When Life Throws You Lemons...Make Lemonade!

I was reading the latest news from my favorite online daily and was shocked to hear the tragic suicide and death of a producer that radically changed the music world. I won't go into who that person was and what led him to his death but it made me think about how someone of his success would eventually "exit stage left". This month, I would like to focus on what to do when life throws you lemons.

The question is, "how do you make the best lemonade from lemons that life throws at us"? In the process of learning, self–help is the best help. One must learn to stand on one’s own feet. The secret of success lies in self-confidence and self-reliance. Teachers, parents and even mentors can only help us to manifest strength, power and perfection that are already with in us.

Timidity and self distrust are almost as great faults as conceit and over confidence. There are many people, who have real talent or skill sets in different fields, and yet who never accomplish anything, because they are afraid to make to reach out and explore the possibilities.

A reasonable amount of confidence in one’s own ability is necessary for success.

Life is tough but it seems "en vogue" to always grumble about how difficult life is. How about we step back in time 150 years and then you will know how tough life used to be. Here's the cold facts, most people will never get any happiness out of life or achieve the success they envision because they don't take the proper steps to learn how to be successful. However, there is another approach, if we face it bravely with honestly and try to make the best of it, we shall find it is not so bad as we thought and we may have our moments of happiness and the joy of success.

Someone said, "any thing that is worth doing at all is worth doing well". Even in the humblest task we should be ambitious to do it as well as we can, if possible better than anyone else. Not to "outdo" someone else but to perform at the highest level you can achieve.

In short, we need to have a success mindset. Let's look at some of the basic principles of defining success.

Defining Success

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As they say, you have to "make the best of life". I know its a cliche but there is something truthful about this saying. The time to keep your head up is when you're at your lowest.

I like looking back in time and seeing what some of the great essayist of our time had to say on a variety of topics. For this topic, I've chosen Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)


Death to such people is the ending of a short life, but it does not touch the life they are already living in those whom they have taught; and happily, as none can know when he shall die, so none can make sure that he too shall not live long beyond the grave; for the life after death is like money before it—no one can be sure that it may not fall to him or her even at the eleventh hour. Money and immortality come in such odd unaccountable ways that no one is cut off from hope. We may not have made either of them for ourselves, but yet another may give them to us in virtue of his or her love, which shall illumine us for ever, and establish us in some heavenly mansion whereof we neither dreamed nor shall ever dream. Look at the Doge Loredano Loredani, the old man’s smile upon whose face has been reproduced so faithfully in so many lands that it can never henceforth be forgotten—would he have had one hundredth part of the life he now lives had he not been linked awhile with one of those heaven-sent men who know che cosa e amor? Look at Rembrandt’s old woman in our National Gallery; had she died before she was eighty- three years old she would not have been living now. Then, when she was eighty-three, immortality perched upon her as a bird on a withered bough.

Even the wealthiest people in the world don't know what tomorrow brings. Words to live by. I could write a book on adversity but what people would be more inspired by is how I overcame the adversity and inspired others in the process.

When times get tough, rewrite the script and use the opportunity to reinvent yourself, don't fall through the cracks of life and continue to inspire others in the process.