by Sarah Knight
WHAT’S IDEAL?
Every shitstorm harbors a range of realistic outcomes, and what makes any one of them an ideal outcome depends on the preferences of the person afflicted.
For example, if you just discovered your fiancée’s very active online dating profile a month before your wedding, there are plenty of realistic outcomes. You may be ready to call the whole thing off, or you may decide to kiss and make up (and personally delete her Tinder account). You’ll take stock of the situation by confronting her (or not), believing her (or not), and deciding whether you’re through with her (or not), and then proceed to solve for X.
Or for “your ex,” as the case may be. Whatever is ideal, for YOU.
HOW DO I FIGURE IT OUT?
The key to determining your RIO is to be honest with yourself. Honest about what’s possible and what you want, honest about what you’re capable of doing to get there, and honest about what’s out of your control.
Think of it like buying a pair of shoes. When you try them on, no matter how much you like them, if they don’t fit, they don’t fit. Do not go to the cash register. Do not drop $200 on a pair of sweet-but-uncomfortable kicks. You cannot will your size 10s to shrink overnight, and if the shoes pinch your feet now, imagine how your poor toes are going to feel after you walk around in them all day tomorrow. You’ll be blistered and bleeding, relegating your expensive mistakes to the bottom of your IKEA MACKAPÄR cupboard as soon as you hobble in the door.
Dealing with it becomes exponentially more difficult if you’re chasing improbable outcomes and handicapping yourself with subpar tools.
Be realistic. Be honest with yourself. And be ready to walk away. Comfortably.
Triage
Prioritizing is at the core of all the advice I give—for determining what you give a fuck about, for getting your shit together, and for calming the fuck down.
Dealing with it is more of the same. Triage is just a fancy word for prioritizing. I like to mix it up every once in a while and create a sense of DRAMA for my readers.
You’ve probably heard them talk about triaging on Grey’s Anatomy. And like an emergency room only has so many beds to go around and its staff so many hands with which to compress chests, dispense morphine, and change bedpans—you only have so many resources to devote to your personal emergencies. You need to learn to do mental triage so you’ll be prepared to deal when a total shitstorm blows through the swinging doors of your mental ER with little or no warning.
I gave you a taste with the Case of the Stolen Backpack, but let’s look at a few different shitstorms in action, and practice prioritizing in terms of “dealing with it.”
• On your way to your best friend’s surprise thirtieth-birthday party in Boston, your flight gets canceled.
TAKE STOCK
What time is it now, what time do the festivities begin, and are there any other flights (or perhaps trains, buses, or nonthreatening guys named Ben who are headed in that direction) that could get you there?
RIO
Depending on the answers to the above, you may still realistically be able to land in time for dinner, or at least for after-hours club-hopping—and you may want to try. Or if booking a substitute flight means missing the party completely and showing up just as your pals are stumbling home from Whisky Saigon at 5:00 a.m. (and about five hours before they decide to bail on the planned postbirthday brunch), you may decide to cut your losses. It’s up to you, boo. What’s your ideal outcome?
TRIAGE
Your priorities should be set in service to your RIO. It’s a matter of time and money if you can find and afford another flight out, or energy and money if you decide that instead of making a personal appearance, you’ll be calling the club and putting the $ from your canceled ticket toward bottle service for your besties and a cab back to your own bed. Either way, the clock is ticking, which is why we prioritize—once more, with feeling—BASED ON URGENCY.
(Or you could decide your most realistic ideal outcome is to find another flight to Boston but pretend that you couldn’t, taking in a game at Fenway while your friends are busy regretting their life choices. Go Sox!)
• Grades are in. You’re failing.
TAKE STOCK
What does this mean? Are we talking one exam or an entire course? High school or traffic school? Did you lose your scholarship or just a little respect from your professor?
For the sake of this example, let’s say you have not yet failed an entire class in oh, how about Science A-35: Matter in the Universe, but as you approach the midterm, you’re well on your way.*
RIO
An ideal outcome would be that you improve both your study habits and your capacity for comprehending “science” and ace every assignment from here on out to bring your grade to the minimum passing level. Alas, that is not realistic. Your best bet is probably to cut your losses and drop the class before it drops you down a point on your GPA.
TRIAGE
Alright, Einstein, time is of the essence. University rules say that any grade achieved after the midterm stands on your permanent record, so you need to get that course-droppin’ paperwork submitted ASAP. Then consult the master class schedule and see where you can fit this bitch of a required science credit in next semester—and which easier, more palatable elective you’ll have to sacrifice in its place. Sorry, English 110FF: Medieval Fanfiction, I hardly knew ye.
Is it distressing to discover that you are failing at something at which you need to succeed in order to get a diploma, a driver’s license, or an A grade from the city health inspector? Yes, it is. Are there plenty of logical, rational ways to deal with it? Yes, there are.
• A big, bad storm blows through town.
TAKE STOCK
Walk around your home (and property, if you have it), assessing the scope of destruction.
RIO
Secure the place from further damage, repair whatever’s broken, and don’t go bankrupt while doing it.
