The $3,500 commission check you were expecting won’t be coming. The customer canceled the order.

The $15,000 salary increase your boss promised when he hired you will be only $5,000. “Times are tough,” you are told.

And the plumber’s promise that he’d have your toilet fixed by day’s end was just a pipe dream. You need a whole new septic system.

There is nothing like a bad surprise to ruin a day. Or three or four of them to ruin a month or a year.

I once knew a very successful entrepreneur who had to face, in a single, six-month period, the theft of his best three clients by a top-salesman-turned-traitor, the death of his father, and the embarrassment of learning his wife was having an affair with his next-door neighbor.