Life is unfair, unpredictable, and sometimes just does not go to plan. Get over it.
As a child, I once sat through a prize giving speech that was for me at the time novel and exciting - but in the years since I have heard a thousand times in various guises. It is the old "if you can dream it you can do it" theme, which, while exciting (and backed up by countless examples of people who have dreamed of being champions in some discipline or another and then triumphed) fails to take into account the fact that life is unpredictable, unfair, unjust, and sometimes just does not go to plan. Sometimes, despite doing everything right (or trying to) bad things simply happen to good people. And when they do, it can shake our psychology, our belief systems (If [ insert deity of choice ] is so powerful, why does this happen?), and impact negatively on our wellbeing. We're sort of hard-wired to be negative, and so a whole range of cognitive distortions (these are natural biases or irrational thoughts that come into play in our thinking) can reinforce a spiral of nega...