When a new challenge comes your way, remember your past victories.

Failures are filed carefully and victories are filed badly.

Ask somebody what they've come through and you usually get a long pause, then one item, then a look of surprise as the rest of the list turns up behind it.

Worth writing yours down while nothing is on fire, because the search function stops working under pressure. Three or four hard things you handled, with enough detail to be retrievable — the year, what it cost, what you actually did.

That's not vanity. It's a document you'll be glad exists on a morning when your own history appears to consist entirely of things going wrong.