I had 25,000+ Instagram followers … and lost them all to a hacker.
A (surprising) lesson in gratitude.
“ Hi Jenleahgottlieb, the email on your Instagram account has been changed at 11:17 (PDT) on Saturday, July 21 2018. Your new email is besprozvannyxzhenya99@mail.ru.”
Two weeks ago, I woke up to this message from Instagram in my inbox.
Not too concerned, I thought, “No biggie, I’ll just change my password and I am sure this will be fixed in no time!”
I clicked on ‘Revert this change’ and followed the instructions to make sure they were aware that this in fact, was not my email so I could get back to doing ‘more important things’.
I wasn’t really worried …
Until I went to log into my account and my password was no longer working.
That’s when it hit me. I was locked out.
Totally unable to access the lifeline of my business and the 25,000+ followers I had spent years building up.
I suddenly felt a massive wave of loneliness and major FOMO rush through my body.
I felt like I was thrown out of the popular kid’s party that all of my friends were all still at.
Alienated, detached and kind of helpless.
Years of memories, partnerships, content… everything was locked inside of my little device and I no longer had the key.
I took action right away and did “all the things” to fix the situation. I took all the right steps and emailed Instagram …
OVER AND OVER AND OVER.
I had faith it would all be fine and tried not to worry too much about it until about 4 days had gone by and I still had no access to my account.
By this time my new Russian alias “Aubrey” had taken down my bio and changed my name, but luckily hadn’t posted anything just yet.
Then - exactly 7 days after the email change- it happened...
“Jen, I think you’ve been hacked!”
I started receiving the floods of text messages from my friends and family. “Jen, I think you’ve been hacked!”.
As if she had been waiting for the perfect time, “Aubrey” started posting fast and furiously. One image after the next. I gotta hand it to her- Bitch had that content calendar on point! She was ready.
Some photos were pornographic and some were just plain weird. Either way, the damage was done. I knew at this point there was no salvaging the years of memories, the tens of thousands of dollars I invested in my page or my 25 thousand followers.
It was gone.
Just like that.
Deep breath.
Now what?
Voice in my head:
“Ok Jen, You have two options here...
- You can let this ruin you. You can go down the rabbit hole of feeling helpless. You can be a victim to your circumstances and choose to be bitter, angry and sad. You can use this as an excuse to opt out of life and watch HGTV in bed for 3 days… (very, very tempting.)
- You can be grateful. Because gratitude fixes everything.
That’s it. Those are your choices.
The beautiful thing here is that you have a choice.”
“Shitty things happen in life, but at the end of the day something is only “bad” if you decide that it is.”
I teach people every day that it is impossible to feel sad, anxious, fearful or angry and grateful at the same time. If you find gratitude for any situation it will immediately ease any pain and destroy any fear.
So I made the choice. I became grateful.
I pulled out my notebook and made a list about why this was awesome!
Excerpt from my journal:
I am so grateful my Instagram is gone because…
-I get to start over and feel totally in alignment with every single thing I post from now on. My old page was a bit of a mosh posh of the real me and the me that was trying to get engagement posting things that “you are supposed to post”.
-I get to create a new following of people that want to follow me because of the person that I am NOW, not the person I was “trying to be” before.
-I get to feel excited and motivated about creating new content and reaching new people.
-I can make this feed look and feel however I choose!
All the sudden, the fear went away and I got excited! Yes - I said excited!
So now not only am I grateful for my fresh start with Instagram, I am also grateful that I was able to take a really shitty situation and turn it into a great one!
It reiterated to me that no matter what happens in life, I always get to make the choice about how I want to react to it.
I choose to be grateful. Everything that has happened in my life, “good” or “bad” has always been exactly what I needed to get me to where I am today.
I am grateful for that, and so excited to create my own party and invite you all.
