Alexandra Levit recently posted this on her Water Cooler Wisdom blog under the title “Troubleshooting Airport Delays,” but I think they’re great suggestions for getting through many situations that are just plain out of your control – and those happen more than we sometimes like to admit. I think Americans like to feel that we’re a can-do, fix-it, whatever-it-takes, accept-no-obstacles people – but sometimes that’s just not the case, like it or not. An excerpt:
- Surrender to a higher power: …There isn’t anything you can do about this, so instead of railing against God or the system or whatever, tell yourself that the situation is what it is and look for ways to make the best of it.
- Ring all the people you owe phone calls: …Getting stuck is the perfect opportunity to scroll down your contact list and touch base with folks you haven’t connected with in a while. (I know for a fact my son uses this as one of his airport time-passers. In fact, he was doing that just this past weekend.)
- Forget about standby and go get a beer: If the weather is bad and all the flights are delayed, you can bet that everyone has the same idea to try to get on the first plane to leave the terminal...Leave the hand-wringing to the 100 people ahead of you on the list waiting for their names to be called.
- Give into a guilty pleasure: …Think about an activity you’d normally feel guilty about doing during work hours, and engage with abandon. (As long as it’s something suitable to do in public, that is!)
- Cut your losses and leave: …Unless you have a pressing reason to get home as fast as possible, it’s often easier and much less stressful to get a good night’s sleep (NOT in the gate area at the terminal!) in anticipation of clearer skies.
I would add my own personal favorite – make sure you have a book or two in your carry-on.
Flying these days has more and more in common with the endless waits we usually associate with jury duty. One of life’s little unhappy secrets is that no one is too important to have to wait once in a while. And sometimes, waiting’s really the best thing we can do. Take a few deep breaths, settle in, do what you can to make the situation easier – accepting that it might not be very much – and know that the airport delay, or the traffic jam, or whatever, isn’t going to last forever. Whether or not it’s a virtue, patience is a skill, and life hands out lots of opportunities to practice. (And I’m not saying I’m all that good at it myself, but I try.)
