By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to turn the lemons in your life into lemonade.

I needed a cup of coffee. Bad. Let me revise that with proper emphasis: I NEEDED a cup of coffee. You know the feeling. That vending machine looked like an oasis to me. I had no change. I only had three wrinkled one-dollar bills.

But the dollar-bill change machine spit out all three of my attempts to feed it. I was desperate. HELP! A service man from the vending company happened to be restocking a nearby candy machine. He came to my rescue.

He took my wrinkled dollar bill – and wrinkled it some more. I CRINGED. Oh, no. That’s going to ruin that dollar even more and the machine will spit it again and again. I was wrong. He folded it lengthwise, creased it, flattened it and then fed it into the machine. The machine gobbled it up and soon I was gulping down the coffee. Ahhhhhhh! You know the feeling.

That vending machine service man demonstrated to me that sometimes you gain strength through a perceived weakness.

After all a leaf will stay afloat longer if its sides are curled up, even though the curl would seem to weaken the structure. Continue reading →