Would you share your bed with a giant cockroach?

As you know, I recently returned from a trip to Indonesia and Asia. Three weeks, multiple conferences and many, many client meetings. It was a fab trip. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few hiccups along the way.

Now, when you travel as much as I do, you get used to the varying standards in accommodation. Gone are my days of holing up in a hostel or motel. These days I like to travel with a little more comfort. I’m not talking 5-star luxury, but good, clean comfort. Most of the time, this works out just fine. But every now and then it goes a little awry.

Take our stay in Bali as an example. During the conference in Bali, Connor had a little problem and had to change rooms. By little problem, I mean the bathroom flooded. A lot. It was very wet. But we weren’t the only ones. I heard a fair few stories of people asking to change rooms. The reasons ranged from “really” to very much understandable. One lady wanted a new room because she found a cockroach in her bedroom. The cockroach was removed, but the lady wanted a “clean” room. Hilarious! Cockroaches are just a part of life in warmer climates.

Another couple had to swap rooms after the ceiling fell down! Luckily the lady was able to get out to her balcony and avoid injury. She had to call her husband, who was busy doing his 121s, to ask him to come rescue her as she was trapped!

That wasn’t all. It wasn’t just cockroaches, floods and collapsed ceilings – the gym caught fire too! Thankfully it was contained and no one was injured. But overall it was far from the seamless experience you can come to expect from a good hotel chain – I won’t mention names but it’s a world-famous, well-respected brand.

Now, we could have got our knickers in a twist. Demanded refunds. Complained about how the trip was “ruined” – But that’s not my style. In life (and travel) things are going to go wrong. Shit is going to go down. Cockroaches are going to find you and bathrooms are going to flood. We can’t control that. But we can control how we react to it. We can get in a tiz and stress out, or we can go with the flow, chill out and just enjoy the ride – however bumpy it might be.

It’s the same in business too. Sometimes things will be smooth sailing. Sometimes there will be storms to navigate. We can’t control that, but we can control our mindset 

So how do you handle adversity?

What do you do when things go wrong? I’d love to hear your feedback?