7 Things You Must Do Now To Reduce Stress After An Everyday Disaster

Lets face it – every now and again you lose things, break things, get things stolen, or have computer problems. It’s incredibly stressful and it takes ages to recover from the nightmare that is a lost phone or broken not backed up laptop. So we’ve come up with 7 things you must do now, to reduce stress after a disaster.

Everyone’s done something silly at least once with a mobile device, a laptop, data or a wallet! It’s just part of modern life that everyone is rushing around and gets distracted – which means that you can end up leaving your phone in the taxi cab, drop your laptop, smashing the screen, or you rush out of the house with no wallet/purse and realise you have no petrol/gas a few miles down the road, and you’re running late.

So when it does happen (and it does happen), it will send your stress levels sky high. Running out of petrol means you have to wait for the recovery people (if you have them) and having your wallet stolen means you have to spend half a day calling and cancelling – and do you remember the cards that were in your wallet??

The knock on effects (as well as the guilt at being so careless) will also throw you off balance for a while afterwards while you sort out a solution. Oh, and there’s the money as well as the time lost…

So when I was listening to the podcast of Walter O’Brien (genius and the best in the world at disaster recovery – google him!) being interviewed by Tim Ferris (Four Hour Work Week- google him too) the other day, I stopped the car and wrote down what he suggested listeners to do to ensure that they reduce stress after an every day disaster. Being prepared for when things can and do happen means that instead of knocking you sideways with your stress levels soaring you can deal with the inconvenience, put your disaster recovery plan in place, and get on with things.

You can listen to Walter O’Brien’s interview here.

Here are 7 Things you must do now to reduce stress reduce stress after a disaster inspired by Walter O’Brien. Who, with an IQ of 197, a major TV series about geek solutions saving the world, and a global company who does that for real, is worth paying attention to. Just knowing what to do to reduce stress after a disaster means that when things breaks, get lost, or stolen, there is a minimum amount of downtime that you will be out before you are back up and running.

Recently, I (Lisa B of Team Raw Energy) dropped my laptop and the touchscreen smashed. Because I followed these tips, I was up and running again in half a day, no data lost, and I totally reduced my stress levels after a disaster.

Photocopy everything in your wallet both sides, and store it with someone you trust, then if you lose your wallet you won’t have any problems making the right calls to get the cards cancelled and re-issued.

Always have roadside and tow recovery for your car.if you break down, it’s a call and a tow and then you’re back home.

Tag your car keys with a phone number to call – preferably your partner or a family member in case it’s in your purseIf you drop your keys or leave your purse somewhere, the finder can get in touch with you thus being able to reduce stress after a disaster.

Another note from Lisa – I walk my dogs a lot and I have found at least three sets of keys over the last few years. If they had a phone number on, that owner would probably NOT get back to the car park with their dog in a complete panic, rather just be waiting for me to arrive with their keys.

Tag your phone with an alternative phone number in case you lose itA found phone with a locked screen isn’t any good to the finder unless they know who to call.

Put on a phone number and a sticker that says’ reward for return‘ on all of your stuff that you take away from the house.

Walter O’Brien said he left his tablet on a plane (and we all know that you never get stuff back from a plane). The finder called the number for the reward, and it was lost for just an hour.

Take the time, money and energy to set up back up for your phone, laptops, and films or photos. Use the cloud if you can (dropbox, i cloud etc etc). If you dont know how to do it get a professional to do it. You can’t get that stuff back. AND if you lose your data or break your equipment it’s a major source of stress.

Lisa: We have a server at home which backs everything up – including all of our films, photos, data etc etc and we have a back up in the cloud. That’s because I have a geek for a husband. But I would have happily outsourced it and paid for it. When we moved house recently we lost our films because I plugged something into the TV that I shouldn’t have. Husband was not happy, as you can imagine, as it took him months to re-stock so we now have a disaster recovery in place.

Keep a credit card you don’t use much, plus a note of around £20 / $20 bill in your car, tucked away somewhere and also have money in in a separate section of your every day bag – separate from your purse/wallet.

That way if you forget to take your wallet out, or bag, and you’re stuck for petrol, or train fare, or whatever and need to get out of a fix, then instant solution.