Reframing Adversity: Making Lemonade from Life's Lemons.🍋

Published: Wed, 10/18/23

You Learn More From Failure than From Success. Don't Let it Stop You. Failure Builds Character.

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I’ve always thought that the ability to reframe challenges was a must-have skill if you wanted to be a writer without mental health issues. The disappointments and failures of an artist’s life need a coping mechanism to handle the creative life’s ups and downs. The skill of reframing failure is precisely what the doctor ordered.

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"You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over"

Richard Branson.

But who am I kidding, Gentle Reader? We all need that in our lives, not just creatives. We talk a lot about failure not being separate from success but a part of it, but it’s hard seeing it that way when you’re in the trenches. When I began to set goals for myself, I struggled with recognising the things I had ultimate control over. I would beat myself up when I failed to achieve my lofty ambitions. I had this naive idea that once it was written down, it was sacrosanct and must be attained in the timeframe I set myself.

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I didn’t appreciate that pushing against the wrong wall is assuring your failure. With maturity, you learn to take the time to focus and find the right wall, but it stings in the moment, and you can’t help feeling disappointed. Especially if the guru of the moment is spouting off about how effortlessly they achieved their goals while you are struggling.
You must embrace your failure, they say.
What!
How?

The secret that’s not a secret is reframing the outcome because even these gurus have failures.
Let me ask you something, Gentle Reader. Do you believe that everything standing in your way, blocking your progress, is helping you to build a stronger you?
I do.

I didn’t make the universal laws, but it seems that you can’t control or change many aspects of life, no matter how hard you try. So why waste time banging your head against the wall when you can flow with the current of life.

Bruce Lee said something I love.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water.”

Now, that is how you reframe obstacles.

The legendary motivational speaker Zig Ziglar states that “failure is an event, not a person. Failure does not identify who you are as a person; it only gives you experience and wisdom”.

I look at every failure as growth, and that growth would not have occurred if you had not gone through the struggle. The most important thing to remember is that you put in effort, and there are lessons to be learned. Because every step and decision you take will teach you something if you look back at them. You have gained valuable experience and are far better off for failing.

Life is about growth, and growth is about failures. It’s a game of inches - both backwards and forwards. It’s rarely a single moment that will define how far you’ve come but the cumulative effect of many small decisions, experiences and, most significantly, failures.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
Start looking at failure as an opportunity to grow. Accepting that setbacks and adversity are part of life makes us better equipped to adapt and bounce back from challenges.

Be Your Own Hero.