When a general loses a battle, the instinct is to analyze the tactics. Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher, would suggest that's already the wrong level. In his doctrine of śūnyatā — the radical claim that no phenomenon has a fixed, independent essence — he argued that what we call 'a failure' or 'a strength' is always a relational event, not a property lodged inside the person or the plan. Modern attribution research by Bernard Weiner maps this precisely: leaders who treat setbacks as internal and permanent ('I am not decisive') erode future performance, while those who locate causality in shifting conditions adapt faster. Put Nagarjuna and Weiner together and you get something neither says alone — perseverance isn't grit stored in the chest like fuel; it's a continuous act of correctly reading where the edges of a situation actually are. The most durable leaders aren't the ones who push hardest; they're the ones who keep refreshing their map of what's fixed and what's fluid.

Name one setback you've been treating as a permanent fact about yourself. What actually shifts if you locate it in the situation instead?

Drawing from Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy combined with Attribution Psychology — Nagarjuna (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, c. 2nd century CE) and Bernard Weiner (attribution theory of motivation, 1985)