Becoming Resilient In The Face Of Hackers

Two months ago, some people I had hired to help me with my social media gained access to all my passwords and started hacking into all my accounts. What a wild ride it was, particularly in the beginning, before I found some people who knew how to help me fend off hackers.  I worked as quickly as I could for days on end, trying to change passwords before they got into various accounts.  They dismantled my new website, redirected my PayPal account to theirs, etc. etc.  I kept changing my passwords, only to find the next day that they had changed them to something else. I worked my way through this, learning to successfully hide my passwords, put 2 step verification on everything I needed to, and changing my passwords to really complicated ones.  When I noticed I was tense, I remembered where the tension was really coming from (thought in the moment about the hackers, though it sure looked like it was coming from them!).

Initially, what bothered me most about it, besides the feeling of violation, all the extra work it created for me and the money I had to spend getting it straightened out, was having to create new, really complicated passwords that I wouldn’t be able to remember.  What an inconvenience going forward!  But as I got inside out about that – again, remembering where my feelings were really coming from – my head kept clearing, and eventually I began having new thoughts about it.  To my surprise, I started enjoying the challenge of creating complicated passwords with weird symbols in ways that I would be able to remember, at least some of the time.  And the thought kept occurring to me that this was a great, ongoing exercise to keep my memory sharp.  As I got inside out about the hackers, the stress disappeared, and in its place, came good ideas and even gratitude.  It was a forced short course in the internet and technology, things I am always needing to get better at; none of my financial accounts were compromised; I now have passwords which give me the opportunity to feel delighted when I can remember them, and on top of that I found much better people to help me with social media and my website!  This is what resilience is all about – getting through challenges with minimal wear and tear, and not only learning from them, but truly benefiting from the experience.