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| 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/.
© 2016
