No matter what I tried, the little arrow wouldn’t budge and just blinked at me in the center of the desktop screen. I methodically pressed every Function key in every combination I could think of, but nothing worked. After about an hour of frustrated brainstorming and restarting the machine countless times, I finally gave up. Based on a similar experience nearly two years ago, I deduced that the laptop was probably infected with a virus. Obviously, I needed professional help solving this problem. Since it was already well past midnight and I couldn’t do any more work, anyway, I took my frustrating situation as a sign that it was time to just go to bed. I had already written, but not yet posted, my blog for that day: Who Do You Trust? Obviously, it would have to wait. I just hoped my readers would forgive and my not posting a new essay that night.

The following morning, I took my computer to the nearest Staples® store for their computer experts to diagnose and treat (de-bug) whatever had infected my laptop. I was still sure that was the problem and even went so far as to tell the technician what I believed he needed to do. Seven hours later, all we knew was that the cursor was still frozen but my machine did not have a virus. To my mind, the situation was going from bad to worse.

Just as I was about to take the computer home, the head technician returned from an off-site appointment and offered to see if he could figure out what was going on. He also tried various key-combinations to unlock the cursor. No luck. Then he plugged a computer mouse into the USB port and, voila! The cursor moved easily over the computer. I thanked the technician for the diagnosis, purchased a computer mouse and went home. I could finally get my work done.

Later that evening I thought about the surprising lessons I learned during that day. The first was probably patience. Since I completed my hypnotherapy training and became a certified hypnotherapist in 2005, I have become much better at being patient and accepting that sometimes I need to step back and wait for a situation work itself out on its own. The second lesson was to recognize and accept that when I don’t know how to resolve a conflict or solve a problem, the best course of action is to allow the expert in that field take over. I am no expert in recognizing let alone resolving a computer problem—even one that looks “just like” a conflict I have experienced before. I know to always refer a client for examination by a licensed medical or mental-health expert if the person’s behavior or goals falls outside my scope of expertise as a hypnotherapist. This situation was another example of when to recognize when I should step back and let the experts do what they know how to do.

Although I hadn’t needed to use an external computer mouse in many years—the laptops I have owned only required a fingertip to navigate the cursor around the screen—it was easy to get back into this action. Obviously, all those years of working on a desktop computer and external computer mouse created strong subconscious knowns. Less than a day after purchasing the computer mouse, I can’t believe that I haven’t used one all along. 

The final lesson I learned was that sometimes I need to take a break and relax; if I don’t make the time to do nothing for a little while, the Universe will intervene on my behalf. I had been spending a lot of time and late nights working on various projects to promote my hypnotherapy practice and to complete formal handwriting analyses for various clients. It did feel good when the only thing I could do that night was kick back on the sofa, work on a word-search puzzle and watch some episodes of various television series still stored on my DVR. As Dr. John Kappas would have advised, even when a plan doesn’t work out as expected you can always turn the negative situation around to create a positive outcome and learn from that.

I definitely learned a lot on Tuesday and Wednesday.


Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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