Elizabeth Gilbert in a recent Ted Talk analyses the way we experience great failure and the way we experience great success.

In this moving video she describes how “for most of our lives, we live out our existence here in the middle of the chain of human experience where everything is normal and reassuring and regular, but failure catapults us abruptly way out over here into the blinding darkness of disappointment. Success catapults us just as abruptly but just as far way out over here into the equally blinding glare of fame and recognition and praise. And there’s a real equal danger in both cases of getting lost out there… in the hinterlands of the psyche.”