Making Lemonade

"When life throws you lemons, make lemonade."

How do you make lemonade out of your lemons? Making something positive out of something negative is exhausting, and it's not my favorite activity.  Sometimes I want to throw my hands up in the air and say "I give up," but that isn't going to solve anything.

Lately I've had some bowling ball sized lemons thrown my way.  Not getting enough hours at work, which makes paying bills not so easy.  Not being able to move like we wanted to.  Taking a break from school and trying to figure out what the next year will hold.  Life is completely up in the air, and the other day I took it out on the person I love the most.  I was ready to give up and yelled at him for it.

When I was in high school, I was in this group called Life 101.  One of the biggest lessons I learned was called "the cup".  The cup was basically your mood, your life, in a cup you carry around with you.  If your cup was nasty, full of bad attitude, not letting go off the bad things, letting them rot in your cup, making your cup the nastiest substance ever known, you could make someone else's cup that way too.  What if you bump into them, and spill your cup into theirs? They aren't going to have a great cup either. That's what I did to my boyfriend. I spilled my cup into his, and his cup turned rotten too.

I needed to filter my cup, or throw it away and get a new one, rather than holding onto my rotten mess.  Instead of holding onto the bad stuff, focusing on that, I needed to make lemonade. I left my lemons in my cup and let them rot to the point they were unrecognizable. So now, I'm making lemonade.  I took my lemons, and added sugar, strained out the pulp, and decided that having lemonade in my cup was way better than rotten lemons.

Do you have lemons you are letting rot in your cup?  Maybe you are struggling, lost in the unknown of your future, or wishing you could do something different.  Make some lemonade, sit down, and decide you're going to be positive. I promise, it helps.  You control your cup, you decide what you carry with you.  Wouldn't it be nice to have delicious lemonade?

p.s. I promise every day won't be about lemons!