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#1 I became Israel's youngest-ever national squash champion in 1987. I was thrilled, but I quickly began to think that my accomplishment was not very significant. I decided that to feel truly happy, I needed to win a world championship.

#2 I had always been afraid of failure, and the thought of not achieving my goals kept me up at night. I spent my first years of college in a state of constant stress and unhappiness.

#3 I had always done well in science and math, so I decided to switch my major from computer science to psychology and philosophy. I had not realized until then that so many people struggled with the same issues I did.

#4 The Perfectionist fears failure, whereas the Optimalist accepts it. Perfectionism and optimalism are not distinct qualities that are entirely independent of each other. We should think of perfectionism and optimalism as lying on a continuum, and each of us tends to a lesser or greater degree of one end or the other of the continuum.