The ability to make the best of undesireable circumstances and setbacks – and find creative solutions - is an important skill to develop as an entrepreneur. The truth is, life, will occasionally knock you down. And when that happens, negative emotions, stewing over circumstances you cannot control, or getting angry at yourself, is simply a waste of your precious energy. I know this is easier said than done, because we have our habitual reactions and emotional triggers, and it’s hard to stop the crappy feelings from flaring up.

I made an epic blunder by allowing my visa to run out AND missing my flight to the Maldives by 5 minutes. I didn’t give myself enough time to clear customs, which was slow, plus I was even more slowed down by my having to pay the overstay fine. And then, I just had to get a cappuccino before getting on the plane. I’m so used to pushing the envelope with time, and getting through by the skin of my teeth.

Well, when I got to my gate, the agent said to me,

“You missed your flight.”

I stared at her dumbly.

“You missed your flight. It left 5 minutes ago.”

It started to sink in. The Aggressor Fleet live-aboard dive boat would leave Malé at 4pm that day without me, and since the boat was already provisioned, it was doubtful that at the 11th hour, they’d refund my $2,000 payment; I'd lost this round-trip flight ticket, which cost about $600; and my visa, including my extension, had expired, so I had to leave the country. I had been working a lot and was really looking forward to 1 week of unplugging completely, so the thought of flying back to Chiang Mai to continue working away, while completely wasting all that money, and time, made me feel like an epic fail.

However, being angry at oneself is completely unproductive. I allowed myself a couple of minutes of feeling crappy & stupid, and then let it go. I started to inquire about options, and expressed gratitude to the agent helping me. Thankfully, Aggressor Fleet has a 24 hour on-call agent to help with snafus like this. Fortunately, while I wasn’t allowed to legally leave the transit area, I could get on the same flight the next day for a $30 change ticket fee. And the dive boat was going to be diving the local area, so they could actually pick me up at the airport the same time the next day, for free.

I also had access to the airline wifi lounge, restaurants, a smoothie / juice bar, a spa, showers and, if I wanted to pay, a bed I could rent for 8 hours for $156 USD if I didn’t want to stretch out on 3 airport lounge seats, which, hooray, didn’t have arm rests! I could just deal with it rather comfortably, at airport prices, and crank out some work. So apart from the missed dives, my situation really wasn’t that bad.

Now when I look at this whole situation I created for myself, it’s small stuff not worth sweating about. But how do you become a master at not letting the big, complicated obstacles of life derail you?

Dr. Angelica Underwood is the founder of Match Entrepreneurs, a done-for-you business networking organization, where matchmakers connect entrepreneurs with expertise, with entrepreneurs who need help in that corresponding area.

She is also a transformational coach who helps people deal with trauma using NLP. NLP - Neurolinguistic Programming - is an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. NLP asserts that there is a correlation between neurological processes (“neuro”), language (“linguistic”), and behavioral patterns learned through life experience (“programming”) that can be modified in order to achieve specific goals in life. Simply put, NLP works with rewiring your belief patterns by changing the way you talk to and think about yourself.

In this empowering interview, Angelica will share with us;

The power of starting a radio show on Blog Talk Radio.

How language has a powerful impact over the way we experience the world.