(Originally published July 27, 2012.)

I can laugh about this now, but 2 weeks ago, I was in no mood for laughter.

If you attended my Intuitive Entrepreneur Experience telesummit, you’re aware that Mercury Rx came early for me.

Which is a shame because the summit itself was aMAZing! The speakers were all phenomenal, bringing the hot content and inspirational stories that you’d expect from a telesummit. But this one was different: I asked each speaker to bring a exercise that would held attendees break through their blocks and move them forward in their business.

I thought it would be cool, but I had no idea. None. The speakers were all so excited that some of the brought two, even three exercises to help the attendees. One speaker (Shaman Michele Lessirard) even composed and sang a healing song just for our summit. Can you believe that? I was blown away. Everyone I’ve heard from who heard the calls—even just part of a single call—has expressed so much gratitude and Love for the work we did putting this together. And then…

And then I was tested. In a really big way.

It started slowly: first of all, the promised internet was not all it was cracked up to be. In fact, instead of being strong and steady, in order to capture some wi-fi from my in-laws’ house just down the mountainside, I had to hang out the window and wave my laptop around.

Then, one of the amazing speakers was in the middle of a launch and then on vacation until I left for France, so we were going to have to do the call from there, a week before the summit’s start. No problem, I thought. Big problem.

We were doing the call over Skype and that seemed to be okay, and in fact, nearly miraculous: I had kicked my in-laws out of their house so that I’d have a strong connection. But in the near background some workers were sawing metal. I would think they were done, and then there would be another “screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!” Painful. So I went out to ask them to cease and desist, since I was on a call to the US doing an interview. They agreed.

Then, as soon as the ear-splitting metal-rending noise stopped, the Skype connection broke up. There was no way to do the call. As intuitive entrepreneur pioneers, we decided that we’d do the call separately: she would do the interview all by herself, and I’d record the intro and conclusion. I’ll admit that while this was the perfect solution—and indeed the call was among the most commented on in the FB group—this option did not occur to me: I was too attached to the outcome I was envisioning, which was that I would conduct all the interviews.

Do you see where I’m going with this? I was too attached. This is a big clue to what’s coming later.

There’s more context: remember how I mentioned my in-laws? We were in France visiting them for 3 weeks, on vacation. So I was getting pressure from them and my husband to do the family thing and forget about the telesummit.

So on the day before the telesummit, my husband, daughter and I piled into the car and drove the 3 hours down the mountain to Monaco, his hometown. We had lunch at the Café de Paris, ice cream on the Place du Casino watching the fancy cars go by, and then spent some afternoon hours on the beach. He drove us around showing all the places he’s lived, where he’d gone to school, where he’s learned to swim and scuba-dive. It was fun.

By the time we got home, it was nearly 11. Family time: check. Now time to get to work!

Well, the in-laws were in bed, so not wanting to disturb them, I opted to sit out on their patio to capture the wi-fi that was not reaching our place up the hill, no matter how far out the window I leaned.

I picked my way down the hill in the pitch dark to sit outside in the pitch dark and check in with my trusty assistant at home. As I left the shelter of our place, I could hear really loud rustling noises in the laurel hedges. “What’s that?” I asked. “Just a cat,” says my husband, but I knew that no cat would ever make that much noise. I went anyway, ‘cause I needed to check in to see that all was okay and set to go for the summit, which was starting in a few short hours.

When I got on Skype to chat with my assistant there was already a message from her waiting for me: something about the kickoff call—to which I had recently added a new series opener introduction—being only 7 minutes long when she had loaded it. Whaaaa???

Oh, boy. No wonder it had miraculously downloaded in record time for me! I could barely get the other calls to download in a day, and this one had only taken a few hours. I checked it, and sure enough: the featured speaker wasn’t even on the recording: it was my new intro stuck straight onto the revised conclusion I had sent to my team.

At that point the world, and the worrisome rustling in the bushes, fell away. I had sworn off swearing a few years back for my young daughter’s sake, but you’d never know it in that moment.

Now, normally, when this kind of panic-inducing situation arises, I laugh. Because that’s what the Universe has taught me to do. And I’m laughing now, though I couldn’t laugh then, not about the call anyway. I did laugh with my assistant about the context of the situation: sitting in the pitch dark, outside at nearly midnight. “There are creatures about,” I wrote her. I could hear 2 in the bushes next to me, and one creeping around under the chaise lounge not far away.

The reason I usually laugh is because I know the Universe has my back. This is something that I teach clients all the time: that no matter what, the Universe has their back.

And the Universe did have my back. Guess what those creatures creeping around in the dark and rustling in the bushes were? Nothing too scary, after all. And, seemingly miraculously, my project manager for the tech team was on Skype within about an hour, on the computer late because his daughter was sick. So he knew to alert his team to get on the problem right away. It wasn’t really necessary for me to sit there in the dark for 5 hours, but I did.

If you were on the summit for the first day, you know that it started off without too much of a hitch: the opening call still had one editing issue, but the speaker and her lovely energy came through loud and clear. And it really felt like a miracle when I listened to that first call live along with every else.

My lesson in this case it was to let it go and leave the midnight stillness of the garden to the hedgehogs, but I didn’t. All through the next day, and well after the summit was over, I kept struggling with the internet, and not being able to communicate. Heck, starting that night my ability to respond to emails was down (unbeknownst to me for a long time) until after the summit. Interesting timing, no?

I needed to unplug and spend time with my family, and the Universe unplugged me!

There were more trials and tribulations with the summit, and more lessons to learn, but you’ll have to wait ‘til next time for those.