When outcomes fail to fall-out as you expect, do two things: (1) determine if you controlled the outcome, e.g. if your work product was deficient or if the outcome was out of your hands, e.g. an election, and then, (2) “blame” any and all outcomes you cannot control on anything other than components of your self-system. This isn’t excuse making, it’s reality.
Hope For The Best; Prepare For The Worst.
I’m not a political scientist but I do know that the damage done by Obama in his first term was made possible by Nancy Pelosi and a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. That’s not what he’ll work with after he and Jay-Z are done partying. If he adapts, things won’t go down the toilet. If Obama entrenches himself based on the false notion that his victory was a mandate, he’ll be stuck in a standoff until Marco Rubio runs for, and wins, the Presidency in 2016.
Since no one knows what will pan-out in the future, you need to prepare for an intransigent Obama however you can: Cut back on visits to Starbucks; study your investment strategies more carefully; take a “staycation” this Christmas rather than the vacation to Costa Rica you planned. Do whatever makes you feel safer should doom-and-gloom scenarios come to fruition. In this regard, simultaneously doing a Sam Zell will be wildly synergistic.
What do these tactics achieve? A sense of self-control that makes you feel efficacious and wards-off depression.
When I was a graduate student at Duke a friend of mine did a series of studies that demonstrated how a placebo strategy taught to hospitalized patients recovering from heart attacks –having them curl their toes at specific intervals— was incredibly beneficial, relative to no intervention, in speeding their recovery. The point of this research wasn’t to prove how a ridiculous “exercise” could ameliorate physical disease but, rather, how boosting feelings of self-efficacy improved a person’s physical and mental health.
Don’t curl your toes for the next four years; do something constructive. Anything constructive. If you do, your view that a “disaster” struck the USA when Romney lost to Obama will soon be replaced by a sense that, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and you are one tough S.O.B.