Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Have you recently experienced an Ohnosecond moment? I just did and I can tell you that it’s not fun 🙁 but you can learn from it

People who regularly read my blog articles will know that they’re often fairly long, with lots of useful information from many sources including my own experience. Obviously this being so, it often takes several hours or more to write and rewrite such articles and I go through many drafts before I end up with the final published article.

This evening I was working on a draft for an article about my recent experience as a political candidate, and after 3 hours of solid editing I pressed save for the last time in my blogging software, and opened the finished article …

This is when I experienced the ohnosecond moment, because the only part of the article which had been saved was the first paragraph, everything else had vanished into thin air 🙁

An ohnosecond is the fraction of time in which you realize you made a big mistake, can’t undo it, and say to yourself in exasperation “Ohhhhh Noooooo”.

Besides my example of losing hours of work on a computer, other classic ohnosecond moments include closing your car door with the key in the ignition and clicking “send” for an important business email and then seeing that you didn’t add the invoice as an attachment.

The key to dealing with an ohnosecond effectively is what you do after you experience such a moment yourself.

If you dwell on it for the rest of the day and complain to others than that won’t achieve anything. Instead stop what you’re doing, and think to yourself “Is there any way I can recover from this mistake or at least make sure I don’t do it again”. In this case I decided to write drafts offline and then copy them to my blog, so even if there’s an error while saving, it won’t matter.

The next thing do is remember the lyrics to Eric Idle’s song Always Look On The Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian (watch and listen to the song below) If that doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will 🙂

Lyrics: Always Look On The Bright Side of Life by Eric Idle

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…

And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…

If life seems jolly rotten
There’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you’re feeling in the dumps
Don’t be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing.

And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life…

For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin – give the audience a grin
Enjoy it – it’s your last chance anyhow.

So always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath

Life’s a piece of sh#t
When you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep ’em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.

And always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the right side of life…
(Come on guys, cheer up!)
Always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the bright side of life…
(Worse things happen at sea, you know.)
Always look on the bright side of life…
(I mean – what have you got to lose?)
(You know, you come from nothing – you’re going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!)
Always look on the right side of life…