I was recently reading Canadian Dream and noticed a post where he recently spoke about his net worth update and the number did not look so good. He then surmised that it was just shy of impossible to meet his 2008 net worth goals, and needless to say he was disappointed. His ultimate reaction though is something we can all take away from, as rather than wallow in the fact that he failed to meet his goals despite his best efforts and factors beyond his control (softening housing market, volatile stock market) he made up his mind to focus on what he could do to make the situation better.
This sort of optimism allows us to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and do what needs to be done, even if it isn’t hitting the marks we set for ourselves. I used to play a number of organized sports, and occasionally we’d be up against a team that just flat out outclassed us. We’d be down by so much that it was literally impossible for us to come back to win. At this point we had two options: Lay down and die or keep playing as hard as we could and make them work for it. We chose the latter. The same holds true when we miss out on goals we’ve set for ourselves. You can either give up entirely (as many dieters can attest) or you just keep on trudging and try to get as close to your goals as possible.