When Life Gives You Lemons You Squeeze the Vitamin C Out of Them

Dear Impossible Readers,

When life gives you lemons, you squeeze the vitamin C out of them. Yes, that is correct. Did you know that one lemon provides nearly 50% of the recommended daily intake for adults? Did you also know that citrus fibre can lower bad cholesterol, LDL, by preventing the intestines from absorbing it? That sounds like great advice. Only I do not believe in good advice. Nor do I believe in bad advice. Am I stubborn? Possibly. I believe one should evaluate one’s values and decide whether to take advice. If you live your life to meet others’ expectations, you are not living the life you want. You would be living the life others laid out for you.

My mother came from a small fishing village. One day, her brother came home with poor grades, yet again. My grandfather said something interesting. He said, ‘It is okay. If school does not work out, you just go fish’. Funny enough, one of my uncle’s friends did become a fisherman. And guess what? After 20 years, fishermen were among the wealthiest men in the village.

To be honest, most people in school or at work are not high performers. However, I do not believe in bad performers. I believe that under the right conditions, many people could be classified as high performers, whether within that system or through a journey of self-discovery. I think everyone has innate abilities that have yet to be uncovered.

I went from being an A student to a C student, then to a B student. When I was a C student, my teachers thought I was hopeless. My mum told me something interesting. She said I needed someone to teach me how to learn because the way I was learning was not working. Little did she realise that the standard educational system was not working. It never did.

I do not believe in good or bad advice. I believe in science and values. The average lemon contains 30 to 50 mg of Vitamin C. That is a fact. Whether you should squeeze it into your water is a matter of personal choice. We are told that only 10% of us are high performers. The fishermen were low performers in a classroom, but they were the wealthiest men in the village once they got on a boat. So, who is the low performer now?

Do you know how I went from a C to a B student? I sat at the back of the lecture hall doing newspaper puzzles instead of sitting in the front row to pretend I enjoyed boring lectures. Do not take this the wrong way, I have met teachers so good that the entire class passed. I moved back up to a B, not because I worked harder but because I stopped trying to fit the standard mould and started using my innate abilities, even if they looked like a Sunday crossword puzzle.

In reality, most people just follow the stepping stones. Then reality slaps you in the face. The standard system is not working because it tries to turn every lemon into the same lemonade. If you are a C student, you may not be hopeless. Maybe you are just a fisherman sitting in a math class.

The power law beats the bell curve,
Yours Possibly

Further Reading

O’Boyle Jr, E. and Aguinis, H., 2012. The best and the rest: Revisiting the norm of normality of individual performance. Personnel Psychology, 65(1), pp.79-119.
Bronfenbrenner, U., 1979. The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design (Vol. 352). Harvard university press.
Edwards, J.R. and Cooper, C.L., 2013. The Person-Environment Fit Approach to Stress: Recurring Problems and Some Suggested Solutions. From Stress to Wellbeing.
Gardner, H., 1993. Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. Basic Books/Hachette Book Group.
Kristof-Brown, A.L., Zimmerman, & RD, Johnson, EC (2005). Consequences of individuals’ fit at work: A meta-analysis of person-job, personorganization, person-group, and person-supervisor fit. Personnel psychology, 58(2), pp.281-342.
Livingston, J.A., 2003. Metacognition: An Overview.
McRae, M.P., 2008. Vitamin C supplementation lowers serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides: a meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials. Journal of chiropractic medicine, 7(2), pp.48-58.
Zimmerman, B.J., 1990. Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational psychologist, 25(1), pp.3-17.