Making it through a season you thought would break you is proof you can’t fake. Keep that proof handy.

Proof about yourself is hard to come by and almost impossible to manufacture. You cannot talk yourself into believing you can take something. You have to have taken it, and then the belief stops being an opinion. That is what a survived season hands you, and it stays available for every future thing that looks impossible at the start.

Write down, while it is recent, what you got through and roughly what it cost. Keep it somewhere you will find it when the next hard stretch begins. When you catch yourself saying you could not handle something, check that note first.