Chapter 25 If you have a lemon, make lemonade

Beethoven wrote better pieces when he was deaf, so we can see that defects can sometimes help us unexpectedly. While writing this book, I traveled to the University of Chicago to ask President Rob Rogers how to be happy.He replied, "I've been trying to follow a little piece of advice that was given to me by the late Sears Chairman Rosen. He said, 'If you have a lemon, make lemonade.'" This is what a great educator does, and the opposite is what a fool does.If he finds that fate offers him only one lemon, he will say sadly, "Fate has been so unfair to me. I have no chance." Then he begins to curse the world desperately and wallow in self-pity.And when a wise man gets a lemon, he thinks, "What can I learn from these misfortunes? How can I improve my current situation? How can I make this lemon into a glass of lemonade?"

After spending a lifetime studying human behavior and human potential, the great psychologist Alfred Andel said that one of the most wonderful characteristics of human beings is "the ability to turn a negative into a positive." The following is a story that is both interesting and meaningful.The heroine of the story is named Therma Thompson, whom I knew.She told me about her experience: "During the war, my husband was stationed at an Army training camp near the Murgar Verde desert in California. I moved there too to be closer to him. I hated it so much, you could say I hated it. Husband Traveling a lot and leaving me alone in a shabby house put me in the most distress I've ever had. The desert weather was unbearable, with temperatures reaching Fahrenheit even in the shade of giant cacti 125 degrees. Hardly anyone to talk to except mexicans and indians, and they don't speak english. It's windy all day long, and there's sand in everything you eat and air you breathe! sand! sand !

"There was a time when my life was in shambles because of the pain, so I wrote to my parents and told them I couldn't take it anymore and I was going home, right away, and I couldn't stay for a minute. Father's reply Just two lines, and these two lines have stuck in my mind and changed my life. These two lines are: 'Two men look out of the prison bars, one sees the mud; Another saw the stars.' "I read those two lines over and over again, filled with guilt. I made up my mind to discover something beautiful around me - I was going to see the stars. “So I made friends with the locals and was amazed at how friendly and hospitable they were. When I showed even the slightest interest in the cloth they wove or the pottery they made, they didn’t hesitate Favorite things were given to me instead of sold to tourists. I carefully admired the fascinating forms of cacti and yucca; I learned a lot about groundhogs; Look for shells - 3 million years ago this desert was once a sea.

"What made me change so much? The Morgarfort Desert didn't change, the Indians didn't change, but I changed--changed my mentality. In this mentality, I will change the previous The situation that made me depressed turned into the most exciting adventure of my life. I was moved and excited by this new world. For this reason, I wrote a novel called "The Fortress of Light"... …I looked out of my prison and found the stars." Therma Thompson found not just the stars, but a truth taught by the Greeks 500 years before Jesus Christ: "The best are the hardest to come by."

In the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick explained this sentence: "Happiness is more important than enjoyment, but victory." Indeed, this kind of victory comes from a sense of accomplishment. A kind of pride also comes from the fact that we can make lemonade from lemons. I once visited a happy farmer in Florida who even turned a "poison lemon" into lemonade.When he bought the farm, he felt very depressed.The land was in bad condition, neither fruit nor pigs, and it was full of poplars and rattlesnakes.However, he came up with a brilliant idea to turn what he had into an asset - he wanted to use those rattlesnakes and make them into cans.This approach took many people by surprise.But when I visited him a few years ago, I found that there were roughly 20,000 visitors a year to see Rattlesnake Farm.His business was very successful. The rattlesnakes from the farm were taken out, and the snake venom was transported to major pharmaceutical factories to be made into anti-venom serum; It is sold all over the world...Before I left, I bought a postcard with local scenery and sent it through the local post office, and found that the village had been renamed "Florida Rattlesnake Village"-in memory of the "poisonous lemon" "The farmer who made sweet lemonade.

I have traveled back and forth across the country and have been fortunate enough to meet many men and women who demonstrate "the ability to turn a negative into a positive." The late William Polisot, author of The Twelve Men Who Surpassed Heaven with Their Men, once said: "The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on one's earnings, as any fool would Do it. What really matters is to profit from your losses. It takes ingenuity to do it, and that's the difference between a wise man and a fool." When Boriso said this, he had just lost a leg in a train accident.I also know a man with two broken legs who can turn a negative into a positive, and his name is Ben Fortson.I was walking into the elevator of a hotel in Atlantic City, Georgia, when I saw a disabled man with two broken legs sitting in a wheelchair in the corner of the elevator.The elevator stopped, and at the floor he was going to, he asked me if I could make room so he could turn his wheelchair. "I'm very sorry," he said, "to trouble you like this." He had a very warm smile on his face as he spoke.

I left the elevator and went back to my room with nothing on my mind but this happy disabled person.So I decided to go to him and ask him to tell me his story. "It was 1929, and I was cutting a big pile of walnut logs to be used as bean trestles in the vegetable garden. I was loading the branches on my Ford and walking back. All of a sudden, a branch slipped under the car and got stuck in the In the engine, the car turned sharply and went off the road and threw me into a tree. My spine was injured and both legs were paralyzed. "I was just 24 years old when the accident happened, and I haven't stood up and walked a step since then."

