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At the University of Chicago, Dale Carnegie 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.” 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.”
#1 Story of a Woman
Here is an interesting and stimulating story of a woman named Thelma Thompson. She used to live in New York City. She shared her experience to Dale Carnegie, “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 had never before been so miserable. My husband was ordered out on operations 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. 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 miserable, 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.
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 reactions amazed me. When I showed interest in their weaving and pottery, they gave me presents of their favorite 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. 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.”
Thelma Thompson had discovered an old truth that the Greeks taught five hundred years before Christ was born: “The best things are the most difficult.”
#2 Story of Happy Farmer
Dale Carnegie once visited a happy farmer down in Florida who turned even a poison lemon into lemonade. When he first got this farm, he was discouraged. The land was so wretched he could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs. Nothing thrived there but scrub oaks and rattlesnakes. Then he got his idea. He would turn his liability into an asset: he would make the most of these rattlesnakes.
To everyone’s amazement, he started canning rattlesnake meat. Within few years tourists were pouring in to see his rattlesnake farm (YouTube video) at the rate of twenty thousand a year. His business was thriving. Poison from the fangs of his rattlers being shipped to laboratories to make anti-venom toxins; rattlesnake skins being sold at fancy prices to make women’s shoes and handbags. Canned rattlesnake meat being shipped to customers all over the world. Dale Carnegie bought a picture postcard of the place and mailed it at the local post office of the village, which had been renamed “Rattlesnake, Florida”, in honor of a man who had turned a poison lemon into a sweet lemonade.
Way Ahead
Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope for us to turn our lemons into lemonade, then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anyway, two reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Reason one: We may succeed.
Reason two: Even if we don’t succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and encourage us to get so busy that we won’t have either the time or the inclination to mourn over the past.
Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three strings.
The following words of William Bolitho (the author of Twelve Against the Gods) can be carved in eternal bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land:
“The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.”
So, when fate hands you a lemon, try to make a lemonade. Cultivate this mental attitude to bring peace and happiness to your life. (Inspired from ‘How to Stop Worrying and Start Living’ by Dale Carnegie).
