The problems as Advantages

FLIPSIDE. Here is a book which “reveals an exciting, new concept” to “help you turn any problem or obstacle to your advantage, learn where the most successful people find the best opportunities in life, turn loss into gain and failure into success, and understand how people can triumph in the face of adversity.”

The Flipside is a collection of experiences of many well-known and also lesser-known individuals who have come face-to-face with almost unsurmountable problems and have come out of them, victorious. Ofcourse they could have buckled under the pain and the grief, but they decided to see the flipside and made the best of their situations.

“All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming,” says the deaf, dumb, and blind Helen Keller. “Every problem or obstacle contains an opportunity as big, and sometimes bigger, than the problem itself. The flipside is that opportunity,” quotes the author, Adam J. Jackson.

Take the example of Harland Sanders, who at the age of sixty five lost his business and everything except the Government’s social security of $105 given by the government. He realised he had a special secret chicken recipe. He sold this to restaurants, opened 600 franchised outlets for it. This is none other than Colonel Sander;s KFC!

According to the author, other factors which play an important role in our optimism and finding a flipside are surrounding yourself with the right people because, “the quality of your life is the quality of your relationships; it is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social support in order to be happy; focusing on the mind and finding inner strength.”

“This is the first key to the flipside. Finding the hidden opportunities in life does not depend upon what happens to us; what matters is how we respond to the challenges that come our way…. Even in the face of extreme tragedy, it is possible to build a new and, in many ways, richer and more meaningful life. That is because they are extreme optimists; they have positive expectations of their future.”

But, says the author about optimism, “when there is a high cost of failure, optimism needs to be tempered with caution.”

Some critical questions that come to the author’s mind – What is good about this; What could be good about this; What could I do, right now, to turn this to my advantage; What could I learn from this that could be to my advantage; What could I learn from this that would benefit others.

“Instead of looking back, we can look for the future, and by asking the right questions all of us can find the flipside,” says the author. (www.headine.co.uk)