When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Wait, what?
We all know the saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Chances are someone has said this to you before when you’ve been in a bad situation. It means you should use your bad experience and turn it into something good. You probably haven’t heard “when life gives you lemonade, make lemons” though.
That’s all fine and dandy, but I find that many times people try to avoid the bad experiences or pretend they never happened; they want the lemonade without the lemons. This is where my twist on the old saying comes in: When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Now, this could be taken several ways–you might read this and think “is she telling us to turn a good situation into a bad one…?” No, that’s not what I’m trying to say. Let me explain.
When life gives you lemonade, make lemons.
Everyone faces hardships, it’s a simple fact of life. You can’t learn anything without failing a few times before you succeed. Do you think you were able to ride your bike without training wheels on the first try? Or tie your shoes right away? In dance, you won’t likely won’t land a triple pirouette or an aerial on the first attempt; in chemistry class you might fail the first or second or tenth time you try to titrate a solution perfectly. Life is about making mistakes.
I make a lot of mistakes, I know that I do. Am I embarrassed of them? Nope. I’m proud of all of the mistakes I have made.
You know what is the most important thing about making mistakes? Acknowledging them. Taking these mistakes and learning what you will from them, then accepting that they make you who you are today. It’s having a glass of lemonade and saying “Wow, this is really good. I wonder what kind of lemons/how many lemons went into making this. I appreciate them. Without them, I wouldn’t have this delicious lemonade.“
I might sound silly to you right now, and that’s okay. You don’t have to see the analogy the way I do, and it doesn’t matter. As long as I can get my point across: Don’t hide the struggles that made you who you are because you are embarrassed or afraid of how many times you failed at something.
Failing is natural and is the only way to learn.
You might be the best soccer player in the league. Don’t forget all of the times you let the opposing team’s forward player slip past you and score; don’t forget all the times you missed the net; don’t forget that you made it through the struggles and succeeded.
You might be known as the greatest artist at your school. Don’t forget all of the drawings you ripped out of your sketchbook, or scribbled over in frustration; don’t forget the countless videos you watched to improve your technique, only to pause it in anger because your sketch of an eye doesn’t look exactly like the one in the video, which the artist of has years of their own trials and failures behind. Don’t forget that you made it through the various trials and are a better artist because of these trials.
You might be fluent in six languages, but did you learn them all on the first try?
You might be a great chef, but did you ever not burn any of your dishes?
You might be a joyful person right now, the “sunshine” in your friend circle, but wasn’t there ever a time when you doubted yourself and everything you thought you were?
Making the most of a tough situation.
Back to the analogy; lemonade is great; success is great. Don’t forget the lemons (the struggles, the failures) that got you there. You needed those struggles to be successful. Be proud of what you failed at, and where it has brought you now. So, no, making lemons out of lemonade is not actually possible, nor am I saying you should take your success and downplay it. I’m saying you should always remember the struggles you faced to get to where you are now. If you see someone struggling like you once did, don’t laugh at them or criticize them, help them! You were in their position at one time. Wouldn’t you want help from someone who knew just what you were going through, and managed to pull through it all?
That’s all I have to say. Thanks to my mom, who once accidentally said “When life gives you lemonade, make lemons” when she was trying to cheer me up after I failed at something. It got me thinking, and now it’s become an entire post on my blog.
I hope some of this resonates with you. We’ve had it ingrained into our heads that failure is bad, but it really isn’t. Without failure we never find our passions and dreams. With failure, we become stronger.
I hope “when life gives you lemonade, make lemons” is now your favourite saying.
Until next time.