How to Be More Resilient

Life has its ups and downs. You’ve got to play the hand you’ve been dealt, and you’re not always dealt the best hand.

The concept of resilience — the ability to bounce back from adversity — has become a highly discussed topic among high-achieving professionals. From startup founders, to company executives, to athletes, to leaders who want to create impact — we all want to become more resilient.

How do we do that? It starts with how you talk to yourself about challenges, setbacks, failures, and adversity. In these situations, are you a pessimist or an optimist? If you’re a pessimist, you will get depressed and give up. If you’re an optimist, you will be resilient and keep going.

What are the differences between pessimists and optimists?

Pessimists tend to look at negative events as permanent, universal, and internal.

Optimists tend to look at negative events as temporary, specific, and external.

I’ve been reading a book lately called “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

In his book, Prof. Seligman describes the difference between pessimists and optimists:

“The defining characteristic of pessimists is that they tend to believe bad events will last a long time, will undermine everything they do, and are their own fault. The optimists, who are confronted with the same hard knocks of this world, think about misfortune in the opposite way. They tend to believe defeat is just a temporary setback, that its causes are confined to this one case. The optimists believe defeat is not their fault: Circumstances, bad luck, or other people brought it about. Such people are unfazed by defeat. Confronted by a bad situation, they perceive it as a challenge and try harder.”

The key to being resilient is how you respond when confronted with a challenge, a setback, a defeat. At the moment when you encounter that defeat, what does your inner voice say to yourself? How do you explain the events that are occurring? Permanent, universal, and internal — or temporary, specific, and external? As Prof. Seligman writes:

“What is crucial is what you think when you fail, using the power of ‘non-negative thinking.’ Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism… Your way of explaining events to yourself determines how helpless you can become, or how energized, when you encounter the everyday setbacks as well as momentous defeats.”

So there are three dimensions to how you perceive bad events that determine your pessimism or optimism: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization.

Permanence

Permanence determines how long a person is “set back” by a negative event. Do they think it’s a permanent adversity, or short-lived?

“Permanent explanations for bad events produce long-lasting helplessness and temporary explanations produce resilience.”

Suppose you competed in a swim meet and you lost. How do you explain it?

• Permanent: “I always lose swim meets. I’m not good at swimming.” (always, never, forever)
• Temporary: “I lost that swim meet. I’ll practice harder next time.” (sometimes, lately, this time)

Pervasiveness

Pervasiveness determines how overwhelmed a person will get by a negative event — in essence, the magnitude of the defeat. Do they think this adversity will affect many situations broadly, or is it just one aspect of their life?

“Universal explanations produce helplessness across many situations and specific explanations produce helplessness only in the troubled area.”

• Universal: “I’m not a very social person, I’m awkward at meeting people.” (generalize one event to an entire category)
• Specific: “I’m not good at starting conversations at parties, but I’m generally a friendly person.” (limit the negative event to one specific area)

Personalization

Personalization determines how hard a person is on himself or herself as a result of the adversity. Do they curse themselves for their own failures, or do they chalk it up to bad luck or bad circumstances?

“When bad things happen, we can blame ourselves (internalize) or we can blame other people or circumstances (externalize). People who blame themselves when they fail have low self-esteem as a consequence. They think they are worthless, talentless, and unlovable. People who blame external events do not lose self-esteem when bad events strike.”

• Internal: “I made a lot of stupid mistakes that caused my last startup to fail.” (blame myself)
• External: “I encountered a streak of bad luck that caused my last startup to fail.” (blame luck, circumstances, or others)

Tips for Being More Resilient

When you encounter adversity, listen to the inner voice that’s explaining what’s happening. Does the explanation sound permanent, universal, and internal? If so, you need to actively dispute your own inner voice to avoid being too pessimistic about the setback. How do you do that?

#1: Maintain perspective.

It’s super important that you maintain perspective whenever you encounter difficulties. The two dimensions to think about are having a long-term and big picture perspective.

