The Flipside: Finding the Hidden Opportunities in Life

The Flipside

Finding the hidden opportunities in life

Adam J Jackson

Blue Dolphin Press

Dedicated to and in memory of Sam Chapman

24th February 1990 - 3rd February 2020

Flipside: an opposite, reverse, or sharply contrasted side or aspect of something or someone.

Wikipedia

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2009 Adam J Jackson. All rights reserved.

The right of Adam J Jackson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

The right of Adam J Jackson to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Every effort has been made to fulfil requirements regarding the reproduction of copyright material. The author and publisher will be glad to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-912424-06-1

PRAISE FOR THE FLIPSIDE

By Adam J Jackson

‘T his is an inspiring, really energising book. It is just the sort of thing you need when you have watched too many news broadcasts about how the world is going to the dogs...This is an empowering book. Read it first before you give it to that friend who really needs it.’

The Times - South Africa

‘Life-affirming stories guaranteed to make us change the way we look at adversity’

Publishers Weekly

‘An entertaining and relevant read when so many people are facing financial and emotional traumas.’

News of The World

‘I found it hard to put down, always wanting to see what the next chapter would reveal. It is a truly inspirational account, showing as it does, how people with the right attitude to life can overcome some of the most difficult еxperiences.’

Euro weekly

‘This inspirational chronicle of optimism might just change the way you deal with life’s challenges.’

The Daily Record

‘An exciting, life-changing phenomenon" but even if you don’t buy into that, you will find fascinating stories here of how others (some well known, some not-so- well known) have taken lemons and made lemonade. If nothing else, it’s incredibly inspirational.’

Stuff.co.nz

‘The Flipside...can help you in your career and with the problems you face every day.’

Third Sector

‘We are inspired by Adam J Jackson’s writings in his book The Flipside which is based upon a simple and inspiring idea that "every problem or obstacle in our lives however big or small contains an equivalent or greater benefit or opportunity.’

Mrs Miriam Segabutla. 18 June 2009.

Limpopo MEC for Health and Social Development,

Health budget speech

Department of Health and Social Development

Limpopo Provincial Government

Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

1. THE ROAD TO MADRID

2. DEFINING MOMENTS

3. CRISES & OPPORTUNITIES

4. LIFE CHANGES

5. THE OF TWO TRAUMA SIDES

6. REASONS FOR OPTIMISM

7. HEALTH AND OPTIMISM

8. FINDING THE FLIPSIDE

9. GREAT EXPECTATIONS

10. THE ENTREPRENEUR'S MINDSET

11. REFRAMING YOUR LIFE

12. LOST DREAMS & NEW DIRECTIONS

13. EDISON’S LEGACY

14. THE ART OF SEEING

15. THE PARADIGM OF POSSIBILITY

16. THREE AVENUES

17. THE RELATIONSHIP FACTOR

18. FOCUSING THE MIND

19. REFLECTIONS

20. CONCLUSION

21. EPILOGUE

NOTES AND REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CONNECT WITH ADAM

NEWSLETTER

PREFACE

3rd Edition

Fourteen years have passed since I wrote The Flipside. The world had just gone through the biggest financial recession since the 1930s. Many people around the world lost their jobs and their homes; some lost their lives. Today, the state of the world is no less precarious. A global pandemic in 2019 caused politicians to lock down the entire world for the best part of two years. Russia invaded Ukraine, causing fuel prices to skyrocket and, as I write, people everywhere are facing a 'cost-of-living' crisis in which prices are rising faster than people's incomes. In addition, climate change and the effects this may have on the imminent future of the planet are causing genuine fear and concern. Few would disagree that we are living in very challenging times.

However, the story of The Flipside may help us reframe our views of world events. When asked about the lessons learned from the work of Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, a prominent U.S. theoretical physicist of the twentieth century, replied that Einstein's work revolved around three rules which apply to all science, all problems, and at all times:

'Out of clutter, find simplicity;

From discord make harmony; and finally

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.'

Difficulties, by their very nature, come with opportunities. And the biggest difficulties contain the greatest opportunities. I hope The Flipside helps explain this phenomenon and reveals how and why the difficulties we may face in life – things we may be tempted to curse and think of as personal tragedies - often turn out to be our greatest gifts.

