2013-30 Inspirational Story: When you have a lemon, make lemonade
Dale Carnegie: While writing the book "How to Stop Worrying", I dropped in one day at the
University of Chicago and asked the Chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, how he
kept from worrying. He replied: "I have always tried to follow a bit of
advice given me by the late Julius Rosenwald, President of Sears, Roebuck and
Company: 'When you have a lemon, make lemonade.'
"
That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the
exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and
says: "I'm beaten. It is fate. I haven't got a chance." Then he
proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of self-pity. But
when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: "What lesson can I learn
from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon
into a lemonade?"
After spending a lifetime studying people and their hidden
reserves of power, the great psychologist, Alfred Adler, declared that one of
the wonder-filled characteristics of human beings is "their power to turn a minus into a plus."
Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman I
know who did just that. Her name is Thelma Thompson, and she lives at 100
Morningside Drive, New York City. "During the war," she said, as she
told me of her experience, "during the war, my husband was stationed at an
Army training camp near the Mojave Desert, in New Mexico. I went to live there
in order to be near him. I hated the place. I loathed it. I had never before
been so miserable. My husband was ordered out on maneuvers in the Mojave
Desert, and I was left in a tiny shack alone. The heat was unbearable-125
degrees in the shade of a cactus. Not a soul to talk to but Mexicans and
Indians, and they couldn't speak English. The wind blew incessantly, and all
the food I ate, and the very air I breathed, were filled with sand, sand, sand!
"I was so utterly wretched, so sorry for myself, that I
wrote to my parents. I told them I was giving up and coming back home. I said I
couldn't stand it one minute longer. I would rather be in jail! My father
answered my letter with just two lines-two lines that will always sing in my
memory-two lines that completely altered my life:
Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.
"I read those two lines over and over. I was ashamed of
myself. I made up my mind I would find out what was good in my present
situation. I would look for the stars.
"I made friends with the natives, and their reaction
amazed me. When I showed interest in their weaving and pottery, they gave me
presents of their favourite pieces which they had refused to sell to tourists.
I studied the fascinating forms of the cactus and the yuccas and the Joshua
trees. I learned about prairie dogs, watched for the desert sunsets, and hunted
for seashells that had been left there millions of years ago when the sands of
the desert had been an ocean floor.
"What brought
about this astonishing change in me? The Mojave Desert hadn't changed. The
Indians hadn't changed. But I had. I had changed my attitude of mind. And by
doing so, I transformed a wretched experience into the most exciting adventure
of my life. I was stimulated and excited by this new world that I had
discovered. I was so excited I wrote a book about it-a novel that was published
under the title Bright Ramparts. ... I had looked out of my self-created
prison and found the stars."