When you maintain the long-term perspective, you’re able to remember that whatever adversity you’re facing now is just one blip on your life’s journey. Maybe you will even remember a previous setback that you encountered and overcame. You may remember that things that seem like major setbacks in the moment are often forgotten with the passage of time. Some of these negative events may also have a silver lining in the lessons learned for the future. Maintaining long-term perspective helps to avoid the feeling that this adversity is permanent.

When you maintain the big-picture perspective, you’re able to confine the current adversity to just one aspect of your life. Someone who is well-balanced (and has a fulfilling life across career, health, family, friends, and hobbies) is able to maintain the big picture when he or she encounters a setback in one area. It’s important for us to remind ourselves regularly about all of the things that we have going for us. Some people do that through daily affirmations, through reflection, or even by traveling. Maintaining the big-picture perspective helps to avoid the feeling that this setback is universal. If you encounter a setback in your career, for example, you still have the other aspects of your life (health, family, friends, etc.) that are going well.

#2: Contrary evidence

If your first reaction is to describe the negative event in permanent, universal terms, pause for a second and ask yourself if that’s really true. As Prof. Seligman writes:

“The most convincing way of disputing a negative belief is to show that it is factually incorrect… You adopt the role of a detective and ask, ‘What is the evidence for this belief?’”

Sometimes when we encounter a negative event, we catastrophize:

“From all the potential causes, they select the one with the direst implications.”

By disputing the “catastrophic” interpretation of the event by examining contrary evidence, we can avoid the permanent and universal explanation of what happened.

I had a friend who had a heated argument with his boss. When he told me about it afterwards, he said, “I can’t believe I said that. That was a career-ending move.”

He was feeling really pessimistic about the situation. If he had objectively looked at the facts, he would have seen that the argument — while a setback — was not a “career-ending move.” He may have temporarily harmed the relationship with his boss. But he could apologize and make efforts to rebuild trust, and maybe the relationship damage would heal over time. And even if the damage was permanent — my friend was going to have many jobs over his career, and many bosses. So yes, this was a negative situation with his boss, but it wasn’t a permanent “career-ending move.”

#3: Alternate explanations

Most events — even negative ones — usually have many different causes. Pessimistic people tend to latch onto the most negative explanation behind the event.

“If you did poorly on a test, all of the following might have contributed: how hard the test was, how much you studied, how smart you are, how fair the professor is, how the other students did, how tired you were. Pessimists have a way of latching onto the worst of all these possible causes — the most permanent, pervasive, personal one.”

To avoid falling into the pessimism trap, take a step back and reflect on what happened. Consider all of the different explanations for why the event occurred. Focus on the non-permanent/changeable (“not much time studying”), the non-pervasive (“this particular test was hard”), and the non-personal (“the questions weren’t fair or well-written”). And avoid focusing on the most negative — the permanent, pervasive, and personal (“I’m not smart”).

Life has its ups and downs, and we all want to be more resilient when confronted with the downs.

The key to being more resilient — and more optimistic in general — is how we explain the causes and the implications of adversity. Are we quick to fall back on permanent, universal, and internal explanations? Or do we instead focus on temporary, specific, and external explanations? This is the most importance difference between pessimistic and optimistic people.

I’ll end with one last excerpt from the book, and my own take on it:

“Common sense tells us that success makes people optimistic. But… we have seen repeatedly that the arrow goes in the opposite direction as well. Optimistic people become successes. In school, on the playing field, and at work, the optimistic individual makes the most of his talent.

“And we now know why. The optimistic individual perseveres. In the face of routine setbacks, and even of major failures, he persists. When he comes to the wall at work, he keeps going, particularly at the crucial juncture when his competition is also hitting the wall and starting to wilt.”

There’s a famous saying that’s derived from Louis Pasteur: “Luck favors the prepared.” Given what we know about optimism and resilience, we can also say “Luck favors the resilient” as well.

Note: All of the block quotes in this post are excerpts from “Learned Optimism,” by Prof. Martin Seligman.