This revised edition contains all the same stories of the original, except one. On January 13, 2013, Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and seven times winner of the Tour de France, confessed to using illicit performance-enhancing drugs throughout his career, including during all seven Tour wins. Although cheating of that kind is reputed to be endemic in cycling (and in many professional sports) and Armstrong is certainly not the only cyclist to be found guilty of taking illegal drugs, his story is not a great example of someone finding the flipside in sport.

Almost a month to the day after Armstrong's confession, 14 February 2013, the legendary Paralympian, Oscar Pistorius, shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in his Pretoria home. Pistorius claimed he had mistaken Steenkamp for an intruder hiding in the bathroom. After a long, drawn out and very public trial, Pistorius was cleared of murder. But he was found guilty of 'culpable homicide' (the negligent unlawful killing of another human being) and received a five-year prison sentence. I left Pistorius's story in the book because I believe that his struggle to overcome the challenges of growing up with no feet and later becoming the fastest man with no legs remains an inspiration.

All the other stories in the book remain. I have revised some of the wording, but the core messages are unchanged.

Adam Jackson

Hertfordshire, England,

June 2022

INTRODUCTION

Each problem has hidden within it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognised a problem and turned it into an opportunity.

Joseph Sugarman

The first time I met someone who had found the flipside was on a cold winter evening in February 1981. In fact, that night I met not one but two remarkable people, both of whom spoke about tragic events that had changed their lives. While I don’t remember their names, the events of that evening have stayed with me.

I had just watched the student drama society at Southampton University perform an outstanding production of a play called ‘Whose Life Is It Anyway?’. The play tells the story of a man who wakes up in a hospital bed following a serious car accident and discovers that he is a quadriplegic. He has no feeling and no control over any part of his body below his neck.

Prior to the accident, the man’s life revolved around his work as an artist. Discovering that he is paralysed, the man is unwilling to face the prospect of a life in which he has no control of anything. He pleads with the hospital authorities to help him die. When they refuse, he initiates a legal battle for the right to end his life.

It is a brilliantly scripted courtroom drama that explores the emotional journey of a man whose bright, witty and vibrant mind has become trapped inside a useless body. It also highlights the legal and moral issues surrounding euthanasia. In the ensuing legal battle, it becomes apparent that the man gradually begins to feel differently about his life. He builds relationships with the people around him and the challenge of the court case gives meaning to his daily existence. I won’t tell you how the play ends. Suffice to say that, if you get an opportunity to see it (or the film version starring Richard Dreyfuss), I’m sure that you’ll find it thought-provoking and memorable.

As an undergraduate reading Law, I had been especially interested to see the play because, at that time, we were covering the legal and ethical issues around the subject of euthanasia in our degree course. One of the core issues that arose from the play was whether a person could be considered mentally stable or emotionally capable of making a rational decision immediately after they had suffered such a drastic physical and emotional trauma. If not, what period of time would need to pass, or what test would they need to take before they could be considered capable of making a rational decision?

I saw the play in the first semester of 1981. It was particularly memorable because the play was followed by an open discussion about the issues raised in the story. The play’s director was joined on stage by a law professor, a psychology professor and two other men, both of who were sitting in wheelchairs.

The Law professor spoke about the issues that need to be addressed when considering the legalization of euthanasia. Suicide is not a criminal offence in the UK, and therefore, one could argue that helping someone who wants to die but who is physically incapable of committing suicide also should not be a criminal offence. If an able-bodied person can swallow a bottle of tablets to end his or her life, should we should deny a paralysed person the same right just because he or she can’t physically pick up the bottle?

The professor asked if someone you loved was suffering and begged you to help end their suffering by handing them a bottle of tablets, would you hand it to them? If you did, should you be guilty of murder? Or manslaughter? How far should the Law go in criminalizing the act of helping someone who wants to end their own life?

It seems straightforward enough; most people wouldn’t hesitate to end the suffering of a pet animal, so why should we not extend the same compassion to humans? But the more one reflects upon the issues, the more one discovers it is anything but straightforward.

The psychologist took up the discussion and explained that any trauma will affect a person’s cognitive and behavioural patterns. We know it as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and it can manifest in a variety of symptoms including depression, suicidal tendencies, nightmares, anger rages and flashbacks. PTSD usually develops within the first three months following a severe trauma, although it can take up to a year before symptoms become apparent. Many trauma survivors will, at some point, consider ending their lives. But we need time to process experiences, the psychologist explained. And, as we do so, our thoughts and feelings about our future and our place in the world can change.

