Don’t make the goal your whole identity. If it falls through, you’ll still need to know who you are.

If a goal becomes the answer to who you are, then missing it does not merely disappoint you, it removes you. That is why people come apart harder than the setback warrants, and why others keep going past the point of sense, since stopping would mean dissolving. Holding it slightly loosely is not a lack of commitment. It is what lets you survive the thing not working.

Keep two or three other true sentences about yourself going, and make sure something in your week has nothing to do with the goal. Keep one friendship where it is never the subject. Then a bad year can stay just a bad year.