The Great Alaskan Adventure Mystery!

We had ourselves a mystery on our trip.

We were at a Yukon Territory Provincial Campground (like a state campground in the U.S.) Lots of people, BEAUTIFUL campground (see the pic)! We actually ran into a couple who happen to be on the same trek we are and stayed in the same campgrounds together a couple of nights before

We stayed 1 night and woke up in the morning to our Starlink/internet not working. Weird. Can’t say enough about how amazing Starlink is- for another blog.

Bruce went outside to check all the connections. Good news - Starlink was not damaged or stolen.

The cord had been cut.

WHAT?!

On investigating, part of it looked like an animal could have chewed on it; the other part looked like someone had cut it with a knife. (See pic below)

It’s fascinating how quickly our minds came up with a ‘story’.

Did someone actually cut it? Who DOES that? Was someone mad at us; was our music or TV too loud? Was it a bunch of hooligans cutting everyone’s Starlink cords? Was it an animal and how did an animal decide to chew on THAT cord about 3 ft off the ground?! Do I even want to KNOW if it was an animal… cue scared face.

We went from what to WHO/HOW in microseconds.

And that’s how our brains work.

We love stories; campfire stories, movie stories, TV bingeworthy stories, book stories, FISH stories (you know you have them), kid stories, and the list continues. Stories are everywhere in our daily lives and stories give contextual meanings to the events that happen around us.

Which brings me to PTFAR (programming leads to thoughts, leads to feelings, leads to actions, leads to results, which leads us back to programming).

The challenge is our programming can be based on mis-interpretation and lead us to inaccurate conclusions.

It usually starts as an EVENT; an event happens (Starlink not working, cord appears cut).

Thoughts: All the above questions.

Feelings: That is so rude! Why would someone do that? We’ve been sabotaged. We would NEVER cut someone else’s cord… you get the picture.

Actions: We have to protect our Starlink from all those ‘bad individuals’ that cut cords. Protect the Starlink cord at all costs.

Results: We can’t trust the people we are camping next to. All sorts of judgment. Live in fear.

Programming: Keep this in mind for all future times that Starlink cord (or other ‘such mysteries' occur) so we know what to do & how to react.

Do you see where we can get REALLY off based on the stories our brain came up with? Our brains are designed to keep us safe. Fabulous! Unfortunately, not every solution to an event is necessarily accurate to what our brains came up with.

How do we stay out of judgement, misunderstanding and calm our brains down? There are two great ways to start.

1. Interrogate my ‘reality’. Is my reality really correct? Are my ‘conclusions’ really the right conclusions to the situation? What meaning am I attaching to the conclusions?

2. Stay in curiosity. What did we really know? What do we actually not know? What if we never find out the reason this happened - can we be ok with that?

What events in our daily lives could we apply the above principles to? All of them! What could change in our lives if we apply these principles?

For us, as we applied these principles it definitely helped us reset to calm and peace, relax, and even be able to laugh. We’ve let it go.

We still have the mystery. Maybe one of you can add to our story, enjoy the curiosity with us and think of other ideas of what happened.

In the meantime, Starlink was back up & working well. THANK God for a my husband having a 2nd cord (just in case) - ALWAYS have a backup!!

Keep curious in your adventures!

Traci Evans