When life gives you lemons

There is an old saying, when life gives you lemons make lemonade.  I used to think this was a great saying as it ascribed to my belief that you can turn any adverse situation into an opportunity but recently my thoughts have begun to change along those lines.  I now wonder if making lemonade is just too easy of a solution.  Maybe instead of making lemonade we need to think of making lemon meringue pie.

Why lemon meringue pie?  Making pie involves many more steps than making lemonade and it often doesn’t come out right on the first attempt.  But lemonade, lemonade takes less time and fewer ingredients but it often comes out just the way the maker intended.  So lemon meringue pie offers the bakers more of an opportunity for growth which is often an overlooked factor when we are in the midst of life’s difficulties.  “All great changes are preceded by chaos,” Deepak Chopra.

There is a saying around our family, “when you are continually troubled by the same problem, it means you haven’t learned to deal with it yet.  Change your response to the problem and it will likely go away.”  Of course when someone reminds us of this mantra, we each do a collective sighs and roll of the eyes.  But inevitably a change of how we respond really does prompt a new result, it still may not be the desired result but it is a different result.

The next time something happens to you that makes you want to cringe, consider not embracing your instinctual response.  Once you try something new, don’t forget to look for the lesson at the end of the journey.  Here are a few quotes to help you on your journey:

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore” – Andre Gide

 “Lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at you” – David Brinkley

 “Each person’s task in life is to become an increasingly better person” – Leo Tolstoy

 

Til next time,

“Action expresses priorities” Mohandas Gandhi