The two men in the wheelchairs then expressed their thoughts to the audience. Their comments had a deep and lasting impression on me, so much so that I can remember it over twenty-five years later. The two men explained that in the immediate weeks following their accidents, they had indeed wanted to die. Their losses were seemingly unbearable and they couldn't see a future. But, in the months that followed, their attitudes changed. They faced new challenges every day; challenges that were hardly challenges at all prior to their accidents, like getting washed and dressed in the morning. But there were daily challenges, nonetheless. Their accidents had also forced them to re-evaluate their lives and to reflect upon their hopes, their dreams and their aspirations. It was this, they both said, that brought about something they had not expected. As time passed, the two men, in their own ways, found the will to live.

What I found most astonishing was that both men said that their lives were far richer and more fulfilled following their accidents than they had ever been before their accidents. They claimed, years after their accidents, they were much happier than they had been as able-bodied men and they both went so far as to say that their accidents had been ‘one of best things to have happened to them’. I found their comments shocking. How could anyone claim that an incident that left them paralysed and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life was the best thing to have happened to them?

A $105 SOCIAL SECURITY CHEQUE AND A CHICKEN RECIPE

Harland Sanders was sixty-five years old when, through no fault of his own, he lost the business that he had spent the best part of his adult life building. Most men his age were enjoying retirement, but Harland was facing financial ruin. After a lifetime of hard work, Harland was having to survive on a social security cheque of just $105. But losing his business proved to be one of the best things to have happened to Harland, because it became the catalyst for something incredible. Without that loss, Harland may never have gone on to find the flipside.

Harland was no stranger to difficult times. He was born on 9 September 1890 in Indiana, USA, and his childhood was anything but easy. Before Harland had reached his sixth birthday, his father died and Harland’s mother had no choice but to go out to work. Instead of attending school, Harland had to care of his three-year-old brother and baby sister. This meant that he had to cook and clean for his siblings. He excelled in both. According to his mother, by the time he was seven years of age, Harland was a master chef and could prepare many of the regional dishes.

At the age of 10, Harland got his first paid job working on a nearby farm for $2 a month. When he was 12, his mother remarried, and he left his home near Henryville, Indiana, for a job on a farm in Greenwood. He held a series of jobs over the next few years, first as a 15-year-old streetcar conductor in New Albany, and then as a 16-year-old private, soldiering for six months in Cuba.

During the years that followed, Harland worked as a railroad firefighter, studied Law by correspondence, practised in Justice of the Peace courts, sold insurance, operated an Ohio River steamboat ferry, sold tyres, until he finally ended up operating a service station in Corbin, Kentucky.

When he was 40, Harland tried a new initiative offering meals to hungry travellers who stopped at his service station. He served his customers simple, local recipes on the dining table in the living quarters of his service station. Harland soon realized that there was a genuine opportunity to expand his garage business by opening a restaurant. He acquired premises across the street that could seat 142 people and that was the beginning of what was to become one of the most sought-after restaurants in the county. Harland’s reputation for serving delicious home-cooked food spread far and wide. His restaurant was listed in Good Food Guides for the area and Harland received honours from the State Governor Ruby Laffoon in 1935 in recognition of his contribution to the state’s cuisine.

But life’s fortunes can quickly change. in the mid-1950s, a new interstate highway was built that bypassed the town of Corbin, diverting the traffic and, with it, the bulk of Harland’s customers. Harland was sixty-five years of age. A few months earlier, he had a successful business which could have been sold to pay for a comfortable retirement. Now he was facing financial ruin. His garage and restaurant, a mere fraction of their expected value, were auctioned off. After paying the last of his debtors, Harland had nothing but a $105 social security cheque.

However, within just a few years, Harland would look back on the catastrophe that befell him and saw it not as a disaster, but as the opportunity through which he found celebrity and success, the likes of which he could never have dreamed and would, in all probability, never have attained, had his garage and restaurant survived.

Having lost his business and livelihood through no fault of his own, it would have been easy for Harland to give up. Who would have blamed him, particularly at his time of life, if he had become resentful and despondent? Instead of complaining or finding someone to blame, Harland set out to look for the flipside and he found it in the unlikeliest of places – a chicken recipe!

