Zoombombed Mid-Webinar: What It Taught Me AboutAutopilot Living
Last week I was in the middle of a GLP-1 webinar. It was going great. My co-host and I were setting the stage for an important discussion about a topic that really matters. I was in the middle of the case study we were using, sharing my screen, when I heard my co-host say,"Uh, Erika, I think we need to leave." I was so confused. I thought we were doing a great job, that everything was going well. So I unshared my screen and saw all the participants' faces looking shocked and confused. The room's energy totally shifted. I asked, "Wait, I missed something. What happened?"
Then they told me that some random person had taken over the screen and put up an
inappropriate video.
I was completely stunned. The first thought that went through my mind was: that can't be real. How did I not see it? We probably look so unprofessional right now. I bet they are going to leave saying we are inexperienced. My mind was spiraling. I could sense myself getting in my own head, heart rate climbing, body tensing up, all the classic signs of anxiety and stress. So I paused and took five deep breaths. I knew this could happen, and I had prepared. I had already removed someone who seemed suspicious. I did everything I could do. I reminded myself I came here to teach and to educate. I came with a positive intention.
After I calmed myself, I looked around the Zoom room and said, "Well, that was
unexpected. I'm so sorry. Let's shake that off, take a few breaths, and recenter." Then we moved on with the webinar.
And here is the big takeaway.
When I took those five breaths, I was not pretending the situation was fine. I was not
pushing the feeling down or skipping past it. I was giving my nervous system a chance to catch up with my values. Because here is what I know from my work and from my own life: your nervous system responds to threat the same way whether the threat is real or imagined, whether it is a Zoom bomb or a comment that didn't sit right or an email that was unexpected. It does not sort through context. It just responds, based on automatic belief systems that may have been set by three-year-old you.
I was not pretending the situation was fine ...I was giving my nervous system a chance to catch up with my values.
The practice of intentional living is learning to create that pause between the trigger and the response. To question the belief system. It is five breaths. It is asking yourself what is actually true right now, separate from the story your brain is telling you about it. It is remembering your own intention.
The practice of intentional living is learning to create that pause between the trigger and the response.
I came to that webinar to teach. That did not change because something went wrong. And when I came back to that purpose, everything else relaxed.
Your version of that might be: I came to this day to take care of myself. That does not
change because the plan fell apart. You do not start over on Monday. You do not write the day off because lunch went sideways. You come back to your intention, right now, in the next small moment you have.
That is the work. It's navigating the pause.
And your Zoombomb probably looks a little different than mine. Maybe it is the week your nutrition completely fell apart because your kid got sick and you were in survival mode. Maybe it is the meeting that went sideways and you stress-ate through the afternoon. Maybe it is the moment you snapped at someone you love and then spent the rest of the day in a shame spiral about it instead of just moving on. The situation changes, but the response is the same. Something unexpected happens, and within seconds your nervous system takes the wheel. Your heart rate goes up, your thoughts start to race, and before you even realize it, you are in a story about what this means about you, instead of just dealing with what is actually in front of you.
That is autopilot conditioning. And most of us live there without knowing it.
The webinar ended up being one of the best ones we have done. Not because nothing
went wrong. Because we chose to keep going anyway.
That is what I want for you. Not a life where everything goes according to plan, because
that is not a life anyone gets. I want you to have enough of a relationship with yourself that when things go sideways, and they will, you know how to come back. You know what five breaths feels like in your body. You know what your intention is. You know that one hard moment does not undo everything you have been building.
Meet the expert:
Erika Muralidhar is a Registered Nurse, NLP Practitioner, and Reiki Master who has spent years studying how the nervous system responds to stress and the belief systems that drive it.
She works with women who look put together on the outside but feel dysregulated on the inside, teaching them how to create a pause between a trigger and their automatic response instead of living on autopilot.As the founder of HealthE Wellness, she now helps women build that same relationship with themselves, so that when life goes sideways, they know how to come back to their intention instead of getting swept into autopilot.
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