When Life Gives You Lemons It’s Time To Get Creative

We’ve all heard the quote or seen the memes: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Lemons are an opportunity for change, creativity, and the transformation of sour into sweet. 

The quote implies you turn something yuck into yum. However, lemons are just lemons until you do something with them. They are not inherently good or bad. 

Ask Yourself: 

Is stress my go-to response at the first sighting of a lemon?

Do I take in the landscape and begin to notice the possibilities before jumping to conclusions?

Do I crave sour or sweetness? (At work and in life, some people crave chaos and are bored when things are easy.)

Is my default to squeeze acid on my paper cuts or use lemons to my advantage?

When life gives you lemons… celebrate the opportunity for creativity and change. 

At the tail end of 2017, I moved into a new house with a gargantuan lemon tree. A few months later, we had more lemons than we could use in ten jugs of lemonade. In truth, I didn’t know how to make even one pitcher of lemonade without searching for a recipe.

Lemon bars!

Chicken Piccata!

Jugs of water with floating slices!

Tea!

Lemon cake!

And, of course, lemonade!

And I was out of ideas. Google only gets you so far.

An abundance of lemons turned joy into madness as we drowned in the excess. So many people have fruit trees here; we couldn’t even offload them to neighbors. At the end of the season, a fair bunch ended up in the garbage disposal, which I read keeps it clean and smelling nice. Win!

Ask Yourself: 

What am I doing with lemons that show up in my life? 

Am I turning to tried and true solutions or activating my creativity? 

Do I rely on what I know, or do I research, reach out to my network, and search for new ways to use the lemons to my advantage?

When life gives you lemons… you anticipate, ready for the creative challenge. 

Then came the big chop of 2018. 

After years of growth without any pruning, our lemon tree towered higher than our roof and broader than our yard. 

We asked our lawn service for help to keep the tree healthy and our gutters clear. The request was something like: “Please cut it away from the house.” Their interpretation of my message and my intention diverged. 

A week later, all that remained of our beautiful tree were a few feeble remnants of once-thriving branches.

After that, like most people around the world, we hit the grocery store for our lemons and used them judiciously instead of creatively. No room for play or failure, we used what we purchased, and that was that. 

The universe didn’t care that I had plans for those lemons from our tree. I was ready. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the universe tends to work.

As for our tree…

2019 passed with no lemons.

2020 was a sour year, but no lemons grew.

2021, the tree is still only a shadow of what it once was. 

Branches are currently heavy for the other lemon trees in our area. A copious amount of fruit is visible from every angle. 

However, if you stand by the trunk of our meager tree and look up, you can spot dots of yellow. There are six perfect lemons, a sign that a change has come. 

Ask Yourself: 

How much time do I waste comparing my lemons to someone else’s?

How often do I give that advice? “You’re better off than so and so.” Does it help?

When I anticipate and am let down, do I wait for circumstances to change, or change my circumstances?

When life gives you lemons… you discover your limits.

COVID, for many, was a harbinger of the year of the lemon. Sweet and sour co-existed. 

The things you hated about your pre-COVID life, you longed for too. 

And the things you loved, you miss.

For some, the challenge of the past year and a half has been overwhelming. Others were massively creative and used life’s lemons to their advantage. Most people lived somewhere in between, reaching the limits of their resourcefulness and resilience. 

My bet is that you deserve more credit than you give yourself. You took an overabundance of life lemons and didn’t get smothered even when you felt within inches. You’re still here, pushing forward. 

When life gives you lemons… notice the lessons before tossing the rind.

Take a moment and celebrate your creativity and ability to roll with change instead of putting it all behind you. This moment is not a final approach to the finish line in your race to return to normal. You are changed. The world changed. 

You’re kinda like the lemonade. The past months have transformed you. You may look the same, or your clothes may be a little tighter, but you’ve discovered when life is upside down and backward, you can get through it. 

Break the Frame Action: 

• Set a timer for two minutes.
  
• Say or jot down at the top of a piece of paper or in your favorite app: “Life gave me lemons and…”
  
• Now write. Don’t judge. Get it out on the page: the good, the bad, the truth.
  
• Focus on not only what you did but also what you learned about yourself in the process.
  
• Timer done, read over what you’ve discovered.
  
• Use this brief 120 seconds as an act of self-care. This is your moment to acknowledge how you made your lemons into lemonade.
  

Lemons are your circumstances. My family had lemons on our tree, and we all have lemons in our lives – they come and go. Good news is, you are the chef and get to decide what you’ll do with ’em.