Two steps down a staircase still leaves you way above the ground floor. Look how far you’d already climbed.

Measured against yesterday, a setback looks total. Measured against where you began, it is a small correction on a long climb. Your mind is very good at deleting the flights you already walked up, because a recent drop is louder and more vivid than the slow accumulation behind it.

Try picking a date about a year back and listing three things you can do now that you could not do then. Keep the list somewhere you will find it on a bad week. The aim is not to argue yourself out of disappointment, only to set it beside an accurate picture of the distance.