Your best friend starts hanging out with a different bunch of people.
Strained relations with your manager doesn’t let you get a good rating during your appraisal.
The philosophies that made you a ton of money in the stock market fail although the market keeps climbing.
The common reaction to this would be to fight back. To make your friend and manager see the light of day so that the friendship can be revived or you can get the rating you want. To double down on the stocks you own citing the law of averages.
But that’s like trying to make a sinking ship float. Even if it’s possible, it’s unlikely. Besides, you don’t even know whether your efforts will pay off. Because anything broken, when put back together, is never the same.
It’s better to accept situations as they are. Maybe your friendship has run its course. Maybe your manager and you will never see eye to eye. Maybe your investing philosophies have become redundant because the market has changed. (Or maybe this is all temporary and things will revert to what they were within a few months.)
Acceptance doesn’t mean surrender. It means you won’t waste your energy on a lost cause but invest it in a useful course of action instead. Like growing your own circle of friends, learning skills that will keep you up with the times, or investing in mutual funds and letting an expert fund manager handle the headache of growing your money.
If things do go back to old times, great! You can enjoy a combo of the new and the old. If they don’t, you have something useful to replace what is gone.
Look through your windshield, not your rearview mirror, while driving.