Keep Going, Keep Growing
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time,” - Thomas Edison. Usually, I’m a person that doesn’t give up, and keeps trying until I figure it out. That’s not to say, I don’t have problems or want to pull the hair out of my head. Recently, I had a couple weeks of trying, failing, then getting back up and trying again. I’m confident many can relate and I wanted to share my story.
I had a business call a few weeks back and my take-away to-do list was long. It involved items I’d have to tackle myself, even though it wasn’t an area of strength. I was in the process of hiring a VA (virtual assistant), but in the meantime things had to get done. Tech issues and lack of tech knowledge tend to trip me up. I regularly use Google and YouTube to find answers and solutions. I was definitely feeling like I was on the struggle bus.
I had to rely on whatever skills I could muster to knock some things off my list. For days I had been wrangling one thing or another, and two friends called that happened to be traveling together. They could hear the frustration in my voice, and one of them, Karen, was good with tech offered to help. She told me to send her a message the following week. Even though I’ve always had trouble asking for help, I was desperate and knew I’d reach out. However, while she was out of town I needed to make progress. Until I couldn’t get any further.
I was so excited when the day arrived. She had several hours to assist. As we began going through the project, we kept running into problems and realized the “work arounds” we found, no longer worked on the free version of a program I was using. It was either pay for the monthly service or rebuild on another platform, UGH. Instead of going with another preferred platform, I upgraded since the work was already created.
Once we converted to the paid version, things started to go more smoothly, even though we ran into several little problems we’d have to fix. I said several times, “We’re finally done, for the day,” only to discover there was another error that needed repair. Hour after hour this went on until Karen had to leave, but we were elated that it looked like it finally worked! Or so we thought.
Fast forward to the next day and I had been testing things out and realized something was awry. I reached out to Karen for her thoughts. She mentioned that since I had the paid version I had access to support. HOLY MOLY, why didn’t I think of that?
As I searched for help, it wasn’t clear where to find it and I kept getting the virtual assistant feature which couldn’t help with the situation. I kept clicking around and somehow found the correct area. Of course, no one tells you that support is all through a chat feature. There isn’t anyone I could talk to live. Tech #1 helped me with my first issue. Once I was clear I made the appropriate steps only to find another issue.
I had to click around again to find where to ask for help. SERIOUSLY, they make things difficult to locate, and embarrassingly enough, I couldn’t remember how I found it earlier. I’d always end up at the same area for the virtual assistant and not the real person.
All of a sudden, everything was in Spanish. WTH? Then I noticed it stated, “Hola Sheryl!” FOR THE LOVE OF! I couldn’t even ask for help because it was in Spanish. My knowledge of the language consisted of approximately 10 numbers and maybe 10 words. For the next hour I tried everything I could think of to get back to English. Nothing worked. Then, by the grace of God, I discovered what I had done. I was back on the virtual assistant screen and noticed a drop-down box with language options. I must have inadvertently selected Spanish. I was able to change it back to English … Alleluia!
On to Tech #2 as they were able to help me with the next issue I was trying to solve. Once that was corrected, guess what? I found another issue. On to tech #3, which took so long to solve since there were several steps along the process. I finally asked if they could test it on their end as the other techs had done and this one said no, they were having difficulties and weren’t able to test. NO WORDS! Tech #4 was able to test and asked me about a default code I had and he gave me four letters GDPR. WHAT IS THAT? Apparently it is only used for European countries and the default setting. Once I figured that out, all things seemed to be in order; for now at least. I was elated but exhausted.
I shared this story to be a reminder when we keep going, we keep growing. Although the work was complicated and confusing in the moment, once I made it to the other side, magically the irritation and frustration vanished. I was proud at all I accomplished by not giving up. “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently,” Henry Ford. I encourage you to keep moving forward.
xoxox…..Sheryl
PS … I’ve got some additional tech issues I need to solve, I’m going back in. Wish me luck!
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