What I learned living through a fu**ed up situation.

A couple of years ago, my brother was murdered in a horrific and mindless attack. He was a father of five beautiful kids, three of whom were eight-month-old triplets.

This is one of those completely Fu**ed up situations.?

One that has the magnitude to completely throw you off the course of your life.

I was four months into starting Spencer Lane - this was not the time to be setting up a business.

I feel extremely exposed and vulnerable just attempting to write about this.

But my aim here is not to gain sympathy votes. I’m doing it because it’s partly therapeutic, but more importantly to hopefully help others to change the way you look at adversity in your lives.

I’ve always been someone who dusts myself off, moves on, and looks at the brightest side of every situation. I'd already been through some tough situations in my life ( like most of us) and been able to navigate without letting any of them break me.

I’ve always searched for the positives - looked for lessons and teachings rather than playing the blame game.

But this felt different, I was dealing with one of the worst situations imaginable.

On the loneliest of flights back to the UK, I started to think I wouldn't be able to deal with this in the same way I’d dealt with previous situations.

Thankfully,

I didn’t allow my thoughts to spiral to think... ‘this is the worst possible thing’ ‘how am I going to even deal with this?’

I started to ask myself questions like these instead...

What can I do here?

Who can I help?

Who can I make feel better?

What can I learn?

What are the positives that I can focus on?

I decided to focus my energy on helping my sister-in-law, the kids, and my mum deal with their new situation. I wanted to provide support and provide realistic reassurance to them that everything would be ok. Life moves on. People get on with things in my experience.

What you are feeling right now is temporary. It will change.

I mourned my brother but also accepted he’d gone to a place where we’re all destined to go. It didn’t feel as heart-wrenching thinking of it this way.

I learned a lot about anger on this trip back home. I saw too many angry people around me . What was clear was that their anger didn’t serve them. It was completely pointless and detrimental. They focused their energy on being angry rather than dealing with their situation.

Anger serves no one.

I looked at the positives. My bro left behind a great legacy. He was a publican and hotelier who grew his business from nothing. He had five beautiful children (by far the best thing he ever did) and married one of the most selfless and beautiful women I know. He was fortunate enough to have done fairly well in life and was able to leave my sister-in-law and their kids enough resources so that they didn’t have to worry. Even in this horrible situation, this was a positive that I could look at and focus on.?

What I learned about myself was that I was able to do exactly what I had always done in other smaller challenging situations, but apply it to this huge, monumentally fucked up one. I focused on all the things that had served me well in the past.

Thankfully, my attitude to adversity remained the same as it has always been. I had worried that faced with real adversity I'd crumble and not be able to approach it in the same way I always had.

I firmly believe we are 100% in control of our lives. Life isn’t happening to us.

How we deal with adversity in our lives is crucial. And it’s this ability to deal with adversity that is such a critical ingredient in people in my opinion.

Life will throw so much our way. It really is how we deal with it that matters.

To me, it's the measure of a person. Everyone can be delightful in the best of times. How are you in the worst of them?

Are you someone who dwells on the negatives? Because negative thoughts breed more negative thoughts and no good can come from this. Positive thoughts breed positive thoughts and beautiful things happen when you are able to focus on the positives.

My business partner Emma Graham shares a very similar mindset when it comes to adversity. She wrote a wonderful article about her struggles and her approach to dealing with her cancer diagnosis. You can read her article here: https://bit.ly/3PrYdlt

Situations in life have the power to break us. BUT ONLY IF WE LET THEM. Mindset is everything.

I read a quote recently that really sums up everything I’m trying to convey. The quote is by Viktor Frankl.

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Lastly, to my awesome bro. See you on the other side, my friend! Xx