"Smile." As a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling, one of my favorite theories is Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development. According to Erikson, there are 8 psychosocial stages of development that each person goes through over the course of his/her life. As I have seen personally and for other people, being optimistic, thinking positively, and thinking big can feel more difficult with each psychosocial stage as we face many challenges and obstacles. Putting it bluntly: failure hurts. Failure isn't fun. It stinks. In struggling and failing, we often lose optimism, positive thinking, and big thinking. How can we thrive if we cannot survive? My transition from predominantly business work to predominantly counseling work began during my days as an MBA graduate student 9 years ago. One of my organizational development (OD) professors told us the story of her deciding to pursue a doctorate and become a professor. For her, she turned to a