“We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world,” wrote Helen Keller. How I wish she were wrong. Disappointments leave us with the unpleasant task of squashing, crushing, and pinching life’s lemons to extract anything to transform into lemonade. Let these techniques help you more easily turn sour into sweet as you take steps to overcome disappointment.

Throw Away the Evidence

Albert Einstein failed his college entrance exam. Walt Disney was fired from his first media job. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Get it?

Stay in the mud

“The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud,” says a Buddhist proverb, just in case you thought everything dirty was bad.

Make a pearl

Allow your disappointment to form a life-affirming pearl, just as an oyster does when an irritating grain of sand gets inside its shell. Just be sure to grab the pearl before the sand gets in your eyes.

Ignore the critics

Success is one percent natural talent, 99 percent hard work. Take it from a writer whose eighth-grade paper was read aloud as an example of how NOT to write.

Grow your roots

Although the bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth, it looks lazy at first because it has no branches…just lots of deep and wide roots. Once its roots take hold, though, bamboo is capable of surging as fast as 48 inches in 24 hours. So are we … if we grow strong roots.

Persevere

“The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground.” — Author Unknown

Don’t rush the process

Only in struggling to emerge from a small hole in the cocoon does a butterfly form wings strong enough to fly. Should you try to help a butterfly by tearing open the cocoon, the poor thing won’t sprout wings, or if it does, its friends will make fun of it. So take your time, and emerge slowly and deliberately.

Protect yourself

Avoid the highly educated relative who might tell you “all things happen for a reason” or that you somehow attracted this disappointment with the wrong thoughts. Build an imaginary bubble of protection and hide inside.

Stay big

Newspaper columnist Ann Landers once wrote, “Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, “I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.” So give yourself permission to be a giant

Allow cracks

A crack in your marriage, career, or personal plans doesn’t mean that your life is broken. According to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”