When Life Gives You Lemons
There is a well-known saying, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” that people often quote during times of struggle and hardship. The idea is to manage your mindset and get your thinking flowing in a positive direction. This can be a hard thing to do when times are tough so I’ve put together some ideas of what you can do with those proverbial lemons.
Zest the rind. Many recipes call for lemon zest- you take a zester (a handy, hand-held kitchen gadget) and swipe it over the lemon rind making little yellow spirals that you can bake into things for lemon flavor. You are literally scratching the surface of the lemon. When talking, we often scratch the surface of a topic or a problem and then stop. Instead of stopping, scratch the surface a bit and notice what it is that you are feeling sad/scared/angry about. Write these things down on small pieces of paper. One scratched rind per piece of paper. Write as many down as you can think of. Zest the entire lemon rind, if you will. When you have finished, look at each piece of paper. Read each slowly and deliberately. Tell yourself that it is okay to feel sad/scared/angry or any other feeling that you are having. Now, sort the pieces of paper into piles. One pile for things that you need to do more than scratch the surface in order to be okay and the other for things that you find are minor for you. Take the pile of minors and throw them away (in a trash can or other container- no littering please). With the pile of things that need more than a surface scratch to be able to deal with, continue on to:
Squeeze the juice. This is the literal making of lemonade. You can squeeze the lemons by hand to get the juice out (this is messy and fun) or you can use an actual lemon juicer. With this metaphorical step, you are going to take the things that go below the surface of your sad/scared/angry upset because they are bigger, hold more meaning for you, or just need more than a cursory glance and a quick jotting down on a piece of paper. The juice of the lemon that you are going to be making into lemonade is a recognition that your emotions and the reasons for them are valid. Squeeze them out. This squeezing may require talking about, writing about, or crying about. But they must be let out! Set the juice and lemon zest aside.
Scoop out the lemon pulp. At this point, we are going to be feeling rather raw because we have identified all of the things we are sad/scared/angry/other about. We have squeezed out all the juice and zested much of the rind. Having taken time to get our feelings out, we are recognizing that things are really tough and there are only so many things that we can do. Scooping out the lemon pulp is a chance to pause. We have set aside the juice and the zest. We have talked/cried/written and done a tremendous amount of thinking. Scooping out the pulp, we begin to shift away from just identifying, validating, and venting to taking action. We are gearing up to doing something.
Grab the seeds. Doing something. Doing is important. Doing something leads to change. When we take lemons and turn them into lemonade, we are taking the hard and turning it into something positive. It’s not about ignoring the negatives and pretending everything is all sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows or that we are feeling totally great when we are really not. When we pull out the seeds, we are pulling out the ideas that have come about from this lemon to lemonade process. We take these seeds, and we contemplate them. After pausing to scoop out the pulp, we open our minds up for new ideas. They can be new ideas such as putting the lemon juice and zest together with some sugar and ice cubes to create a refreshing glass of lemonade. This allows us to further contemplate our lemons. What is it that we can learn from them? Then, one by one we take the ideas as we take each of the seeds and we plant them. Cultivate them, nurture them, help them to grow. In doing this, you may come up with a new business idea or a new way to help teach your child that math problem that just won’t work out for either of you. Maybe you decide to reach out to a neighbor and ask about trading seeds for a vegetable garden or you send a note to a grandparent you haven’t been able to see for a while. In taking the sad/scared/angry and turning the energy into something positive, you are taking action. And action feels good.
So, take the lemons that you are getting in abundance right now and find ways to turn them into lemonade! Go ahead, you can do it!