Don’t treat a hard week like a referendum on your whole life. It’s a week.

A difficult week invites a much larger conclusion than it can support. Tiredness makes the whole of your life look like whatever the last few days were, and the mind starts asking enormous questions at exactly the moment it is least able to answer them. Seven days is too small a sample to tell you anything about a direction. It can only tell you about seven days.

Postpone the big questions until the end of an ordinary week rather than a bad one. Write them down if they will not leave you alone, then read them again once you have slept. Most will have stopped seeming urgent.