I guess the Buddhists would call this idea healthy detachment.  Too often we are told to visualize what we want and cut out pictures of it and repeat it like a mantra over and over again....I am introducing a new idea.  Try to care less.  Practice ambivalence.  Learn to let go of wanting it.  Treat your career like a bad boyfriend.  Here's the thing.  Your career won't take care of you.  It won't call you back or introduce you to its parents.  Your career will forget your birthday and wreck your car.  Your career will never marry you.  Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity.  Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you.  That joy that comes when you do something you love.  That small voice that tells you, 'I like this.  Do this again.  You are good at it.  Keep going.'  That's the stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world.  Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend.  Career is different.  Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs.  Mix in public opinion and past regrets.  Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty.  Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren't.  Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never make you truly whole....Ambivalence is the key to success.  You have to care about your work, but not about the result.  You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.