But they’re WRONG!!

So…..

I was locked in combat with the beast known as Facebook advertising. When I tried to re-run an ad – previously approved by FB in every detail – my account was instantly shut down for “non-compliance with our policies.”

I was certain this was an automatic, unthinking response from one of their bots, so I confidently appealed the decision…only to be told by another entity (couldn’t tell if this one was human or electronic) that my repeated non-compliance meant the account ban would not be lifted and that I had no further recourse.

This prompted my inner child to throw an intense (though silent) temper tantrum: “But it’s not fair! It doesn’t make sense! They’re disallowing something they’d already approved. That’s just wrong. They’re wrong.”

I’d been warned this would inevitably happen, because, hey – Facebook. But the pre-warning didn’t really make it any more palatable.

You know and I know that this type of unfair, just-plain-wrong decision is something we’ve all had to deal with over and over again as we move through this adventure called life. Since there’s no getting away from this type of situation, what can you do to shake it off and move on as quickly and effectively as possible?

Let yourself be irritated – for a while.

I opted to just walk away from all things Facebook for at least 24 hours. While I didn’t exactly rehearse my irritation and indignation, I also didn’t fight against it when thoughts of FB’s bad decision popped into my head. Choosing not to resist actually enabled me to release my irritation more quickly than I would have if I’d tried to talk myself out of my crankies.

Use it as motivation to keep moving forward.

I decided to emulate the attitude of a successful FB advertiser who was dealing with multiple issues in trying to use the platform: “Facebook picked the wrong person to mess with.”

Yes, I’m in a David-and-Goliath battle here, and I’m not Goliath. But we all know how that story turned out.

This was my first account ban, and it won’t be my last. But there’s nothing FB can do to make me quit – so who’s the ultimate winner gonna be?

Celebrate it as an opportunity to flex those persistence muscles.

This is a great complement to strategy number two. As a classic Japanese saying encourages us, “Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.”

So many huge and small successes have resulted from a person’s refusal to give up. I believe you can even go so far as to say that some level of success is inevitable if you keep on keeping on. And doesn’t that possibility make persisting sound a lot more appealing?

                          *******************

Our life experiences are completely in our control. Not that you can control your circumstances – COVID-19 has made that abundantly clear – but you can control how you respond to them. So pull up your big girl/boy panties and know that, even when someone else is dead wrong, you can still create your own happy ending.

Remember: Those circumstances picked the wrong person to mess with.

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