On the Way to the Courthouse Wisdom—When you fall short, do you question the circumstances or question your skills and damage your self-esteem? Learn how to keep your self-esteem intact.

As most of you reading this know, I write a regular piece I call “What I’ve Learned about Life on the Way to the Courthouse”.  I send it to several   hundred friends and clients.  It is also published in North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and I record them for WFDD FM radio station, Wake Forest University’s local National Public Radio affiliate.

I have been encouraged to send a weekly message, which is why you are receiving this.

The question of what it is, exactly, that makes people happy has been around since Man first told a story on the wall of a cave.  But science itself has learned to define it more precisely now.

Here is a brief conclusion of empirical data about an important moving part of this mystical thing we call happiness.  Hopefully, it will provide another sight line to this place where happiness resides.

TAKING OUR SELF-ESTEEM TO THE FAIR.  People who are happy with themselves take defeat and explain it away, treating it as an isolated incident that indicates nothing about their ability.  People who are unhappy take defeat, put it in front of the funny mirror at the fair in a very real way, and enlarge it.  They make it stand for who they are and they use it to predict the outcome of future life events. (J. Brown and K. Dutton, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68:712. 1995).

We all need to make a clear assessment of what went wrong when events do not turn out as we wish.  But no assessment in front of the funny mirror is ever clear, is it?  That is one broken mirror which will lead to good luck, not bad luck