Change your life in 3 easy steps! Lose weight in 10 minutes a day! This kind of ‘cruel optimism’ suggests that socially-created issues can be solved by individual effort, and quickly. It’s a kind of magical misdirection that leaves us feeling worse, when we don’t manage to drive change. So what’s a better way? (Read on for more! Complete with real-world success stories! No, really, that’s true.)

There’s a tension between being content with what is, and striving forward to what might be. But it might be possible to ‘strive with contentment’ – if we go after the right things