There is an experiment from 1957 that explains every comeback story I have ever respected. A researcher named Curt Richter dropped rats into cylinders of water with no way out. On average, they swam for 15 minutes and then sank. The autopsies were the strange part. The rats still had energy in their muscles. Their hearts were healthy. They had not drowned from exhaustion. They had drowned from giving up. So Richter ran it again. This time, just before each rat would have quit, he scooped it out, dried it off, held it for a few minutes, then placed it back in the same impossible water. Those rats swam for 60 hours. Same rats. Same cylinder. Same task. The only difference was that they had been rescued once before. So their nervous system encoded the possibility that rescue could come again. I think about this experiment constantly. Because everyone I have ever known who has built, lost everything, and rebuilt larger shares one quiet trait. They do not fear the loop the way first-timers do. They have seen the cylinder before. They have the receipt that says: this resolves. The hopeless drown with strength still in the tank. The ones who have been rescued once can swim for days.