Isn't Life All about Perspective?

I have two recent examples that show me that much of what we feel in life is really determined by perspective.

#1: Last night Dave and I were playing a game of chess.  Early in the game I made a dumb move and lost my queen.  And the game went down hill from there!  I was sure that I was going to lose.  But I counted it as almost a victory when I fought Dave to a stalemate.  And Dave had been sure that he was going to win.  So he was pretty disappointed when we stalemated.  So I was happy and he was sad, even though we ended up getting the same "score" in the game.  Perspective.

#2: I have set goals for myself of different things I want to accomplish during the day, or a certain amount of time I have to work each day on my project.  But I frequently don't meet those goals.  I decided that I needed to give myself an incentive to meet my work goals.  So now I have a set amount of time that I have to work each day.  If I don't work that long, I have to eat 1.5 inches of black licorice for every 10 minutes I come in under that time.  On Tuesday I didn't get 1 hour and 10 minutes done.  So I had to eat 7 units of black licorice, or 10.5 inches (about 1 piece).  I HATE black licorice!  So this is really motivating for me.  Yesterday I hadn't quite made my goal, and I worked in the evening so that I could get the time in and not have to eat licorice.  It's not that the work is any more interesting to me.  It's that eating licorice is worse than working on my project.  Perspective!

So what are some things that give you perspective in your life?