On Fri, 01 May 2009 09:44:45 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> Well that's not entirely true. As you may have noticed, when something
>>> actually goes right for once, I suddenly become very optimistic.
>> 
>> You need to make it less "sudden" and more a way of being.
> 
> Easier said than done.

Nobody said life was easy - there are things one has to work at.

>>> It's just that for the most part, my life is a failure, so usually I'm
>>> pessimistic.
>> 
>> See, you need to stop with statements like "my life is a failure".
>> That's what we've been saying.
> 
> And what *I* have been saying is that when you repeatedly try to do
> things and are greeted only with failure, it makes it really, *really*
> hard to remain positive.

Oscar Wilde (I think) once said something like "experience is what you 
get when you don't get what you want".  You do seem to learn from the bad 
and you don't give up (as evidenced by your recent success in getting a 
phone number), so that's a good thing.  That's something to be positive 
about.

> Most people fail sometimes, and succeed sometimes. Unfortunately, I fail
> almost *all* the time. This is extremely depressing.

You *feel* you fail almost all the time.  That's not the same as actually 
failing all the time.  Count the success - as in this case - of getting 
the phone number, and having the courage to ask for it.  That's a win.  
The outcome, while clearly not positive - look at that as a secondary.  A 
step in the right direction is getting over the shy enough to talk to 
someone you only normally talk to in her professional capacity.

What it looks like from here is that you're looking at the entire 
sequence of events as a total epic failure.  It's not.  There are small 
successes in there and things you should be proud of having done.  So it 
didn't work out with this one - ultimately, so what?  The thing is you 
took a chance, and taking chances is what life is all about.  That's a 
win no matter how you slice it.

> (That's probably why I get so hyperactive on the rare occasions where
> something actually works...)

That's a perfectly reasonable reaction.  People get excited when things 
go their way or have a positive outcome.

Jim

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