Much through my life growing up, when dealing with a challenge/problem that hurt, I imagined whether I would have the same problem at the age of 60. Given that

Much through my life growing up, when dealing with a challenge/problem that hurt, I imagined whether I would have the same problem at the age of 60. Given that I was certain the problem was solved by then, it gave me hope for a solution. And then it was a matter of getting there. The specific example that bothered me was lack of girlfriend. But I was certain that at some point in college / after college I'd eventually find someone. So it stopped being a gnawing pain, and became an acceptable scenario. This somewhat worked with particularly challenging times when I was starting as a developer -- feeling like an impostor with not enough skills. I knew that in a few years I'd have the skills to solve the problem, so that meant I could just keep studying knowing it would work out. It's a sort of optimism that I've honed over the years - it's hard for me to know whether this is a common way to think or not. Hope it's helpful to some.