techno no no no no!!!

Do you remember the cartoon The Jetsons?

It was one of my favorites.

I not only loved the fact that people flew around in their own personal aerocar, but also that a meal could be produced and presented with the push of a button.

Heaven.

No fuss. No muss.

Just the push of a button.

Future technology looked amazing and I couldn't wait.

Well.

This past week saw the return of my ongoing battle with present day technology.

A call from my Mom alerted me to the fact that as a subscriber, she had not received my blog via email for the past two Mondays.

My heart dropped as my brain scrambled to comprehend.

What could have happened?

I could feel my eyes narrow and my breath hold as I prepared to spit out the dreaded word (much like Seinfeld upon seeing his arch nemisis Newman):

"Technology!!!" I muttered.

Ugh...the bane of my existence.

Everything was supposed to be automatic.

No fuss. No muss.

Just the push of a button.

It should have worked.

Except it didn't.

I felt so...

helpless,

frustrated

and

incapable.

Prior to that call, however, I hadn't felt any of those things. 

In fact, I had felt...

proud,

excited

and

strong.

How did I go from empowered to inept?

Well...

that little glitch in my automatedsystem triggered my beliefs about technology - particularly my dysfunctional ones. 

Beliefs like:

"Technology is complicated."

"I will never understand this stuff."

"It's too hard."

The minute that glitch came to my attention, it reinforced those limiting beliefs and my feelings and actions fell into line accordingly:

I gave up,

gave in

and

gave over to them.

I was acting as if my beliefs were fact rather than...well...just beliefs.

As soon as I became aware of what I was doing, I did the next best thing:

I called my daughter.

Yup.

I got help before I spiraled further down the rabbit hole of technology overwhelm.

It took a few days before we sorted things out...but within that time I came to some decisions.

I needed to pull my head out of the sand and stop pretending that technology would just 'sort itself out.'

I needed to dismantle my limiting beliefs about my abilities with technology once and for all. 

I needed to take ownership of new beliefs that would put me in a state of resourcefulness rather than helplessness.

In short, I needed beliefs that were...

empowering,

believable

and already

true.

And so, I created:

"I've done complicated."

"I can do hard things."

"Given time, patience and perseverance, I can learn anything."

As with most things, a test of sorts presents itself shortly thereafter. My test came in the form of another call with my Mom. She advised me that, according to my nephew, the acronym "lol" had been replaced by "haha."

I caught myself, as I was about to sputter,

"Ugh...I will never keep up with this stuff."

Instead I said, 

"Huh...good to know."

* A special thank you to "little" Maureen for suggesting I write about this 'incident.'