Hey guys, this is Kelsey, from the GoalGetter blog.
Thanks for watching this video, today.
I want to tell you guys a story. This story
happened when I was in an unfamiliar city.
I was traveling for work, I'd flown there.
Just so you guys know, I am a very...
I'm a planner. Whenever I'm flying,
not only do I like to
print out the paper boarding pass, I also like to use the airline app
to keep my boarding pass there, and then I use the Apple Wallet
app for my boarding pass. So I like to
make sure that everything is planned to the tee. When I was flying to
this city, they had changed the gates for
one of my flights and I had to run across the airport twice to get to my
correct gate. I was really proud of myself.
This was the first time I'd flown by myself, without my husband,
without anybody that I work with.
I had nailed this challenge, I was great
So I was writing a blog post about the importance of being
flexible. Because I was SO flexible.
The story gets really interesting about six hours after
I finished that blog post.
I'm at the airport, I'm about to fly home. I've got to fly to Chicago
and then I'm going to fly from Chicago
to my home city, and then land there about 10:30pm.
I was sitting at
the airport charging my phone, because
when I use my phone for my boarding pass,
if it's anything less than 100% charged, that's not okay.
So I'm sitting at the airport charging my phone, watching Netflix,
and I get a notification from the airline app. They say,
my first flight to Chicago has been delayed by 40 minutes.
I purposefully
book long layovers because I'm a planner. So I was like,
"okay, that will leave me about 10 minutes
to run to my next gate across the
Chicago, O'Hare airport, so that I
can make my flight home." So I'm in tears,
and I call my husband, and he says, "It's gonna be fine, you can do
this. You're just gonna book is at soon as you get off your first flight.
If you miss your second flight home, you tell an airline employee ,
and you explain the situation, that your flight was
delayed. They'll find you a hotel,
you will fly home tomorrow morning, it's gonna be fine." So, I'm calm.
So I'm just chilling, watching more Netflix, and
I got another notification from the airline app,
and they said that my flight was now
delayed one hour and fifteen minutes.
So that meant that my first flight was going to
land in Chicago after my second
flight had finished boarding. So then of course
I'm panicking, because there's no chance now.
It's all over, there's no way I can get home. I go talk to an
airline employee, and I tell them the situation, they're looking
up new flights to get me home, and they say "we've got one for tomorrow
morning." and I said, "you can't get me something for
tonight?" and they said
"No, I'm sorry. We can't. There's nothing else." So, I said
"Can you get me a hotel so that I can stay
the night?" and at this point I was trying to be strong to hold
back the tears. They said, "No, we can't. I'm sorry." Second
cry of the night. Uh, third cry?
I can't even keep track any more. I called
my husband, panicking. "I can't do this, I can't do this!"
And he said, "Yes you can. You can do this."
What you need to do is you first need to book that next flight
then you need to find a hotel,
then you need a rental car, so you can go to the hotel. So I'm
repeating to myself, "okay, flight, hotel, car. Flight, hotel, car.
I can do this, okay." I talk to the airline employee,
and I say, "yes, I want that flight out for tomorrow morning."
While he's booking that, I call the hotel I stayed at
in this city the night before.
They had a room open, so everything's looking good, everything's comin' up
roses. I get my ticket for my new
morning flight. I walk down to the rental car area,
and they have a rental car. So I'm like, "YES!"
Still kind of tense,
and on edge, because even though I was bawling, believe it or not,
I was still kind of holding it together. But you know,
this is the plan I was on. So I get in the rental car,
and put the GPS coordinates in there, and I just
start driving. A lot of chaos ensued. Everything that happened
while I was driving to the hotel from the airport
could have been avoided if I'd just
listened to everything I'd been told in drivers' ed about
what to do when you're in an unfamiliar car. "Learn how to adjust the mirrors,
and adjust them accordingly. Learn how to turn on the headlights,
so you're not driving 65 miles an hour
after sunset, on a highway, with no headlights."
I get to the hotel. I had a pizza delivered to the hotel
because I was like, "I'm not going back out there again! I am getting here,
and I'm staying here." And so then I got ready for bed.
I chowed down on a huge pizza, and then I'm
finally starting to calm down.
I'm looking at my airline app, and they had updated the flight
that I was supposed to take tomorrow. It was scheduled
for the next day, but I did notice that it was scheduled for
the evening of the next day. The guy had booked me
for a flight that wasn't supposed to board for another
fifteen or twenty hours! I...cried again
I don't even know how many cries that's been at this point.
But it was a lot. I called my husband and I was just like,
"I can't do this!"
So he said, "Kelsey, you just need to call the airline,
explain what happened, and tell them you were supposed to be on a flight for tomorrow
morning, not tomorrow evening." So I do. And
I'm talking to their customer service person,
bawling, I had to repeat what I was trying to say multiple
times, in between all of the crying.
And the guy said, he goes, "ma'am, are you okay? You're crying."
And I was like,
"Yeah, I'm so sorry, I just really wanna go home."
He's like, "Okay, let me put you on hold for a minute, it's gonna be fine.
I'm gonna get this taken care of." And
that sweet man, he booked me for a flight that next morning.
It was the flight I was originally supposed to have. I guess the guy
at the airport told me he was gonna
book me for a flight in the morning, but he was probably distracted
by the grown woman who was bawling her eyes out
in front of him, and he booked me for a flight the next evening.
I went to bed, barely slept at all, because I was
so panicked that I was going to miss my flight that I just booked
I woke up the next morning, I went to the airport,
and from that point on, my
trip was pretty drama free.
All of that to say, I learned a lot from
writing a blog post that was
about being flexible, and then actually
put to the test and being forced to be flexible.
The first thing I learned was don't act like an expert
on something unless you have the experience
and the authority to back it up. I can say now
that I've learned a lot, but I would still
definitely say that I'm not an authority or
an expert on being flexible. I still definitely
prefer planning, and I prefer to have things go
my way in an organized fashion.
So that's the first thing I learned. I was not an authority on being
flexible when I wrote that first blog post.
The second thing I learned from this experience was whenever
you're in a position where you're uncomfortable, and you're not quite sure what to do,
it's okay to step back and talk to somebody who's
got experience, and leadership in this area.
Sometimes it's not best to 'fake it 'till you make it.'
If I'd tried to go through this experience on my own, I would have ended up
crying on the floor, in a little ball,
for hours.
Until airport security came and made me leave because
I looked suspicious. In that situation, what I
did was I talked to a person that I trusted, that I knew would have experience
with delayed flights. My husband
has experienced delayed flights in the past, where he had to
sleep in the airport until
the next morning flight came. He's also had experiences where he's had to
take a red eye flight to get home in the middle of the night. I knew that
he would know what to do. He would be able to guide me and direct me when I was
in a position where I wasn't quite sure
what to do next. So, it's okay to turn to
people that are more experienced when you don't know what to do.
A lot of times, you'll end up with a better result.
If you are interested in reading that original blog post
that I wrote about being flexible, go ahead and go to
this blog post, it's actually the first part of the blog post
and then I launch into the story about what happened after I wrote that.
If you're interested in reading that blog post,
you can check it out at my website. It's www.beagoalgetter.net
And then you can also see
lots of other blog posts that I've written, other videos that I've posted.
If you like this video, be sure to "thumbs up" and subscribe to my channel.
I post new videos every week. Thanks for watching!
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