Don't Give Up! <> Be Realistic?

I'm not sure which one wins the day, either in the short or long run.

To temper the tension, I'd advise myself to both not give up and be realistic.

But what about when being realistic means giving up, by definition?

If you don't have unrealistic expectations, you won't be let down!

Such folk wisdom!~  Who ever said that I would be in control of my own expectations.

Seriously, most of these sayings are grounded in the idea that we have the capacity to control ourselves!  What a fanciful notion.

Still, what if we could control our emotional selves.  Which would be better?  Not giving up, or being realistic?

Which one wins, more often?

Which one wins, more often, for you/x individual?

For those that win, can we be sure that the motto was adhered to in its entirety?

I'm guessing that small level adjustments are made all the time.  But I could be wrong.  I've certainly been exposed to a lot of people that are inflexible, and guess what: their inflexibility works.  For instance, and especially, imagine some negotiation.  Even though it might not be where you want to end up, you take a certain stance precisely because you know that you will have to compromise eventually.,,  you basically bake in that assumption to your stance.  So taken on its own, you don't subscribe to what you're saying.  But taken in the expected context of other people's strategies, your strategy makes sense.

Except that they are doing the same thing: strategizing based on your expected strategy.   What if both sides started at where they wanted to end up?  Then they definitely wouldn't end up where they wanted!  So it makes sense to be extreme, given any antagonistic system.

Perhaps it also makes sense in the personal emotional realm?  For all the fanfare that "giving up the right way" -- "failing well" yields these days in ultra data policy making/personal decision making, perhaps it still makes sense to set expectations unrealistically to get where  you "really" want to be in the end.

Just makes sense to somehow remember where  you really wanted to be, when the time comes to accept something/or keep arguing.

And that part is difficult.