When something bad happens it is natural for us to worry about consequences, ask ourselves questions, and in general want to transform whatever felt bad into something that feels better. When something good happens it is about the same, it is that what has been there is invited to stay. The desired feeling is feeling good.

It is a movement of holding on to and rejecting.

Looking back at a year or a decade, some of the bad remains present, but human nature often finds it easy to push all of it into the background to keep the nicer things in the foreground.

Nature softens both. The joy or satisfaction that appeared in the moment has faded away. The frustration or anger feels less acute than it did in the moment.

It’s the bigger picture. It’s noticing that whatever one achieves, alone or with a team, is the result of things that felt good, difficult, easy, bad, challenging, or exciting.

One may learn from all of these events. And we’ve been told that what we learn for, is to avoid previous problems. But what we actually learn for, is to become used to the cycle of projects and the fact that things rarely happen as we expected them.

We learn that it isn’t possible to always succeed, and that mishaps are part of the journey. We learn to assess the journey through the bigger picture and not through the problems.