How do I keep going when good plans die in politics?

You think in decades while everyone around you thinks in months. That is a lonely way to work. When a good plan dies in a meeting, it feels like the future itself lost. Of course that wears you down. Here is the truth the long view teaches: not every seed you plant will you see grow. Some plans die. Others sit quietly and rise years later, when the moment is finally right. Your job is to keep putting good ideas into the world, not to control when they take root. You will burn out if you measure yourself only by what gets built now. Measure instead by the quality of what you propose and the people you shift, even a little. Save your best energy for the fights worth having. Let some losses go. The work of decades is not won or lost in a single room.