What’s the secret some people possess and others don’t? A catastrophe happens and some seem to weather the disaster and keep on going. And at the same time others have the identical thing happen and fall totally to pieces. It seems one answer is how we define the problem and therefore see either opportunity and potential, or long-term challenge.
Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, said that some people can put their troubles neatly in a box, even when part of their lives are crumbling. Others let one problem bleed all over everything.
It comes down to this, says Seligman. People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when failure strikes, while people who make specific explanations may become helpless in one part of their lives but manage everything else very well. One person might say, I failed at that job, I’m going to be a failure for the rest of my life. Another will say I really blew it, and I know I’ll learn some valuable lessons so I’ll never let that happen again.
Learning to pause, remove the emotion and then see the problem as a temporary setback rather than a character flaw we’ll never overcome, helps us put things in perspective. This is the attitude that enables us to bounce back regardless of the circumstances.
