Part of my major life plan includes selling off pieces of my existing website business. I recently connected with a fantastic company and sold them the web hosting side of my business. The deal went through beautifully, without a single hitch.

Quickly, Panic Turns to Blame

A couple of days later I went to post a new article on my More Positive Outcomes blog, and I got an error message, one I have never seen before. Being a web developer, this concerned me greatly. How was I going to fix it? What caused it? Now that I sold my hosting business, who do I contact?

In the space of about five minutes a lot of fear-based thoughts sprinted through my head. Instead of taking the time to assess the situation, immediately my mind turned to panic and blame. What had these new guys done to cause this? Regret over selling my business seeped in along with other very negative, scary thoughts which made my stomach ache.

Don’t Let Fear Drive Your Thoughts and Actions

More Positive Outcomes is my baby and my future, so I was terrified when the site crashed. I needed to quickly post my blog article and social media.

Thankfully, I became conscious of all this negativity and my potentially damaging thoughts, and realized I was spinning out of control. I am grateful that I was able to pause and ask for God/The Universe’s help in keeping calm, and addressing the issue without doing something hasty which might make things worse.

I contacted the hosting company myself and asked a couple of questions. Within a few minutes, they determined what the issue was. I had run out of disk space on my account due to a large backup sitting on the server. Hmmm….as soon as I heard that I realized, it was all my fault.

My Bad

In my rush to blame someone else, I didn’t consider that I might have caused the problem. A few days before the sale of my business, I backed up every site on the server and left the backups instead of deleting them.

Upon realizing what I had done, I cringed. If I filled up my account with a backup, then I may have done the same to some client accounts. So I quickly got busy removing those large backups, so no one else’s website crashed.

When my account filled up, it also deleted a couple of files required for my site to run. Once I restored those from backup, my site came back up perfectly, and the crisis was averted.

Put Yourself In Their Shoes

The things I found interesting about this experience were twofold. First, when I first realized the site was down, it dawned on me that “this is how my clients feel when their sites go down.” It helped to put things into perspective from their angle, rather than my own (which was generally frustration of having to deal with angry clients).

While on their side of the fence, I felt helpless, out of control and scared. It was very beneficial to feel how they feel so now I can be more understanding and patient. Even if they don’t react well, at least I will know where it is coming from and not take it personally.

Next, I am grateful to have caught myself in the process of blaming before I lashed out (the way my clients often do) without good cause and all the facts. It would have been very embarrassing to have blamed this new company who did nothing at all, when in fact, my actions caused the issue.

Think Before You Act

I am so glad that this experience alerted me to the fact that I had left all these backup files out there. These files could have potentially crashed other client websites had I not cleaned them up. As it turns out this was a gift and not the disaster I initially perceived it to be.

It is so easy for us to get caught up in fear, and to act without thinking. Instead, if we take a step back when we are scared or helpless, and resist the urge to attack or blame someone else, we just might find not only are we at fault, but there is a quick and easy solution too.

My new motto is: stop, breathe and think, before jumping to conclusions and it might save you some embarrassment and someone else the sting of your blame.