Recently I had an experience where my flight got cancelled on route to a destination vacation. There was no notification or any way we were contacted about the event. When things turn for the worse, it’s hard to hold your composure and solve the problem - but that’s what you need to do.

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Today I wanted to go into when plans change for the worse (which happens so often), how to keep your cool and do what matters - solve the problem.

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First off, losing your cool over something you can’t control isn’t helping you. What needs to happen in a situation like this? You must figure out what you can do and do your best to solve the issue.

Circumstances will change for most people every day. Things will be out of your control, and you may not be able to do much about it.
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So, let’s get into the story where our flight got cancelled, but we still made it work. We had planned a tropical vacation to St. Lucia island in the Caribbean.

About five hours before the first flight (of two), I checked my phone to ensure it ran on time. I saw online our flight status - FLIGHT CANCELLED.

This came as a huge shock. Was this correct information? How were we not notified of any changes or cancellations to the flight? I was filled with doubt that we would be able to go.

What’s the first takeaway of changing circumstances?

Remain calm when plans change, events shift, and the uncontrollable occur.

We then figured out what we needed to do to get to our target destination to sort out a new flight path. Side note: flying to St. Lucia from Canada is tricky, especially from Vancouver. There were only two flights out each weekend (one of which we were on).

We didn’t have many options to get there, and if we missed the flight to the island, we probably weren’t going on our trip.

What’s the second takeaway of changing circumstances?

Ask yourself what you can do to make it work?

After finding out about the cancelled flight, we needed to figure out what we could control. We called the flight company to figure out what had happened and what they could do about it.

After an hour on the phone with no help from them, we decided to take matters further into our own hands. We tried to get another flight from them, but it was already late in the day, and they couldn’t provide any more options.

What’s the third takeaway of changing circumstances?

Don’t give up; keep hopeful and try again.

After getting off the phone, we asked ourselves - what else can we do to make this work? And the answer to that was to go to the airport right away and see how else we could fly out as soon as possible to catch the second flight in time.

We drove to the airport and talked to the flight company about options. They couldn’t make it work for us. The next flight was full. We would have missed our vacation if we didn’t get out right away.

What’s the fourth takeaway of changing circumstances?

When it doesn’t work again, keep trying until you exhaust all your resources.

Again, we took matters into our own hands and asked ourselves how we could solve this situation?

We then decided to go to another flight agency and try and book a flight out immediately. Guess what? It worked. We paid what we had to leave immediately. Was it cheap? No. Was it on time? No. Was it what we expected to go through that night? Absolutely not.

But the point I want to get across is we made it work. Even though the chips were stacked against us, we persisted until we solved the problem. Cool, calm, and collectively.

What’s the entire takeaway of this post? When things don’t go as planned, try and take a step back. Take a deep breath. Access the situation and figure out what you CAN do.

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Try not to get emotional and upset about the circumstances. Could our result be different? We could have done everything in the same order and not been able to catch any flights.

But, I want to make it clear that we used our heads. We thought about the situation. We had one goal - to solve the problem. Whether the flight company was going to do it or not didn’t matter to us. We had to make it work and do everything to do it.

Thanks so much for reading another one of my blogs! I have some exciting stuff coming down the line soon. An entire new website is being created as we speak, and a new brand launch is coming - Chris Wilson. Stay tuned for more content, tips, and insight into how to improve your life. All the best.

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Chris M Wilson

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