TRIAGE
Here’s a secret top priority—take photos. You’re going to need them for your insurance claim, which means they can’t wait until you’ve already started fixing the place up. Then put a stop to any leaks and get rid of standing water and soaked rugs if you can. Mold is some vile shit and you don’t want it growing in your hall closet. Any busted doors and windows should be closed off to further rain and opportunistic thieves/raccoons. And if the power looks to be out for a while, empty the contents of your fridge into a cooler to save what food you can. After five hours of wet rug lugging, you’ll die for some leftover chicken pot pie.
That’s just off the top of my head—obviously there could be much more or much less or much different stuff to deal with in the aftermath of a shitstorm/actual storm of this variety. But no matter what, you can’t do it all FIRST. At least if you prioritize based on urgency, you’re going to get the right things done first.
For example, you may want to get a tarp over that hole in the roof before you start saving the pot plants you’ve been hobby-growing in the basement. Just a thought.
Get bent! (a bonus principle)
If Get Your Shit Together was about bending life to your will, this book helps you not get broken by it. How? By being flexible when the situation demands it.
When shit happens (e.g., sudden monsoon rains, absentee roof guys, early-a.m. spider wrangling), it puts a minor-to-major dent in your plans. And while maintaining a rigid stance in the face of unwelcome developments such as these is good for, say, culling surprise Trump supporters from your Facebook feed, it’s not terribly useful otherwise.
You gotta be flexible.
I’m not talking about touching your nose to your hamstring (although that is impressive and the logicats would surely approve). No, it’s not so much contorting like a cat as it is thinking like one.
As an example, when my Gladys discovers that the terrace is crowded with humans and therefore feels she cannot eat her dinner in peace and at the stroke of five as she is accustomed, sh
e saunters over to the side of the house and waits for clearance. Grabs a snack lizard to tide her over.
Gladys is no dummy. She’s not going to meow “Fuck this shit!” and foolishly strike out for parts unknown just because her schedule got thrown off a little bit. She knows there are other ways to get food (wait for it, hunt for it), and all she has to do is chill (or kill) if she wants to eat. A logicat after my own heart.
Like Gladys, you can’t afford to freak out (alienate or abandon your food source) and not accomplish your end goal (eating dinner) just because some shit happened (rude humans changed the rules).
You gotta be flexible. Regroup. Reimagine. Reattack.
Unfortunately, flexibility doesn’t come naturally to everyone—including me. I’m a literal thinker, which is great for writing and editing books but not so great for adapting when the landscape shifts. For most of my life, if you gave me rules, I would follow them. Rigid was good. I knew what I was dealing with.
But if you changed the rules? OH HELL NO. That was bound to trigger a freakout.
How do I move forward? Now I feel like I’m breaking the very rules I so carefully observed and internalized for so long. This doesn’t feel right. I can’t do this. I’m trapped!
And more specifically:
But-but-but YOU told me to do it one way and now you’re telling me to do it another and WHICH WAY IS IT, GARY?!? Clearly my resulting confusion and paralysis are ALL YOUR FAULT.
This doesn’t end well for anybody.
Here’s a lesson I learned rather too late in my corporate tenure (mea culpa old bosses, coworkers, and assistants), but have since been able to apply in my professional and personal relationships to great effect: it really doesn’t matter why this shit happened or who “changed the rules.”
All that matters is that it happened, they’ve changed, and you have to be flexible and deal with it. And THAT means being less concerned about Why? and more with Okay, now what?
Whose fault is it anyway?
Placing blame is a classic impediment to dealing with whatever shit has happened. So much time wasted. So much energy. Why don’t you take a unicycle ride across Appalachia while you’re at it? Determining once and for all who was at fault doesn’t fix your problem, and it won’t make you feel better about it, either. How much satisfaction are you really going to get from browbeating your coworker Sven into admitting that he was the one who left the laptop with the presentation slides in the back of the taxi you shared last night? It’s 7:00 a.m., your client is expecting a PowerPoint bonanza in two hours, and you and Sven both smell like the back room at Juicy Lucy’s. Put a pin in the blame game, hit the shower, and send Sven to the Staples in downtown Phoenix for some poster board and a pack of markers.
Remember: when options seem to be closing off all around you, the ability to be flexible opens up new ones. If you’re still bending, you’re not broken.*
Incoming!
Listen, I know you’re kinda busy reading an awesome book, but your mother, Gwen, just called from the airport. SURPRISE—she’ll be here in forty-five minutes, she’s staying for a week, and oh, can you order her an Uber-thingy? Thanks, doll.
Can you calm the fuck down? I hope so, because otherwise I’ve failed you and I will have to “get a real vocation,” as a helpful online reviewer recently suggested. (Thank you, Dorothy—your input is valued.) If you’re struggling, consult the flowchart here and meet me back here in five.
No need to panic—this is a solid Salvage Job. You’re not getting your afternoon back, but you do have the power to minimize the fallout from Hurricane Gwen. If your home is not exactly camera-ready and you don’t give a fuck what your mother thinks about this sort of thing, congrats! “Dealing with it” just got a whole lot easier. But if you do care what she thinks about this sort of thing, then you’ve got a wee window in which to tidy up and a lot of places you might start.
