You can lose a fight and still win the year. Don’t trade your future for a moment.

Bad afternoons feel total while you are inside them. The argument, the loss, the mark, the humiliation in front of people: all of it presents itself as the thing that decides how this goes, and almost none of it does. A year has room for a great many bad afternoons and still ends well.

When it is going badly, ask what the next twelve months need from you rather than what the next ten minutes wants. Usually that means not saying the thing, not quitting tonight, not posting it. Sleep first, then decide.