If you live in the midwest or on the east coast (in the US), at this time of the year there can be a real fear of freezing. Freezing pipes, furnaces getting killed and the family freezing in the house, freezing on the way to the car, or into the office. The car getting stuck and freezing.

There are numerous ways we can all freeze due to weather. But we can all freeze psychologically as well.

Just before Christmas, December 22 to be exact, I thought that the house had become cooler. Devices were cold to touch and there seemed to be drafts everywhere. I checked the thermostat and sure enough the temperature had dropped from our normal fairly toasty 69 to 64.

We checked the furnace and it didn’t seem to be on and then it kicked in but not for long and the vents weren’t generating any heat. The temperature dropped to 59 – this was not good. We called the company we use for a maintenance and we pay them a substantial monthly sum to be on call. They could come out but not until the next day, some time between 7am and 11pm.

This news was delivered at 10:30pm, December-22. We were about to potentially freeze. We had family coming to stay for Christmas the next day our daughter traveling back from Columbia in the morning for Christmas.

I froze! Shit, shit, shit, what do we do? Maybe they would come out the next morning at 8am and fix the problem. Maybe they couldn’t fix the problem. What if we needed a new furnace? What if the temperature dropped below 50 and we had to move out? What was Christmas going to be like now? And so the thought process went on.

I had effectively frozen myself. I was weighing up going to bed with additional covers and then I thought of everyone else. Are we just going to wait for the saviour to ride in on their white horse?

I needed to do something. We needed heat and fast. I googled space heaters now close to me. Walmart appeared to have some and they were open until 11 pm, and by now it was 10:45. I put coats, boots and gloves on and raced out to the garage, raised the garage doors and shot to Walmart in the still to be ploughed roads that were insanely white.

There were three heaters left on the shelf. A radiator, bar heater and a space heater. I grabbed them all, loaded them into a trolley, self-checked out and drove home. We plugged them all in as soon as I got in the house in strategic places and the place felt warmer just by doing that.

With the help of our living room gas fire on all the time and 3 other space heaters, after a few hours the temperature started creeping up again to 64 and then by morning was up to 68.

The technician booked for anytime between 7 am and 11 pm never turned up. No call, no nothing. We eventually got a call out on Monday, December 26 and they fixed this issue which was a blocked drain.

So, what occurred to me is we nearly froze. Panic set in and stopped any rational thinking except for just hoping things would be fixed. The temperature dropped and then we had a brain freeze. We didn’t know what to do and the inaction nearly cost us a pleasant family Christmas. But, deciding on the necessary action and then doing it changed the likely outcome.

So many times we try and HOPE our way out of problems. But to quote the famous saying “Hope is not a strategy”. Just hoping something will change things is an option. Is it an effective one though?

One of the ways we can prevent brain freeze is to have ready made options available. Often called contingency plans, these are created in advance of dire situations that may occur. For example, what will you do if your Warehouse Manager gets sick or leaves? What do we if we have a pandemic? What do we do if a critical vendor stops supplying?

All businesses should be spending some of their annual meetings thinking about the 5-6 worst scenarios and then what action can be taken to remedy them. Agenda this as “Contingency Plans”. Done effectively you and your leadership team won’t be afraid of freezing, wherever you live.