Imagine working a 9 to 5 job that you really enjoy, that brings you personal joy and professional fulfillment. You get along great with all your coworkers, the boss likes you, the job pays well, your family never hears you complain about your work, and overall, you can’t think of another job or employer that better suits you. Then one day the boss asks you to do something that doesn’t sit right with you. You get a terrible knot in your stomach and experience what you believe may be your first ulcer. You reject the request, taking the chance that the boss will retaliate. Instead, things seem to return to normal. Until the next time. This time the boss gives you a direct command to complete a task that you know skirts some ethical lines.
For the first time since you started the job, you start rolling, instead of leaping, out of bed for work. You start questioning why you stay on the job. Finally, your relationship with the boss is clearly strained, and you just want out. Whether you quit or get fired, how do you bounce back stronger than before? How do you turn a setback into a comeback, adversity into prosperity?
Some entrepreneurs begin their professional lives as their own bosses because they can’t imagine being employed by someone else. Others voluntarily ease into entrepreneurship after gaining some valuable, albeit sometimes painful, work and life experience. Still others get forced out of jobs and discover the entrepreneur within out of necessity. They find the silver lining in the dark clouds. They hear beautiful music above the roar of angry mobs. They’ve learned to make sweet lemonade of the sour lemons that life heaps upon them. In short, they practice the principle of turning adversity and challenges into opportunities for learning and growth by finding or creating good from what otherwise seems harsh and bitter.
Master of TACT was founded on the principle of welcoming setbacks and surprises as opportunities to flex new mental, emotional, and spiritual muscles. When I left a toxic work environment with no safety net, no job waiting on the other side of my resignation, independent contract work became a means to earn a meager living while waiting for the next job to open itself. When a premonition prompted me to leave my next full-time job, it was months before another full-time employer welcomed me into its family. In that time, I did the white-collar equivalent of odd jobs to sustain me: trained a nonprofit staffer in Quickbooks, revamped a small business client’s office, helped some social entrepreneurs launch their nonprofit, and assisted a pastor in organizing her church’s after-school programs. Finally, it occurred to me that I could make a full-time endeavor of turning calamity into growth – for me and for countless others at the precipice of launching their big dreams.
How about you? Have you seen this principle in action? Are you applying it right now? Either way, we’d love to hear how you’ve witnessed or applied these ideas in your own life, whether or not in an entrepreneurial context. Your story could inspire an entire generation of struggling entrepreneurs. Comment below or share via our Contact page how you made cold, refreshing, sweet lemonade from lemons that life has dealt you.
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