Many mistakes move us forward more than backward. Conscientious people often experience a springboard effect following mistakes, whereby fixing the mistakes accelerates growth faster than if they'd never made any missteps.
The money was supposed to feel like something. You work your whole life thinking about the payoff. The day you can finally relax. The moment you don't have to worry about making payroll or whether that big invoice will come through.
The Yerkes-Dodson Law, first described in 1908, suggests that our performance improves with physiological or mental arousal-but only up to a point. Picture a bell curve: Too little arousal ( boredom, fatigue), and we underperform. Too much arousal ( anxiety, panic), and performance drops. Somewhere in the middle is our "zone of optimal arousal," where we're alert, focused, and effective (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908).
While goals can create structure in your life, give you something to strive for, and even inspire you, reaching the goal itself is a result of what you do to get there. The actions you take are the process-how you're actually filling the time that is your life. Sometimes, if you're lucky, what you do is fulfilling; it brings out the best in you-your talents, interests, and skills.
Personality traits are simply labels that summarize typical patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. For example, some people tend to interpret situations pessimistically, while others naturally expect things to work out. Some react quickly with irritation when they're inconvenienced, whereas others are more inclined to assume good intentions. Some people plan ahead meticulously, while others rely on last-minute bursts of effort.
