Have you noticed that a lot of times when life gives us lemons, we tend to complain about the sourness of those lemons? A very few people are able to make lemonades out of those lemons that life throws at them. So what does this even mean? Let’s dive in.
This reminds me of the baseball metaphor. If you are at bat and ready to hit the ball. You are expecting a fastball and are all ready to knock it out of the park. All of a sudden the pitcher throws a curveball at you. The ball actually slows down as it is coming to you. You are stumped and suddenly you get a strike. Now if you are a veteran player and do know what to do in a situation like this, you will adjust on the fly and take a single instead of that home run you were looking for. That is what it means to make lemonade out of the lemons life throws at you.
Before we can make those lemonades though, we first need to not lose it! Meaning, we need to stay positive when adversity comes at us at 100 miles an hour. The most important this in these situations is to keep things in perspective. We tend to blow things out of proportion when things go wrong. We assume the absolute worst and often our reaction is more like an overreaction. Instead, if we learn to keep things in perspective as to the extent of negative news that may be coming at us, we will be able to look at that objectively and find the right solution. We touched on this in a roundabout way in our discussions on equanimity if you recall in episode 13—I know sounds like a lifetime ago! If you get a chance, go revisit that episode.
The next thing to do is to have open communication. Understand what needs to be done and ask questions. This actually happened to me recently. We sold a building and the tenant sent us the rent after we sold the building by mistake. The buyer asked me to write him a check for the rent. I asked him if he can get the tenant to email me that they authorize me to send him a check I would be happy to otherwise, I needed to return the rent to the tenant. The buyer flipped out. He was all worked up because he did not expect that answer. I called him and said all it takes is an email from you to the tenant and why he was so hesitant about it. After talking it over with me, he realized that it was a reasonable thing to do and the matter was resolved in an hour. So it is important to understand what it is that someone is asking before getting all flipped out about it. So communication is key because oftentimes when we think is a lemon may not be a lemon at all!
Another thing that helps is always to be grateful. We always start our sessions with a gratitude attitude. A gratitude mindset helps you keep a positive outlook in the face of adversity. Yet another thing that helps is to be mindful. Slow your breathing down. As we all know, our thoughts are racing at a million miles mile per hour. When you slow your breathing down, they slow down to a manageable level.
One thing I have learned is that when people perceive something as a threat, they tend to overreact. So when life throws lemons at you, try to take them as a challenge and not as a threat. This is the key. We all know how to accept challenges and rise to them. Threats on the other hand evoke fight, flight, or freeze responses within us and that tends to be destructive.
And the last point I would like to make is that accept what you can and cannot do. What does that mean? As we have talked about this before, focus on what you can control. There are things and outcomes that are out of control. If you worry about things that you have no control over, it will become very difficult to get out of the negative spiral.
Hope all of this makes sense. Next time you come across a curveball in the shape of adversity, try to put some of these tips into practice. Hopefully, you will be able to make lemonade out of those lemons after all!