Take stock of them all, identify your RIO, and then it’s time for some triage.
If it were me, the RIO would be to give Gwen a good first impression and then keep her from inspecting anything too closely.
• I’d begin with the guest room/sofa bed. Make sure you have clean sheets or put them in the wash N-O-W so they’ll be fresh when it comes time for Gwen to rest her weary, immaculately coiffed head.
• Next, stow all of your stray shoes, sports equipment, broken umbrellas, and half-empty duffel bags from your last vacation that you haven’t unpacked yet in a closet or under your bed.
• Wipe down visible surfaces. Leave higher shelves and ledges alone—dragging the step stool all over the joint is just going to aggravate your bad back, and you really don’t need more aggravation right now. (Realistic + ideal = WINNING)
• Then take out the trash, light a few scented candles, and chill some Pinot Grigio if you have it. Gwen loves that shit, and after two glasses she won’t be able to tell the difference between dust bunnies and her grandkids.
Oh, and you may have to cancel or put off a couple of less urgent things you were planning to do this week in favor of tending to your surprise houseguest.
Good thing you’re so flexible.
It’s all in your head
The foregoing example may have been an exercise in physical decluttering—but where did it start? Why, IN YOUR MIND, of course. Recall that the NoWorries Method has its roots in mental decluttering.
Step 1: Calm the fuck down. DISCARD unproductive worries.
(Gwen’s already here; don’t waste freakout funds on stuff you can’t control.)
Step 2: Deal with it. ORGANIZE your response.
(Spend your FFs on stuff you can control. Like Febrezing the pullout couch. Maybe there just isn’t enough time to do those sheets.)
Lots of shit happens with no warning. Parental sneak attacks, birds pooping from above, or that crack in the sidewalk that caused you to faceplant on the cement and now you’re hunting for an emergency dental clinic in the middle of your Haunted Sites tour vacation in Charleston. Damn sidewalk ghosts. They’ll get you every time.
Which means that often you’ll need to be able to organize with little or no advance notice: taking stock, deciding on a realistic ideal outcome, triaging the elements, and, sometimes, getting your Gumby on.
And you’ll be doing all of this mentally before you attempt any of it physically.
(No rash moves, remember? That bobcat be hungry.)
In the case of Sudden-Onset Houseguest, you had virtually no time to solve a problem, you had already learned how to not waste it freaking out, and you were able to alter the course of your afternoon, not to mention the rest of your week, to accommodate your new reality.
• All of that was mental decluttering in action.
• All of it was accomplished after you put down the phone but before you ever picked up a dustcloth—by knowing your limits, focusing on what you could control vs. what you couldn’t, and prioritizing.
• All of it was the NoWorries Method helping you calm the fuck down and deal with it.
So tell me: are you ready to take it to the next level?
BECAUSE I AM.
Total shitstorms: a catalogue of terror
In my anonymous online survey, I asked “What’s the most recent shit that happened to you?”*
I’ve fashioned a bunch of those responses into a lightning round of total shitstorms spanning health, finances, family, work, relationships, and more. From bad hair days to broken bones, I’ll offer my quick-and-dirty take on each entry from a logical, rational point of view.
Now, to be clear—I don’t necessarily have personal experience in all of the following situations. (I would never be caught dead wearing a Fitbit, for one.) But if my methods are sound, that shouldn’t matter. I should be able to work the steps just like I’ve been asking you to throughout this whole book.
The idea behind Calm the Fuck Down is to apply universal truths to the whole universe of problems. Probability. Urgency. Control (or lack thereof). Learning to prioriti
ze. Crating your emotional puppies. Keeping your eye on the Flipside.
And anyway, quick-and-dirty advice aside, in the end none of this is really about me and what I would do. It’s about YOU, and changing your mind-set to change your life.
YOU take stock of what you see laid out before you.
YOU determine your own realistic ideal outcome.
YOU set your priorities and plans in motion.
I’m just the foulmouthed, commonsense lady who’s lighting the way. Let’s see what I got.
Relatively painless shit
This is the kind of stuff that puts a kink in or all-out ruins your day, but not so much your week, month, or life. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s at least mildly annoying. The good news is—there’s a lot of potential here for Full Fixes, or for high-level Salvage Jobs. Like I said, I’m easing you in slowly. Think of this section like a warm bath.
In fact, why not run yourself a temperate tub to enjoy while you read? If you don’t have a bathtub, a shot of tequila will produce roughly the same effect. Or so I’m told.
• The restaurant lost my reservation.
Take stock. Are they offering to seat you at the next available time, and is that time acceptable to you? If so, do you know how to pronounce the words “Might you spot us a round of gin and tonics while we wait?” Good, you’re all set. If it’s more of a “Sorry, we can’t accommodate you at all this evening,” then your time, energy, and money are better spent patronizing another establishment, not sticking around this one just to have a word with the manager. (Plus, remember what we talked about earlier—you don’t want to wind up an unwitting star in somebody’s viral “Customer Does Unspeakable Things with a Breadstick, Gets Banned for Life from Local Olive Garden” YouTube video.)
