When your boss gives you (literal) lemons… 🍋
A few years ago I got a little tchotchke gift from my former line manager — a tiny lemon charm.
It was after a major setback in my career and admittedly, I was a little sour emotionally, given the timing. I don’t know if it was an intentional choice of a fruit — during this meeting a lot of her former female reports got something from her.
I didn’t pay too much attention to any possible hidden meaning until about a year later, after the sourness has mellowed away, and I found the little gift accidentally in my home office desk drawer. There is was, bright and yellow.
I decided to follow the advice of the saying, “when life gives you lemons…” I literally squeezed the little charm into my wallet and then I squeezed life as much as I could — with a lot of hard work and steps along the way leading to my sabbatical leave, which has been an amazing 8 months so far.
TL;DR of the story is that sometimes we’re spending so much of our strength and energy fixated on this or that failure to realize that life gives us lemons that we just have to make the best of. But once you’re ready, once you’ve moved yourself forward, the lemonade will be refreshing. 🍸
