A three-part strategy for overcoming the pain of minor failures… 1. Blame your goal-setting strategy, not your abilities. People often take on big projects and set themselves tight deadlines—then blame their skills when they fall short. Instead, set a series of smaller, incremental, achievable goals. You’re likely to reach at least some of these incremental targets, easing any feelings of failure if others are missed. Example: Rather than try to lose 30 pounds in three months, try to lose one pound a week for 30 weeks. 2. Focus on factors within your control. Failing can make you feel helpless, as though you have tried your best and don’t know what else you can do. Such feelings can damage your motivation when making future efforts or make you give up entirely. The best thing to do is to focus on factors within your control. Example: You exhausted your contacts, you’re out of leads, and you still haven’t found a new job. Focus on the interim goal of expanding your contacts and professional network. Send a quick message to your Facebook friends and other social-media contacts asking if they know people in your field…and/or join relevant LinkedIn groups. 3. Learn the simple trick that could keep you from choking next time. Let’s say a bowler makes nine strikes in a row, then rolls a gutter ball on the tenth. What happened? He choked—he became so anxious that he overthought something that didn’t require much thought at all. Everyone chokes on occasion. Trouble is, once we’ve choked, we might start to worry that we’ll do so again, undermining our confidence. There’s a simple way to reduce the odds of choking—whistle. This works best when playing sports but can come in handy at other times, too. Whistling requires just enough brainpower to distract the part of our mind that might otherwise overthink things. If you’re bowling, start humming or whistling a tune (softly) as you pick up the bowling ball, and continue whistling until the ball is rolling toward the pins.