In chess, a bad position isn’t lost until you stop looking for the best move in it.

Losing positions still have moves in them. The player who gives up internally while still sitting at the board starts playing carelessly, and the carelessness is what actually finishes the game. A bad spot narrows your options rather than removing them. Most comebacks are not brilliance, they are one person continuing to look while the other assumed it was over.

Take something you have mentally written off, a subject, a season, a project. Rather than deciding whether it is salvageable, find the single best available next move and make it. Judge again in a fortnight.