A friend of mine has put on a few pounds. (He’d like to lose 20 or 30 of them.)

He joked with me saying, “At my current weight, I could just tell people, ‘I recently lost 100 lbs,’ and they’d all say, ‘Wow! Way to go. You look great!’”

People tend to praise us based on where they think we’ve been and where they think we’re going — often more than where we are right now.

Perceived direction has a lot of influence on our perspective.