My thirteen-year-old son has a goal. He wants to break 40 on nine holes of golf. He has been so close he can taste it.

Recently, he had a three-foot birdie putt that would have put him in a great position to finally get there. He lined it up, stroked it, and missed.

That was the moment. The moment when everything that followed depended on one thing. How quickly he could pause, reset, and move forward. But that's not what happened. The disappointment took over, emotions ran the show, and the goal wasn't realized that day.

Here's the hard truth. This isn’t just a teenager thing or a sports thing. This is a human thing. You rarely control what happens, but you can control how long you carry it.

Most people think they are good at this. And maybe you are, when things are going well. But the true test isn't how you respond when life is easy. It's how quickly you can go from a bad moment to a useful next action when it isn't.

It’s what Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”

That's where your biggest advantage lives. The people who close it fastest aren't the most talented or the most prepared. They're the ones who have trained their mind to reset.

So the question today isn't whether something bad is going to happen. It will. The question is how long you're going to carry it when it does

P.S. The Optimistic Outlook is a Podcast! Leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts would mean a lot.