At only 24 years old, he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.How did he bravely accept this fact?I asked suspiciously.He said that at the beginning, he was also full of resentment and suffering, complaining about the injustice of fate all day long.As the years went by, he discovered that anger did nothing for him other than make him behave badly toward others. "I finally realized," he said, "that people were kind and caring to me, and that I should reciprocate." I asked him again, after many years of suffering, did he still feel that the accident he encountered was terrible and unfortunate?He quickly replied, “No, sometimes I’m even thankful that I had that experience.” He told me that when he got over his initial shock and regret, he began a new life.He read desperately and developed a strong interest in literature.In 14 years, he has read at least more than 1,400 books, which brought him into a new realm of thought and enriched his life.He began to listen to beautiful music, and the great symphonies which had previously bored him now moved him very much.Another biggest change is that he now has enough time to think. "For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to look at the world carefully and have real values. I began to understand that many of the things I used to pursue were mostly worthless."

Reading made him have a keen interest in politics.He started researching issues of public concern, gave speeches here and there in a wheelchair, and got to know a lot of people, and people got to know him.Although Ben Fortson is not out of his wheelchair today, he is already the Secretary General of the Georgia State Government. For 35 years, I have been hosting adult education classes in New York City.I find that many adults express regret that they did not go to college.They seem to view not having a college education as a great flaw in their lives.That's certainly not true, because I know thousands of successful people, some of whom haven't even graduated from high school.To that end, I often tell my students the story of a man I knew who didn't even finish elementary school.At that time, his family was desolate, and his father was buried only with the help of relatives and friends.After the father died, the whole family relied on the mother to work alone in an umbrella factory to make ends meet. After working 10 hours a day, the mother had to bring some work home until 11 o'clock in the evening.

The boy who grew up in such a difficult environment once participated in an amateur theater performance held by the local church.He was so excited by the show that he decided to learn speech.This ability led him into politics, and at age 30 he was elected to the New York State Assembly.However, he was unprepared for the task.Facing those long and complicated bills that need to be voted on, he was at a loss as if reading Indian script; when he was elected as a member of the Forestry Committee, he was terrified because he had never stepped into the forest; He was even more terrified when he was elected to the state legislature's finance committee because he had never even opened a bank account.He told me that he was so nervous that he almost wanted to resign from the parliament at the time, but he was ashamed to admit his defeat to his mother.In desperation, he made up his mind to study hard for 16 hours a day, and turned his ignorant lemon into a glass of lemonade of knowledge: through unremitting efforts, he finally became a famous big man all over the country from a small local politician. Politician, because of his outstanding achievements, he was hailed as "New York's most popular citizen" by the New York Times.

The above is Al Smith. Ten years after Al Smith began his self-education course, he became one of the most influential figures in New York politics.He was elected mayor of New York City four times—a record never seen before or since. In 1928, he ran for the presidency of the United States as the Democratic candidate.And half a dozen universities, including Columbia and Harvard, awarded him honorary degrees — to a man who didn't even graduate elementary school. Al Smith once said to me that none of these things would have happened if he hadn’t been working 16 hours a day trying to turn the negative into the positive. Nietzsche once gave such a definition to Superman: "To not only bear all things, but also to love all things, if necessary." The more I study successful people, the more I feel that they are successful because there is always some obstacle that hinders them in the first place, and this pushes them to redouble their efforts, so they achieve great achievements.As William James said: "Flaws often have unexpected benefits in our lives." Yes, maybe Milton wrote better poems because he was blind in both eyes; and Beethoven made better tunes because he was deaf in both ears; Maybe it was because she couldn't hear or see. If Tchaikovsky hadn't been immersed in a sea of ​​​​wretchedness-a tragic marriage almost brought him to the brink of suicide-he might never have written the immortal "Pathetic Symphony". If Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had not experienced life full of ups and downs, perhaps they would never have been able to write such immortal works. “Without disability,” wrote the man who changed the basic conception of the life sciences, “I could never have done so much work.” Darwin confessed that disability helped him in unexpected ways. On the same day that Darwin was born in England, in a log cabin in the Kentucky woods, another child was born, whose imperfections served him well.His name was Abraham Lincoln.If he had been born into an aristocratic family, graduated from Harvard Law School, and had a happily married life, maybe he would never have been able to deliver the immortal speech at Gettysburg from the bottom of his heart, or make a second campaign speech. uttered the poetic line in it—the most beautiful and noblest words ever spoken by the President of the United States: "Have no malice for anyone, but be full of love..." Harry Emerson Fosdick once said in the book "Seeing Everything": "There is a famous saying in Scandinavia that can be used to encourage yourself-the north wind made the Virgins. Why do people Do you all think that having a certain sense of security, without having to face any difficulties, comfort and leisure can make people happy? My opinion is just the opposite. People who look at themselves are always poor, even if they lie comfortably on the big Simmons. No exception. We have seen from history that a person's character and happiness are often influenced by a variety of different circumstances, so I will say it again: the north wind made the Virgin." If we're so frustrated that we can't turn lemons into lemonade, try these two reasons why we're making money but not losing money. Reason #1: We might succeed. Reason #2: Even without success, the mere desire to turn a negative into a positive causes us to look forward rather than backward.Because replacing a negative attitude with a positive attitude can stimulate people's creativity and make us have no time or interest to worry about the things that have passed. Once, the world-renowned violinist Ollie Bull gave a concert in Paris.During the performance, the A string of the violin suddenly broke, but he still used the other three strings to finish the piece. "It's the same in life, if you break your A string, play it out on the other three strings," said Harry Emerson Fosdick. It's not just living, it's more than living - it's a life triumph. If I could, I would have these words of William Polisot engraved on copper plates and hung on the walls of every school: "The most important thing in life is not to count your earnings as capital, as any fool would do. What really matters is to profit from your losses. It takes ingenuity to do that, and that's what The difference between a wise man and a fool." Therefore, to cultivate the psychology that brings peace and happiness, the sixth rule is: "When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a glass of lemonade."