Chapter 16 find the positive side of things

While I was writing this book, I went to the University of Chicago one day to ask President Robert Menan Rogers about how to be happy.He answered me, "I've been trying to follow a piece of advice that was given to me by the late Trias Rosenvo, chairman of Sears. He said, 'If you only have lemons, Just make a glass of 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 give up and say, "I'm finished, that's life. I don't stand a chance." Then he begins to curse the world and wallow in self-pity.And when a wise man gets a lemon, he says, "What can I learn from this unfortunate incident? How can I improve my situation, and how can I make this lemon into a glass of lemonade?"

The great psychologist Alfred Adler, after spending his whole life studying the undeveloped retention ability of human beings, believed that one of the most wonderful characteristics of human beings is "the power to change the negative into positive". Here is a very interesting and meaningful story.I know the heroine of this story, and she did exactly that.Her name is Therma Thompson. "During the war," she told me of her experience, "my husband was stationed at an Army training camp near the Murgar Verde desert in California. I moved there as well to be near him. I hated that place, to say the least. Extremely, I've never been so bothered. My husband was sent on a business trip to the Morgarfort desert, and I was left alone in that little hut. It was unbearably hot in there - even under the shade of a large cactus, it was as high as 125 degrees Fahrenheit. No one talks to you except the Mexicans and Indians who don't speak English. The wind keeps blowing and everything you eat and breathe is full of sand! Everywhere Sand! Sand! Sand!

"I was so sad that I can't describe it. I wrote a letter to my parents and told them that I couldn't bear it and wanted to go home. I said I couldn't live for a minute and I might as well go to prison. .My father's reply letter consisted of only two lines, and these two lines stayed in my memory forever. It changed my life. "'Two men looked out of the prison bars, and the one saw nothing but mud, the other saw stars.' "I read those two lines over and over again, and I felt so ashamed. I made up my mind to find out where else there was to be, and to see the stars.

"I made friends with the locals and was amazed at how they responded. When I expressed interest in the cloth they wove and the pottery they made, they offered their favorite things that they wouldn't sell to tourists. Gifts from tourists. I carefully admired the fascinating forms of cacti and yucca, and learned the story of the groundhog. I saw the sunset over the desert and searched for shells - here 3 million years ago Or the seabed. "What made me change so dramatically? The Morgarfort Desert didn't change at all, and the Indians didn't change at all, but I changed—I changed my attitude. In this change, I put Those decadent situations turned into some of the most exciting adventures of my life. I was so moved and excited by this new world I discovered that I had the pleasure of writing a novel, The Shades of Light. "... I looked out from the prison I set up and finally saw the stars."

Therma Thompson also recognizes a truth the ancient Greeks taught 500 years before Jesus Christ: "The best are the hardest to come by." In the 20th century, Harry Emerson Fosdick repeated this sentence: "The greatest part of happiness is not enjoyment, but victory." Yes, this victory comes from a sense of accomplishment, from a sense of achievement. The pride also comes from the fact that we can make lemonade from lemons. I once visited a happy farmer in Virginia who even turned a "poisonous lemon" into "lemonade".When he bought the farm, he was very depressed.The land was so poor that it could neither grow fruit nor raise pigs, but poplars and rattlesnakes.Then he hit upon a brilliant idea to turn what he had into an asset - he was going to put those rattlesnakes to good use.What he did surprised everyone, because he started canning rattlesnake meat.When I visited him a few years ago, I found out that nearly 20,000 visitors a year visit his rattlesnake farm.

His business is doing great.I saw the venom taken from the mouths of his rattlesnakes being sent to major drug companies to make snake venom serums.I have also seen rattlesnake skins sold at great prices for women's shoes and purses.I've also seen canned rattlesnake meat shipped to customers all over the world.I also bought a postcard with a picture of the place on it and I mailed it at the local post office.Now the village has been renamed Virginia Rattlesnake Village to commemorate the gentleman who made "poisonous lemons" into sweet "lemon juice". Because I have traveled back and forth across the country time and time again, I have had the privilege of meeting many men and women who demonstrate their "ability to turn a negative into a positive."

The late William Poriso, author of Twelve Men Who Surpassed Heaven, once said: "The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your earnings. Any fool would To do, what really matters, is to profit from your losses. That requires ingenuity, and that is what separates a smart man from a fool." By the time Boriso said those words, he had already broken a leg in an auto accident.But I also know a man who broke two legs and also turned his negative into a positive.His name is Ben Fortson.I bumped into him in the elevator of a hotel in Atlantic City, Georgia.As I entered the elevator, I saw this very happy looking man with two broken legs sitting in a wheelchair in the corner of the elevator.When the elevator stopped at exactly the floor he was going to, he cheerfully asked me if I could make room for him to get out. "I'm so sorry," he said, "to trouble you like this"—with a very warm smile on his face as he said this.

When I got out of the elevator and went back to my room, I couldn't think of anything else but this happy disabled man - this guy didn't even finish elementary school, his family was very poor, and when his father died , or by his father's friends soliciting donations, his father was buried.After his father died, his mother worked 10 hours a day at an umbrella factory, bringing some work home until 11pm. The boy who grew up in this environment once participated in an amateur theater performance held by the local church.He felt so happy during the performance that he decided to learn speech.As a result, this ability led him into politics, and at the age of 30, he was elected to the New York State Assembly.But he was not at all prepared for the job.In fact he told me that he didn't even know what was going on.He began to study the long and complicated bills which he had to vote on--but which seemed to him to be written in Indian script.When he was elected to the Forestry Commission, he was both surprised and worried because he had never been in a forest.

He was equally surprised and worried when he was elected to the state legislature's finance committee because he had never even opened a bank account.He told me he was so nervous he almost resigned from Parliament, but he was ashamed to admit his defeat to his mother.In desperation, he resolved to study hard for 16 hours a day, turning that lemon he knew nothing about into a glass of lemonade full of knowledge.As a result, he went from a local politician to a national figure and distinguished himself so much that The New York Times called him "New York's most popular citizen."

I said Al Smith above. Ten years after Al Smith began this self-educating political course, he was the most vocal voice on all matters of New York state government.He has been elected governor of New York State 4 times, which is currently an unprecedented record. In 1918, he became the Democratic nominee for president, and six universities—including Columbia and Harvard— gave honorary degrees to the man who hadn't even graduated elementary school. Al Smith himself told me that none of this would have happened if he hadn’t been working 16-hour days turning the negative into the positive.Through these examples, I am reminded of Nietzsche's saying: "Not only to endure everything as necessary, but also to like it all."