We live in an era where motivational quotes have become an anthem that resonates everywhere. “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” “nothing is impossible,” or “you can achieve anything you set your mind to.” It all sounds lovely, inspiring, and worthy of an Instagram post with an idyllic backdrop. But there’s one small problem: it’s all a lie.
The misinterpretation of Positive Psychology has a lot to do with it. Martin Seligman, the father of this movement, spoke of cultivating our positive emotions and personal strengths, not of believing that success is just a matter of attitude and that you just have to want something to achieve it. Life is not a Disney movie where everything is resolved at the end with a song and a bit of magic. Life is more like an episode of Black Mirror: unpredictable, uncomfortable and sometimes downright absurd.
The problem with living in that world where “anything is possible” is that when we inevitably fail — because the real world has rules, limitations, and factors beyond our control — the blame falls squarely on our shoulders. Phrases like “you didn’t want it bad enough” or “you didn’t try hard enough” hammer away at our minds until they become psychological torture. Not only is this unfair, it also creates brutal frustration. Basically, it’s the emotional equivalent of telling someone with a broken leg that if they just try hard enough, they can win a marathon.
The utopia of “everything is possible”
The world is full of factors you don’t control. You can work your butt off at work and still get fired because your company is bankrupt. You can train like an Olympic athlete and get injured the day before a competition.
No matter how hard you try, there are limits. Genetics, context, economics, luck, the simple fact that there are only 24 hours in a day… everything influences what we can achieve. For example, you could train 10 hours a day to be an NBA player, but if you are 5’3” tall, the odds are not in your favor. And it’s not because you didn’t want it badly enough. Life is like that.
The brain also plays against us. Survivorship bias, for example, pushes us to focus only on success stories and forget the millions of failed attempts, just because they are less visible. Oprah was fired from her first job in television and told she had no future in the industry. Stieg Larsson had his application to the School of Journalism in Stockholm rejected because he was “not good enough.”
Popular myths have been built on the basis of famous people who were rejected, persisted and succeeded. But the truth is that behind every visible success there are thousands of stories of invisible failures that we don’t know about, simply because their protagonists never got anywhere.
Behind the idea that it is possible to achieve everything we set our minds to, there are also other, more complex psychological mechanisms. The illusion of control, for example, encourages us to think that we have more power over circumstances than we actually do. And we feed it because it makes us feel safe and in control.
At the same time, the belief in a just world causes us to lose perspective and touch with reality. We think that if we do everything “right,” the universe will reward us in some way. We think that if we try hard enough, the universe will reward us. But the truth is, the universe doesn’t have an HR department to evaluate your performance. Sometimes things just don’t go your way, and there’s no cosmic complaint form. And that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’re human, and life isn’t fair or unfair—it just flows and changes based on circumstances.
The good thing about not getting everything you want
Failure is not only inevitable, but it is also tremendously useful. It forces us to recalculate the route, to develop resilience and, above all, to accept our vulnerability and understand that not everything is in our hands. Sometimes, not achieving something leads us down unexpected paths that end up being better than we had planned – or simply different.
Think of all the times when a “failure” turned out to be a blessing in disguise. That job you didn’t get and, months later, you discovered that it was hell. That relationship that didn’t work out and that allowed you to meet someone who has now become your soul mate and without whom you couldn’t imagine your life. Or simply that goal that you stopped pursuing because, over time, you realized that you didn’t really even want it that much.
Learning to lose is also learning to let go, to adjust expectations and to find new opportunities where before we only saw failures. And perhaps most importantly, it teaches us that our worth does not depend on our achievements. We are not less valuable for not having achieved everything we set out to do.
Not getting everything you want:
- It teaches you humility, realism and perspective.
- It reminds you that “success” is not a straight line and that there are as many ways forward as there are paths to explore.
- It forces you to hone your judgment to determine which battles are actually worth fighting.
- It teaches you to tolerate frustration and avoid wearing yourself out unnecessarily.
- It trains you to make decisions without fear of error, because you already know that making mistakes is not the end of the world.
- It allows you to appreciate what you achieve in its true measure, without taking everything for granted, which opens the doors to gratitude.
- It gives you the mental flexibility to adjust course when things change or go wrong.
- It frees you from the weight of perfection, because you understand that you don’t always win – although that is also winning.
So the next time someone tells you that “you can achieve anything you set your mind to,” smile, nod, and remember that life is much more interesting when you also leave room for the unexpected and focus on the truly meaningful things, instead of chasing utopian ideals that keep you from serenity and happiness.
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