Harland knew that his chicken recipe was special because it had been the clear favourite of his customers. So, armed with only his secret recipe – a coveted blend of eleven herbs and spices – he travelled throughout the state and then across the entire country visiting one restaurant after another selling his recipe to restaurateurs. Harland cooked batches of chicken for the restaurant owners and their employees and waited for their reaction. Almost all of them loved his chicken and, at that point, Harland entered a ‘handshake’ agreement on a simple deal that allowed the restaurant to use his recipe on the condition that he received a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold.

They rest, as they say, is history. By 1964, Harland, who became known as ‘The Colonel’, had over 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and Canada. That year, he sold his business for $2 million to a group of investors. But the Colonel remained the public face and spokesperson for the company. In 1976, an independent survey ranked the Colonel as the world’s second most recognizable face.

Today Colonel Sander’s’ KFC (originally ’Kentucky Fried Chicken") outlets are found in over 82 countries around the world and serve up over two billion dinners every year. The Colonel travelled over 250,000 miles a year visiting the KFC empire he founded until 1980 when, at the age of 90, he died from leukaemia. And the greatest success of his life would never have happened had he not lost everything and been forced to become resourceful. Colonel Sanders refused to be beaten by adversity and, with nothing more than a $105 social security cheque and a fried chicken recipe, he found the flipside.

SMILING FROM CRACKED TEETH

When Simon Purchall had a biking accident that left him with a mouth full of cracked teeth, it could have ruined him financially. He had been cycling home from work and, as he turned a corner, he skidded and fell off his bicycle. He landed face down and smashed his jaw on the kerb of the pavement. Initially, he thought that only a few teeth had chipped, but four teeth then became infected. After a thorough examination, Simon’s dentist discovered that four of Simon’s teeth were badly cracked and would need to be replaced. The total cost to repair the chipped teeth and replace the cracked teeth with implants was in excess of £20,000.

Initially, Simon had little option but to borrow the money and have the work done. However, Simon’s wife, Veronika, who was a qualified dental nurse from Hungary, suggested that they look at having the work done in Budapest.

‘Like most people, I had a few reservations about going to an ex-Communist country for dental work, but it was amazing,’ Simon said. ‘The level of service and expertise was fantastic. I had all the treatment done there and saved about £16,000.’

When he returned to the UK, Simon found the flipside of his accident. He and Veronika thought that there could be an exciting business opportunity helping other people save money on their dental treatment by promoting and marketing the specialist dental treatments offered in Hungary.

The fact that Veronika was Hungarian and a qualified dental nurse made the decision to start the business that much easier, and within a matter of months, their company ‘SmileSavers’ was launched.

Today, SmileSavers is a hugely successful business which has enabled Simon to free himself from his previous work as an IT consultant. Both he and Veronika work in their own business, building a future together.

Whether it was down to fate or just the randomness of life that Simon suffered his biking accident is immaterial to him and to our search for the flipside. The injury itself would have been enough to send many lesser people into a state of depression and, on top of that, there was the huge financial burden of having to find £20,000 to repair the damaged teeth. But what is significant about this story is that Simon Purchall’s accident presented an enormous opportunity. It was the catalyst that would change his life. Simon grasped that opportunity and turned the incident to his advantage. Today, he looks back on the whole affair of his accident with a smile; a smile with a set of perfect teeth, knowing that, without that accident, he wouldn’t be enjoying the lifestyle he has today. Simon Purchall found the flipside.

THE SEARCH FOR THE FLIPSIDE

Was it just a matter of luck that the two disabled men confined to wheelchairs found something in their disabilities that brought their lives greater meaning and happiness? Would Harland Sanders have become a phenomenal worldwide success had he not lost everything first? And was it simply just good fortune that Simon Purchall built a hugely successful dental business following his bike accident? Or could there be something else involved?

Could there be a common thread that runs through these stories and many others like them? Something which enables ordinary people to literally ‘flip’ a seemingly adverse event or circumstance and find opportunities that would otherwise have remained hidden.

The Flipside is an attempt to answer these questions with the help of a simple yet controversial and life-changing philosophy. At its core is a belief that every problem or obstacle, however big or small, that life places in our path, contains an equivalent or greater benefit or opportunity. That benefit or opportunity is known as the ‘Flipside’.

To find the secrets of the flipside, I am going to take you to South Africa to meet the man with no feet who holds world records in 100m, 200m