What Happened When the Lights Went Out

Not everyone handles things the same way. Some people react well, others freak out, others still get angry, defensive, aggressive or just plain crazy. While it's easy to say that we're all different, and therefore react differently, not all responses are good ones.

How you react to a crisis is a reflection of who you are and how you choose to live your life.

A few weeks ago, the internet went down. Well, not the entire thing, but for me and thousands of other people, it sure felt that way.

One Friday morning, just minutes after this post went live, the servers over at Bluehost went down. I don't know the cause, but I do know how people reacted to the situation.

Bluehost is the website hosting company for thousands of blogs just like mine. I wrote about how and why I switched to them here. When their servers went offline, you could type in www.empoweringthe80percent.com and your browser would simply give you an error. No page, no image, and no text would load.

That Friday, when me and thousands of other bloggers and website owners couldn't access our content, I learned four things I thought were worth sharing with you.

1: Not everyone handles a crisis well.

Have you ever met someone that freaked out over the tiniest things? When the servers went down, Twitter was blowing up with people complaining, ranting, and acting like crazy people.

If you're ever in a crisis, the worst thing you can do is lose your head. Stay calm, and hope you've done the other things on this list.

2: Always be prepared.

I was in Boy Scouts. Cub Scouts actually; I dropped out to play soccer full-time when I was eleven or so. Even if you've never been a Scout, you probably know their motto: Always be prepared.

While life often throws curve-balls that we can't predict, we can still be prepared by keeping a level head and planning for multiple possibilities. Whether it's bringing along your trusty pocket-knife, or having an updated resume, we can be prepared for the unknown when it comes our way.

3: Always have a backup plan.

If you have all of your eggs in one basket, you're practically asking for something crazy to happen.

In the world of investing, they call it diversifying. In sports, they call it a play book. Whatever you find yourself doing, you need to have a backup plan. Sometimes the lights just go out.

My backup plan was to share my blog post for people to read on my Facebook page. If we're not friends on Facebook, will you go do that now? That link opens in a new window so you won't lose your place. I'll wait.

Whenever my website was inaccessible, I copied the post from Evernote, and pasted it into a status update and shared it. No site, no problem. I had a backup plan. Too bad it took me an hour to think of that…

4: Don't panic.

As I said in point #1, the worst thing you can do in a crisis is freak out and panic. Behaving that way serves no purpose. None. In fact, it may even do more harm than you were in in the first place.

Sometimes bad things happen, but we don't have to react badly. If you're looking for things to do when you don't know what to do, read this post. Unless your life is in danger, (and even then) you should do your best to think with a cool head.

Gather your thoughts, work your plan, and you'll get through it.

Question: How do you handle a crisis? What techniques have you developed to deal with stressful situations? Please share them with us in the comments below by clicking here!