How to Ground Yourself When Things Don't Go As Planned
Sometimes life doesn't go the way you planned. And sometimes the hardest part isn't the disappointment itself, it's what happens in your mind right after.
This week I learned that again firsthand.
I have been building toward an in-person workshop for months. It started because I wanted to be in community, to share this work with people in the same room, to be of service in a way that felt close and real. The online version came out of that. It was a way to open it up to everyone.
But collaborating with an outside organization meant that some things were out of my hands. And if you know me at all, you know that loss of control is one of my hardest things. It does not matter how much I teach this work. When something I have invested in starts to feel like it is slipping, the anxiety shows up fast. The what ifs. The over-checking. The trying to manage things that were never mine to manage.
Registration was slow at first and we talked about rescheduling. Then it picked up and I got excited. I spent Saturday with a good friend, filling myself up, feeling ready. And then that night an email came. Two women had cancelled. The coordinator felt it was better to postpone.
I felt it immediately. The disappointment. The frustration. And then the familiar story started up. You can't do this. This wouldn't have happened to someone else. You put all of this energy in and look what happened. That voice is old and it is fast and it knows exactly where to land.
But I caught it.
Not gracefully. Not prettily. But I caught it.
I let myself feel the disappointment without turning it into a verdict on who I am. I took a breath. I talked it through with Keith and a friend — out loud, honestly, without trying to perform being okay. And slowly I came back to what was actually true. This is out of my control. I did everything I could. This happened for a reason and when the in-person does happen, it will be better for it.
What grounding actually looks like
That is what grounding actually looks like. Not the absence of hard feelings. Not bouncing back quickly or reframing your way out of something real. It is feeling what is there, catching the story before it takes over, and finding your way back to what is actually true.
I know you know this feeling. The moment something does not go as planned and the spiral starts before you even realise it. The exhaustion of managing not just the situation but your own reaction to it. The wish that you could just feel disappointed without it becoming something bigger.
One thing to try when the spiral starts
Before you do anything else, just name what you are feeling out loud. Not to fix it. Not to reframe it. Just to hear yourself say it. That one small act of acknowledgment is often enough to stop the story from taking over.
That is grounding in its simplest form. Not a technique. Not a tool. Just honesty with yourself in the moment.
Want to go deeper?
If this resonated with you, I would love to have you join me for my upcoming workshop — Grounding in Self-Trust When Life Feels Uncertain. We are going to work through exactly this together: what happens in your nervous system when life feels out of control, and how to find your way back to yourself.
Online, March 14th at 10 AM EST. $37 CAD. Replay and resource guide included.
